Invision

On further reflection I discover that I had been doing character studies forever - forever being a relative term. I was of the first TV generation. TV was cinematic characters. In the beginning it was mostly movies and shorts from the thirties or thirties characters. Then forties movies and then the advent of the sitcom, which was really just visual radio comedy all of which came out of vaudeville. The fifties became vaudeville radio players doing sitcoms, with New York style theater playhouse productions and serial semi-dramas like Maverick and Gunsmoke. Much of this was live. Could watch characters playing characters - live. Then came the advent tape in the sixties and the end of legitimate television. The corporations took over. So it was live theater and a good percentage of the national population was watching the same thing you were. And there were all the rock and roll stars another whole ball of wax.

School of course is a study in character types or identities, which only the teachers have fully developed. Many if not most of the kids hadn't decided yet. Those who were already decided were the leaders. Mostly they were adult oriented and were already imitating and acting like these adult characters. For the kids that hadn't decided yet, it is a lot of what all the commotion was about. What should I be? Where I am I in the pecking order? People form clicks with an internal pecking order established, by a leader who had established their character type identity before the rest. He/she always had an advisor as the second-hand man as they used to say. The job of the leader was to be an absolute, to stand for something. The job of the advisor was to be relative or consider alternatives. This was s a counter-character. The counter-character was either a woman or a man.

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