Sunday, October 14, 2018

Sunman and Moonman

There are dozens of movies and TV shows that include a Sunman/Moonman buddy pair. Star Wars has Luke and Han who are linked to the Sun and Moon via their wardrobes and spacecraft and their hair. Often in the movies and TV shows that have these characters, there will be a half-hearted attempt to make the sunman seem intelligent (which often doesn't work in the context of an action movie or Sci-Fi show) and make the moonman into a gruff military figure, often with close cropped hair. (Sam and Dean Winchester on Supernatural)

The sunman is supposed to represent the rational, intellectual part of man, and the moonman is a gruff military man (or a greedy smuggler) because he's supposed to be associated with handling the physical world and physical aspect of man.

The needs of plot and character development of TV shows, though, tends to make the distinction between these characters hard to recognize. It's really difficult, for example, to depict intellectualism in a TV show, similarly, it's difficult to have one of the characters be dumb all the time, yet be heroic, or able to move a plot forward.

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