End of the Character

I find it interesting seeing actors from one's favorite TV show or movie interviewed, noting how different or how similar they are to their characters. Larry Linville, who played Frank Burns on TV's M*A*S*H series for the first couple seasons, was 180 degrees away from the character he portrayed: low-keyed, soft-spoken, and reportedly well-liked by his castmates.

One of the comments he made about Frank Burns always stuck with me: "if Frank were to become suddenly liberalized, that would be the end of the character". Frank would, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist.

This was apparently one of his reasons for resigning from the show, the fact that he'd exhausted the potentialities of his character. Nowhere else to go with it and still keep the essential- annoying quality of Frank Burns.

The reason this remark stuck with me is that I've known people in this life who, among their various aspects of self(some of which might be wonderful), have that central something that just irritates the living shit out of you. They could be a rabble-rouser, for instance- someone who just loves, just lives to stir things up, to add drama the way you'd add salt(or A-1 sauce!) to a steak. An incendiary. More plainly put, a shit-stirrer. We have one person in particular from work who fits this description. Well okay, they embody this description.

Or they could be a nasty gossip. Someone who spreads rumors at the drop of a hat, and bad-mouths whoever has just left the room. We have someone in the musical community- well, several such someones but one in particular- who fits this description to a T. He's referred to in some circles as the Town Crier. Actually a Jekyll and Hyde thing going here: a very nice kind individual coexisting with(but frequently eclipsed by) a major asshole. Well I should say a terribly, sometimes pathetically insecure individual whose insecurities drive him to act like a - major asshole. That's the best way I can put it.

Both these individuals are my personal Frank Burnses. The rabble-rouser seems to create trouble and drama almost without intending to, like it was second nature. Like some self-destructive psychic force pulls them in. It's happened at every location they've worked: walk in, sweet-talk everyone, and then proceed to create and spread drama, and then move to a new worksite(with the staff they just left singing, "Thank God and Greyhound you're gone")and probably went on way before working for the same company as me. This behavior is so central to them, their whole socialization process, that if it suddenly ceased: if they came in to work and got to it without meddling or stirring up trouble, you'd either suspect head trauma or be looking around for pods.

Likewise the Town Crier. His deeply ingrained socialization process is not so much to stir up trouble in a given community or setting as to balkanize it. To divide people into 'in' groups and 'out' groups, with himself in the 'in' group of course: always a small and exclusive membership. And he does this in just about every social setting he finds himself in, just as second nature as the 'rabble-rouser' does their thing. He just kicks into automatic, and some sort of polarity is set up between who's "in" and who's "out". I've seen him do it, time after time after time after time. Again, if he were to suddenly open up and be more accepting, less judgmental, less insecure, you'd figure it was either a pretty good bump on the noggin or Body Snatcher time. I think if I ever heard him say, in reference to some bit of potential gossip: "well gee Rog, that's none of my business.", I'd probably faint.

End of the character. Maybe the character as such is part of one's purpose in life, that is to overcome its imperfections, its insecurities. And once that is achieved, it's the end of your 'mission' here. If Frank Burns were to suddenly become liberalized, he'd have a satori moment- and then get hit by a Bus.