Anna Godberson once said, “She should have known that villains often come with pretty faces”. This is regularly the case in the film industry. Hollywood has an abundance of beautiful villains that steal people’s hearts. But, even though physical beauty is a common theme for glamorous Hollywood villains, there are many more means to ploy an audience to love an antihero. In a diversity of films, the audience is manipulated in to liking the bad guys in many divergent ways. With the use of enticing looks, schemas, and the fundamental attribution error (Keen, McCoy, and Powell 129-148) film developers master piloting their audience to love their villains. The directors and actors alike make these characters appeal to everyone who watches the film. Television shows including Arrow, breaking bad, and weeds all glamorize criminals that people have come to recognize and respect.
In Arrow, the audience is drawn to the billionaire vigilante Oliver Queen otherwise known as Arrow. As with most vigilantes, Arrow is ultimately a criminal. Although he is saving innocent lives and tries to keep corruption at bay, by doing so, he is still killing people. A series of flashbacks help the audience understand his passion for repairing his wealthy families wrongs. He gets shipwrecked alone on an island after he watches his father kill himself to save his own life. However the island is a vicious place. It is there that he gets trained for the survival of his own hell. When he finally returns home after several years, he is determined to save his city and make up for his father’s mistakes. In the show his friends and family do not know that he is the vigilante saving their city, but his audience does. Fundamental attribution error is one...
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...t is good.” (135). In most movies the protagonist is more attractive than the antagonist, thus, leading people to believe that he or she carries a more positive demeanor.
Arrow, Breaking Bad, and Weeds all introduce the villains worldwide audiences have come to adore. The use of physical attraction, schemas, and the fundamental attribution error are clever techniques that reel in an audience and make them go against natural instincts for their survival. Everyone knows they should not love a bad guy and yet, they are being manipulated by media to fall in love with them. These are the new heroes of pop culture and it is safe to say they will be sticking around for quite awhile.
Works Cited
Keen, Richard, Monica L. McCoy, and Elizabeth Powell
“Rooting for the Bad Guy: Psychological
Perspectives.” Studies in Popular Culture. 34.2
(2012): 129-148. Print.
Relations between sympathy-empathy expressiveness and fiction have become a significant issue in the debate on the emotional responses to the film fiction. Due to their complexity many scholars found it useful to diagram them. With his essay, “Empathy and (Film) Fiction”, Alex Neill tries to develop new theory for analyzing the fiction and, especially, the emotional responses from the audience on it. The project of this essay is represented with an aim to show the audience the significant value of the emotional responses to the film fiction. From my point of view in the thesis of his project he asks a simple question: “Why does the (film) fiction evoke any emotions in the audience?”, further building the project in a very plain and clever way. Tracing the origins of this issue, he distinguishes between two types of emotional responses, sympathy and empathy, as separate concepts in order to understand the influence of both types of emotional responses to fiction. However, relying mostly on this unsupported discrepancy between two concepts and the influence of the “identification” concept, Neill finds himself unable to trace sympathy as a valuable response to fiction. This difficulty makes Neill argue throughout the better part of the text that empathy is the key emotional factor in the reaction to (film) fiction and that it is a more valuable type of emotional response for the audience.
And last but not least is the villain in these movies. Most of the killers in these films are portrayed as mentally deranged and/or has some type of facial or bodily deformation and who have been traumatized at an early age. Even though these characters terrorized and murder people they have taken on the persona of anti-heroes in pop culture. Characters like Halloween’s Michael Myers, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger and Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees have become the reason to go see these movies. However, over time,”their familiarity and the audience’s ability to identify and sympathize with them over the protagonist made these villains less threatening (Slasher Film (5))”.
Emotions have the ability to stop time and conjure a single tear or a simple grin, but most importantly emotions can give one the drive that can change what seems impossible. Many major movements, political or social, are fueled by emotional motives. These emotions lie within the people of society, and could be exposed by a rudimentary activity, like watching TV shows. Today is known as the golden era of visual media, and TV shows have become more prevalent and popular. Whether TV shows are comedy based, like Black-ish, or drama based, like Luke Cage, they all have the ability to appeal to one’s emotions. Both Black-ish and Luke Cage utilize emotions to propel their representations of racial conflicts in today’s society, but Luke Cage’s coveys
Many people might say that stars are merely a product of the Hollywood system needing to make a profit; Hollywood manufactures a product and creates the demand for it. A star's image is processed through advertisements and promotions and has little to do with what the audience wants and needs from entertainment. There is a widespread mentality that any Average Joe can become a star with enough resources backing him up. Richard Dyer points out, however, that even movies full of stars fail, and stars can and do fall out of fashion (12). A star's economic worth is not invulnerable to audiences' opinions. The audience isn't so easily controlled.
Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, the Boston Strangler, Jeffrey Dahmer. Despite the years of history that separate these names, they remain indelibly preserved within our collective societal consciousness because of the massively violent and calculated nature of their crimes. Serial killers, both men and women, represent social monstrosities of the most terrifying variety. They are human predators, cannibals in a figurative and, often, literal sense, and are therefore uniquely subversive to society's carefully constructed behavioral tenets. They frighten because they are human in form but without the social conscience that, for many, defines humanity. They capture the public eye because they terrify, but also because they elicit a sort of gruesome curiosity about the human potential for evil; as Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde alleges, wickedness lies within each heart, waiting only for the proper time and impetus to break free.
Perceptions of the superhero and supervillain are mainly based on subjective definitions of each concept. These observations often lead to a definitive dichotomy that precisely splits characters into two impermeable divisions. However, this stringent separation is unable to account for the characters that are not at the extreme ends of their respective side. Neither is this rift capable of classifying characters that flirt with both sides of the superhero-supervillain dichotomy. Therefore it is imperative to analyze the established criteria for both superhero and supervillain to derive a more adequate explanation. Most superheroes are not easily characterized, but rather fall somewhere between Superman, the bastion of moral purity, and Doctor Doom, the display of indubitable corruption. This solicits genesis of an entirely new notion about the differences between superheroes and supervillains. A more precise idea is that superheroes and supervillains are lined on a spectrum that spans from pure good to pure evil. Disparities between superheroes and supervillains are not black and white, but rather these characters are on a spectrum that radically changes based on individual cases.
Today’s films and TV shows have a large impact and sometimes change the way people think. The TV show “Arrow” does exactly that while asking the question if a vigilante could be classified as a hero. Vigilantes have accomplished quite a few astonishing objectives, from Julius Caesar’s assassination to something in today’s time, Mr. Extreme. In films there will always be the people who criticize the actors, all the way done to the characters behavior and ideas. Avoiding a huge question, can a vigilante like Oliver Queen be considered a hero because of his actions?
Immanuel Kant’s accounts is most plausible in this case. The choices Superman makes are always done out of perfect duty. The concept of categorical imperative, follows along with the majority of the actions Superman takes. Superman’s decision making is done out of good will which is a “good in itself.” Some might say that Aristotle’s accounts is most plausible in this case. Everything about Aristotle’s ethical theories points to Superman performs virtuous acts which leads to a life of happiness. Lex’s actions not only harms others, but also harms his chances of cultivating a virtuous character. The drawback of Aristotle’s theory in Superman’s case is Superman’s longevity. Aristotle’s theory, makes it so that one can only obtain happiness at the end of their lives; there is no telling what the future holds, Superman might not always take the correct actions. In the case of Mill’s theory, one can see that neither of Superman’s identities seek out higher pleasures; one only sees him live his life day by day; either stopping the bad guys or writing articles about bad guys. So out of the three theories Kant’s is most plausible for this
Rabison, Rebecca. “Representations of Crime in Disney Films: A Qualitative Analysis.” Wesleyan University Honors College. April 2008. Retrieved 18 Dec 2013 from .
Zombie, gang, and rival family movies all seem as if they are not similar in the least but, one common characteristic links them all together, a main character who fell in love with someone she is not meant to be with. This common bond originates from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which, Juliet serves as the inspiration for the main character in many modern day works. The idea of a young girl falling madly in love with someone whom she is forbidden to associate with is not only appealing but, it is versatile and easily adaptable. Altered versions of Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet include Warm Bodies, West Side Story, and Baz Luhrmann’s modernized Romeo and Juliet all in which portray Juliet in many different fashions. Her character is not only popular in movies but, also in many songs, television shows, and spin-off plays. Juliet is an extremely recognizable and versatile character who is portrayed in numerous ways in many contemporary works.
Rather than celebrity being perceived as inspiring people with good motives, a celebrity in the modern context could be anyone most talked about. With the combination of media, and society that is engrossed with gruesome, sadistic crimes, modern serial killers and their crimes has become a form of entertainment. Modern societies will even pay money to watch a villain get mutilated or shot on a big screen. Serial killers are becoming’s popular as rock stars, although murder has been around for centuries, but ever since mass media society has become fascinated with the personalities and the action of these people. This kind of attention is also liked by the serial killer, as living a life of a celebrity promises to liberate people for the anonymity and make them known beyond the parameters of class and family. There are many Legal cases whereby the serial killer has admitted to seek media attention or are satisfied with the media attention given to their crime For example Ted Bundy commented that he took pride in his sinister celebrity, and bragged about the reaction that left to movies, screenplays, hard books and articles. Egger manifest the magnitude of this notorious behaviour by stating that through his study he found that many seemed to enjoy the celebrity attention. The media has become a platform for overwhelming exposure of serial killers; initially serial killers were
In recent times, such stereotyped categorizations of films are becoming inapplicable. ‘Blockbusters’ with celebrity-studded casts may have plots in which characters explore the depths of the human psyche, or avant-garde film techniques. Titles like ‘American Beauty’ (1999), ‘Fight Club’ (1999) and ‘Kill Bill 2’ (2004) come readily into mind. Hollywood perhaps could be gradually losing its stigma as a money-hungry machine churning out predictable, unintelligent flicks for mass consumption. While whether this image of Hollywood is justified remains open to debate, earlier films in the 60’s and 70’s like ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) and ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) already revealed signs of depth and avant-garde film techniques. These films were successful as not only did they appeal to the mass audience, but they managed to communicate alternate messages to select groups who understood subtleties within them.
The terms "hero" and "villain" are as distinct as the terms "good" and "evil." They are mutually exclusive; the hero is courageous, popular, strong, morally, and willing to save the people at whatever cost, while the villain is despicable, hated, and heinous to his core. However, when we turn away from the archetypal world of comic books, this distinction is no longer as clear. When we look at real human beings we do not see a hero as a hero or a villain as a villain, but rather individuals composed of varying degrees of both extremes. No hero is perfect, and no villain is completely heinous. The most recent film adaptation of the DC Comic series Batman presents this truth of human nature. The Dark Knight Rises effectively communicates the
Killers are the biggest threats to humans in society today because it could be the most original and kindest person ever who turns out to be the killer. The huge amount of monsters in our society are the killers and greedy people. A lot of people’s lives are at risk everyday just from being around these people and don't even know it. Nobody can trust a stranger,a friend, or even a family member. T.V. shows, and movies, show the killer as a psychotic person in a typical way. When it really could be anybody people come in contact with, they are just more experienced on how to deceive a common person.(The Making of a Monster Pg 2)
Looking in this day and age, movie heroes are taking the law into their own hands, creating the anti-hero in the long run. Defined by wikipedia, the anti-hero is a villain or an outsider, but is nevertheless portrayed somewhat sympathetically. In particular, an anti-hero may have enough heroic qualities and intentions to align them with the heroes in the readers' mind ("Anti-hero"). A film that depicts the classic vigilante is Man on Fire by Tony Scott. The film takes on the idea of revenge with a blend of disturbingly sentimental seriousness and harsh reality.