A Lesson For Me In Character Development

More and more I am beginning to truly understand character development. I always thought it was about revealing information about a character such as their past, hair color, weight, hobbies, stuff like that. Earlier today I learned something very interesting. Characters are developed as they act and learn.

It happened when I saw an episode of "Fat Albert" this afternoon. It was an episode about a hate group and how one of Albert's female friends became part of it. The part that caught my attention was when the leader of the hate group was painting a racist sign on a jewish church and he slipped and was hanging onto the roof for life. Even despite how he was earlier treated, Albert climbed up and risked his life to save him. Now I found that admirable! Also, when the girl stood up to the gang leader and voiced her opinions and how she decided to clean up the painted sign on the church at the end. I admired that too!

Did I really learn something through this experience? Is this what character development is all about? If so, I learned a lot!

For me another good example of character development happened in both direct-to-video sequels of Disney's Cinderella. They revolved around the character of Anastasia.

In the original Cinderella, Anastasia was completely unlikeable like her sister Druisella and her mother the wicked stepmother. But in the second movie, the producers actually fleshed out her character to make her more likeable and sympathetic. Her sister and mother remained unlikeable. I found it admirable where she actually stood up to her mother to find happiness with a man her mother called "inferior". I thought I'd never see her actually do it! In the third movie, the producers succeeded again in the same way when she foiled her mother's plot to marry her to the prince, deciding that she couldn't bring herself to do it when she took the prince's hand into her own and could not sense true love. And when her own mother and sister went against her in the final climax, Cinderella was ready to take the spell to defend her stepsister. Now that was admirable!