The Appeal of Unrestrained Id in Grown-up Fictional Characters

[I'm using the qualifier 'grown-up' instead of 'adult' so as not to give the impression this blog entry is about porn - that discussion is for another day]

[Also, "id" as in id, ego and superego, from Freud's model of the psyche]

And when I say, fictional characters, I'm only referring to 2: Dr Sheldon Cooper from TV show The Big Bang Theory and Ignatius Reilly from the novel A Confederacy of Dunces. (I'm sure there are many other such id unrestrained characters in fiction - indeed in real life - but these are the 2 I've encountered most recently, so they're what I'm going with). I haven't studied psychology, or specifically, Freudian psychology, so I'm probably being a little free (unrestrained?) with my interpretation of unrestrained id. I'm defining the id as being that part of the brain/mind that wants what it wants - now! - and won't be told, especially by any other part of the brain/mind, to modify its wants and the behaviours which result from these wants. It's a perfectly acceptable condition in a baby, not so much in a 30-year-old.

The behaviours manifested by the unrestrained ids of Sheldon Cooper and Ignatius Reilly, and the reactions to these behaviours by their friends and family, are both disturbing and amusing. For Sheldon, the epitome of his behaviour is his overwhelming "need" to have his own spot on the couch:

“In the winter, that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm yet not so close as to cause perspiration. In the summer, it’s directly in the path of a cross breeze created by opening windows there and there. It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide as to create a parallax distortion.”

For Ignatius, it's his compulsive eating, especially of the hot dogs he's meant to be selling in his capacity as a hot dog vendor. Another pivotal, and disturbing and amusing, trait of both characters is their narcissistic enjoyment of their intelligence. Sheldon's IQ is at genius level, and Ignatius believes himself to be a genius, though he does most likely have a high IQ (as well as some culinary skills):

"I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labours, I make an occasional cheese dip."

A possible explanation of the unrestrained ids of these characters could include an analysis of their 'arrested development'. In Sheldon's case, his accelerated intellectual development and scholastic achievements were acquired in the absence of normal childhood developments, with the reult that he's experiencing his childhood in his late 20's. With Ignatius it's harder to pin down, perhaps an over-pandering mother and an absent father - at some point someone really needed to give him a firm kick in the ass.

While I enjoy watching/reading these characters I wouldn't want to spend much time with them in real life. They're both verbose, egotistical, elitist snobs, and Ignatius is constantly belching and farting. So why are they popular fiction archetypes. I think, partly, it's a case of living vicariously through them. Inside all of us is a self-absorbed baby, wanting its own spot on the couch and to eat as much junk food as it can shovel into its mouth. But we wouldn't last long in the real world behaving in this way; people wouldn't want to share a couch with us and our arteries would eventually clog up and we'd die.

Did Kyle Reese really have to come across time for Sarah Connor?

YES!

And thus ends this blog entry.

No, wait, there’s more…(a lot more)…

As a fan of the “time travel” subgenre of Science Fiction (eg Dr Who, Terminator series), I was interested in this Physics research. The article is a little heavy going, but, basically, the scientists are using a wacky quantum mechanics set-up in an attempt to subvert the Grandfather Paradox of time travel – ie that if you travel back in time and kill your grandfather (or your grandmother), you will no longer exist. Such an event would generate a series of convoluted time/existence paradoxes, which is never a good thing. [NB: Somebody who’s mean enough and/or stupid enough to travel back in time and kill a grandparent deserves to be caught in a convoluted time/existence paradox!!].

Something I found especially interesting in the article was the idea that slightly altered histories (or timelines) are created each time a person travels back in time (I’m not sure how/if this would work for forward time travel). So, in theory, you could go back in time and kill a grandparent, without disappearing, because another timeline would be created, and the (your) original timeline would still exist. However, this series of time events still posses a conundrum: If the grandfather is killed in the second timeline by his grandchild, the grandchild who doesn’t exist in this timeline, how can the grandchild be there? My guess is that there are “vertexes/intersections" between timelines, where things (people, events) in one timeline can affect another timeline. I suspect these vertexes would be very unstable and potentially catastrophic. I know it sounds a bit wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey but it does make sense. And I’m COMPLETELY serious. Time travel is not to be taken lightly – which is why it’s best left to the professionals, eg Timelords.

In regards to explaining the myriad time travel paradoxes created in the Terminator series, this theory of ‘time travel generated altered timelines’ works well. It’s especially helpful in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where people and cyborgs are being sent back through time with alarming regularity. During season 2, a time-travelled character asks (with a degree of suspicion) another time-travelled character, “In what year did your apocalypse occur?”. The second character refuses to answer but the question has suggested the possibility of more than one timeline existing. This apparently contradicts the theory in the second Terminator film that only one timeline exists, but that it can be changed. Hence, at the end of the second film, Sarah and John Connor have (seemingly) destroyed every last piece of terminator metal and believe they have prevented the future rise of the machines – which they haven’t, ‘cos those metalfuckers re-appear in the aptly named, third Terminator film, The Rise of the Machines!

And, of course, there is always a kind of reverse Grandfather Paradox hanging over the very existence of John Connor. If the machines don’t rise, they won’t build a time travel thingy, which means Kyle Reese won’t be able to travel back through time and get it on with Sarah, which would result in the non-existence of John Connor. However, this paradox can be fixed if someone else, maybe John Connor himself, is able to build a time machine. In fact, there is probably a timeline where John drives himself to complete mental and physical exhaustion building a time travel thingy so that he can send his father back through time and allow himself to exist. Lordy.

By the time we get to The Sarah Connor Chronicles (when John is about 16-years-old), it’s fairly clear that there will always be “metal”. Sarah and John continue their valiant, and, at times, morally ambiguous, struggle to rid the world of any computers/machines/metal that might evolve into Skynet (or a variation thereof) and thus bring forth the apocalypse. But it’s a matter of constant vigilance rather than any conclusive victory. There’s an unspoken acknowledgement that the machines will never be eliminated; the fight will only ever be about containment. There is also the charged issue of possible alliance with the cyborgs, as the existence of the cyborgs becomes increasingly inevitable. John from the future again sends back a reprogrammed “protector” terminator (as he did in the second film – in which the terminator also acted as a father figure to John). The relationship between John and the terminator of TSCC is extremely complex. The exterior of this terminator (named Cameron) is that of a young female - about John's age. She and future John had a very close and secretive relationship, one which caused some concern to the humans working with John. This strange (and fraught) relationship continues with present day John.

It’s a shame TSCC only lasted for 2 seasons. The first season was cut short due to the scriptwriters strike, and the second season set up a number of interesting and complex themes and storylines (presumably with an eye to future seasons), only to be axed. Argh! Though, the ending of season 2 was BRILLIANT, AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL. Sigh.

So, in answer to the question posed by the blog title (I know I already answered it but I’m going to re-answer it), perhaps, in the space-time continuum, timelines can be changed, but certain events always need to occur in order for a timeline to exist. For John Connor to exist, Kyle Reese absolutely has to come across time (for Sarah). This also concurs with the laws of time as stated in Dr Who, that there are fixed events in time which are so deeply embedded in history that they cannot be changed.