This week’s theme: The Phantom of the Opera. Over the span of five days, I read the original novel by Gaston Leroux, watched the 2004 film adaption, then experienced the live musical performance in Melbourne with my partner. From the initial reading, then throughout the performances, one question kept arising in my mind: why are the main characters in this adored musical so amazingly unlikeable?

The Phantom of the Opera revolves around three main characters: first, the phantom, a.k.a. opera ghost, our mysterious antagonist who turns out to be a disfigured, talented man named Erik with sociopathic tendencies; second, our damsal in distress, Christine Daas, our angelic soprano and Erik’s key love interest, who appears unable to think for herself; third, our handsome protagonist, Viscount Raoul de Chagny, our innocent, passionate young noble and Erik’s love rival over Christine, who makes absurdly naive decisions in the name of love. Each of these characters have glaring flaws and I found few admirable features in any of them. This confused me: main characters were meant to be likeable, I assumed, and portraying Erik, Christine and Raoul in this way was surely a disservice to the audience and the overall narrative.

But as I explored the story further and read other people’s analyses, I found that what turned me off was exactly why others enjoyed this classic. What happens when you put three imperfect characters – a mysterious sociopath, naive opera singer and love-obsessed young royal – in a love triangle, amongst tragedy and death at an opera house? Well, you get an interesting story.

Many of the most alluring stories are full of imperfect people. If all characters were perfectly rational and morally upright, you wouldn’t get something worth following. Good drama requires a spanner in the works; inconsistent motives, flawed characters, absurd decisions. The contrary is predictable, unrealistic and boring. The Biblical stories or Greek myths, for instance, wouldn’t be the same without the rebellious Jews or the promiscuous Gods. There is something about imperfection that makes a story more touching and engaging.

This is why the ‘monsters’ portrayed in the likes of Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, Count Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera have such a mysterious appeal. They are, on one hand, brutish, without morals, pitied at best, feared at worst, yet simultaneously fascinating characters, as their imperfection creates tales of magic, and serves as reminders that even we, as the audience, with our own degrees of flaws and demons, are capable of great stories as well.