Just who has the black and white world view here? Or: rexamining fannish vocabulary

[selenak]

The other day, when looking for someone, anyone, writing anything about Regina and Snow that's not driving me crazy, I came across about the comment that "Regina has been remarkable patient with Snow", complete with somewhat later a comment about "The Charmings' black-and-white morality". Now, other than immediately thinking "you have that

Comments

[astrogirl2]

You know, I've been known to complain about hero characters being entirely too black and white... But that was maybe a quarter century ago, back when the standard TV narrative mostly was "every episode the Good Guy heroically wins out against the Bad Guy by virtue of how unambiguously awesome he is and nobody ever has any actual character evolution or worries a whole lot about the moral nuances." (Although, of course, even then that was far from universal. It was just a lot more common.)

And then TV started to change, actual complex character development started to happen, anti-heroes became popular, and villains were more often allowed to have motivations that went a bit beyond "Because I'm evil, that's why!" And there was much rejoicing. I'm wondering now how much of that "good guy characters are too black and white and simplistic!" line is just received wisdom from that time, parroted back without real consideration of whether it's still true or not.

[selenak]

I'm wondering now how much of that "good guy characters are too black and white and simplistic!" line is just received wisdom from that time, parroted back without real consideration of whether it's still true or not.

Me too. It's just like "female characters are never as interstingly written and layered as the male characters". Maybe thirty years ago, that had some truth, though even then, not to an universal level. Certainly not now.

[amenirdis]

Some very good points. I think one of the things that plays into it is The Rebel is Always Right, and often the villain is the rebel and the hero the one tasked with saving the world. But The Rebel is Always Right because he's the rebel! Everyone knows that the government or authority is wrong and that it's noble, smart and good to rebel against it. (See Loki....) So the moment someone says, "I have a grievance and I'm going to make you see it my way," they obviously have the moral high ground. Because he has a grievance! He says he's been hurt! So obviously he's right

[willowgreen]

My "A Welder Reviews Flashdance" comment for the day, regarding your statement that "(classic rape culture, though the phrase hadn't been coined back in ye early 90s)": I had friends who were talking about rape culture back when I was in college, in the dark ages of the late '70s/early '80s. They never bothered to explain what they meant, though, so I never had any idea what they were talking about until a year or two ago when the term started to come up on Facebook. I think I get it now -- but I also think it's a phrase that's all too often been used as a test to divide the in crowd from the outsiders.

[selenak]

I claim German vocabulary ignorance then. :) I didn't hear it used until the later 90s, but then of course that was when the internet took off for me and I thus was able to "talk" to many more people, and read many more articles, from the English speaking world than I was before that point. (The first time I visited the US as part of a student exchange program, I was 14 and it was the year of Reagan's reelection. I certainly didn't hear it then... but again, I was 14.)

[willowgreen]

Fair enough! I don't remember ever hearing or seeing the term outside of a college campus myself until a few years ago.

[ljlorettamartin]

The term was coined sometime around 1974. :-)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_culture

[nomadicwriter]

Oddly enough, I think black and white thinking can sometimes be one of the things that makes a villain sympathetic. It's that blinkered genuine inability to conceive that there was ever any other option that gives a villain like Magneto an edge of self-made tragedy rather than active malice. He's so trapped by his own fears and personality flaws that he can't see any other way forward than to do something terrible. If he was capable of considering other viewpoints and possible compromises and yet still pushed ahead and did it anyway, that would turn it from tragic inevitability to an active choice to do evil. (I think the main reason Marvel's Loki, especially in the comics, has never really interested me as a villain is that, while he does have that self-sabotaging aspect, he lacks the core of more sympathetic traits and good intentions to go with it. Even Doctor Doom has understandable backstory reasons for mistrusting any authority other than his own and an apparently sincere crusade to solve all the world's problems by ruling

[daybreak777]

some of my favourite pairs of enemies are when you have a hero who's just a little bit wrong and a villain who's just a little bit right and yet they're both so stubbornly rigid in their convictions that neither of them can ever take the tiny step forward that's all they would need to connect and see each other's point of view.Ooh, this quote reminds me of Laura Roslin and Gaius Baltar on BSG. Not really heroine and enemy they were definitely adversaries. I remember one line from Baltar that made me sympathetic to him. (I couldn't stand his character at the time

[selenak]

Oh, I agree re: this rigidity making Magneto tragic. (And sympathetic.) It's just when I see him listed as someone capable of understanding the shades of grey that I'm baffled. :)

Taking away the 95%: sigh. And it happens so often. Frustratingly even and especially with canons which may have their share of flaws but are actually good about keeping these characters fascinating by NOT ignoring either part of them.

[selenak]

Hello there, and welcome!