Young Adult, the Case for the Unsympathetic Protagonist

Theatrical promotional poster for Young Adult.

When I was 20 years old, I lived in a one-bedroom dorm with three people, myself included.  For those of you who are math wizzes, that’s two bedrooms less than people!   My bed, where the magic happens some might say, was placed inexplicably between the floor-to-ceiling windows and the underside of the kitchen counter.  Specifically, it was underneath the sink.  Before you call OSHA, I’d like to highlight that, regrettably, these types of unconventional living arrangements are pretty typical on college campuses these days.  On my campus alone, this was just one of dozens of other dorms that had similar sleeping accommodations. 

Typical or atypical, I was not, shall we say, in the throes of utter contentment and bliss about my living situation during this period. So, I spent most of my time elsewhere on campus.  Even after classes ended for the day, I would usually go to my friends' dorms or apartments to hang out, work on homework, or just soak up some of their more hospitable living environments in the hopes of improving mine through osmosis.  

Years later, a friend of mine told me that he ran into one of my roommates from the “chambre de bonne” New York University had the gall to call a three-person dormitory.  More specifically, this friend ran into the roommate who had dominion over the one and only bedroom.  I’d like to preserve this roommate’s privacy, but I’m actually really petty, so I can’t.  

His name was Andre, and I can’t even remember his last name off the top of my head so he earns some anonymity by the grace of my poor memory.  This friend of mine ran into Andre during a study abroad trip, figuring out quickly they each had me as a mutual friend.  My friend asked Andre how he met me, to which he replied, “Jack and I were roommates.”  He took a dramatic pause, and then continued: “Yeah, I’m not really a big fan of Jack’s.” 

I couldn’t believe it.  Years later, I still tell this story in shock and awe as I explain to people that I was literally never in my dorm room unless I was sleeping.  How could this person form such a poor opinion of me when I literally never spent any time with him?  I still don’t know why Andre found me so unlikable (this is not a prompt, please do not pitch me theories!), and I will never understand how he couldn’t find sympathy for the fact that I was never there because my living situation was so utterly unfavorable.  And, I’ll probably never know the real answer, but I think about this story often; it haunts me to the point that I even retold it (at the time of posting) as recently as last weekend. 

In my telling, and in the story of my life, Andre is a minor, yet ultimately unsympathetic character.

Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) ghostwrites the final manuscript of her Young Adult series.

Mavis Gary, in the film Young Adult, is another such character.  Unlikable, unsympathetic, and perhaps unworthy of either sentiment; Mavis seems an unlikely candidate for a film’s protagonist.  Yet, in Young Adult (written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman), she is presented as our point of view character, our leading lady, our protagonist, without so much as a second glance.  Portrayed brilliantly by Charlize Theron, Mavis is a divorced, passionless, and petty alcoholic who spends her days ghostwriting for a young adult series of novels.  She is utterly directionless, somewhat unkind to her friends and even pet dog, and for some reason, obsessed with a high school ex of hers, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson).

Her obsession begins when she receives an email from Buddy’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser of Twilight fame) announcing the birth of their first child.  This news quietly devastates Mavis, and in a moment of weakness, causes her to travel back to her hometown in an attempt to break up Buddy’s marriage, and rekindle their flame.  Mavis, without rhyme or reason, is convinced that she and Buddy are meant to be together, and will stop at nothing to make that dream a reality.

Throughout the film, we see Mavis unashamedly flirt with Buddy in front of his friends, his wife, and his newborn baby, much to the disdain of another former classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), an unpopular kid who was crippled by his high school bullies after they erroneously assumed he was gay (which Matt continually reminds us he is not).  Another point against Mavis: she is often unkind and derogatory towards Matt while he tries to pull her back from the brink of self-destruction. 

Mavis, Buddy (Patrick Wilson), and Beth Slade (Elizabeth Reaser) talk after Beth’s band’s performance.

After several unrequited attempts at flirtation, Mavis attends Buddy’s daughter’s naming ceremony, a christening of sorts, and lays her cards on the table.  She tells Buddy she believes they’re meant to be together, and that she wants to take him away from his new, boring life of his, and attempts to seal the deal with a kiss.

Buddy rejects her, much to Mavis’s dismay. He pushes her away from him, and asks her to leave.  His brutal rejection leads Mavis to drink, and culminates in her drunkenly arguing with Buddy’s wife, explaining the source of her obsession with Buddy.

The specifics of this outburst, I’ll keep a secret, as the monologue and the source of Mavis’s obsession is best left a surprise for newcomers to the film.  Though if you are curious, and have no self-control regarding spoilers like me, I’ll link the scene here.  

In rewatching the film recently, I was amazed all over again by how this climactic scene always manages to catch me off guard, and actually makes me begin to feel sympathetic towards Mavis, rather than scornful.  Perhaps it's the details of her obsession, and the ulterior motives she reveals that makes me sympathetic to her cause.  But even without them, this outburst, in which we see Mavis at her lowest point, makes me feel for her in a way that a film with an intrinsically sympathetic protagonist doesn’t.  

But why?  Why does this scene cause my opinion of Mavis to turn on a dime? And why does my sympathy for her feel so poignant?

Mavis and Matt (Patton Oswalt) drive around Mercury, Minnesota together.

I think it’s because a scene like this forces me as the viewer to work at feeling sympathetic for Mavis and her situation.  At the beginning of the film, in witnessing her bad and occasionally inflammatory behavior, it’s easy for me to turn my nose up at Mavis, rife with judgement.  But, when we see her fall from the lowest rung of grace into the role of the drunken disruptor, I begin to feel that I should feel sympathy for her, even though I don’t.  

So, when you feel like you should feel bad for someone, but don’t, what else can you do but muster up a reason to feel sorry for them? What else can you do but work to understand their prerogative? And besides, the sympathy that I work to create myself always feels more genuine than the type of sympathy a film tells me to have by creating characters that begin in obviously pitiable circumstances. 

So, why tell stories with unsympathetic characters?  Because telling stories with unsympathetic characters forces us to try on our own to be empathetic rather than just sympathetic, and in a world that feels increasingly unempathetic, this is no small feat.  And, in this particular instance, revisiting a story with an unsympathetic protagonist also reminded me of the seemingly inexplicable divide between me and my former roommate. 

It occurred to me, in retelling the story of me and Andre, that perhaps, and in fact obviously, I am the unsympathetic character in Andre’s story.  And, the only thing that separates the two versions of this story of diametrically opposed roommates is the absence of empathy for the other person’s side of things.  

Acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert once said that “the movies are like a machine that generates empathy,” and in Young Adult’s case, this could not be more apt.  Stories that teach us to be empathetic, like Mavis Gary’s story, ultimately teach us to be more empathetic to those around us, even in a situation as petty as a squabble between roommates.  

It reminds us that while we’re always the sympathetic character in our own story, we’re also always the unsympathetic character in another person’s story.  Ultimately, for me, this is the case for writing stories with unsympathetic characters: it engages us to generate empathy as audience members, and as people, and serves as a call to action for empathy in the world at large.  

In other words, to Ebert’s point, the case for an unsympathetic protagonist is the case for movies as a whole. Empathy.