In terms of being written for the games, Blair occupied a very unusual dramatic standpoint -- he has as little character as possible, as the player is supposed to "project" his own personality.
That doesn't really work in a movie -- the main character needs to have some sort of conflict. I think *that's* what offends people the most... Blair was 'you', until viewed from outside.
Quoted because it bears repeating!
That’s an insightful point. And, as it happens, also Shakespeare’s at the end of
Twelfth Night. (Kudos as well to Mjr. Whoopass for serendipitous posting!)
Much drama derives of course from how one’s expectations about oneself, others, or life in general often go awry, but Shakespeare was a master at that. What makes
Hamlet,
Henry IV, and
King Lear, among others, such great plays is how their principal characters get “recharacterized” because of expectations suddenly foist upon them.
In the case of
Twelfth Night though, and especially that song, the expectations being addressed are those of the audience. And while the song can stand alone for that very reason, Shakespeare clearly intended that it be understood within the context of the play, because his ultimate point is the relationship between our attraction to fantasy and art–as in a fictional play–and our actual experience of life.
At the end of the play, the Duke Orsino predicts a “golden time” ahead, and so the audience is invited to expect that the characters will live happily ever after. (And the play is indeed a comedy, not a tragedy.) But when the song is lastly sung by Feste, the clown,
he is alone, and so he is meant to be singing to the audience. The message of the song is a gentle rebuff to the wishful thinking of a “golden time”–both as to the Duke and to us. Shakespeare is warning us that the Duke and the other characters might not have a happy ending after all, and he is thereby also reminding us that however much we might likewise hope for and spend time envisioning an ideal existence for ourselves, we all know, because we have been learning firsthand since childhood, that life is going to be riddled with disappointment and angst . . . “[f]or the rain it raineth every day”. (And a running theme in the play, besides, is how easily people can fall prey to misunderstanding and illusion.)
There’s nothing to be done about the fact of Blair’s Pilgrim heritage. To be sure, it goes against some people’s “expectations” for the character. But imagine Shakespeare smiling, for none of us can wish it away, even though it’s only part of a fictional story, for we’re not the authors of it (any more than we’re the gods of own fates).
(Ah yes, from what was intended as sarcasm to what probably sounds like . . . no, I daren’t imagine.
)
