tealin | On Villainy

I've been meaning to post this since last summer, when a comment thread fed a pebble into the rock-tumbler of my brain, but there was always something more important to do ... Well, I have a lump of unexpected free time so I am carpeing the diem.

WARNING: I do go on rather.

I've never been much of a one for villains. From my first foray into fandom I've puzzled at the villain fangirls, some of whom appeared to fawn over the bad guy out of a sense of obligation more than anything else (Frollo fangirls, with all due respect: what the crap?). So it was with no small amount of surprise that as the last year rolled along, I found myself drawn repeatedly to the darker end of the character spectrum, starting from the Herbert West stories, really kicking off with Sweeney Todd, through The Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel and peaking with Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. How could this be? I have a fairly conservative moral code and certainly don't identify with those who rejoice in evil, so what was I connecting with?

Of all things, it was the Captain Hammer comic that made the breakthrough: villains are smart.

Now, I'm not saying all villains everywhere are smart, and there is a fundamental lack of observation skills necessary not to notice that evil is inevitably self-defeating, but bear with me for a moment.

I'm going to come at this mainly from the superhero mythos, because that is the most pervasive genre in American culture, both reflecting it and informing it in some sort of allegorical feedback loop, across all ages, in many different media, and its archetypes are the clearest and most caricatured. I am no great expert on superheroes, though, so please correct me or fill in holes in my knowledge where you feel I may be mistaken.

Heroes, generally, are physical. They have unusual strength, or some other sort of supernatural skill involving physicality; e.g. Wolverine's healing, Spiderman's spider skills, and just about everything about Superman. They win the day by being honest and true, fighting for love or justice, are straightforward, hardworking and resourceful – the ideal Americans. Villains often don't have superpowers, but they do have brains. Not only brains but scientific brains – I've never come across a novelist villain. They are called Doctor and Professor; they build mechanical devices or engineer chemicals to give them powers the heroes come by naturally (or supernaturally); they have intricate schemes and use mind games, deceit, and cunning to their advantage; they have an enlarged, sometimes visible brain, a small or weedy physique, and a massive scientific laboratory. They challenge the system and think outside the box, coming to their own conclusions on what is right or what a society should be rather than unquestioningly accepting the status quo. They use elevated language, sometimes alluding to classic literature, and frequently have English accents, which all Americans know is a sure sign of intellect.

The good/physical side and the bad/mental side are not always mutually exclusive, but look what happens to those who cross the line: intellectuals on the side of good are usually subservient to the heroes, relegated to engineering devices for them (Batman) or doing their research (Buffy). The physically powerful baddies are usually hired muscle for the villain, goons the heroes have to overcome before conquering evil. If you want to realize your full potential you have to pick your designated team.

I know that the origin for a lot of the mad scientists and evil professors stems from a crisis of conscience after the atom bomb, but that it's survived so long and, if anything, increased in intensity is intriguing. The pattern has only gotten clearer in recent years, with the glut of superhero movies. The nerdiest superhero, Spiderman, was stripped of the canon webshooters he scientifically engineered, and given organic ones instead. The Incredibles makes it abundantly clear that Syndrome relied on his cleverness to compensate for his lack of naturally endowed superpowers and get his revenge on the honest, good, true superheroes. The very fact that Patrick Warburton has such a successful voice acting career is an acknowledgment of the Big Dumb Hero. So, what is the nature of causality here? Is it all a permutation of the American distrust of intellectuals?* Or are superhero stories telling America that clever people are evil? I suspect it's more complicated, that they feed off each other, and the mores of one or both leech into other genres or cultures over time. Still, it's something to ponder.
*I find it an interesting topic, and posted on it here.

There is, traditionally, a place for the lying, cheating, devious and manipulative who still want to be on the positive side of the narrative divide: the trickster. Tricksters are found in most mythologies; you get the same traits in Raven, Coyote, Loki, Monkey, Brer Rabbit, and Anansi. They all lack physical prowess and find themselves up against vastly more powerful foes, where they must depend on their ingenuity to survive. The trickster has never really had a place in mainstream American culture,* at least not in a serious way – the Puritan values of hard work and honesty upon which the country was founded oppose their sort of behaviour, so they're usually relegated to comedy when they appear at all. The most iconic American trickster I can think of is Bugs Bunny, and I would not be surprised if his popularity is at least partly on account of his filling an archetypical hole in our contemporary mythology. The same goes for characters like Jack Sparrow and Bart Simpson. It's interesting that the superhero genre, and to a lesser degree many of the other stories American culture tells itself, more or less inverts the trickster tale, pitting a hero's strength and righteousness against the villain's guile.
*Addendum:

spence137 pointed out Tom Sawyer. America has one!

It's understandable that the further a society moves away from its hunter-gatherer roots, the less need it has of tricksters, but America seems unusually barren even for Western culture. I don't know much about other European traditions but the echoes of Commedia dell'Arte, with its masked schemers, seem to reverberate into the present to some extent. When I was racking my brain for English-language tricksters I kept getting British ones: Moist von Lipwig, El-ahrairah, Sherlock Holmes, and Doctor Who; the latter two of whom are cultural touchstones. Perhaps I notice them because I'm slightly more in tune with British literature than American, but it might be related to their higher esteem of cleverness in general. The reason I'm focusing on American culture in particular with this is that it has become the single dominant force in Western culture as a whole, and its exported media is beginning to influence the media (and thereby culture) of countries far afield.

Something else to ponder is the trend recently towards telling the villain's tale. In recent years, we've seen V for Vendetta, Sweeney Todd, Dr Horrible, the Villains arc of the Heroes TV show, and Dexter, a series about a sociopathic serial killer. Above all, look at the amazing success of Wicked, both the book and the play, which has as its central character a well-established, culturally iconic villain. I pose a theory, and this is only a theory, which I present merely to mull over: in a world where Americans are daily reminded of Guantanamo, collateral damage, extraordinary rendition, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and the loss of their romantic status as the plucky underdog, perhaps there is a collective (subconscious?) examination of conscience. What if we are the villain? Is it really so black and white? Is the villain such a bad thing to be, or is it just a matter of perspective? We aren't evil, we're just misunderstood ... right? The people who create the media are just the sort of liberally educated empaths who tend to see the world in shades of grey anyway; it's easy to imagine they should go from anxious hand-wringing to some sort of expression of doubt in the media they create. The Dark Knight is positively a psychotheraputic couch session on this subject: Batman says of himself: 'You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I can do those things because I'm not a hero ... I killed those people. That's what I can be. I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be.' But that statement could just as easily be said of the nation as a whole, if you take Gotham to be The World. It's all an exploration of the difference between What A Hero Would Do and What Needs To Be Done in a world confronted by chaos and senseless destruction, and America ate it up. What does this mean? I don't know. Does it mean anything? The movie did have a tragic death associated with it, and for those who didn't care so much for Heath Ledger there were a lot of explosions and fight scenes and awesome vehicles with engines that went 'VROOM' so maybe I'm reading too much into its popularity. But it's something to think about nonetheless.

Anyway I don't know how to wrap this up so I shall take the cheap way out:

Current Mood: analytical
Current Location: work

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

themarinator.livejournal.com

Lovely, lovely, lovely post. I'd heard similar sentiments about the Dark Knight, but never expressed in such an insightful manner, and never wrapped in such a nice bow :) Thanks for posting.

From:

twirlynoodle.livejournal.com

There was a really good interview/report on NPR the weekend before Christmas (I think) in which one of their regular reviewers discussed how the modern American psyche is reflected in films like The Dark Knight and Cloverfield. It was really interesting but I just tried searching for it and came up empty-handed, unfortunately. It was a male critic and female host, if you want to continue the quest ...

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On Villainy

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