“Well, just a comedy”: what genre do you live in?

When you tell others stories about yourself and life, what drives you the most? Do you want to laugh? Teach? Just speak up? Complain? Find common? Separate?

Psychodramatherapist Olga Malinina offers a list of five genres. To check in which of them your life story develops, ask yourself questions: what stories does it have more (comic, sad, tragic or happy ending)? With a moral at the end, unfinished? Inspiring you or disappointing?

Heroic epic

Describes the struggle of the main character with fate, evil, darkness. He raises existential themes: moral duty, responsibility, fate, life, death.

Сюжет always ends with the victory of the hero – real, if he survives the fight, or moral, if he dies.

examples: “The Tale of a Real Man” by Boris Polevoy, “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway.

Genre Helps to endure in difficulties, to overcome one’s own weaknesses: doubts, cowardice, cowardice, to see an elevated meaning in everyday life, to establish oneself in one’s truth, to take a decisive step. When we turn to this style, we have clarity, clarity in understanding goals, in determining who is friend and who is enemy, there are no doubts and halftones in explaining what is happening.

Getting stuck in the heroic epic, we turn life into a constant struggle. We are looking for an enemy, real or imaginary for our battles, sometimes within ourselves – in the form of our own “immoral” qualities and weaknesses.

We are inspired by difficulties and obstacles, as they provide an opportunity to accomplish a feat. We divide others into our own and others. It is difficult for us to see the diversity of human characters, their inconsistency, ambiguity. There is only white and black, yes or no, truth and lies.

Comedy

Uses a satirical or humorous approach in which the conflict is specifically (not heroically) resolved. It opposes the heroic epic, everything is the opposite here. Comedy shows how absurd, contradictory, inconsistent the world is, explains that it is not always worth following the heroic path, there are other ways to cope with reality.

Plot. Ridiculous events happen to the main character, funny and not very funny, which he usually does not take seriously, as if they happen “for fun”. The hero of a comedy is a victim of circumstances, he gets into stories, and does not create them, events happen by themselves and seem to draw him into a kaleidoscope of absurd incidents. Despite this, the problems of the main characters are successfully resolved.

examples: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, “Monday Starts on Saturday” by the Strugatsky brothers, anecdotes.

Genre Helps to look at oneself and at the world from its comical side, to see life in its ambiguity, inconsistency, complexity. Comedy allows you to recognize your limitations and weaknesses, inspires optimism and faith in the good, develops wit, creativity and spontaneity. Such a view makes the world not as one-sided as in the heroic epic, and allows you to see the halftones, ambiguity, diversity of life.

Getting stuck in comedy, we perceive ourselves as a victim of circumstances, on which little depends, devalue our contribution to life events, laugh at painful topics so as not to delve into them, not to notice real difficulties and problems.

Cheating novel

It represents episodes from the life of a rogue without a clear compositional pattern. The protagonist goes through life effortlessly, easily, without thinking about the consequences. He does not follow the general rules. His goal is to enjoy the process of the game that he started. The Rogue lives in the moment, in the here and now. His motto is: “Catch luck by the tail!”

Plot. There is no transformation of the main character here. He does not learn from his own and other people’s mistakes: “It did not work out this time, but suddenly it will come out next.” His life is ruled by excitement and a desire for risk.

examples: “The Golden Calf”, “12 Chairs” by Ilf and Petrov.

Genre helps. when we need to take risks and try something unfamiliar, when there is a desire to play a new game, to start a business, but fears and concerns interfere. It lifts us above the boring routine, moves us off the ground and allows us to enjoy risk and uncertainty. Winning is not as important as the process of the game itself: “Let’s start, and then we’ll see!”

When we get stuck in a picaresque romance, we perceive life as easy and unburdensome. Such people are called “tumbleweeds”, they do not linger in relationships, quickly change jobs, places of residence, areas of activity, do not bind themselves with obligations and restrictions, there is only a moment, a moment of joy and euphoria, for which they strive.

Such people sometimes seem empty and narrow-minded, sometimes immoral and dangerous, sometimes charming and sweet.

Detective

Describes the process of investigating a crime, a mysterious incident in order to clarify its circumstances and solve the mystery.

Plot. The protagonist finds causal relationships in the world around him, understands the hidden essence of things, sees different options for inconsistencies. It is difficult to deceive him, he instinctively feels untruth and lack of logic. “There’s something wrong here!” he says, trying to figure out what’s really going on.

examples: “Ten Little Indians” by Agatha Christie, “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco.

Genre Helps better understand your world and those around you, become more attentive and insightful, be open to riddles, and therefore to clues. Our inner Detective can manifest itself both in external reality and inside. In the first case, it comes in the form of conscious logical mental constructions, psychotherapeutic work, in the course of training, and in the second – through intuitive insights, insights, images of the unconscious.

The need to “call the Detective” comes when something incomprehensible, inexplicable, requiring a solution occurs:

• Why is this person doing this?
• Why am I doing this again?
• What is behind this event?
• Why is life and the world around like this?

Being stuck in the detective, we turn life into a constant search for the causes of current events. We find cause and effect relationships where they are and where they are not. Also here, magical thinking, the desire to see signs and coincidences, confirmation of one’s thoughts and actions can intensify. The explanation that “sometimes a banana is just a banana” will not satisfy such a person, because “nothing happens just like that.”

everyday realism

He talks in detail about various life circumstances, his goal is a truthful reproduction of reality in its typical features. This genre is invisibly present with us all the time. Life consists of things, furnishings, routine activities, familiar people, the whirlwind of days, weeks, years. And only our view can make this flow meaningful and filled.

Plot. The protagonist in everyday realism looks at life as a description of everyday life: “this is a chair – they sit on it, this is a table – they eat at it.” He can remain only at the material level and notice some everyday nuances – or rise above it and look at the world of reality through the semantic possibilities that it gives.

In the latter version, the little things of everyday life are considered as valuable and unique features of the general pattern of life. Everyone has their own, with different colors and tones. Their individuality makes life unique for everyone.

examples: “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, “Fathers and Sons” by Ivan Turgenev.

Genre Helps to fill with meaning routine actions, ordinary life, the whirlwind of days and years.

The need for it arises when we want:

• stop and see where life is going;
• see what puzzles it consists of;
• see what meaning we give to ordinary moments;
• learn to enjoy ordinary things and trifles.

Getting stuck in everyday realism, we stop at only one focus of reality – the material one. We see in it exactly what we see, and nothing more. Fantasies have no place here, as well as humor, pathos, riddles, games. On the one hand, such a life is understandable and predictable, has a clear picture and order, but on the other hand, it is devoid of flight and inspiration, spontaneity and cute nonsense.