we’re going to do a character exercise, said my writing teacher john last nite with one eye on the clock. quickly. everyone just call out names of your favorite movie characters. i think better with a pencil in hand: i picked one up, and immediately two names came to mind. harry burns from when harry met sally i said, and then, eleanor of aquitaine in lion in winter. teacher john scribbled as suggestions peppered him from around the table.
all right, he said, that’s enough. those of you who have taken a class with me before know what i’m going to say. he counted up the names and announced, i have twice as many male characters here as female characters. i looked around to see if anyone was surprised. one woman on my side of the table, who’d established herself early as a sci-fi maven and resembles carol kane, objected “but we have more women here in class. of course we’re going to like the men more.”
i hissed. more constructively, teacher john counted heads and said, no, there are 6 women here and 6 men. sci-fi woman slunk back. teacher john continued: regardless, i’ve taught classes of all makeups, and the results are the same. he delivered a small lecture on the importance of activity to memorable characters. television, plays, books are different. in films, characters have to make decisions, to be assertive, to fight, which is why more of the resonant ones tend to be men.
by contrast to sci-fi woman, at whom i was still hissing internally, i remembered this: ages ago i went to camp with and idolized a girl named emile. she once said that she’d made out with everyone — straight girls, straight guys, queer girls, and queer guys — and so knew definitively that gay guys were the best kissers.