Our Newest Op Ed

May 25, 2005 | Filed Under Uncategorized |

So You Want to Be a Villain?
- By Greg Stewart

Well, it has been a curious past couple of days, as I have watched the hype of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith reach a fever pitch. The anticipation of Anakin Skywalker turning to the “dark side” has captured the imagination of citizenry; or, at the least in this humble “geek’s opinion” the popular movement of the moment. To see the corruption of an individual transfixes us as we watch the choices people make for their own undoing and become the villain.

The villain is fascinated with a single goal: the unyielding conformity of the society has to be undone, so they can impose their own sense of orthodoxy. Therefore, the villain in the great tragedies are filled with the complexities that are reflected from their own culture; the “heroic” villain-the anti-hero-challenges the society’s normative value. In others words, those traditional values, those items which are besieged by the everyday authority and accepted as governance by the culture-at-large, are at times transformed by the anti-hero.
The “heroic” villain challenges the ideals, the principals, and the morals, which are confined within the status quo of the society. Needless to say, the villain’s complexities are reliant on the emotional picture of the culture. In American-Western culture (but especially in America) we want the villain to be simplistic and be able to escape from the difficulties of the world. We do not want to be confronted with the grays; we just the black and white.

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