The morality play never ended

The parallel

A morality play in everything but name. The protagonist's interior is staged as a room full of named, costumed agents who argue over the controls. Each emotion has a voice, a height, a colour, a gait — exactly as the medieval Virtues did.

Inheritance

The technology of personification, untouched since 1151. Riley learns to feel sad by watching Sadness walk; the medieval pilgrim learned to feel patient by watching Patience hold her stone.

Caveat

Inside Out improves on the moralities in one crucial way: Sadness is not defeated. The medieval form needed Pride to lose. The film argues that the cast cannot be ranked.

The parallel

A two-and-a-half-hour pageant in which abstractions wear capes. Justice (in a flag-coloured suit), Vengeance (in matte black), Chaos (in green and purple), Order (with a shield) battle for the future of a city that is itself usually personified.

Inheritance

The wagon stage, rolling between cities, performing the same plot at each station. The York cycles had Noah's Flood; we have Thor's Ragnarok. The genre needs the villain to lose and so gives him the better entrances and the worse arguments.

Caveat

Where the moralities expected the audience to walk home and continue the fight in themselves, the superhero film leaves them holding a popcorn bucket and a sequel date.

The parallel

Every political season casts the same dramatis personae under new names. The Forgotten Worker, The Coastal Elite, The Activist Mob, The Silent Majority — these are not analyses, they are characters. Each comes with a costume and a voice. Each is given lines designed for the audience to cheer or boo.

Inheritance

The moralities discovered that a confusion of interests is easier to remember if you personify it. Modern political communication has industrialised the same finding.

Caveat

Medieval audiences knew the actors took the costumes off after the play. The modern audience is rarely told the cast is performing.

The parallel

Each post is a small pageant. The reply guy, the karen, the gaslighter, the doomer, the centrist, the bot — all are personifications, named, costumed by avatar, given one-line scripts. The feed is the wagon. It rolls past your attention all day.

Inheritance

The pageant model: short scenes, recognisable types, no narrator. The audience supplies the moral by liking, retweeting, or quoting in rage.

Caveat

The wagon does not leave. The pilgrim cannot walk home. The play does not end. This is the medieval form running with no ground wire.

The parallel

Internal Family Systems therapy talks about your 'Manager,' your 'Firefighter,' your 'Exile.' These are Virtues and Vices in business casual. The Enneagram type is a costume.

Inheritance

The medieval discovery that you can negotiate with a personified inner agent in ways you cannot negotiate with a diffuse mood.

Caveat

The clinical versions are explicit that the agents are a useful fiction. The pop versions tend to forget.

The parallel

Doge, Pepe, the Gigachad, the Soyjak, the Distracted Boyfriend — the digital folk pantheon is straightforwardly a set of personified abstractions assigned voices and outfits by collective improvisation.

Inheritance

Personification as a folk art. The morality play wagon, dismantled and reassembled by anonymous craftspeople.

Caveat

Without a wagon-master to end the performance, the cast multiplies without limit.