Context : My 5th year diploma thesis.
Subject : Person/Characters
Problematic : How can we distinguish person and character ?
Thesis : Who are I ?
Who are I ?
« Even if we don't ask ourselves every morning "Who am I really?", "Am I the same as the one I was?", "Am I going to be the same one tomorrow?", "Am I the one the others think I am?", "Am I the one who did this?", "How far for myself could I become?", "What would it be like to be in someone else shoes?", "May I survive the loss of my body?", these questions are not exclusives to specialists. All are related with the identity issue. »
Gérard LENCLUD
The world is living a strange paradox. Regarding an English survey of February 2008, a quarter of the teenagers interviewed thought that Sir Winston Churchill was fictional, whereas Sherlock Holmes and Eleanor Rigby were real. Reality and fiction seem to stir together. Whether it is a misunderstanding from our perception or a trick subtly set up by the fiction, we fall under the spell and get confused. If confusion occurs, then the boundaries might not be clearly defined, with reality on one side and fiction on the other side. Thus, when grown-ups know that Santa Claus isn't real, kids claim his realness. Not that grown-ups don't want to believe in him, but because they know that he is only fictional. And yet, every year these same grown-ups fall for the magic of Christmas, and keep the illusion alive for children. They place presents under the Christmas tree, bringing out their inner child for one night, and hoping to finally see Santa.
Apparently, when we are awake, we are able to distinguish the real world from fictional worlds. It seems more complicated to do the same when we analyse the characters of these worlds. What happened to Winston Churchill so that he became fictional ?
Beside, are we really able to say that Santa does not exist ? We are tear in two between the certitude of his fictional existence, and our desire to still believe in him. As Umberto Eco says, «we are not asking "where, in which part of the universe, do fictional characters live ?" but rather "what do we mean when we talk about them as if they were living in some part of the universe ? ». We must be aware of what is a person (from the real world) and what is a character (from a fictional world). Yet, if we want to know what is real and what is fictional, we have to draw up the line between fiction and reality.
Then, how can we distinguish person and character ?
The issues related with the person are not new. Philosophers have made the notion of person thrive through time and mentalities. John Locke for instance, define a person as « a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places ». Nowadays the concept of person is fading in the Core, the essence of each human being. This person-core is invisible, abstract, and expresses itself through our behaviour. The person disappear in favour of its images, so that it depends on the others to determine who the person is. In fact, questioning the person makes us lose interest on the person itself. Thus we won’t focus anymore on the person, but its images and its identification processes.
When the identity is broached by the images of the person we must focus on the body. Each person owns a body, and take part of the world trough and thanks to that body. This process is similar with fictional worlds : heroes, fictional characters, avatars... help the person look into these worlds. This projection of the self, the reproductive imagination, and the willing suspension of disbelief enhance the person-core by experimenting new worlds and experiences. All these lives are lived by, and are questioning the real life : the person can mould differently its life in the real world thanks to the constructive imagination. Social and fictional characters accompany the person all the time, freeing it from loneliness. The person is embroiled in a virtuous spiral with all kinds of characters, sometimes as a "consumer" with the interpretation, and sometimes as an "author" with the characterisation : historical an fictional characters inspire the present and help people shape their social selves, and someday, when the person dies these social selves will become historical and therefore inspire the next generations, and so on.
As generations passed by (Babyboomers, X, Y et now Z), technology has evolved, changing step by step the habits. People belonging to the generation Y (or Millennials) have Internet to spread their social selves. Online, they can model their avatars according to their wishes, but these ultra-connected people are also living a social saturation. As the Internet offers freedom concerning the identity, the characters of a same person are far from each other. This leads to a lying society. The lie is a tool used, more specifically by the Millennials, to stay credible within its different selves. Honesty tends to become something rare and precious, for each individual, as for big companies like Google. These companies might end up with more data about ourselves than anybody else. In addition to honesty, Internet is questioning about death. On the Internet, when a person dies its characters remain online as long as the servers keep running. Slowly and steadily this place become haunted by the ghosts of former social selves. The world is living a strange paradox, and we are living a strange time, where we are asked to decide how we want to live our life and how we want to live our death.
