What is a character?
It's etymological origins remind us that a character is an engraved mark, a symbol or imprint on the soul, an engraving, a pointed stake, something scraped or scratched. But of or from what? In the sense of the classical dramatic-narrative, and in consequence, of our own daily lives, this character is something grafted out of the invisible spiritual-energy which binds a given society. Character, then, is the manifestation of a system's values.Within the narrative world, a character can not simply be a prop or column for a protagonist, or for the unfolding of a certain plot point; the spectator, vulnerably open in a state of constant expectation, semiotically absorbs a dramatis personae in the same way a richly iconographic renaissance painting stimulates the linguistic mechanisms in the brain :: immediately and unconsciously. A character is a symbol in the way all things are symbols, yes -- but a character can, and should, also be seen as a fleshy-knot holding within a unique contradictory textual code, breaking through the fourth-dimension of time to display and reveal a systemic energy that can no longer be sustained quietly. This is why the great fictional characters across recorded history are always highly-vivid, cartoon like in their contours (near stereotype, but not quite), and dare I almost say: accessorized. Something is breaking out of the textural life-ether into a Violent cognitive awareness. This is done through character.
What makes Ze striking is Marin's grafting of a highly specific energy, breaking the sleep of the normative, axiomatic, personal figures, and dramatizing what otherwise would be, simply, repression.
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