Voices in Your Head:
Imagined Characters in Movies
All of us have subconscious hopes and dreams that we are unable to make real in our everyday lives. Maybe we don't have the money to become the space tourists we always wanted to become, or simply aren't capable of growing Wolverine claws. Anyways, we're all trapped in a way because we cannot extend ourselves as much films portray fantasies as reality. This is a key part of the appeal of movies; they can wish-fulfillment; allowing the audience to live out their dreams through the characters.
Even so, movies are also commentaries on reality, either as we actually experience it, or as we would like it to be. Characters exist in fictional worlds with their own rules that govern their behavior. Sometimes, they too cannot be who they really want to be. Through the power of imagination, they can will another character into life, someone with the power to do what they cannot...
The classic example of this technique of Fight Club where the unnamed protagonist, played by Ed Norton, feels emasculated and worthless in modern society. He makes a friend, Tyler Durden, who liberates him and changes the way he sees the world. However, it turns out that Tyler was a figment of his imagination, a creation of his subconscious specifically designed to help him become someone else.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a classic of 1980's teen cinema. Ferris is a good-looking, popular young man who pretends to be sick and takes a day off to party and have fun. He enlists his friend Cameron, who is a bundled wreck of nerves and repression. Together, they have a lot of fun, although they do end up wrecking Cameron's dad's Ferrari... Ferris himself plays a role quite similar to that of Tyler Durden, freeing Cameron from the structures and restrictions of teenage life. Ferris allows Cameron to live out a fantasy that he would probably not have been able to make happen on his own. Now, there is no explicit part of the movie saying that Ferris is imaginary, but his role as a wish-fulfillment device for Cameron, not to mention his sheer extreme cartoonish recklessness, and led to some interesting fan theories online.
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