Stock character

The formal study of fictional characters began with Aristotle's student Theophrastus. In The Characters (c. 319 BC), Theophrastus introduced the "character sketch", which became the core of "Character as a genre". It included 30 character types, each exemplifying a group and characterized by his most prominent trait:

It is unclear from where Theophraestes derived these types, but many strongly resemble those from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Though Theophrastus sought to portray character types and not individuals, some of the sketches may have been drawn from actual public figures in Athens.

Although the preface implies the intention to comprehensively catalogue "human nature, associate[ed] with all sorts and conditions of men and contrast[ing] in minute detail the good and bad among them", many other possible types are left unrepresented. Since the thirty characters represent only negative traits, some scholars have suspected that another half of the work has been lost, covering positive types. The preface, however, is certainly a later addition, unreliable in describing the author's intentions. Many scholars also believe the definitions introducing each sketch are later additions.

New Comedy was the first theatrical genre which developed after Theophrastus' formulation. Menander was said to be a student of Theophrastus, and has been remembered for his prototypical cooks, merchants, farmers and slave characters. Although we have few extant works of the New Comedy, the titles of Menander's plays alone seem to allude to Theophrastus:

Another early form that illustrates the beginnings of the Character is the mime. Greco-Roman mimic playlets often told the stock story of the fat, stupid husband who returned home to find his wife in bed with a lover. A stock mime character was the mimus calvus, resembling Maccus the buffoon from Atellan farce.

Atellan Farce introduced the first true stock characters. It employed four fool types: Maccus the buffoon, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the old simpleton, and Dossennus the cunning hunchback, which may have developed into a fifth type, Manducus the chattering pimp.

The Roman playwright Plautus drew from Atellan Farce as well as the Greek Old and New Comedy. He expanded the four types of Atellan Farce to eight (not quite as distinct as the farcical types):

• Angry old man – senex iratus
• Young man in love, possibly the angry old man's rebellious son – adulescens amator
• Clever or cunning slave – servus callidus
• Stupid slave – servus stultus
• Hanger-on or flatterer – parasitus
• Prostitute – meretrix
• Slave dealer or pimp – leno
• Braggart or swaggering soldier – miles gloriosus

Plautus's fool was either the slave or the parasite.

In revision of Theophrastus, Diogenes Laërtius published Ethical Characters (Circa 230 BC), sparking interest in two lines of study. The first is that of the character book. Imitators of Theophrastus including Satyrus Atheneus, Heracleides Ponticus, Lycon, and Rutilius Lupus wrote their own character sketches. Circa 212 BC, Ariston's discourse on morality included several proud Character types and mimicked the Theophrastan style. Following Philodemus of Gadara's work on "Self seeking Affability" and Ariston's characters, evidence of acquaintance with the genre is present, however popularity of the portrait over the generalized stock figures in increasing. This may explain the gap of time from the beginning of the Common Era to the 16th century marked by an absence of character sketching.

The second field is the study of nomenclature. As the Character rose as a literary genre, many terms were coined in attempt to place labels on the new subject. The translation Theophrastus' title is based on the terms charassein and Charakter, associated with the stamping of an impression. Rhetorica ad Herennium (c. 20 BC), attributed to Cicero, split the character up into two qualities: effictio, the description of physical appearance, and notation, the nature of man. Later in his De Inventione, Cicero divided the character, or conformation as he called it, into eleven points: name, nature (natura), way of life (victus), fortune (fortuna), physical appearance (habitus), passions (affectio), interests (studium), reasons for doing things (consilium), one's deeds (factum), what happens to one (casus), one's discourses (orationes).

Seneca, too, played a part in providing labels for the new genre in his Epistulae Morale, using the terms ethologia and characterismos for characteristic conduct of moral types. Circa 93 AD, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria discussed the effect of personality on rhetoric and in so doing, coined the terms ethopoeia, an orator's imitation of another person's character or habits, and prosopopoeia, the same thing, but with a dramatization of the person as well as the giving of his words. Other terms conceived in the period include figurae sententiarum and descriptio personae. Decorum, the rhetorical principle that an individual's words and subject matter are appropriately matched, also became a relevant term, and would remain significant into the Renaissance.

The Romans' "perverse admiration for decorum" is in part responsible for the deterioration and the resulting blackout period of the Character genre. During this blackout, the Character smoldered under the philosophies of such men as Horace. In the Ars Poetica (c. 18 BC), Horace drew pictures of typical men at various ages, from childhood to old age. Horace's belief that "what is typical of a class should be observable in the individual" was illustrated in his epistles classifying Achilles as a man of rage and love, Paris an impractical lover, and Ulysses the model of virtue and wisdom. Others, such as Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Priscian, shared this belief and sought to explore the workings of human nature.

Stock characters also feature heavily in the comic traditions of Kyōgen in Japan and Commedia dell'arte in Italy; in the latter they are known as tipi fissi (fixed [human] types).

In American popular films, there a wide range of stock characters, which are typically used as non-speaking extras in the background, bit parts with a single line, minor secondary/supporting roles, or major secondary/supporting roles.[11] Stock characters in American films have changed over the decades. A 1930s or 1940s film's stock characters include newspaper vendors, ice vendors, street sweepers, and cigarette girls; in contrast, a 1990s film has homeless "bag ladies", pimps, plainclothes police, business women, and Black and Hispanic stereotypes.[12]

Stock characters in American popular culture, especially racial and ethnic stereotypes, often became offensive in later decades and were replaced with new stereotypes. For example, the "lazy Black" and the "treacherous bespectacled Japanese" were replaced in the 1990s with the "street-smart Brother" and the "camera-happy Japanese tourist".[13] Other groups reduced to stereotypes include women, Native Americans, Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, and Italians.[14] Other briefly popular stock characters include the 1950s "overweight Communist cell leader" and the 1970s "Black Panther revolutionary".[15]

Even in timeless occupations, the person in the job has changed, reflecting cultural and demographic changes. [16] In the 1990s, a hairdresser (previously French) was often depicted as a gay man, a gardener (previously White) as Asian or Hispanic, a bar tender (previously White) as Black, and a maid (previously Black) as Hispanic.[17]

Due to the scheduling constraints on television production, in which episodes need to be quickly scripted and shot, television scriptwriters often depend heavily on stock characters borrowed from popular film.[18] TV writers use these stock characters to quickly communicate to the audience. [19] In the late 1990s, there was a trend for screenwriters to add a gay stock character, which replaced the 1980s era's "African-American workplace pal" stock character.[20] In the 1990s, a number of sit coms introduced gay stock characters, such as Friends, Rosanne, Mad About You, and Will & Grace, with the quality of the depictions being viewed as setting a new bar for onscreen LGB depiction.[21]

One challenge with the use of stock characters in TV shows is that, as with films, these stock characters can incorporate racial stereotypes, and "prejudicial and demeaning images".[22] One concern raised with these gay stock characters is they tend to be shown as just advice-giving "sidekicks" who are not truly integrated into the narrative; as well, the gay character's life is not depicted, apart from their advice-giving interactions with the main characters.[23] This also echoed the way that Black and Latino characters were used in 1980s and early 1990s shows: they were given a stock character role as a police chief, which in put them in a position of power, but then these characters were used as minor characters, with little narrative interaction with main characters.[24] In the 2000s, with changing views on depicting race, Latino/a characters are both typecast into stock characters and the writers play with viewer expectations by making a seemingly stock Latino/a character act or behave "against type".[25]

Southern sheriff stock characters are depicted with a negative stereotype of being obese, poorly trained, uneducated, and racist, as was done with Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard.[26]