Narrative Heroization

[bcholmes]

In film theory, the term narrative focalization refers to the process by which the audience is expected to identify with the (usually white and male) protagonist. Devices that contribute to narrative focalization include the amount of time the main character appears on screen, how important the character is to the story, etc.

I've been looking for a term to describe the aspects of films that contribute to making the protagonist unambiguously heroic. For example, in Terminator 2, there's a scene in which Linda Hamilton is being locked in her room in a mental hospital. The orderly, a big, muscular man, straps her down to the bed. In a few minutes, Linda Hamilton will escape from the room and knock this guy out with a stick.

But the guy was, after all, just doing his job. It's mean to knock someone out like that. So there's this moment in the film in which the orderly, after having securely strapped Linda Hamilton to the bed, licks her face. The orderly suddenly becomes the creep. When Linda Hamilton knocks him senseless a few scenes later, it's okay, because he was a creep, right?

Hollywood movies, especially, are replete with these little scenes. Scenes that make it okay for the hero to hurt another character, while still remaining unambiguously heroic. Anyone heard of any terms for this concept?

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Ah crud. I *know* this. Or at least *knew* it. There's a companion term for it wrt to hero characters, a stripping away of vices to allow what remaining vice the hero exploits to save the day to be permissable. Like in the old westerns, where the good guy doesn't drink, doesn't chase loose women, doesn't cuss, bathes, etc, all to be allowed the vice of violence necessary to rid the town of the bad guys.

You're right that there's enough of a class of these patterns happening that there's vocabulary to abstract it. But I can't remember what it *is*.