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I have noticed a trend in people that is starting to translate into characters. At the very least, I've noticed it completely dominate the world of stand-up comedy. It's the self-imposed presumed ethnicity where people think that if they tell you where their grandparents used to live or where their parents bought a house, that such information will tell you everything you need to know about them.
I hate people who tell you something esoteric about themselves and think that now you know them personally. "Well, I'm half Albanian, and my father's mother was from East St. Croix, so you know what that means." No, I don't. "I'm from north South Dakota by way of Texarkana, Quebec, so you know what that means." Nope - no idea. "I'm a Leo with a Carpricorn cusp and I was born in the year of the Chinese fire ant, so you know what that means." You'd think so, but no. anyone who tells me some pointless fact about their genetic make-up and thinks I "know what that means" is fooling himself. Usually it just means I don't want to talk to you, you jackass.
It's Independence Day, and so few people I meet or know actually identify themselves as Americans. It's time like these that I'm glad that my parents hardly spoke to me, because I don't have that pseudo-identity built into my brain pattern. When someone asks me what my nationality is, I say that I'm American. Why? Because it's the correct answer to that question.
Every comedian I hear now has a routine about what it means to be a member of whatever classification he or she belongs to. I have heard more stupid jokes about pale Irish skin and attitude-laden black women than I could ever care about. Nothing loses me in a movie faster than a good dose of culture. I don't feel like I'm being brought in to a new world. I feel alienated.
Of course, presentation is everything. Chris Rock talks about white people and black people and I'm laughing so hard that I almost cough up a kidney. Other comedians make some lame joke about how white guys dance or how Mexicans answer the phone and suddenly those Golden Girl reruns on Lifetime are looking very appealing. The Joy Luck Club was a brilliant and fascinating drama about mother/daughter relationships. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was about bigotry and exclusionary attitudes and I couldn't get through ten mintues of it. Drama and story and the sharing of information are great. Blindly following stupid traditions is bullshit. Tradition is for people who are done thinking for themselves, and that makes characters predictable and pointless.
It is often said that familiarity breeds contempt, and I gotta say that fake familiarity greeds boredom and aggravation. If you and I are alike it's not because our grandfathers walked the same clump of dirt a hundred years ago or because we both grew up in the same quadrant of the U.S. I have a brother and we have the same parents and ate the same dinner every night and grew up in the same house and we're NOTHING alike.
So, here's your writer's tip for the day: Make your characters a little more than skin color deep. Not everyone in every group is the same as everyone else in that group. If they were, you wouldn't be you and you wouldn't be doing what you're doing.
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