The Nature of Evil

[yma2]

Consider the following statement;

“Two qualities that make up a popular and iconographic villain are a feeling of utter and incomprehensible evil and also a believable and compelling motivation. It is ironic, therefore, that these two factors cannot co-exist within a single antagonist.“

True or untrue? Discuss.

My own opinions to follow.

Comments

[myaibou]

Interesting...

I got a comment on my latest fic hoping that the resolution chapters would give some background about the villian and his motivations, and I realized that's a real weakness in my writing. I don't tend to put enough thought into the villian and WHY he does what he does. Mostly he's there to create a crisis for the antagonists.

Something to work on in future stories, I suppose.

About the two things not co-existing. I'd never thought about it. Darth Vader was kind of the former when he was introduced, then became the latter (well, I suppose his story wasn't told well enough for everyone to feel it was a compelling motivation, but just for argument's sake...) I do think that he was much less "incomprehensible" as you began to understand his motivations. So maybe they can't co-exist? I don't know.

[yma2]

You know, it's interesting... one of the complains I got, or get, in my stories is that I ALWAYS give my villains too much motivation. I don't tend to make my Bad Guys Bad enough. So there you go.

I'm not arguing that the two cannot exist from point to point in one character, but that by gaining one, one looses the other. Example; Death Vadar, in the early part of Star Wars, was scary because he was just Evil. Later he became sympathetic and, so became a more interesting character but lost that sense of iconographical fear and evil about him that had a charm all of its own.

Interesting concept, no?

[myaibou]

Yeah, I was trying to make the same point about Vader, but not as well. ::sheepish grin:: It is interesting. I'd never really heard that before, but I think it's a very valid point. (I'll have to work on my next villian, make him either scary-evil or give him a good motive.)

[fatkraken]

honestly, EITHER quality in excess is kinda dull. A villain with NO motivation and just pure incomprehensible evil isn't a character, he's a monster, a force of nature. Sure this can be fun, but it doesn't make a villain interesting or compelling as a character. Iconographic maybe, popular maybe, but not interesting. So Sauron isn't a terribly interesting villain. A villain can still have a compelling motivation without being "a good guy in a bad situation"; their motivations can still be twisted and nasty, but destroying the world for a REASON is more interesting than "just because", a villain like that is no more interesting than a killer asteroid.

[yma2]

I think I might agree that in excess they can be dull, but there is also something horrifically interesting, at least for a short while, in the Pure Evil concept. I think that interest comes mainly from Fear.
A good example is the Borg from Star Trek. In the early days these things were terrifying because they were fast, unstoppable and if they caught you they turned you into one of them. Yeah, a bit of a force of nature, but a really cool enemy non the less.
Then they started to slowly humanise them. Adding motivation, then adding a level of sympathy, until the Borg stopped being this evil Killing Machine and started becoming... victims and that's no nearly as scary as the thing that Simply Kills and Cannot Be Reasoned with.
Don't misunderstand me, in the long term a Simply Evil villain is no where near as interesting as one which has motive, but as a plot device and as something to inspire fear and awe it works pretty well.
At any rate, I'm going to post up a mini essay on this tomorrow.

[fatkraken]

lets be realistic here, the problem with the borg wasn't inherently that they were given "motivation", it's that it was horribly handled and badly written. The borg ARE an interesting ENEMY, but NOT an interesting VILLAIN, because I would say they aren't evil at all, any more than a bunch of army ants that eat a baby or a storm that levels a city. They have no CONCEPT of evil, or suffering, which means by definition they cannot be evil. A truely evil villain knows what he's doing causes pain, and he still does it, because he values his pleasure more.

[yma2]

Ok, you've got a point about the Borg

[anonymous]

Untrue. No great time for comment now but c.f. Linden Kohlrabi from Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night (if you haven't read it - DO).

Am Oxfordgirl on elsecomputer yes.

[littlefeltfangs]

This was my gut feeling, but I've had a hard time coming up with any examples that would illustrate it. But I think that incomprehensible evil is not on the same continuem as understandable and compelling motivation. They seem closer to cause and effect (although that still doesn't seem quite right), where you can understand what drives them but it is not the same as being able to understand what they do.

But that might be a little naive.

[yma2]

I think one can argue there is a difference between method and motivatation but I'm not sure you are right about it being on teh same continuem... at least I don't think so... your phrasing is a bit odd there. I certainly dissagree with the cause and effect idea, but you'll see my arguments later.

[yma2]

I havn't, but I'll put it on my VERY long list of things to read. I'm going to put my own opinion down in a follow up post I'll put out there tomorrow night hopefully. I hope you can find time to comment on that. I'd be interested to see what people think. This is just a warm up post to get people mulling the idea over. :D

[lavaliere]

Hmm... I'm compelled to disagree, however the only real example I can provide (at the moment, considering my current state) is Bakura from Yuugiou. In an essence, he is true and utter evil, the very darkness of the world incarnated in a soul (if we are to go with the Bakura = Zork concept). He is not merely hate and anger personified, as we see in Yami no Malik, but the real and true evil villain of the YGO series. Only he was able to withstand so many defeats, while maintaining the ability to return to strike again. His tactics are also what makes him more "evil" than any of the other villains in the series (or even in general): manipulation. It takes someone without any shred of good will to use others without regards or regrets. And Bakura does this well

[yma2]

Ah, but you see I'd argue that Zork and Bakura are different sorts of evil. Zork is pure evil. He has no motivation, no reason for wishing to cover the world in darkness. It's simply what he does. IF you could sit Zork and Bakura down and feed them truth pills, then ask them 'why do you do this?' Zork would probably answer, 'because I want to.' Where as Bakura would say, 'to gain revenge on the Pharoah,' or some such. He has a REASON. An understandable, to some even sympathetic, reason. Oh one might not like his methods, but he has a motive at least, a human and understandable drive. That's not something Zork has. I'm not sure one can exactly argue that this makes him more or less 'evil' than Zork, but it makes him a different sort of evil, that's for sure.
But more on this in my essay...
Thanks for taking time out of your recovery to answer. I hope you feel better soon!

[astrogirl2]

Hmm. I think there's truth in that, or at least some good insight, but I think the key to creating a really compelling bad guy is to find exactly the right balance between those two extremes. Scorpius from Farscape leaps to my mind. Definitely a bad dude: torture and genocide are pretty freaking evil in my book, and I cannot for the life of me ever imagine wanting to do the kind of things that he does. And yet I totally understand the reasons why he's like that and why he does those things, and even have quite a lot of sympathy for him and his goals.

(Sylar on Heroes also comes to mind... His motivation is a little less complex or compelling than Scorpius' maybe, but it is comprehensible. And he's way out there on the spectrum of batshit creepy evil. :))

[yma2]

That's the point I'm going to make in my mini essay, which I'm hoping to finish off tomorrow night. You've even mentioned some of the poitns I'm going to make... but I'll wait 'til I've finished my essay thing before I continue here. Bascially I'm going to argue that there are many different levels with which the reader/viewer can relate to a villain and some of these become muturally exclusive.

[labingi]

Re. Scorpius, you bring up a good example of why "evil" is so hard to define. I really don't like the word (except in sort of self-ironizing Buffy way), but to be evil, in general, is to be the opposite of good, and it's hard to be that if you feel like your own position is justified (i.e. "good"), which 99.9% of people (including Scorpius) do. In other words, I don't think Scorpius would see himself as evil because, to him, his utilitarian moral system is perfectly valid: a "good" system. Now, I don't agree with a lot of his moral choices. I'm comfortable saying that he does bad things. But I'm not comfortable saying he's "evil" as long as he truly perceives himself as "good." (All of this probably means that the closest I can comfortably come to defining evil is hypocrisy, in which people do what they know is "not good" without owning up to it.)

[astrogirl2]

I used to make a point of avoiding the word "evil," myself, mainly because it smacks of a certain moral absolutism that I don't buy into, with religious overtones that I really don't buy into. But it gets bandied about in discussions like this, and I use it, 'cause I'm lazy. :) I suppose how I'm really defining the word here is something along the lines of "stuff that I find morally objectionable regardless of motivation, and which I believe should be avoided at all costs." Which is admittedly subjective, although I don't think I'm hugely out on the end of the bell curve in terms of what I personally find morally indefensible. It's definitely a word that, even when I'm being lazy, I only apply to actions rather than people, though. I don't think there are very many people who go around thinking, "I'm evil! I do evil things because I'm evil, and I like it!" And the ones that do are seriously mentally ill, which is itself explanation enough for their actions. Scorpius does some majorly bad things, stuff I'm willing to use the