"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it."

[alanajoli]

We've been going through a lot of kids' movies from the library here at Casa Abbott, as Bug enjoys a little bit of screen-time to settle down when she's getting sleepy. It typically takes three or four days to make it through a regular cartoon movie (unless I finish it after she's gone to bed), since we watch it in spurts, which is not an optimal

Comments

[sartorias]

I love CHUCK!

[alanajoli]

I fell behind and am now going to have to Netflix the last *two* seasons to make sure I see every episode! (If only I actually had Netflix...)

[ext_542842]

Basically Chuck finds his dad, his dad dies, chuck and Sarah get married, Casey finds his daughter who dates Morgan, Chuck finally finds his mom and must rescue her from the original subject of the intersect project who accidentally turned evil, and then they hint that dad may be alive after all for the final season.

I wonder if the decline of the strong hero has anything to do with the the seeming impotence of military might on today's world affairs. Afgahnistan, Vietnam, and the wars against terrorism and drugs pit powerful militaries against shadow forces who simply skink off into the night to rise again anytime a mortal wound is given. It's like fighting a hydra and taking them down has to rely more on accurate intelligence and electronic tracking. So maybe our heroes are now being expected to fight smarter, just as we are.

[ext_542842]

An even better parallel would be in the plight of the common man Vs today's corporations. To create something of your own rather than be a cog in our economic machine, people increasingly feel like they have to be "rebels", and since corporations and large businesses increasingly have more money and resources than any person or small group can take on directly, the "rebel hero" has to fight smarter and in such a fashion as to avoid or creatively neutralize his enemy's overwhelming force.

[breathingbooks]

If you have geeks as heroes (and at this point it's definitely a popular trope) why not geeks as villains? If you're "worthy" of being one sort of main character, you're "worthy" of being the other type.

[alanajoli]

Hrm. I guess that's true. But I don't think it's that they're the villain that I find odd, per se. It's that they're a villain protagonist. I don't see that many villain-as-protagonist stories outside of this genre (and maybe the Western anti-hero) -- even in fantasy it seems to mostly be done in parody, or in an ambiguous moral context (as in skzbrust's Vlad Taltos books). So while one story of "Identify with me because the way I was persecuted by jocks when I was a kid has driven me to becoming a super villain" worked for me, seeing it in several places makes me wonder what's going on to make this story worth telling.

Does that make more sense?

[breathingbooks]

Hmm, I get what you're saying now, though it's still a little hard for me because I can't think of anything I've seen/read that fits the sympathy-because-of-persecution category. I have seen Megamind, but I thought it clear that he was screwed solely by fate and that his rivalry with the jock-hero was quite one-sided.

As for villains as protagonists, I feel like you could argue some urban fantasy has characters who rather straddle the line. I haven't seen much of The Vampire Diaries, but I get the impression evil brooding emo like Damon fits, and that's certainly a trope within that genre (though it's often paired with a more moral character). Armstrong's Bitten comes to mind.

[alanajoli]

The sympathy-because-of-persecution theme probably shows up more in teen transformation movies, particularly those designed for girls (but possibly boys as well). I think Princess Diaries works in that trope -- the movie, not the book. It's usually a Cinderella story sort of theme: I'm so sweet and good and kind and everyone is mean to me. I'm getting comments about this on my fb page as well, and someone there made me think that maybe what we're seeing is the root-for-the-underdog theme -- because the nerd villains that are showing up in the examples I'm mentioning seem to never win.

Good point about the UF stuff, too. I am surprised that the anti-hero theme didn't occur to me there, given how much of that genre I read! Maybe there's just less clear good vs. evil in those settings, so even the villain might not be really a villain while a hero might do some pretty awful stuff... I'm going to have to think about that!

Re: (user pic is dodie smith)

[alanajoli]

:)