I look at the brother and sister characters, OJ and Emerald as Co-Protagonists.

I look at the brother and sister characters, OJ and Emerald as Co-Protagonists. They not only share personal histories and DNA, they also share the plan to obtain a photograph of the alien. Granted, Emerald is more enthusiastic about the plan (it’s clear OJ would never have gone forward with such an idea on his own) and their paths diverge at a critical point in Act III, but their destinies are inextricably bound together.

The Alien (Jean Jacket) is an actual physical Nemesis as it exists to devour humans and animals alike. As OJ says midway through the story when he has an epiphany about the Alien: “It’s alive, it’s an animal and it thinks that this is its home.” Acting as an existential threat marks it clearly as an antagonist figure.

There are also some psychological dynamics which create opposition among the characters. More on that in my response in the Themes article.

Mentor: On a technical level, Angel serves that function in helping to set up and oversee the complex array of video cameras. This is his area of expertise. Interestingly, it is that knowledge combined with his curiosity about what OJ and Emerald are up to that gets him sucked into the plotline, a third member of the crew.

Attractor: The brother-sister dynamic can be seen as a Protagonist-Attractor relationship. Since Emerald hasn’t been home for at least three years, the pair begin in a distant place. The crazy events which occur draw them closer together.

But I think another Attractor figure their father. Even though he dies quite early in the story, his presence lingers over both Emerald and OJ. There is a pivotal flashback which conveys how Emerald felt her father didn’t “see” her, like she was largely invisible to him. This in contrast to Junior who adored his father and followed in his footsteps working the family business (Emerald left home). While Emerald’s primary motivation in photographing the Alien is to make money (“the Oprah shot”), OJ is, I think, more about trying to make sense out of his father’s senseless death which as it turns out was caused indirectly by the Alien. Underlying Emerald’s obsession with capturing images of the Alien is a subconscious drive to prove that she deserved recognition from her father.

Trickster: I think there are two. First, there is Antlers Holst, a cinematographer Emerald and OJ approach to join their effort to photograph the alien. At times, he dons a mentor “mask” like when he provides this advice to Emerald: “Horse girl, this dream you’re chasing... The one where you end up at the top of the mountain...? All eyes on you. That’s the one you don’t wake up from.” He’s trying in his own way to be an ally there. But eventually, he heads off to chase his dream to photograph the alien on his own, leading to predictably dire results.

Then there is Ricky who may be the most complex character in the story. Traumatized as a child actor by Gordy’s bloody rampage on set, he has by all appearances processed that experience to the point where he makes money in part based on his fame from that very event. Worse, he’s actually a kind of ally to the Alien providing horses (at least a couple purchased from OJ) for Jean Jacket to feast on, all part of Ricky’s show for paying customers. His character lies at the center of the story’s exploration of spectacle, a subject we will dive into in response to the next article: Themes.