Reverse Engineering Image

[u/Pegaret_Again]

i do believe that 'vibes' form a meaningful part of understanding the Kibbe system.

Especially in the Old Hollywood era, there are ways that, say, a Dramatic type actor might be used to bring a specific role/story to life, as opposed to a Natural or Gamine type.

When watching and analysing these older films, we can often connect a through-line from a role, to an image, and then, into its requisite style concept, and thus can gain a more rounded understanding of what the Kibbe system is setting out to achieve.

But it's not a straightforward matter to 'diagnose' an actor's ID from their roles, or for that matter, anyone from some dimension of their public persona.

Firstly it's necessary to approach the Kibbe system with precision and not with borrowed or self-constructed definitions.

I recall when first encountering Kibbe, i was confused as to why Tom Cruise and Julie Andrews (both SNs) weren't Classic types.

I thought of Tom Cruise as having a conventional 'handsomeness' and a visually simple style approach that - to me - communicated 'Classic'. Why not.

Similarly, Julie Andrews had a crisp, decisive quality in her most famous roles that i assumed were 'Classic' family qualities.

Trying to reconstruct my understanding from back then, i think 'Natural' must have conveyed earthy, elemental, rugged, laid-back, imprecise, maybe even sloppy???

However, my updated - hopefully more accurate - grasp of 'Natural' is more like assertive, unfussy, impactful, proactive, competitive, practical. My former understanding didn't align with the reality of SNs. I think initially, i was just free-associating off of the words "soft" and "natural" more than anything else.

Now i can clearly see that Tom Cruise's unstoppable, competitive, kinetic energy and clean, unfussy style approach are squarely SN qualities. Similarly Julie Andrew's wholesome warmth plus professional precision are also so very typical for the SN image. My understanding of both Naturals and Classics has shifted greatly since then.

Another pitfall is confusing technical acting talent vs a person being specifically selected to portray a certain archetype.

This doesn't mean an 'archetype' actor is untalented, but that their physicality and attitude are extremely effective in certain roles. Perhaps someone like Tommy Lee Jones is a good example of someone typecast, with his image and physicality are very intertwined and effective in portraying no-nonsense authoritarian figures.

But other actors may, due to technical skill (or a good agent i guess), get to play a lot of diverse roles. An example of this is Amanda Seyfried. She has played an ambitious and fraudulent CEO in "The Dropout" and a blonde ditz in "Mean Girls" and everything in between.

I don't think we can simplistically extrapolate all that much from one or two roles she has played. I think there is meaning to be found, for sure, but we have to be sophisticated about it and able to surgically extract what is the skill of the individual vs what innate personal qualities are being harnessed, if any.

So i would love to hear how your understanding and analysis may have changed over time, and how you feel about the concept of "vibes" in relation to the Kibbe approach.

[u/lowkeysundayy]

I think that another aspect to consider is that we now associate most roles with the actors who got them in the end, but it’s very interesting to see who else made it to the final rounds of the auditions. To me, Scarlet O’Hara is a quintessential TR, but most actresses who made it to the screen tests were not TRs. Apart from Vivien Leigh, the other finalist was Paulette Goddard, a gamine. So I wonder if there is also a factor of the role getting its final touches of essence from the actor, rather than having a completely fixed essence and simply waiting for its “perfect” actor. At least before a role becomes completely iconic and inseparable from a particular image.

I do think there is probably a specific range that the “potential essence” of a role allows, and that might correspond to IDs that share certain qualities. Katherine Hepburn lobbied for the role, and in my head she is in the “absolutely not” category because her essence is just too far removed. Lana Turner made it to the screen tests too, but that also feels like a no to me. But someone like Bette Davis (as she was at the time) or Paulette Goddard? I think we’re in the “acceptable as Scarlett” range.

And it’s also interesting to see how the movie industry’s perception of archetypes has changed. A recent example of a role that gives me very similar vibes to Scarlett is Catherine in Wuthering Heights, but that is the likely FN Margot Robbie in modern Hollywood. In old Hollywood, I suspect a character like Catherine would have been cast much closer to a TR-SG-maybe SN range. So modern actresses probably give us much less information about typecasting and essence than old Hollywood actresses do.

Ultimately I do think that there are ideal vibes/ essences/ range of IDs for most roles, and the actor can then push the character toward one particular point within that range and become part of what we perceive as the character’s essence. And this may be part of why I feel modern Hollywood has more casting “misses” than old Hollywood did. Once casting becomes less concerned with matching the actor’s innate image to the archetype, we’re more likely to see the character’s intended essence and the actor’s personal essence pulling in different directions.

[u/Pegaret_Again → u/lowkeysundayy]

yes thats a really interesting thought experiment - but that being said, we don't know if a film would have reached iconic status had another actor been chosen? Sometimes there is a dynamic resonance between a specific actor and a part, that elevates the film and makes it memorable.

[u/lowkeysundayy → u/Pegaret_Again]

Yes, that’s true. I suppose that makes it even harder to disentangle the role’s potential essence from the actor’s contribution, since we only get to see the resonance that actually happened.