In honor of Pride I'm spending this month looking at writing techniques in queer stories. This week I'm focusing on HBO MAX's great queer superhero show DOOM PATROL.
DOOM PATROL's season 1 has about the most meta villain you can imagine in Mr. Nobody, a character who not only comments in narration on the action but understands that this is a TV series, even going so far as to wear Doom Patrol gear in 114 and to burn their TV series poster down. The degree to which they take his self-awareness is delightful.
But meta characters and commentary are a a huge challenge to a longform story. Even as they might entertain us, they also undermine the stakes of the story and its characters, by reminding us over and over again that in fact this is just a story.
Stories are like Disneyland; they want to carry us away completely. At Disneyland, that's in part about thinking through every single detail that we experience, from the way you enter the park itself to the texture of the hallways that you walk through on the way to the Haunted Mansion ride. But it's also about constructing the park so that once you're inside, you can't see anything going on outside. There's nothing to pull you out of the experience.
Meta characters and commentary are exactly that. They intentionally pull you out. And once that momentum starts it tends to build on itself. So having a meta main villain is a huge challenge.
And yet the presence of Mr. Nobody does not in the end overwhelm the story or undermine its emotional stakes. And the writers accomplish this by not allowing his meta-ness to distract them from the fact that he is in fact a character with depth and a journey of his own.
In 114 as our heroes are finally facing off against him Jane’s psychologist persona manifests and starts analyzing why Nobody
is like this. And very quickly the team recognizes, he’s actually just like them, someone who has been damaged. And just like that his meta-ness goes from undermining the story to becoming an expression of the pain that he's in. It calls forth their (and our) empathy.
The final episode takes this one step further. After having struggled over the course of the season to claim her own body and her own narrative, in 114 Rita was finally able to dismiss Nobody’s narration of her story and started narrating her own. But then in the finale she turns around and encourages Nobody to reclaim his own narrative.
It’s some powerfully wise storytelling, the woman who has faced her own worst self and come out the other side teaching a monster who has tormented her and her friends to do the
same. But it’s also all a very clever means of kneading the meta back into
the story.
The lesson DOOM PATROL teaches: If you’re going to have a meta character, make sure you don’t forget the journey they’re on. Meta is super fun, but it's not the end all be all of who they are, it’s the thing above the surface that points to important thing going on down deep.
TOMORROW: HIDING THE REAL VILLAIN
