Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Thoughts on a story written about exceptionalism

I am interested in a story, the premise of which is the burden of being exceptional.

Here's an example from the #MeToo movement: being a particularly attractive woman. It's easy for most of us who do not have exceptional appearance to believe that those who do have it "so easy." They receive attention and favoritism.

Anyone with something exceptional will tell you that it comes with considerable consequences. Unwanted attention from crushes or people who want something from you for your exceptionalism.

What if the exceptional person is an introvert? She may appear off-putting and arrogant, but really just has all of her energy sucked from her with unwanted or unsolicited attention.

Crushes or pure physical attraction would be especially difficult to deal with - and especially prone to danger. When someone has a crush, they often wonder, why not them? Why doesn't the beautiful person understand just how great they'll be together? Then it becomes the burden of the attractive person to have to reject people over and over who are desperately in love with their appearance.

I feel that men are especially prone to using conviction or coercion to have a physical encounter with a woman whose beauty is to their standards. The entertainment industry is full of stories of women being promised success if they'll "put out." (See: Harvey Weinstein accusations.)

Do their friends like them for their personality or because of the attention and association?

How does it effect family relationships, such as siblings and their friends; parents and their friends; extended family, etc. What if your older/younger sister is especially beautiful? Eventually, your friends can't help but to notice. What if a peer that you have a crush on has a crush on your beautiful sister?

How teachers, coaches, clergy, and others in the world, whom the beautiful person either knows or doesn't know, looks at and treats the beautiful person.

Others who could fall into this category - athletes, wealthy people, artists, intellectuals . . .

My concern with the viability of the storyline is whether or not the audience will sympathize with the exceptional person? It could certainly have elements of comedy as well as drama. Some "woe is me," moments, as well as legitimate woe is me moments.

There could be various exceptional characters that are followed. Some who are just nice people with the exceptional quality, and others, more nefarious, who use their exceptionalism to get ahead and break all the rules.

There are probably many stories like this that I'm not thinking of, but I wonder if they focus heavily on this theme?

No comments:

Post a Comment