a longass essay _of course_ only krad would write

[kradeelav]

I.
One time a good writer friend of mine asked me why I had such a strong tendency to glom on villains.  

 

It was right after reading one of her stories, and while I was reviewing it - between gushing over the setting and the detail, there was also, uh, quite a bit of gushing krad-style over said antagonist there. ( >_>; )

After a … pause - of loling at krad and predictable tastes (what else is new) - i think there was a brief bit of confused-ness mixed with a bit of wtf.  Apparently the antagonist there - while not /explicit/ yet in the snippet - was a Legitimately Bad Dude Who Did banal-y-evil-Things-that-suck-in-the-real-world-variety.  The kind of dismally bad actions that bring out disgust as a common reaction, if anything. Thankfully Writer Friend knew me, bluntly laid everything out, which elicited an ‘oh … gotcha, ahkay, it’s going there instead’, and after a bit of talking, the snarking resumed and we moved on to other topics.

And yet, this interaction stuck in my head for a while.

(I didn’t have an answer then. Only curiosity in why there was that significant break in expectations.)

II.  

In the 90′s I’m pretty sure the one commonality we all had was Ye Olde Disney movies.

(hell yes lion king)

back then my hearing was even more impressively shitty, so all the formative first (and m a n y) times i watched lion king/pocahontas/aladdin/etc, I had to divine the plot through acting and alotta guesswork in how the characters reacted (and through their stereotypes).  Obviously Plucky Lanky Good Guy was gonna save the day, obviously beard-twirling scrawny shifty-eye dude was Bad but How Bad Was The Question, etc.

(focusing on the visuals was hella good practice for storyboarding theory, in retrospect.  learned a fuckton about solid broad clear acting, and how composing a scene can tell you a redic amount about characters (note the colors used in the backdrop of the different *kinds* of musical, note how they change based on intensity of drama, etc).

(still think it’s why - to this day - i tend to prefer everything animation > live-action since the latter is so /restrained/ and horribly muted in comparison.)

(bla bla bla krad would talk your ear off about animation acting anytime <3)

anyway.  

A lot of subtleties went over my head, in those movies.  (Rereading the Aladdin script for research was a hilarious exercise in 'what the SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT GOT IN THERE omg Robin William’s lines were genius’.)

Yet, a curious thing - you pick up on visual vibes a lot more when words are cut; and what the characters feel.  You pick up on the fact that the protagonists were never … quite allowed to stray too deeply in negative emotions - and for very long.

Plucky Hero™ of course is allowed their one Vague Moment of Doubt when Unobjectionable Sidekick™ cleverly snarks a thing, and they get right back up, no worse for wear.   You pick up on the fact they were hardly allowed to feel directionless, reactionless anger or frustration before the plot carries them gently into happily ever after.  You pick up on the fact that - after a while - there’s a common set of visual traits that protagonsists have - never too far out of the norm or as exaggerated as anyone else. 

There is a thin, invisible line of Acceptable Emotions and Actions and Being™ that they are carefully packed into, and Unacceptable ones that are carefully toe-d around.  Nonexistent. 

You Are What You Feel, to the extreme.

You pick up on the fact that the villains start off with Wanting Something™ that’s been denied, and has usually been denied for most of their lives.  You pick up on the fact it’s eaten, corroded away at them so much that it’s become part and parcel of their entire identity and impossible to separate the I Am from What I Do - Was Scar really /named/ Scar, the hell was his childhood like if he was the one lion that stood out from the rest?  Was Dr. Facilier peddling cheap fortunes all the way back when he was seven to make ends meet, and is Beyond Fed Up With This Shit and ready to sell out the first sucker to finally get what he deserves and a little bit of breather room?  Who /wouldn’t/ be a little resentful of a clearly inept sultan of a desert land who had the all the privileges of being Born In The Right Bloodlines but lived off of the often ugly work that you did? Why were they often stuck in a godforsakenly vicious part of the ‘The Badlands’ where survival, not family ties, were the name of the game? and so on. )

That - plus the overt caricatures - are quite telling of what society thinks of those on the other side of the line. 

You are (and feel) this, or you are that.  A binary deal, if you will.  Blockbusters, all the big name franchises - they’re not exempt from this either, even if it has become more subtle these days.

And it made an impression, even as unintentional as I’m sure that was.   Things stick around in weird ways, when you watch them when you’re that young and unable to put your finger on vibes.

And kids think in binary deals.

III.

Ask books what a villain is, and you’ll get a thousand different opinions.  

Screenwriting books say it’s a figure conveniently placed to oppose a protagonist for drama.  History books would caution against such a loaded term (as they should) but would tentatively agree that it’s someone who’s committed atrocities on a scale To Be Noticed, or at the least, clearly deliberately hurt someone else.

Philosophy books say it’s all bullshit anyway and it all depends on our point of view. ( …highly doubt victims of genocides would agree.)

Another vocal slice of mostly-fiction books would interject and point to the line of thinking that a villain is simply a label for a person - one that is too often hastily applied.  To real ones, yes, but also even when a person has legitimately done nothing wrong or has since clearly changed.  Good for drama, they would add.  People love redemption stories, twists in stories, People Not Appearing To Be Who They Are. 

After all, stories, fiction in particular, is /made/ to subvert those norms and to delight us all.  All about the grey area when you can’t clearly point to Black and White morality, to Victim and Villain, and all of those binaries. 

While stories blend(ed) stereotypes plus evil actions for easy coherence (at a terrible hidden cost), they can also un-tangle those in the eyes of society in a way that nothing else can. 

And so on.  

IV.

To come full circle, I’ll offer another: villains in fiction can be an excellent vehicle to - very quietly - punch up. 

Existence alone can be a powerful message for some.

Redemption stories were practically made for this - to shatter that insidious connection between You Are/Do, You Look, and You Feel - but even without that, a villain’s role can be a significant canary in the mine of who the current Other is in society of any past decade.   (Go on, watch hollywood favorite films of the 30′s/40′s/50′s, and come back.) 

Existence plus violating that taboo of carefully laid separations between You Are/Do, You Look, and You Feel -

- are an even more powerful message.

—

An addendum - even though the actual article deals with “punching up” in regards to comedy instead of stories - sums up things quite succinctly:

“It is important that nothing is sacred in comedy [or stories]. [Stories are]  more than levity. It is, or at least can and should be, a means of talking about serious or uncomfortable issues without everyone getting their mental and emotional defenses up.”

There’s a spectrum between the White, the Grey, and the Black, after all.

Where does each end, and who decides that?