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I actually disagree with the idea that depicting villains as multifaceted or complicated is a bad thing and forcing nothing but sympathy for abusers on us.
I think the response, a lot of the time, is a huge problem, but that response to people doing bad things (to search for an excuse or distraction) is a preexisting social condition, not a consequence of the work.
The social default, before media is created, is that "They can't be bad, they were nice to me/dogs/orphans/good at their job" etc etc.
"I didnt see it happen", "Are you sure thats what happened", "Theyre not always like that" etc are not values and responses created by media but reinforced by uncritical consumption of media that doesnt portray villains with the word "bad" stamped on their head.
The truth being that someone who's public image is spotless can be a serial killer in private. A spousal abuser, a rapist, a stalker. They can do a shift at an animal shelter and then go home and hit their kids.
Work should be depicting the reality that bad people and bad actions are multifaceted. The failure isn't that you see someone being good sometimes and then unforgiveably bad others - its that we do not actively challenge the default narrative that these are mutually exclusive.
Seeing someone do something bad despite being likeable is not inherently telling you that the bad things are ok or excusable. If you need a piece of work to literally say "They were nice to dogs but the murders were worse" for you to read that in the work, well...
Sympathy and empathy are, to a degree, reflexes. When you see the bad guy having a sad moment or a motivation you can understand, you are not being coerced in to saying the characters response and action - villainy - are good.
We cannot criticise media for portraying bad people as more than ~only~ bad and then criticise how media affects our perception of bad people. Those are two diametrically opposed conceptions of what bad people are like.
Gonna say bad people a lot, its not even 9am.
Gonna say bad people a lot, its not even 9am.
If you see someone murder someone in a film and the character is explicitly sad about it - and your takeaway is that the character is being framed positively and the film wants you to go "aww think of the poor murderer" then uhh...
Finding a portrayal, a motivation and a conflict in a characters behaviours interesting is not the same as finding it positive.
There is something complicating the discussion of how media portrayals affects real world perception. Some people dont appreciate enough how much media influences them while others overestimate it. Two opposite issues in one discussion about the same thing.
I also dont adhere to the idea that loving someone and hurting them/abusing them are mutually exclusive, and in fact believe this idea is part of what leads people to both believe they cant be abusing someone else and that someone cant be abusing them.
But its 8:45 am and I have no idea why im awake
If you feel conscious enduring sympathy for a character that commits genocide because he seems a bit sad about it I think the issue might be with you and not inherently in the work
The clash between implicitly imparting importance to something - like a killers regret - by featuring it at all needs to be considered against our understanding of "bad people" as "all bad" and how we disbelieve or excuse immorality because it is not the whole of a person.
Seeing someone who continues as a villain even while experiencing and demonstrating feelings and thoughts we can empathize with is far more interesting and challenging than evil caricatures that do an evil laugh and yell "I just love murder and kicking dogs"
It's also more realistic and really, if you are concerned that portrayal of villains influences how we treat real life terrible people to any important degree, we want more realism so we can identify and deal with those people appropriately when we encounter them.
At the moment our understanding of real life evil and abuse is so 2 dimensional that the moment we see an abuser step out of their abusive behaviour everyone throws their hands up and cant process them as bad anymore.
I mean one of the examples going round is Thanos - because he's sad about throwing his daughter down a cliff while annihilating half the universe.
Im sorry but what part of those films - I mean, marvel films - sold you the idea he's anything but the bad guy?
Im sorry but what part of those films - I mean, marvel films - sold you the idea he's anything but the bad guy?
Did you really walk away from Infinity War going "Aww man, poor Thanos. Can't believe he had to kill his daughter to destroy half the universe. The film really made him out to be less of a violent maniac"
Oh all the pieces of work to illustrate the issues of how we portray villains and evil choosing the most simple, good vs evil, conveyor belt "good always wins" property is silly.
