10 Reasons Why the Governor is Not Your Friend (a meta)
Word Count: ~4,700
Warnings: Strong language, mentions of murder and implied rape, discussion of severe mental illness, and general Governor-related creepiness. Spoilers up through 3x8, "Made to Suffer."
A/N: As always, many thanks to twizzler for her bang-up editing job and to thegeeksshallinherittheearth for being my bitter blogging buddy and just generally phenomenal. She also has written an awesome Governor meta that can be found here. My sort-of companion meta, "10 Reasons Why Rick Grimes is Better Than You," can be found here.
Enjoy~~
10 Reasons Why the Governor is Not Your Fucking Friend
(Or, 10 Reasons Why I Can’t Believe We Have to Have this Discussion, Fandom, Jesus H Christ)
I have been noticing that the fandom as of late, along with making some truly impressive strides towards character hate and ship shaming, has this weird little habit of apologizing for villains. Now villain apologists are nothing new-they (and I do include myself in this, a bit) have existed since at least 1983 when Darth Vader died to save his son and that ~magically~ absolved him of all his sins. Over the past year we’ve apologists sweep all sorts of fandoms, and that included The Walking Dead.
These Governor apologists, sometimes calling themselves “Team Woodbury,” are the ones who believe that the Governor is a better man, a better leader, and a better father that Rick Grimes. They’re the ones who think that the Governor is in the right, and that all his actions are in the defense of his people. They’re the ones who believe that Daryl/Judith/whoever should join Woodbury, and leave Rick and the prison behind.
Now before anyone gets mad, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating the Governor. There’s nothing wrong with being fascinated by his character or loving David Morrissey, who has truly kicked ass this season. There is, however, something very, very, very wrong with loving the Governor, apologizing away his actions, and treating him as the hero of the show.
He is not the good guy. He’s not, he never was, he wasn’t even intended to be the good guy here. That’s Rick. That’s Glenn. That’s Daryl and Maggie and Hershel. That is not the Governor.
So, below I have a list of reasons as to why the Governor is not your friend, no matter how much you want him to be. Enjoy!
10. When He Says “Phillip” He Really Means “Jeffery Dahmer”
Alright, now the first thing you should know about the Governor is that he’s a sociopath*. Sociopath, as in “a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.”
So let’s break this down, with evidence:
· Psychopathic personality-Brutally murders a group of soldiers in cold blood after waving a white flag, keeps decapitated heads in secret room, has a secret zombie daughter, and tortures two people for no reason other than that he can. We will call that a check.
· Antisocial behavior-Lies to sexual partners, manipulates peers, highly intolerant of strangers, low threshold for aggression and violence, check.
· Lacks sense of moral responsibility-Again, murdering groups of people under a universal sign of truce, hoarding heads and his zombie daughter, who could potentially escape and infect his people, as well as giving a leadership position to a mentally-unstable psychopath (fuck you too, Merle) and planning to wipe out a group of people who has never done him any harm, motherfucking check.
· Social conscience-If you think this man has a conscience, after killing unarmed men under a flag of truce, sending Merle after Michonne, his weird-ass experiments, and torturing Maggie during one of the most disgusting, terrifying, and gut-wrenching scenes I’ve seen in a long time, you might want to go see a psychiatrist because you clearly are not well.
The Governor is a better-looking Jeffery Dahmer. Think of Dexter, but more socially literate and minus the Harry Code. Yeah. The man is dead behind the eyes, and if you think that he wouldn’t fuck you up once he decides you’re not useful, even for a second, you need to look at your life and look at your choices.
9. Manipulation is Generally a Bad Thing
The Governor is the leader of what, seventy-five, seventy-six people? That’s a small town full of lives that he’s responsible for. He has men and women who need to know they’re safe and children who are dependent on him. They look up to him and trust him and rely on him to keep them safe. How does our dearest Phillip go about this? Does he tell them the truth? Keep them informed of everything that goes on in their little world?
Uh, no. He doesn’t tell them anything. The Governor, instead of keeping his people reliably informed about what’s going on in their lives (which would, you know, keep them aware and ready for when the shit inevitably hits the fan), does his best to keep them in the dark. Now this habit you will see again, broken down into his pathological lying and impressive controlling habits, but for now, we’re just going to focus on the manipulation part.
The Governor is a manipulator. All good leaders are, to some extent. Rick, for example, is excellent at manipulating positive feelings, such as loyalty or a sense of right and wrong. Shane was good at manipulating negative emotions like anger or fear. The Governor is, in line with them, a world-class manipulator. He plays on a variety of factors-people’s fears, their trust in him, his own charisma-to manipulate the population of Woodbury.
Even the idea of the Woodbury itself is a manipulation. The idea of a completely safe community, well-fed, well-defended, surviving the end of the world and taking back the earth is not only wildly unrealistic, it’s one huge fucking manipulation.
See, the Governor’s strength lies in that he knows what makes people tick. We saw him do it with Andrea, with Merle, with Maggie (oh god, Maggie), again and again. He knows what people want, what they’re scared of, and he manipulates that. With his little town, he’s playing on your fear that you’re always going to be running, always homeless, always exposed to whatever biter wants a piece of your ass, and he’s giving you something that makes you feel good. The citizens of Woodbury feel good. It’s why Andrea stayed. Woodbury feels safe.
This means that the Governor can manipulate the people into doing what he wants. People with a safe place in a storm are going to want to protect that safe place. They’ll do whatever they have to do to defend it. That means the Governor, their own personal, fucked-up version of Jesus, can have them do whatever he wants them to do. He gave them Woodbury. He can take it away. They know that. In fact, it’s all they know. The Governor uses that fear. He bends it and twists it and generally manipulates the fuck out of people to keep it that way.
Stop and think about that for a second. The man in charge of your life is deliberately playing on your fear to keep you in line. That’s just a little fucking shady, don’t you think?
8. Wouldn’t Know Honesty if it Bit His Pretty Ass
Right in line with his awesome (by which I mean sketchy as fuck) affinity for manipulation, the Governor is also a pathological liar. Like, to everyone, even the people closest to him, all the time. He tells the truth only when it suits him, which is, apparently, very, very rarely.
Even if you ignore the secret undead daughter, the Fishtanks-from-Hell, and the crazy experiments, the Governor is nearly always lying. He tells Woodbury that the soldiers were overrun when he shot them down. He tells Michonne that she’s free to leave. He doesn’t tell Andrea that he’s keeping people she knows in some shed in the back of the compound and beating them up for information.
Now, a lot of people defend these lies as “untruths for the greater good.” This would be wrong. The Governor doesn’t care about the greater good. I’m going to say this again, because people, for some bizarre reason, seem to think that he does. The Governor. Does not. Care. About. The. Greater. Good. He doesn’t care about other people. He doesn’t care about the future-“for tomorrow we die,” he said-or anything outside of his own immediate pleasure and survival.
That’s what Woodbury is all about-his own pleasure. It’s all for him. It’s not about a safe place for poor lost humanity to get back on its feet, it’s not about surviving the walkers, it’s about him. The Governor is the kind of man who craves something-anything-to fill the holes inside of himself. Many sociopaths do that by excelling at their work, or in a particular hobby. The Governor does that by becoming a dictator. He wants power. Woodbury is all about that power.
And to have that power over people, he needs to lie about it. If he told the truth, his subjects would run for the hills. Andrea would probably shoot him. So, instead, he lies. Lies give him power. They help him manipulate and control his environment. They, for a little while at least, help fill whatever is missing inside of him.
7. Crazy, Party of One, Crazy, Party of One
Now, sociopath and batshit insane are two separate things. Many sociopaths are not mass-murdering, blood-hungry monsters; they are, in fact, productive, assimilated members of society. There’s just something off about them, something not quite right. Crazy people are not necessarily sociopaths, and sociopaths are not necessarily crazy people.
Our dear friend the Governor, unfortunately, just so happens to be both a sociopath and crazy. Now while those are Not Ideal Situations on their own, when put together they are what we call a clusterfuck. Sociopaths do not have morals or a conscience, so that means no sense of right and wrong and no regret. Crazy people are broken from reality, meaning that a large majority of their actions have no sensical purpose.
Put these together and you have an amoral, deluded psychopath who will kill you for no reason at all and then feel pretty damn good about it.
And this is the guy “Team Woodbury” wants in charge?
See, the Governor is a sociopath for the reasons detailed above, and he’s completely fucking insane for the following reasons:
· He has suffered, at some point, a complete break from reality. (See zombie daughter and the experiments he’s having Milton run. “Any lingering consciousness” indeed.)
· His behavior. He shows the classic symptoms of a man who has undergone a psychotic break-paranoid behavior (shooting random people), delusions (again, that fucking zombie child in his closet), mood swings (from coital bliss to stone-cold motherfucker in like .5 seconds), insomnia (would rather watch floating heads than sleep), and grandiosity (“Welcome to Woodbury,” accompanied with a narcissistic swagger and his I Am A Self-Important Douchebag attitude).
· His interactions with others. Whenever the Governor is on-screen, it’s evident that something is off with him. Even when he’s with Andrea he waits too long to answer or answers too quickly. The way he looks at people crosses the line into socially unacceptable frequently. He is quick to intimidate, and he is highly unpredictable. And yeah, all of these? Characteristic of psychosis.
You know, maybe it’s not the Governor’s fault he’s taken a steep nosedive off Sanity Cliff (very different from Sanity Mountain, as mentioned in previous meta). Psychosis doesn’t necessarily have to be a genetic or congenital condition. The loss of his wife before the show could have done it. The stress of an apocalyptic world could’ve done it. (If it didn’t directly cause his special brand of crazy, it certainly made it worse) Pity the man for whatever reasons you want. Pity is okay. But do not make the mistake of thinking that the Governor is a sane man, that all he needs is time and understanding to get better. What he needs is a doctor, and since those are in short supply during the fucking ZA, the only “cure” he’s ever going to get is a machete to his admittedly nice forehead.
6. Control F-R-E-A-K
Another thing you should know about the Governor-he has Major Control Issues. Ever seen Psycho? Think Norman Bates’ mother. Yeah. He has those levels of control issues. (For those of you who haven’t seen Psycho, Norman Bates’ mother controlled his life to the point where he snapped, killed her, and then went into an awesome downward spiral where he lived a crazy, crazy life with her mummified body in his basement.
This is right about where the Governor is.)
The whole of Woodbury is set up so that he can control everything that happens there. He controls who goes in or out. He controls who’s in charge of what. He even controls what his people feel-the fights are staged to create feelings of euphoria, safety, and belonging, entrenching his position as Savior in the minds of his people.
Now a normal man-or even a slightly more well-adjusted man-wouldn’t feel the need to control the emotional lives of seventy-five people. The Governor clearly does feel this need, which should be a huge, neon-decorated clue that he Is Not Well.
See, people with control issues can be completely normal, harmless people. In fact, most of them are. If the Governor was just controlling, that would be okay. Hell, that might be more than okay, because a control freak has a bit of a higher chance surviving the apocalypse than a regular person.
But put these issues with the Governor’s manipulative tendencies and general soullessness, you have the 6’3’’ walking, talking equivalent of an atomic bomb.
The thing about people with serious control issues (and staging gladiator fights to influence the emotions of a mass group of people qualifies as serious) is that, when their controlled little environments are disturbed, they freak the fuck out. Any foreign factors, such as, say, a pair of outsiders in your Slasher Shed, are going to seriously piss you off and, generally, elicit a huge, overblown reaction.
And what happened to Glenn and Maggie? Yeah, overblown reaction. The Governor is so angry with them not because of what they’ve done (read: nothing) but because he doesn’t know what they could do.
He doesn’t know what they could do. He doesn’t know what Rick could do. He doesn’t know what Andrea could do, when she finds out what he’s hiding from her, and that terrifies him, I think. It terrifies him.
And a cornered, terrified animal? Is not something you want responsible for your safety at all.
5. No Such Thing as a King Without A Crown
One of the most important things you should know about the Governor is this: he loves having power. He loves it. Seriously, it’s probably what is keeping him alive right now. The Governor loves running Woodbury. He loves that people look to him to make decisions, and need him and respect him and fear him. He’s addicted to it.
Why is that a bad thing, you might ask? It certainly makes him an effective leader-because he loves his power so much, he’s going to try and keep it, and for that to happen he has to have a) actual people to follow him, b) a place from which to lead those people, and c), the faith of those people in his abilities. He needs people and a safe place in order to have power, so he’ll do whatever necessary to keep those factors.
See the problem yet? The Governor will do whatever is necessary. Kidnap and torture two young people? Sure, it’s necessary. Order an attack on a group of (so far) peaceful survivors, including two young-ish children and a newborn baby? Sure, it’s necessary. Kill your own people? Hey, if it’s necessary, it’s okay.
The thing about “doing what’s necessary” is that the very word necessary is subjective. Is it necessary to wipe out Rick’s group? Absolutely not, Rick and his people didn’t even know about Woodbury until Merle took Glenn and Maggie. They probably never would have found out-they already have a safe place, why would they go looking for another one? Why would they even bother with Woodbury at all, when there’s only ten of them compared to the seventy at Woodbury? Rick and his people are smart-they have to be, to last this long-and they know better to start a fight that they can’t win.
They are not a threat to Woodbury, or they weren’t, until Merle took Glenn and Maggie.
So it wasn’t necessary for the Governor to order the destruction of Rick’s group-he’s not even going to take the prison as his own! He knew that he couldn’t control Rick’s people and so he wants them gone, but by no definition is it necessary to kill them all.
But he made that call anyway. Why? Because there is no such thing as a king without a crown. The Governor feels like he needs obvious displays of power to keep control of Woodbury-hence the public trial/look-at-me-and-my-badass-one-eye thing at the end of Made to Suffer-so he does things that aren’t strictly necessary or for the greater good. Because the “greater good” would be allowing Rick’s people to live in the prison, unaware of Woodbury’s existence, or better yet, trying to bring them into the fold.
(Because while you know Rick would hate it, and the Governor, he has two kids to raise, and the rest of the group craves safety and security above all else.)
But wiping them out is a display of power. It shows that the Governor is not a man to be messed with-he will fuck up your day big time, just because he can. His people will see and recognize that. Outsiders will see and fear that. So, by this reasoning, the Governor’s power is secure.
(Except for, you know, that little tiny fact that Rick Grimes is really, really, really hard to kill.)
There is no “necessary.” There is no “greater good.” There is only Phillip Blake, and what he wants.
4. Bitch in Sheep’s Clothing
Now all of the above leads to some pretty impressive acting on dear Phillip’s part (and also Mr. Morrissey’s, because damn is he doing a fantastic job) because he has to pretend like he cares about the greater good when in reality he’s a back-stabbing, power-hungry, unrepentant sociopath.
If you think even for a second that the people of Woodbury would follow the Governor willingly, if they knew what he really was, then you’re probably rather susceptible to brainwashing and I recommend that you stay away from any super-charismatic people, lest you be shanghaied into their cult.
The Governor loves power but he has to hide his love for it, because yeah, people who are obviously power-hungry (certain politicians, gang leaders, dictators, et cetera) aren’t really trusted with power. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” after all.
So the Governor has to pretend like he doesn’t really want power. He has to pretend like it’s a burden, like he’s afraid, like all he’s worried about is the safety of his people. He pretty much has to pretend to be Rick. (Because Rick doesn’t want his power. He doesn’t want his responsibility. It’s killing him.)
Philip has two “personalities,” if you will-he has Happy Mayor Funtimes (false personality) and he has the Governor (real personality.)
Happy Mayor Funtimes is a fucking awesome guy. He’s a normal, functional human being with a full range of emotions and cool little character traits like compassion and empathy. He will look after you and protect you and make sure you’re happy and safe. Seriously. He farts rainbows and pisses joy.
He is also a lie.
The Governor is not a fucking awesome guy. In fact, he is the antithesis of a fucking awesome guy. He is the lovechild of Charles Manson and Jeffery Dahmer. He will feed you to his zombie daughter and laugh about it. He does not have emotions other than desire, rage, and maybe a twisted sense of grief. (Your daughter was already dead, bro. She tried to eat you several times.) He will only look after you if you’re useful to him, and he will kill you the moment you’re not.
Remember Merle? The Governor’s right hand man, responsible for hunting parties and town defense and a lot more besides? There’s a lot he can give to the Governor, but the moment he showed that he was more loyal to Daryl-or perhaps himself, because he lied about Michonne to avoid the Governor’s wrath-the Governor threw him under a bus.
Most people in Woodbury don’t see this side of the man. They see and interact with Happy Mayor Funtimes-back to manipulation, again-and don’t even know the Governor exists. The only people who know about the Governor are dead soon after, unless they are Michonne, in which case four for you, Michonne, stab his bitch ass again.
I don’t even think that the Governor exists to the Governor, if that makes sense. He is insane, remember. He thinks of himself as a Savior, as the only sane man in this whole mess. He believes that he is Happy Mayor Funtimes. He thinks that everything he does is the Best Thing Ever and that everyone should love him for it.
A man who is lying to you is bad enough, but a man who also deludes himself? Getting the picture yet?
3. Phillip Blake: About as Stable as Chernobyl
Right, so has anyone heard the old parable of the house built on shifting sand? And how, when the winds and the tides came through, that motherfucker went down? Think of the Governor as that house. The man is about as stable as an overheated nuclear reactor-that is to say, not stable at all.
This point you can technically consider a subpoint of all of the above, since it’s cobbled together from generalizations drawn in previous points, but it is no less important. We have already established that the Governor is a leader, so he’s responsible for the lives of dozens of people.
And leaders have to be stable. They have to be, otherwise their society breaks down and chaos reigns and biters get ahold of your face. And Philip is on a steady decline from stability.
We can attribute this to several factors-stress, grief, no sleep, the lack of control as Rick Grimes, Professional Life Ruiner, and his people get involved, or general batshit insanity-but the point is, he is slowly and surely becoming Shane 2.0.
Remember how unpredictable Shane was, near the end? One second he’d be smiling, perfectly calm and collected, and the next he’d be raging, ready to kill anybody who got too close, even the man he loved like a brother.
Now look at all of Shane’s behaviors in the episodes before his death-the way he walked, the way he moved, the rage in every step, every jerk of his hands-and then look back at the Governor. See any similarities? The mood swings, the delusions, the anger in every motion, those things that we saw Shane go through that the Governor is currently in the middle of now, those are warning signs. They mean danger, mean that the Governor is reaching critical mass.
The Governor is losing control, not only of his town and his people, but of himself. And a delusional sociopath with no morals, no sense of reality, and no self-control is the absolute most dangerous thing you can encounter in a world with no rules. Forget walkers. Forget sickness, and dehydration, and starvation. The Governor is what you should be most afraid of.
2. Loyalty Shmoyalty, or Why You Shouldn’t Trust This Man Farther Than You Can Throw Him
The most fundamental difference that I can think of between Rick and the Governor is that Rick is loyal to his bones and the Governor is just not.
Rick loves his people. He loves them so much that he’d die for them, that he’d run headlong into danger to save them even though he has two children at home. His people are what’s keeping him going. When he feels like he’s broken his loyalty (Lori’s death, for example) it destroys him.
Philip is the complete and total opposite. He is loyal to no one. (If he ever was, he was loyal to Penny and only Penny, and now she’s dead.) He just doesn’t care about anyone or anything. People aren’t people to him, they’re tools. Vehicles for him to ride to newer, higher heights of power and self-delusion, and then to be left on the side of the road when he’s finished.
Merle. Andrea. His town. The Governor doesn’t care about any of them, besides the gratification they can provide. The moment he feels like it he turns on them. He throws Merle to the wolves. The second Andrea shows that she’s more loyal to Rick’s group, he’ll do the same to her.
The Governor cares about nothing and no one but himself. Everything else, if it can’t be controlled, is a threat to that, so the moment something becomes uncontrollable he’s going to destroy it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve saved his life before, or if you could in the future, or whatever you’ve done for him, he does not care for you.
And if he doesn’t care about you, what’s to stop him from leaving you to die, or even killing you himself? Which brings us to our last point,
1. This Motherfucker Will End Your Life (and Then Put Your Head in a Fishtank)
Step back for a second and read that title again. You know it’s true. We were just treated to several minutes of fighting around (and inside, fucking ew) those fishtanks. Those are zombie heads. As in, they were once living people who happened across the Governor and then ended up headless in his fishtank so he could “watch TV” because his little sociopathic brain is bored.
Yeah, that’s right. Bored. In the comics, the Governor says “fifty-seven channels and nothing on” like it’s a game to him, like the heads that were once people-some of whom he knew and talked to when they were alive-are entertainment. Like they’re there to amuse him.
Everything in the above meta, from the sociopathy to the pathological lying to the instability, leads to this last little point: the Governor will kill you. He is not Rick. Don’t confuse them. Rick has his moments of anger and cold-bloodedness-more so now that his own decline into insanity has begun-but he is still, at his core, a good man. He helps people. He is very unlikely to kill you unless you attack him or his family first.
The Governor has no such moral barriers. He’ll kill you because he wants to. Because he feels like it. Because it’s cloudy outside and he was hoping for sun, I don’t know. For the littlest reason, or no reason at all, he. Will. Kill. You. Anyone who he deems useless-or even less useful-is a dead man walking.
Why? Because the Governor is a raging douchecanoe. He is a very sick man, and he’s only getting worse. There are no psychologists in the zombie apocalypse. There are no mental hospitals, no medicines to help his condition. There is nothing to protect you from him, unless you happen to have a faster draw and get him between the eye.
The Governor is sick, but more than that, he’s evil. See, there’s a line between being sick and being evil. You can be sick and hurt people and not know what you’re doing, but the Governor’s not a paranoid schizophrenic. He’s not bipolar. He is delusional, yes, but he’s also sociopathic, viciously intelligent, and aware that his actions have consequences. He knows there is a difference between right and wrong, he just doesn’t seem to care about it.
He tortures people because it amuses him. He hurts them because it’s entertainment. He controls them for his own power and gratification. He kills them because he’s bored.
And that is, I think, the real monster of The Walking Dead. Not the zombies, the title doesn’t refer to them, but the ones like the Governor who are dead inside, who have no compassion or empathy or humanity in them. The walking dead aren’t the walkers-they are everyone else.
*Sociopath (a rather outdated term, but one that most people know), in this definition, refers to a person who displays several symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) combined with reputation-defending antisocial and malevolent antisocial behaviors-the term “sociopath” was used to avoid unnecessary confusion. Also, it is a common misconception that sociopaths do not feel emotion-they actually do, but at a limited or distorted range than a person without ASPD.