Taylor Hochuli
Final Paper - Narrative and
Technology
April 2013
“Deconstructing
the Modern Antagonist”
Can
a movie truly bring about great social change? What was once viewed as pure
entertainment is now used to convey deep messages and emotionally move an audience.
Films like Schindler’s List and Gandhi allow audiences to re-live the
teachings of history while other films spin their own tales in order to express
different thoughts. This medium not only tells tales of history and grandeur,
but also acts as an active social commentary on modern times. This face of
social commentary is especially contorted when it comes from the villain rather
than the hero. In recent films originating from the 90’s, a trend has been emerging
of mysterious villains who are able to manipulate, criticize, and actively
destroy social boundaries. They show the more attractive attributes of being evil
as a form of freedom and try to spread their doctrine violently, ultimately
running up against a hero who fights for society whether it is the police or
even a masked vigilante.
A modern iteration of this villain is the
Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in the film The Dark Knight. The Joker actively spreads messages of chaos and
anarchy while trying to test Gotham city’s people with moral conundrums and societal
ironies. Mystery surrounds both the character and events in real life. Actor
Heath Ledger was found dead by a drug overdose during the post-production of The Dark Knight, causing rumors that his
suicide was caused by playing such an evil role in the movie. Fellow actors
Morgan Freeman and Christian Bale have actively denied this rumor, but the
thought of a movie character pushing an actor to suicide in real life is very
striking (Celizic, 2008; "Morgan Freeman: Joker Role Didn't Kill Heath
Ledger", 2013) . A more serious crossover of the movies into real life occurred
at the premiere of the sequel to Ledger’s controversial performance, The Dark Knight Rises. In what was
dubbed as the “Aurora 2012 Shooting” by the media, a gunman named James Holmes
shot and killed 12 people while injuring 70 as well in a theater in Aurora,
Colorado. What made this tragic event even more scary was that the shooter dyed
his hair orange as a “homage to Batman’s Joker” and was initially reported to
be calling himself “The Joker” when arrested although this was later retracted
by the police (Pelisek, 2013; July 22: Tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, 2012). This
act of violence inspired by the movies and a controversial character has once
again sparked the debate of copycat crimes and such antagonists who may
influence real-life crimes. Despite this, movies are trying to emulate the
award-winning performance of Ledger’s Joker rather than avoiding the chaos it
brought off set. Movie villains like Raoul Silva from Skyfall, The Mandarin from Iron
Man 3, and Benedict Cumberbatch from Star
Trek: Into Darkness are all being compared to Ledger’s Joker as “a villain
with aggressive anti-establishment attitude who likes to discuss the ‘lie’ of
society” (Houvouras, 2013). This trend could spell a new type of villain that
revolutionizes movies and invokes social critique, or inspires more events like
the Aurora 2012 shooting.
ABC News Coverage of the Aftermath concerning the Aurora 2012 shooting (Follow Link to Youtube since video is not able to play on Blogger)
The revolutionary
villain is very well defined after seeing several examples throughout cinema
from the 90’s into the twenty-first century. These examples include Hannibal
Lecter from Silence of the Lambs,
John Doe from the movie Se7en, Tyler
Durden from Fight Club, and the previously
mentioned Joker from The Dark Knight.
These characters are very popular in cinema and are often considered even scarier
for their revolutionary tendencies. They are defined by their socially relevant
rebellion portrayed in each of their movies. Each character dislikes the
current societal order in different ways. For example, Tyler Durden rejects the
current societal “feminization” of men in society. He practically preaches this
doctrine in a speech to the men of the fight club saying:
Fight Club Speech pe video.askmen.ro
“Man, I see in
fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this
potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping
gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars
and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the
middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No
Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is
our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all
be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly
learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.” (Fincher 1999)
Durden actively attacks consumerism
and capitalism as a controlling force that gives false hope of happiness. Both
consumerism and capitalism are actively employed in modern society, so bringing
up these actual issues that the audience experiences makes a more relatable
villain. Both the Joker from The Dark
Knight and John Doe from Se7en
choose to address the issue of crime that is overlooked by society rather than
addressed. With news constantly reporting crimes and wrongdoings on a daily
basis, people have become more accustomed to it and accept these problems as inevitability.
John Doe recognizes this and when accused of killing innocent people promptly
corrects his arresters by saying, “we see a deadly sin on every street corner,
in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it’s common, it’s
trivial” (Fincher, 1995). The Joker addresses the issue by saying if he decides
to kill the average citizen, we accept it, but threatening the mayor causes “everyone
[to lose] their minds” because it isn’t expected (Nolan, 2008). Both address a
realistic issue which causes tension between reality and the movies where these
issues are solved in a radical way.
John Doe discussing how society overlooks sin and crime due to its commonplace nature (Fincher, 1995)
This interplay
between reality and artistic expression has been seen before in history and is
nothing new. The most successful tales that truly brought about social change
participated in what Herbert Marcuse labels “the Great Refusal.” The Great Refusal includes art that somehow
negates or transcends society by bringing up societal problems that are not
normally addressed (Marcuse, 1964). This process of bringing out what is not
normally observed breaks contentment with society and demands that these issues
be solved. Marcuse’s point to bringing up the Great Refusal coincides with his
main point that criticism and opposition to society are simply absorbed into
society. They are turned into something that supports and coincides with society
rather than pointing out issues, or as Marcuse puts it, “draining their
antagonistic force” through a variety of methods (Marcuse, 1964). This new
trend of idealistic villains who are anti-establishment seem to match the
qualities of the Great Refusal by highlighting true societal problems, but
ultimately are not an effective model for social change due to their ineffective
messages, casting as villains, and psychologically insane nature.
The
controversies surrounding these antagonists are the ways in which these
characters choose to address these real societal problems. The resolution of
societal conflicts seems to fall along the lines of either anarchy or
terrorism. Hannibal Lecter seeks an integration of higher culture and baser instincts,
seeing as he is a learned psychiatrist who is also an aggressive cannibal.
Lecter refutes the system by highlighting agent Clarice Starling’s repression
of childhood memories and escaping incarceration by wearing a policeman’s face
(Demme, 1991). Lecter chooses to take a very traumatic and bloody path to his
escape rather than accepting his incarceration and helping out the police in
their investigation. This refusal of law frees him rather than limits him since
he is able to fool his incarcerators, the police, the FBI, and a senator with
great ease (Demme, 1991). This is similar to John Doe who constantly evades capture
for his crimes which are elaborately set up years in advance in order to
manipulate the police. He eventually gives himself in, only to fulfill his
killing spree while incarcerated (Fincher, 1995).
The most radical villains are Durden and the
Joker who employ very realistic forms of both terrorism and anarchism in order
to solve societal issues. Tyler Durden envisions a nation that has animals
“around the ruins of Rockefeller Center” and “wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap
the Sears Tower” (Fincher, 1999). It is a primitive view of the land that
suggests society is worse than the glorious wild where there are no rules or regulations.
He decides to make this vision real
through “Project Mayhem,” a terrorist group evolving from his fight club that
creates acts of discord. This involves committing minor crimes around the city,
spray painting a giant smiley face on the face of a tall building, and ultimately
blowing up financial corporation building in the city in order to erase all
debt in society (Fincher, 1999). This final scene is reminiscent of the
destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 that occurred only two years after the
movie was released. Some have even speculated that this movie showed a “weak
point” in society that the terrorists were able to make into reality (Petersen,
2005). The Joker arrives post 9/11 with an anarchism that is described as a
simple desire to “watch the world burn” (Nolan, 2008). He evades police capture
until is suits his needs, robs a mob bank, blows up a hospital, and nearly
blows up two ferries as the people inside attempt to flee his chaotic hold over
the city. The aforementioned villain John Doe summarizes perfectly the nature
of these villains’ acts by saying to the police:
“Wanting people to
listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them
with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention.”
(Fincher, 1995).
The antagonists see the resolution
to societal problems in a complete wipe of the system. Removing society will
liberate the individuals inside and the only way to do so it to tear the entire
thing down piece by piece. There is no medium ground or compromise, only
radical change or continued oppression.
These
radical solutions cannot act as true social commentary simply because they inadequately
discuss the issues that are brought up. Most of the individuals succeed in
their endeavors, but the problems still remain. The terror of Hannibal Lecter
allows for his escape and freedom, but the individuals he tries to corrupt
remain repressed by society. Agent Starling goes on being a police officer with
troubling nightmares, a senator who Hannibal wins over returns to being a
corrupt politician, and the asylum continues to house madmen like Lecter
despite his loathing of their system (Demme, 1991). Lecter gets his personal
freedom, but leaves all other ideals in the dust once he has it. John Doe is
able to successfully commit his murders based on the seven sins, even after
being incarcerated willingly, but small crimes and sins are still looked over
by society despite his acts of rebellion (Fincher, 1995). This is made even
more explicit when Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman) ends the movie by
revising a Hemmingway quote that the world is “worth fighting for”, but is still
far from a “fine place” after the actions of John Doe (Fincher, 1995). Doe also
dies in the process to embody “Envy”, not allowing him to continue his radical
solution to the societal problem. The Joker is successfully able to terrorize Gotham
and corrupt the “White Knight” of Gotham, but is subsequently defeated by
Batman and Harvey Dent’s evil acts erased by having Batman take the blame
(Nolan, 2008). Things seem to go according to plan for the Joker, but fall
apart once he is captured.
Lastly, Tyler
Durden successfully organizes “Project Mayhem” and is able to blow up financial
building to wipe out debt, but Durden is ultimately killed and Project Mayhem
falls apart with its leader in ruins. The men of the fight club just go back to
being tools of a culture that represses their manhood and individual abilities with
the only difference being that the main character is able to establish a
relationship with a woman (Fincher, 1999). Also, author Henry Giroux examines
the flaws evident in Tyler Durden’s social critique that harm his argument. He points out that the sexism involved in the
male liberation, the “dominant militarism” in place of capitalism, and indistinguishable
forms of freeing and abusive violence cause more problems than are attempted to
be solved in the movie overall (Giroux, 2001). The antagonists all succeed in
their immediate goals, but do not ultimately cause any social change to correct
the problems they preach about. With no alternatives to solve the problems
about overlooked crime and a flawed society, the problem will only continue to
exist despite a failed attempt to change things.
Having the social
critique come from the villain also undermines their messages about social
problems because they are what the audience roots against. In a more
constructive social criticism, societal problems should cause the conflict
rather than the villains. In The Dark Knight, Batman fights for a system that
is flawed since it restricts the power of the police and allows a murderer to
kill his parents. He consistently is in contact with the police through
Commissioner Gordon and helps assist the unit by bringing back a mob banker
from Hong Kong and interrogating the Joker for the police once he is arrested
(Nolan, 2008). Although he is considered to be a criminal vigilante by the
police, he works with them, essentially showing his support for society but
with less restriction. The Joker mocks this, saying that “the only sensible way
to live in this world is without rules” and urges Batman to kill him in order
to finally be free from societal restriction (Nolan, 2008). Ultimately, Batman
is able to resist corruption from the evil Joker. The system remains flawed but
the audience is turned against the Joker who is meant to spur on change in
society. Simply acting as the villain diminishes any possible critique despite
his claim that “It’s not about money…it’s about sending a message” (Nolan,
2008).
The Joker is interrogated by Batman while preaching about the freeing nature of having no rules (Nolan, 2008)
The quickest way
that these idealists are written as villains is their violence. The Joker kills
his own thugs, Hannibal Lecter is described by describing how eats his nurse’s tongue,
and John Doe very graphically kills an obese man by causing his stomach to
burst. This transference into villain is best seen through Tyler Durden who
starts as an inspirational revolutionary, but turns into a villain a little
over halfway into the movie. Durden is immediately shown to be the villain in a
short flash-forward in the movie’s preface where he has a gun stuck in the
mouth of the protagonist, Jack (Fincher, 1999). This is done in order to ensure
the audience that the man is a villain because he is so idealized in the very
beginning of the movie. He represents everything that the narrator wants to be
and liberates the middle class men of their city from their feminine,
capitalist oppression through moderate violence that the men accept. It paints
him as a saint to these men who preaches their worthiness despite what the
system sees them as, simple units of labor. Once Durden forms a terrorist
organization that results in the death of a more feminine man, he becomes the
villain (Fincher, 1999). Since he turns into the villain so late in the movie,
the director might have put the flash-forward in to have the audience critical
of the man’s message rather than also going along with his violent doctrine. It
shows that attaching villainy to these characters is specifically used to tone
down their anti-establishment message.
The nail in the
coffin of any social critique from this form of villain is that all of these
villains are painted as psychologically insane. Marcuse actually comments
negatively against psychiatric ideas saying that they “’solve’ [a] problem by suppressing
it” rather than actually dealing with the problem (Marcuse, 1964). In this way,
mental problems can be a form of breaking this oppression in order to show and
ultimately solve the actual problems they are dealing with. However, this
tactic is used to such an extreme level, the villains become less trustworthy. Hannibal
Lecter is the least seemingly insane, but still makes comments that define him
as insane. For example, Lecter comments to Agent Starling that he ate a past
visitor’s “liver with some fava beans” and also immediately describes Agent
Starling’s skin care products just by catching a whiff of her through the holes
in her cell (Demme, 1991). These acts come off as immediately disturbing and
crazy despite the high culture knowledge of Dr. Lecter. As Marcuse suggests,
Durden is the past antagonist “essentially transformed” into a group of “freaks
or types of the same life, serving as an affirmation rather than the negation
of the established order” (Marcuse, 1964). Tyler Durden turns out to be nothing
but a figment of the author’s imagination, created by his need to break free of
societal control. Jack uses Tyler to “re-establish equilibrium in [his] psyche”
after a series of people push him around (Lee, 2002). By casting Tyler Durden
as an illusion of an insane man, he loses all credibility and all his ideas are
labeled as crazy too. His marketing of the “collapse of financial history” is
redefined as a terrorist act while Durden is branded the villain of the movie
who must be destroyed by the society the movie is actively trying to criticize
(Fincher, 1999). The Joker outright admits that he is strange and comments on
his insanity throughout the movie.
Agent Starling first meets Hannibal Lecter in a psychiatric hospital under extreme lockdown (Demme, 1991)
John Doe from Se7en has a room filled with journals
(estimated to be 2,000) that he raves in about God and Sins and generally
disturbing things. Some excerpts paint very demented and odd thoughts to paint
Doe as insane:
“On the subway
today, a man came up to me to start a conversation…my head hurt from his
banality…I suddenly threw up all over him. He was not pleased, and I couldn’t
stop laughing.” (Fincher, 1995)
“What sick, ridiculous
puppets we are…not a care in the world, not knowing that we were not what was
intended.” (Fincher, 1995)
These journals are “his mind poured
out on paper” and truly reflect this as they are rambling and crazy in nature
(Fincher, 1995). This insanity does come up again when it is discussed further
by the character’s themselves. Detective Somerset warns his young partner that
John Doe is “not the devil,” but rather an actual man despite his insanity.
Despite this, Detective David Mills still mocks John Doe by commenting that he’s
so insane that “he’s probably dancing around in his grandma’s panties…rubbing
himself in peanut butter” (Fincher, 1995). When John Doe is actually arrested,
Detective Somerset asks him if he knows he is insane or if he’s oblivious to
it. Doe replies that it is just “more comfortable” for society to label him as
insane rather than dealing with the fact that societal problems led to his
creation (Fincher, 1995). Although this is thought provoking commentary on society’s
dismissal of the insane, the fact that the audience has witnessed his gruesome
and over-the-top murders and crazed journal scrawls has made them judge him as
so insane that this is nonsense rather than something to be taken seriously.
The
emergence of these rebellious, anti-establishment antagonists attempts to join
the Great Refusal with legitimate social commentary, but ultimately falls short
since they are cast as insane villains who have complicated or too radical
solutions to real problems. So now that these characters are established as
being not effective at passing along messages of complete social overthrow, why
do copycat crimes continue to occur in society? The results of research are
mixed, but seem so focus on the age of the people watching the movies and the
violence portrayed rather than the radical messages by this new type of villain.
A recent study looking into copycat crimes had 575 inmates judge their
consumption of media daily and whether their own crimes were inspired by these
forms of media. The results showed that controversial and violent media seemed
to act as “crime catalysts and rudders, rather than as crime generating
triggers” (Surette, 2012). The younger criminals appeared to be more inspired
by media violence and used it as a model to commit their crimes. Also, most
copycat crimes occurred from people who had committed these crimes in the past (Surette,
2012). It seems that exposure to violence in movies at a younger age causes
these issues rather than the controversial villains’ messages. In fact, more
movies seem to be inspired by real life crime rather than inspiring crimes
themselves. These types of criminal movies are also able to be implemented as
instructional tools in criminology (Jordan, 2002).
These
real world results support the conclusion that rather than the message
corrupting people into committing copycat crimes, it simply escalates these
crimes by showing how to commit higher level crimes. From the meticulous
planning of John Doe’s crimes to Tyler Durden’s discussion of household
explosives, this crime catalyst is seen in films with controversial antagonists.
After analyzing these specific movies for their social critique, the crimes
that followed their release only support the idea that the social agenda of the
villains don’t influence copycat crimes. Hannibal Lecter mostly is connected
with past cereal killers that inspired his creation, but the movie portrayal
also drew attention when a boy murdered his mother a year after the movie
release. David Lorenz (29) of Baltimore beheaded his 57 year old mother and was
dragged away by police shouting “I’m Hannibal the Cannibal” (“Police”, 1992). It
was already known at the time that Lorentz was admitted to a psychiatric
hospital 5 years before the incident and that he was released only four months before
committing this crime (“Police”, 1992). This psychiatric instability of Lorentz
is more to blame for the crime since he was a past criminal who was simply
motivated by a new icon he found in cinema. The aforementioned “Project Mayhem”
of antagonist Tyler Durden inspired a 17-year-old’s bombing of a Starbucks much
like the destruction of a coffee shop representing consumerism in the movie (“Starbucks”,
2009). The teenager also organized his own fight club inspired by the movie (“Starbucks”,
2009). In this case, the crimes of the movie are emulated, but not truly connected
to the villainous figure that they are based off of. Returning to the Aurora 2012 shooting, more
details were revealed about shooter James Holmes as legal proceeding begin.
Holmes was actually a Ph. D. candidate, but began to amass weapons while in the
program. After failing a end-of-the-year test and dropping out of school,
Holmes added an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to his collection to be used a month
later in his rampage (Pelisek, 2013). Although the actual intent of the
massacre is still a mystery, the suggested cause of the attack does not relate
back to the Joker’s messages of anarchy, but rather employs his tactics of mass
terrorism to make up for his problems.
After
analyzing several iterations of the new anti-establishment antagonists with
viable social critique, one can see that the characters attempt to participate
in the Great Refusal, but fall short of transcending society due to their role
in the movies and flawed messages. This leads to only the violence and
terrorism of the antagonists being transferred to real life and inspiring
villains not with their long speeches against society, but rather their tactics
to fight back against it. Although these villains remain ineffective at solving
true social problems, future reiterations of this character type could prove
useful in cinema rather than causing traumatic events like the Aurora 2012 shooting.
As Marcuse suggests, social critique in film should speak to “that which is not
seen, not touched, not heard” in society and shine a positive light on that
aspect despite the antagonist’s wrongdoings in the film(Marcuse, 1964). The
star of the show should be the oppressed over those who fight for them. Social
critique from villains should also take on a more constructive role rather than
suggesting that one error of society negates all its advantages. If the
antagonist does not do this, then the protagonist should at least have a viable
way to solve a social problem, creating an “ingression of a different order of
things into the established one” rather than doing away with the established
order completely (Marcuse, 1964). Finally, in order to prevent such copycat
crimes, these villains should have less explicit descriptions of violence.
Detailing exactly how Tyler Durden constructs his bombs or how John Doe is able
to make a man’s stomach burst conveys realism, but allows criminals to re-enact
the fake crime more easily. Although this next generation of “Joker” archetypes
might fall into the same errors as past antagonists, implementing a more
constructive message with less violence could prove effective in both creating
terrifying villains and getting an effective message across for the audience to
reflect upon.
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