The US Air Force better love me something fierce for giving up my free time to put on a stupid blue tiger striped monkey suit and do my duty to my country on a weekend.
So as I sit here on a Saturday night and do such fun things as 1.) Do dishes, 2.) Run laundry, 3.) Wash bed linens, 4.) Contemplate vacuuming, I have other thoughts, something a little more higher and esoteric.
As some of you know, I've been slowly re-working my way through Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" for the fourth time.
Today I got to think about the concepts of the Knight, the Cowboy and The Superhero.
All three of these concepts represent a sort of "right" or "justice" something that as humans we want on some instinctual moral level that tells us that it's the best thing we can do.
On the flip side, and something that not many folks have noticed. Looking at it from another direction doesn't it all seem really selfish? Yes they are doing things to help others, yes they are doing the right thing, however they are usually breaking laws or going against what is commonly accepted as being the structure of law.
Maybe this is the view of the villain, who knows they are doing wrong, and get blames for it.
Hell I think I'd be pissed too if I knew that the"good guy" was doing wrong and getting off scott-free while I "admit" to being a bad guy and get my ass fried.
Sympathy for the devil? Skewed thinking?
I don't know to be honest, but I think I need to re-examine villain concepts. I've always loved hero's, but maybe the bad guy doesn't have it all wrong.
And ok . .i'm hitting a funk . only solution . .get up and do something . .catch ya'll later.
1 comment:
Fourth time? I haven't even made it through th series once yet! Go you.
I don't think the selfishness of heroic archetypes is something most of us miss, just something we prefer not to dwell on - it's wish fulfillment after all.
I'm going to skip knights and cowboys, because the former often fall firmly on the "law" side of the law and lawlessness issue (discounting Lancelot or the black knight), and I'm not qualified to analyze cowboy stories. But I'm not sure how many laws Superman, for example, broke that weren't covered under "good Samaritan."
I think many heroes exist to explore the intuitive difference between what's good and what's legal. The X-Men movies (at least the first two) seem to me to have a lot to do with the "right" (Xavier) and "wrong" (Magneto) ways to defy an unjust social order. But of course since it's an action movie and based on a superhero comic book, both sides get to use gratuitous violence. Of course, in that example the villain didn't believe he was the villain. But when you get down to it, who does? Many people, even when they admit their faults, will follow up with some implication of "but at least I'm not a..." I think it's natural to perceive ourselves as the good guys, or to at least have something going for us that redeems our faults.
"I may be a criminal, but I'm a hero to the people" or "I may be a villain, but at least I'm honest about it."
Post a Comment