I don't think it's fair of me to go into full details on what inspired this blog entry, but Morgan and I have been talking recently about a break-up she's currently still riding the aftershocks of, in which she is feeling the pains and difficulties of being 'the bad guy' despite her best efforts. It's a complex situation that, as I said, it's not my place to write an open commentary of, but our discussions did get me to thinking of the duality of the states of Hero and Villain, and the shades of grey that these two supposed archetypes actually encompass.
At a young age, we are taught that every story has a Hero and a Villain. The Hero is the archetype of justice, fairness, grace and all that is good in the world. The Villain, conversely, is the antithesis of this, engendering traits of selfishness, greed, power-lust and other less than desirable qualities. The Villain is evil and the crowd cheers when the Hero finally defeats him. It's yin and yang, right?
That, in and of itself, is an interesting article to delve into, the idea of yin and yang. Surely then, every Hero needs a Villain, and every Villain needs a Hero for there to be balance? This, certainly, was something I was not taught as a child, and it's a very important topic of discourse, I think, for the children to actually peel back the flesh of the world, gaze upon the beating heart, the rise and fall of the lungs and see what actually makes this world tick. We're taught to be fair and equal, but life itself is not fair or equal; and the Hero/Villain duality epitomises this.
Eventually, that child, having grown up to be told that Stealing Is Wrong, will inevitably ponder whether or not stealing is still wrong if it is to steal bread to feed a starving family that have been driven to such hard times by the local baker himself. As Jhonen Vasquez mentions in 'Johnny The Homicidal Maniac', it's interesting to discover how often the victim is actually the creator of his own fate at the hands of the perpetrator through previous life interactions. Imagine, if you will indulge me, that a teenage boy is stabbed to death on his paper round one morning. The papers report that he was "such a lovely boy, [who] always smiled and was so caring to his friends", but may neglect to point out that this boy and his caring friends bullied the boy who stabbed him for years, driving the perpetrator into a spiral of depression and desperation. The paper will likely point out that the murderer was depressed and suffered anxiety, but who truly understands who the real Hero and Villain are in this scenario?
On one hand, the bully was very much the Hero to his friends and family, plucked cruelly from the world at such a young age by the Villainous rogue who stabbed him in cold blood one blustery October morning. On the other, the boy, a victim at the hands of the Villainous bully, driven to desperation and despair takes the bold move of putting his own fate squarely into his hands and Heroicly seeks vengeance for a ruined childhood. Before anyone comments on how weak an argument this may be, how many Epic Fantasy tales are essentially the journeys of a wandering rogue seeking to bring the Overlord to account for past misdeeds? Certainly, those stories often have the 'hero' wander through towns and villages oppressed by the tyrannical Overlord as a way of lulling the audience into a submissive agreement that the Overlord is indeed most definitely evil, but then surely if our previous tale were to be so penned, the murderous boy would likely meet several of the bullies other victims to assure the reader that the impending murder is justified.
Perhaps a more contemporary example, therefore, could be found in Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. We, the audience, know the feud is stupid and that Romeo and Juliet are our two lovestruck heroes, but who are the Villains? The first that came to mind was Tybalt, who attacks Romeo and attempts to kill him merely because of his family name. From one side, Tybalt is clearly the Villain, after all, he attempts to kill our Hero purely because of his name (I'm sure some avid Shakspeare fans can, and will, argue that there are other drivers, but stick with me here), right? But what of Tybalts own reasonings? Perhaps his entire life he has grown up being told of the Capulet/Montague feud, and his had it's importance drilled into him on a daily basis. Honour bound to his family, he seeks vengeance upon Romeo. To Tybalt, Romeo is utterly the villain in this situation, and who are we to argue with him when we have followed heroes upon the exact same journey, clapping and applauding as they commit all manner of atrocities in their pursuit of so-called self-decided justice.
What of other characters in this same play? Friar Laurence, for example, as a neutral character can quite readily be swung into either role dependant on the audiences viewpoint. From one stance, he's a hero, going against his better judgement to find a way through the feud and to unite our two lovers. From another, he is very much the villain who ultimately causes both their deaths by putting the two before their families, but the dichotomy is there still.
I think that, in any case, a Hero who is nothing but a hero is bland and one dimensional. There can be no apathy for a paragon of virtue, it is impossible for the audience to connect on any layer beyond so-called (and fittingly so, I may add) hero worship. Whilst we can look up to this character, we cannot connect. Like the Gods of ancient men, they are distant, untouchable. They are flawed in their flawlessness. The same is true for our Villains. A Villain requires a purpose beyond the bland and decidedly immature propagation of evil clause. Why a Villain does what he does is an important facet for the reader. It makes the Villain more believable, more real, and decidedly better off for it. By connecting with the Villain, he becomes much more than an end goal, a resolution, he becomes an antagonist, and this adds power to the story.
Of course, there is always the danger of going too far. I recently made the ubiquitously bad choice of paying money to witness the latest Superman film, Man of Steel, and whilst I will refrain from plunging ego-first into an entire lengthy essay on every flaw evident in the film - there are many, I dare say that one day an enterprising young author may write and entire volume on this travesty of cinema - I will use it as the perfect example of over apathy. So, Zod is supposed to be this big bad guy intending to crush humanity and build a new empire upon their bones, but the film focusses on making the Villain someone we can connect with. We learn that he is little more than a byproduct of what he was literally created to do. His entire existence is to defend a propagate his peoples future, and that's all he's doing. Contrasted against the bland, featureless Superman who is in almost every way a superior god-like being, flawless and untouchable in every aspect, and the viewer finds himself suddenly confused. They're rooting for the bad guy, and the supposedly 'satisfying' finale in which Superman defeats Zod, actually flips onto it's head into a tragedy in which we, the audience, feel disappointed at the climax. The good VS evil dichotomy has fallen apart and we've witnessed the Villain become the Hero, and the original Hero change, through his actions, to the purposed Villain. In and of itself, this would be a really cool twist if it was intentional or if the film actually realised that it had done it. Instead, we watch the rest of the film 'resolve' in an utterly unfulfilling manner, confused. It's like watching Oskar Schindler going for drinks with Hitler before the credits start to roll.
Ultimately, I'm aware that I'm ranting and have likely over laboured the point I was trying to make, so I will stop here with the final addendum that I genuinely believe that this kind of applied thinking and reasoning is the kind of thing we should be teaching our children in schools, not cutting out English Literature from the syllabus completely, thank you very much Mr. Gove, but then again, that's just me, and I'm sure that as a writer I constitute a biased party. Then again, maybe it's the entire reason I started writing in the first place.
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