ISFP: Moses, “The Prince of Egypt”

ISFP, The Composer, The Seeker, The Virtuoso

There seems to be a common knowledge among MBTI/pop-culture enthusiasts that the most popular heroic types are ISTP and INFP. You have your scrappy, action-hero everyman in the ISTPs—John McClane, Han Solo, every scruffy military video game protagonist—and your starry-eyed, moral idealist in the INFPs—Luke Skywalker, Daenerys Targarean.

However, as I’ve read through my favorite MBTI blog lately, I’m beginning to think that ISFPs might be the front runner for most popular heroic type. For one thing, a lot of heroes that have been typed as INFPs are actually ISFPs, Luke Skywalker being the best example. One famous–and super inaccurate–MBTI chart has Harry Potter as an ISTP, and another throws Arya Stark in that slot as well. Well, guess what? Both ISFPs. I’ve also seen Legolas typed as an ISFP before, and though I haven’t seen an cognitive analysis yet, I think that fits pretty well.

(Dany? Well, I don’t know anymore, but I’m thinking she’s not an Intuitive-based personality.)

What I’m saying is that the character of Moses as portrayed in The Prince of Egypt seems to be in good heroic company. The ISFP type just seems super handy as a hero—driven by a non-conforming sense of morality and idealism (Fi), and backed up by physical impulsiveness and dexterity (Se). Plus, once the tertiary function kicks in (Ni), it usually means they’re on their way to Discovering Their Destiny.

Let me show you how this plays out for Moses.

Dominant Function: Fi/Introverted Feeling, “Evaluate the Experience”

Moses begins the story not having to think much about what he does or why. He’s perfectly happy being a prince and riding around recklessly with his brother, playing pranks, and shirking his responsibilities. Once he’s hit with the revelation of his true heritage, Moses retreats inward and re-evaluates everything he knows.

His first song, “All I Ever Wanted,” dramatizes Moses‘ discovery of what’s truly important to him, and what’s truly authentic about himself. At the end of it, he sits by the water where his mother found him, and confronts her with the fact that everything she’s told him about himself is a lie. He meets his father under the painting of the slaughter of the Hebrew children, and his father’s flippant attitude towards the atrocity pierces his newly awakened conscience, his inner sense of ethics and morality.

After Moses flees Egypt, he crawls through the desert slowly stripping off the jewelry and luxurious clothing from his old life. He finds a new life with the nomadic Midianites, and we find him at one point waking up early, sitting on a rock overlooking his flock of sheep, and sighing in contentment. He’s re-defined himself and found a peaceful existence that feels right and rings true.

However, God finds him and gives him a new mission—to free the Hebrews.

The Prince of Egypt MBTI

Alien is in my top ten, if not top five, favorite movies of all time. Let me just get that out of the way at the start. Ridley Scott has made some mesmerizing stuff in his time.

However, last week he released Exodus: Gods and Kings, the latest in a long line of languid “epics” that I haven’t been tempted in the slightest to see (okay, I saw Prometheus with big hopes and excitement, but I’m pretty sure I was emotionally and visually scarred by the experience).

It isn’t just the movie’s bad reviews or Scott’s recent bad track record that turns me off, though. It’s the casting of white European actors in what should have been roles for Middle Eastern, African, and otherwise brown actors that feels tasteless to me. And to twist the knife further, Scott made a blatantly racist statement about his reasons for casting the stars he did instead of ethnically appropriate talent.

To cleanse my palette of the affair, I re-watched The Prince of Egypt. I deeply loved this movie when I first saw it, and I’ve watched it many times. I hadn’t seen it lately, though. One evening this weekend I turned it on as background, and soon I’d forgotten what I was doing and sat transfixed for the whole experience.

This movie’s good, is what I’m saying. Somehow, the folks at Dreamworks* managed to make the story of the Exodus a musical, and came up with emotionally authentic songs that are also catchy. They danced a tricky theological line by writing an adaptation that dramatizes the story while retaining the spiritual truth of it. And they drew characters who are brown!

I’m of white European descent myself (half Serbian, half German), although I get mistaken for Jewish a lot thanks to my coloring. When The Prince of Egypt came out, I missed it at first, but all my friends came rushing up to me at church that weekend to tell me how great it was and that Moses was totally me. I hadn’t grown a beard yet (although I believe that year I was experimenting with an unimpressive goatee), but the comparison was enough than I made an instant connection with Moses when I finally saw the movie. I related to his spiritual journey, in his search for authenticity and truth, and his dependence on God to get him to the impossible place he was going.

To help drive more people to watch or re-watch this movie instead of Exodus, I decided to write MBTI profiles of the main characters of The Prince of Egypt. Mind you, I’m not saying these are fictional characters, just fictional representations of the people whose lives are recorded in the book of Exodus. Even if you consider them fictional though, I think you’ll appreciate these profiles. Like I said, it’s a great movie, and you should see it. Repeatedly.

*If you ever call The Prince of Egypt a Disney movie, I’ll throw a stone tablet at you.