It seems to me that human beings in general are very good at creating worlds they would like to be real. Writers, in particular, might argue that they are even better at this than non-writers! The hero, for example, may well be the ideal human of the sort that we should all aspire to be. Heroes will have our absent qualities, and they will encourage us to be better than we currently are.
However, we should not forget that heroes do not usually exist outside the covers of book, cinema or playhouse. It is true that heroes eat and drink and fall in love like the rest of us, but heroes are much more than this. Heroes are created, built and maintained on stories and myths, a sort of brand that may outlive the original human being. In fact, it could be argued that the brand is much more important than the biological frame it lives in. After all, even when the physical body is dead, the brand continues to earn money for the brand owners. Why? Because brands live in the mind, in the minds of everyone who experiences them: employees, investors, the media, and, perhaps most importantly, customers, i.e. you and me!
Here are just a few of the highest-paid dead celebrities, and their earnings, of 2018.
Michael Jackson - died 2009 - 400 million dollars
Elvis Presley - died 1977 - 40 million dollars
Bob Marley - died 1981 - 23 million dollars
Marilyn Monroe - died 1962 - 14 million dollars
And, I would argue, a well-drawn fictional character will live on in the same way as these people/brands listed above. Consider what one well-known writer said of Jane Austen's character, Emma.
"Jane Austin's Emma is so very human. She is always plunging into such embarrassing mistakes - and yet they are the mistakes oneself, like telling the tediously garrulous Miss Bates to shut up."
The most successful brands, like the most successful characters, may well be those that most effectively correspond to archetypes. And what is an archetype? An archetype may be described as a typical character, an action, or a situation that, apparently, represents universal patterns of human nature, for example: the bully, the damsel in distress, the outcast and the tyrant.
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