Coup de grace: The End of the Good and Evil Series
Ok, so when I posted my first rant a while back, not knowing the flurry of responses it would generate, I had intended for it to lead to this post, about the literary (and no so literary) uses of the terms "good and evil."
I started off with posting about "real life" definitions of good and evil, because I prefer my stories to be realistic, at least in terms of characters. That is to say, unless I'm watching a movie for pure escapism (as is the case with, for example, the Die Hard movies), then what I'm looking for first and foremost is believable characters. Not necessarily in the sense of "plausibly realistic," like the exact character could exist on this earth, but in the sense of "having believable personalities." That's why I read, watch movies, enjoy comics, etc. I get into the characters and watch to see how they affect the plot with their motivations, psychology, and personality. Thus, my need for believable characters.
Which is why I don't care so much for what is referred to as "four colour comics," the stereotypical pulp adventure stories where the good guy fights the bad guy and eventually wins. In these cases, the "good guy" is defined as the one who is "protecting the common people." Spiderman, Superman, Batman, etc., all fight to "protect the innocent." Random Joe Bumblebutt off the street is in danger because (insert one: Lex Luthor, Doc Ock, The Joker, etc.) is up to his old schemes.
This is not always the case, especially not any more, but it is indicative of the kinds of things that I always found distasteful about comics, and for that matter, to many movies and books. The villain was always evil in the sense of "I will do these things that will result in the death, enslavement, impoverishment, or otherwise misfortune of the common people." And what's more, the villain always proclaimed that he was evil.
This bothers me to the extreme. Because, quite frankly, no one truly considers themselves evil. Even those people who wear t-shirts with slogans such as "Evil inside" do not see themselves as evil. As a friend of mine put it once, everyone is the hero of their own story.
Looking at real-life examples, thieves do not see themselves as perpetrators of evil, but as the downtrodden oppressed victim of a harsh and cruel world who are striking back at the evil world the only way they know how. Similar arguments can be made for murderers, kidnappers, etc.
So from where does this dissonance come?
My friend inkbrush76 says that this is a result of the time in which the stories were written. The worst offenders of the good/evil duality were the pulp fiction books and superhero comics of the 50s. This was the time of the onset of the Cold War, of rampant fear and paranoia. This would lead to people needing some heroes who unequivocally fight against bad guys (notice, too, how often heroes born of this era said things like, "I fight for truth, justice, and the American way"). It filled a social need of the time.
Perhaps he's right. I don't know.
What I do know is what I like. Other people like different things, and that's fine, but what I look for in a story is believable characters. And that simply doesn't happen when the villain is going around saying, "I'm evil, so I will rain death and destruction on the people." Real folks don't think that way.
This is why I am such a major fan of Watchmen, by Alan Moore and David Gibbons. You never know for sure who the villain is until the end, and then it turns out that the villain is not working for evil ends, but is instead using what some might see as deplorable means to accomplish a great and noble goal.
This is the reason that I felt the need to define good and evil in that first rant. In Watchmen, the "villain" is not acting out of some evil desire (the selfish need to promote the self at the cost of others), but out of a desire to benefit all people, or at least as many as possible, even if it is at some cost to himself. The Hero works on similar principles, or benefiting the many, though his own personal measure of what is a benefit is a bit more narrow and somewhat self centred than the villain's is.
It's why I loved the X-Men series. After its rough start in the 50s, where it fell prey to many of the drawbacks of the time as detailed before, it grew into a great story of oppressed peoples fighting against repression. There were two opposing viewpoints on how to deal with this repression: that of the X-Men (the heroes), who try to find a way to live in peace with their oppressors and find a peaceful solution, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (the villains, who at first were evil because they needed to be, in order to fit into the milieu of the good/evil dichotomy that ruled the comics of the time, but were retroactively changed so that their name was chosen out of irony instead of intent), who actually fought, using violence, to free themselves. This reached its greatest expression, in my opinion, in the first X-Men movie. Magneto was unarguably the villain, but even he worked not out of a selfish need to benefit at the cost of others, but out of the need to preserve the rights of others. This trait was lessened in the second movie, and almost disappeared in the third, but it was still there. It was what made the X-Men movies so enjoyable for me. The realistic villain.
So in the end, I suppose that what I'm saying is that I prefer stories where, rather than a hero and a villain, or a good guy fighting against someone trying to do evil, there is instead a protagonist and an antagonist.
Ok, I'm done. Time to move on to other topics.
I started off with posting about "real life" definitions of good and evil, because I prefer my stories to be realistic, at least in terms of characters. That is to say, unless I'm watching a movie for pure escapism (as is the case with, for example, the Die Hard movies), then what I'm looking for first and foremost is believable characters. Not necessarily in the sense of "plausibly realistic," like the exact character could exist on this earth, but in the sense of "having believable personalities." That's why I read, watch movies, enjoy comics, etc. I get into the characters and watch to see how they affect the plot with their motivations, psychology, and personality. Thus, my need for believable characters.
Which is why I don't care so much for what is referred to as "four colour comics," the stereotypical pulp adventure stories where the good guy fights the bad guy and eventually wins. In these cases, the "good guy" is defined as the one who is "protecting the common people." Spiderman, Superman, Batman, etc., all fight to "protect the innocent." Random Joe Bumblebutt off the street is in danger because (insert one: Lex Luthor, Doc Ock, The Joker, etc.) is up to his old schemes.
This is not always the case, especially not any more, but it is indicative of the kinds of things that I always found distasteful about comics, and for that matter, to many movies and books. The villain was always evil in the sense of "I will do these things that will result in the death, enslavement, impoverishment, or otherwise misfortune of the common people." And what's more, the villain always proclaimed that he was evil.
This bothers me to the extreme. Because, quite frankly, no one truly considers themselves evil. Even those people who wear t-shirts with slogans such as "Evil inside" do not see themselves as evil. As a friend of mine put it once, everyone is the hero of their own story.
Looking at real-life examples, thieves do not see themselves as perpetrators of evil, but as the downtrodden oppressed victim of a harsh and cruel world who are striking back at the evil world the only way they know how. Similar arguments can be made for murderers, kidnappers, etc.
So from where does this dissonance come?
My friend inkbrush76 says that this is a result of the time in which the stories were written. The worst offenders of the good/evil duality were the pulp fiction books and superhero comics of the 50s. This was the time of the onset of the Cold War, of rampant fear and paranoia. This would lead to people needing some heroes who unequivocally fight against bad guys (notice, too, how often heroes born of this era said things like, "I fight for truth, justice, and the American way"). It filled a social need of the time.
Perhaps he's right. I don't know.
What I do know is what I like. Other people like different things, and that's fine, but what I look for in a story is believable characters. And that simply doesn't happen when the villain is going around saying, "I'm evil, so I will rain death and destruction on the people." Real folks don't think that way.
This is why I am such a major fan of Watchmen, by Alan Moore and David Gibbons. You never know for sure who the villain is until the end, and then it turns out that the villain is not working for evil ends, but is instead using what some might see as deplorable means to accomplish a great and noble goal.
This is the reason that I felt the need to define good and evil in that first rant. In Watchmen, the "villain" is not acting out of some evil desire (the selfish need to promote the self at the cost of others), but out of a desire to benefit all people, or at least as many as possible, even if it is at some cost to himself. The Hero works on similar principles, or benefiting the many, though his own personal measure of what is a benefit is a bit more narrow and somewhat self centred than the villain's is.
It's why I loved the X-Men series. After its rough start in the 50s, where it fell prey to many of the drawbacks of the time as detailed before, it grew into a great story of oppressed peoples fighting against repression. There were two opposing viewpoints on how to deal with this repression: that of the X-Men (the heroes), who try to find a way to live in peace with their oppressors and find a peaceful solution, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (the villains, who at first were evil because they needed to be, in order to fit into the milieu of the good/evil dichotomy that ruled the comics of the time, but were retroactively changed so that their name was chosen out of irony instead of intent), who actually fought, using violence, to free themselves. This reached its greatest expression, in my opinion, in the first X-Men movie. Magneto was unarguably the villain, but even he worked not out of a selfish need to benefit at the cost of others, but out of the need to preserve the rights of others. This trait was lessened in the second movie, and almost disappeared in the third, but it was still there. It was what made the X-Men movies so enjoyable for me. The realistic villain.
So in the end, I suppose that what I'm saying is that I prefer stories where, rather than a hero and a villain, or a good guy fighting against someone trying to do evil, there is instead a protagonist and an antagonist.
Ok, I'm done. Time to move on to other topics.