There is a character on the show West Wing that makes me shudder. It is not because he is three hundred pounds, which he is, or because he has a yippy little dog that sheds, which he does, or because he is intent on dismantling the elected president's agenda. It is because he puts protocol above the life of his own
grandmother.
Glen Walken took over as commander in chief when Jed Bartlett's daughter was kidnapped. I admit that the twenty-fifth amendment was a reasonable course of action, but it still gave me the shivers.
When Bartlett was safely reinstated as
president, I exhaled, and neatly plunked Walken in the "nefarious" column.
The other day I was eavesdropping while Benjamin was listening to Monsters Inc. on repeat. I recognized a voice. Sully sounded like Walken. I asked Ben who the voice actor was, and of course he knew without waiting a beat. For reasons I cannot explain, Ben holds hundreds of such details in
the filing cabinet that is his brain.
"John Goodman," he told me without taking his eyes off the screen.
I looked it up. Yes, the overbearing politician was played by the same man. This was a conundrum. Sully is good. He befriends a little girl
and transforms the scream factory into a laughing company, thereby producing enough power for the surrounding community.
But Walken was banished in my mind to the "no redeeming characteristics" category. This did not compute.
Even though both
characters are fictional, they feel real to me. And the incongruity of their core principles as human being/monster left a crack in my mental construct. Even the actual definition of Goodman's name fought against my choice to judge him.
In another part of my brain I know that no one is completely magnanimous, or universally wicked. But I forget that.
Recently, I came face to face with a person who hurt someone I love. My knee jerk response was anger. I wanted to turn on my heel and walk away. But then I thought of Sully. He learned that yelling is a poor substitute for belly laughs.
Maybe I can draw my
power from a different source than resentment.