A Fear Of Staying The Same
On Rory Gilmore's storyline and the urge to blame fictional characters for our own faults
This post started out as a revision of the post “Standing Up For Rory Gilmore”, which is why you’ll notice similarities between the two. While revisiting past posts, I felt that this one held back a bit too much so I wanted to revise it with more honesty to be more of what I originally had in mind, but as I kept writing, it turned into something somewhat new. Even though this post contains some of the same information and general ideas as my previous post, I hope you still enjoy the new direction it took.
I discovered the early 2000’s hit TV show Gilmore Girls when I was scrolling through Netflix as a Sophomore in high school on Thanksgiving break. Over the next few weeks, I binged the entire show and, since then, it’s become a holiday favorite of mine.
As a 15-year-old, I wanted to be just like Rory Gilmore, which I don’t think is uncommon for most young girls that watch this show. She was smart, witty, always looked perfect, got into one of the best colleges, and everyone loved her. On first watch, especially as a young teen, Rory seemed to have it all. She was the epitome of everything I wanted.
But, as I got older, I realized just how flawed her character is and, eventually, I grew to despise her. But not without the help of the internet.
As my love for this show grew, I began following fan accounts on Instagram and reading articles about it online. While there were definitely a lot people who aestheticized Rory’s life and aspired to be just like her, there were just as many, if not more, who criticized and despised her. They pointed out every mistake she ever made, holding it up as evidence as to why we should condemn her, and I believed them.
Being a book-lover and a writer, I saw a lot of myself in Rory and was sometimes even compared to her, so this new realization that she might not be a good person hit me hard. No one wants to think they might actually be the villain rather than the hero, and in my efforts to distance myself from this thought, I simply accepted everyone’s criticism. If she had been on trial I would have been ready to pronounce her guilty and leave her to rot behind bars.
When I transferred to a somewhat big university and joined the newspaper, I cringed at the thought that I might be growing more and more like her. Actually, I even avoided joining at first because of this. When I started considering applying, I immediately thought of Rory working for the Yale Daily News, wittily replying to her pretentious classmates and swooping around the office using her perfection to put out one fire after another, as they often showed her doing in the show. From this, I assumed I wouldn’t like it. It didn’t seem like my kind of environment and I told myself this over and over, even as I submitted my application. But, my college newspaper was nothing like Rory’s, and I ended up loving it.
Of course, I know that being a book-lover and writing for my college newspaper doesn’t mean I’m exactly like Rory or that I’ll end up like her. My life is separate from hers, and a few similarities doesn’t mean that her life is my life. Well, that, and she’s also just a fictional character. Her life isn’t even real. So why did I treat it like it was?
However, this doesn’t just happen to Rory. We do this with most characters. From TV shows to movies to books, we often criticize fictional characters as though they’re living within our world, operating under our rules with the same realities, and while some fictional stories take place within our world, they’re still fictional. They’re not supposed to be exact replicas of our lives, and if they were, I can’t imagine they’d be any fun or even teach us anything.
So why do we hold fictional characters to the same standards as everyone else?
In The Atlantic article “Do Readers Judge Female Characters More Harshly Than Male Characters” writer Maria Konnikova questions our tendency to see fictional characters as “friends” when she says
“The goals of literature are multifold, but creating nice, positive protagonists that you’d want to grab drinks with or bring home to mom can hardly be considered one of them”.
While fictional characters don’t always have to teach us something, it makes more sense to create characters that differ from ourselves. By doing this we can explore different perspectives, different lifestyles, and even learn from the consequences of a character’s actions. We can take in life lessons without having to live them, but unless they’re relatable or likable in some way, people aren’t going to care about them, which is integral to long running TV shows like Gilmore Girls.
They create characters like Rory with a specific audience in mind, essentially casting her as a blank canvas for us to project ourselves onto. She is the audience, or at least that’s how she starts out. Her character starts off as a reflection of the audience they’re hoping to appeal to, so when her character starts to take shape, her storyline diverging off on it’s own, we take it personal, easily forgetting she is not us and we are not her.
While there are reasons to dislike Rory—reasons I won’t take the time to list now—when asked why people dislike her, they immediately call her “annoying”, “a spoiled brat”, “a slut”, “a home-wrecker”, “the real villain”, and even “a monster”.
Part of this probably has to do with our preconceived notions of how women should act, causing us to judge female characters more harshly than male characters, as Konnikova points out in her article.
“Niceness, for instance, is seen as consistently more important in women than it is in men… Now even fictional females are seeing the sting.”
Later on in the series, especially in the revival Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life, Rory is seen as a highly immoral and entitled character. Eventually, fans started to dislike her to the point that there are dedicated lists all over the internet as to why she’s the worst. Some were overdramatic to be funny, but she’s also judged harshly for her mistakes, and is even called out for “not being nice”. While I’m not saying we should excuse her behavior, I often wonder how it may have been received if a male character had done these things instead.
However, I think it also has to do with the fact that we are always more hard on ourselves than we are on others. Seeing ourselves in characters makes them an easy target for us to take all of our anger out on.
When we focus on specific failings in fictional characters, we’re usually just hyper-focusing on our own faults. We see something in that character that we dislike about ourselves, so we point at and ridicule them in an attempt to deflect from ourselves. We display for everyone else that we know how wrong this behavior is, all the while hiding the side of ourselves that scream otherwise. We tell ourselves we would never do those things or act that way because we are better than them. We have awareness.
But we’re not always afforded that same awareness when we’re the ones in those situations. It’s easy for an outsider to see the “right” choice, but when you’re the one tied up in it all with all the emotional turmoil clouding your judgement, it can be hard to tell right from wrong.
And I think we know that, and it scares us. We all have a ”darker” side to ourselves. A more selfish, ignorant, cruel, spoiled, immoral side. We know we’re all capable of making mistakes, and we don’t like being reminded of this. I especially hate being reminded of it. I hated how much of myself I could see in Rory. Her perfectionist, people pleasing ways and fear of failing reminded me of myself. I could see how all of these things held her back, and I knew it was doing the same to me.
However, it can all be okay if these characters have a redemption arch. It feels better to see a character realize the error of their ways and redeem themselves because then that means all hope isn’t lost. If they can learn and grow into better people, so can we.
But when the revival was released, we were given a glimpse into Rory’s life as an adult and saw her continuing to make the same mistakes. We saw she had been reduced to the worst fate of all: she was still the same person. She hadn’t grown at all. She was still toiling around, trying to figure herself out and had barely made any progress on the goals and dreams set up for her in the original. And this terrified me.
It was like she was stuck in purgatory, doomed to be the same person for all eternity, and suddenly, my own fate flashed before my eyes. My heart rate increased and I felt sick to my stomach. My fear of failing and making mistakes took on a new form: a fear of staying the same.
But, upon rewatching the revival, I saw something else. In the last two episodes, we see Rory embrace her love of her hometown. She sets up shop at the local newspaper and decides to write a book about her and her mom’s life.
I saw her let go.
Fans criticized her for this choice. I criticized her for it. It was disappointing to see she never really fulfilled her dreams of being a world-renowned journalist, but in letting go of those dreams, she was able to finally move forward.
*
My uncle recently sent me a quote from the book Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity by Peter Attia and Bill Gifford, who quote Paul Coelho when they say
“‘Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything,” he writes. “Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you’re meant to be in the first place.’”
Human beings have this way of attacking what feels like a threat, even small ones. We lash out looking to pin the blame on someone, anyone when we feel our own failings rising to the surface, threatening to reveal themselves, especially when they’re reflected back at us in the form of a character everyone loves to hate. Because even a threat to our perception of ourselves is still a threat. One that has the potential to destroy the image we had of ourselves. Of who we thought we were supposed to be.
But in the clouds of dust and rubble are the remnants of who we really are, now unencumbered by who we thought we should be and with the space to be who we’re meant to.
Comments, Thoughts, Feelings
Have you seen Gilmore Girls or Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life? What did you think? Who’s your favorite character? Honestly, I think my favorite is Lane.
Have you ever hated a character so much and then realized you were just like them? What character was it?
What’s your favorite TV show to binge watch?
Any recommendations similar to Gilmore Girls?
Funny thing, I thought I always saw more criticism of Lorelei? Rory always seemed like the grounded character to me. There's shades here of "It's a Wonderful Life," i.e., heading home to Take Care of Things rather than chasing larger ambitions, and how depressing that can seem to some people. I remember interviewing a St Louis musician who spent 7 to 10 minutes railing against It's a Wonderful Life. On the surface it was a digression, but actually told me a lot about what made this person tick.