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The Eus Yram
Have you ever heard of the Mary Sue? It is a trope in fiction, especially in fan-fiction, where some character is hyper-competent. As you can find at the linked Wikipedia page, the term was coined in 1973 in a Star Trek fanzine. Some say Rey from The Force Awakens is a Mary Sue. Some say Superman is the equivalent for men, a Marty Stu. Some say that Captain James T. Kirk was also one. Another that has been said to be a Mary Sue is Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel character. That’s all well and good. It’s a great name for the hyper-competent character who easily overcomes all obstacles.
But I have been noticing characters on the other end of the scale. They are hyper-incompetent. Nothing goes right for them. They are usually male. I remember reading a book a few years ago where, by the time the so-called protagonist found out his wife was sleeping with her hippy spiritual guru, I was rooting for the guru. The main character was just that unlikable. That book ended with a possible note of promise, although I’m not even so sure of that. The protagonist was committed to a hospital to dry out from alcohol, or some such, where he met a woman. Instead of taking the promise of better days seriously, I was thinking, “She’s a crazy person. Think of where you’re meeting her excrement-head. This will go no better than your last relationship.”
My wife just watched a short film. I asked her about it when she finished watching. “How was it?”
“It was good, but it was really depressing. It is critically-acclaimed,” she explained.
“Doesn’t ‘critically-acclaimed’ mean depressing as all get out?” I asked.
“I suppose it does,” she agreed.
“Well, what made it depressing?” I asked.
She went on to describe the character and his life in the film where everything went wrong for him. Again, he was one of these hyper-incompetent characters who are hard to like.
What is going on with these characters? Is this something that has been around and I have missed it? Or is it something relatively new? I know about characters like Charlie Brown and Sad Sack in the funny papers. Or good old Sureshot Crackshot, or whatever his name was from the old US Army training films. Charlie Brown is a “lovable loser.” He’s a kid. Kids are not expected to be hyper-competent. They’re expected to learn. And he is lovable. He’s a nice, sane kid surrounded by less nice or sane kids and animals. Sad Sack and Sureshot Crackshot are both very humorous characters. They’re likable and lazy or a likable idiot made to demonstrate what not to do in the army. Beetle Bailey is another of these types. But these characters I am now encountering are not lovable or likable. They’re incompetent losers who should be losing. They’re perfect examples of why I should be allowed to play shoulder golf. (Preferably with the authors of these characters.) Again, have they always been there, and I just missed it? Were there characters like this in Greek tragedies? I don’t like a lot of G.B.Shaw’s characters, but at least they aren’t hyper-incompetents. They are closer to Mary Sues/Marty Stus, which is a good reason not to like them. But have these anti-Mary Sues existed before the last decade or so? They are not anti-heroes, more like anti-protagonists who definitely don’t have the power to even be an antagonist. They are nothings.
And thinking this really is a new thing, I think this phenomenon needs a name of its own. Since it is the opposite of a Mary Sue, I propose calling them Eus Yrams.
What do you think Ricochet? Have you encountered this sort of character, these anti-protagonists, these Eus Yrams? Where have you encountered them? Have they been around for a while? Do they only appear at a civilization’s death? Are you seeing this trend, too?
Published in Culture
Charlie Brown would come out okay in the end, same usually with Sad Sack (and Beetle Bailey) by avoiding the Sarge long enough to take a nap. Don’t know about the others, but that’s their saving grace.
These characters are a sign of the times. Look at how dark movies got in the 70s. People are expecting the end times.
Yep, that’s why these are not the characters I am speaking of.
That is along the lines I was thinking. Except the ’70’s were better than these guys. Sure, they had anti-heroes as protagonists, but they were still protagonists.
A few characters in cinema come to mind along the lines of what you describe: Jim Carrey’s from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adam Sandler’s in Punch Drunk Love, Vincent Gallo’s from Buffalo ’66 and The Brown Bunny, many of Wes Anderson’s; Ben Stiller probably takes the commercial cake, compared to these “indie” movies.
These came out between the early 90s and late aughts, and I like most of them. These characters were frustratingly soft, but sympathetic. The best of these let us root for America’s postmodern little guy – the kind who grew up with a single-mother.
The archetype is wearing thin though, as the redeeming qualities are vanishing.
AFAIK, a Mary Sue isn’t just hyper-competent, but also there’s no credible reason in the storyline why they’d be that way. Lots of people are born with great talent that is already clear in childhood–Mozart; Alexander the Great. Probably Arahant, too. But a Mary Sue shows no signs of combat training or other indications of education that would let him or her reach this state. Like Richard Pryor in Superman III, he just has the knack, and no other explanation is given.
I don’t doubt that Rey could have been trained into the person she instantly becomes when needed by the story, but I’d like to have seen a little more evidence. I mean, fer chrissakes, even Mulan’s growth into a warrior was vastly more realistic, and Mulan wasn’t even a live action character.
MacGyver comes to mind.
Courtesy wikipedia:
A Mary Sue is a type of fictional character, usually a young woman, who is portrayed as unrealistically free of weaknesses.[1] Originating in fan fiction, a Mary Sue is often an author’s idealized self-insertion. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.[2]
The term Mary Sue was coined by Paula Smith, as a character’s name in the 1973 parody short story “A Trekkie’s Tale”, which satirized idealized female characters widespread in Star Trek fan fiction. A male character with similar traits may be labeled a Gary Stu or Marty Stu.
From Paula Smith’s Bildungsroman:
So it might be a reaction to this ‘the hero/heroine overcomes everything’ despite nutty assumptions.
If you check the suggestions to aspiring authors on many websites, the idea is to make the protagonist emotionally deeply flawed – apparently it encourages audience engagement with the protagonist and their progression through the story better than a Mary Sue that sort of turns people right off. It’s a marketing decision.
I’m still stuck in my own “Eeyore mood” from last weekend. Any comments, by me, about identifying with “unlovable losers” would self-serving at best.
Most people don’t consider obnoxiousness a great talent. 😜
There is flawed, and then there is deeply-flawed über-loser. Having a protagonist having to overcome a flaw is the source of one possible form of conflict in a story. As I remember the list, it’s man vs. nature, man vs. man, man vs. himself. There may be a few others. But overcoming the flaw is man vs. himself or one might say man vs. human nature. Those are certainly the best stories, since they allow the character to change and grow, which is what we want to see in a protagonist.
Man vs. nature are often the competent man or woman against a deadly external foe, such as a blizzard or hurricane.
Man vs. man are often similar stories, except the conflict being between two competent men or women or mixed. And if both men are hyper-competent nearly to or at the Marty Stu level, you get something like the Skylark series. Since you wanted the quote of Wikipedia right there instead of just a link:
Unfortunately, two near Marty Stus in conflict do not make such a great story either.
Now, if you combine man vs. nature, man vs. man, and man vs. himself, you might really have something.
Knowing the sources of conflict and how to use them are great for story writers. The problem with both the Mary Sue and the Eus Yram is that there is not a good conflict, internal or otherwise. Even when Mary Sue dies in the end, it’s seldom a good conflict that brings it on. There is no change in the protagonist in either of these types. There is no growth. Mary Sue is ridiculously hyper-competent from beginning to end. Eus Yram is ridiculously hyper-incompetent from beginning to end.
The thing with the Eus Yram is that there is no there there. There is no conflict because Eus Yram is a doormat. It’s too easy for the forces arrayed against Eus Yram, even if those forces are no better than a hippy spiritual guru who happens to be stupping Eus Yram’s wife (and maybe Eus Yram, too). “Oh, well, if you want to, I suppose,” Eus Yram would probably say if he were told to strip and bend over.
MacGyver is almost an anagram of Gary McVey. Coincidence? I think not.
They had to get an actor who was taller to play him, though.
Good teachers could identify the underlying talent and nurture the good while attempting to moderate the bad.
Nowadays, they just medicate the bad. It’s a good thing we went to school before attention deficits were classified as a “disorder.”
And a good thing I found caffeine to make me bearable for other people.
I recall Jon Favreau’s character in Swingers as being a complete loser. The character annoyed me so much I couldn’t stand to watch more than 30 minutes of the movie. So I don’t know if there was any sort of redemption for him, though I’d be surprised if there weren’t.
Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems.
Bird in Kenzaburo Oe’s novel A Personal Matter.
Both of these guys were unceasingly loathsome.
Beetle Bailey is also scoring dates with Miss Buxley so he’s gotta be doing something right.
Done right and properly directed, it can be an art form.
Is the new Sherlock Holmes ( Benedict Cumberbatch) an example of sorts? Holmes’ incompetencies that were always part of the character are really played up. House M.D. might be another example. They are good at one thing, and one thing only.
To me the worst example of this post-modern nihilism is Paul Auster. I’ve read two of his wretched books and they were both the same. A successful, competent man descends into an animal state and by the end of one book is left living under a rock in Central Park, naked and incapable of speech.
This is what academia thinks is meritable art.
Sherlock is definitely portrayed warts and all, but Cumberbatch has so much charisma that it’s impossible to dislike him or not root for him, despite his insufferable personality.
I don’t think the trope is that new. In 1891 Mark Twain wrote a story about a hyper-incompetent protagonist, Luck. I could probably find older examples. This is just the first one I recalled.
No, that story is not at all the sort of thing I am talking about. First, one has an unreliable narrator in the old military instructor/officer turned priest. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and Scoresby’s record stands on its own. Even if we take the story at face value, Scoresby was a winner, even if the wins came through amazing levels of sheer luck. (Although there are plenty of hints otherwise within the story.) Second, Scoresby seems to be quite likable. Now, the instructor/officer/priest may be a rather unlikable fellow, but if anything, we have a Forest Gump figure in Scoresby. I don’t consider either to be what I am talking about.
The anti-protagonist I am talking about does not win. He loses every time, and deserves to do so.
The Man Who Wasn’t There has Billy Bob Thornton’s character, who may be as close as I can come in the popular media. He does nothing in the entire film other than smoke and cut hair. But even he isn’t loser enough.
I’m thinking here of the Big Lebowski. I don’t think it counts because, although the Dude fits the definition of a hyper-incompetent, it’s not clear that he fits the definition of “protagonist” since he doesn’t actually move the story along. He’s just sort of there, man.
I don’t know about that. He’d have to attempt to do something before he could fail at it.
But he is also likable, and he does get some alone time with Maude Lebowski. That ain’t losing.
It isn’t winning, either, at least as far as “winning”–not losing–is related to any effort on his part. Maybe “abiding?”
Lovable loser? I think Li’l Abner had a character like that.
Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver is more a Eue Yram type.
Holden Caulfield. Official answer.
I like it. Unlikable. Loser. No redeeming social value. Definitely ahead of his time.