WTF Friday: Experiments in Villany

Villains are more difficult to write than heroes.

Good guys are, most often, types, and that’s okay because even if they’re of the “anti” variety, we’re conditioned to root for them (which is a matter for another entry).  No matter how generic, if he’s saving the girl or the city or the world or the universe, or a kitten, we wring our hands at his tribulations, applaud his factories, and fall swooning into his arms when the day is done.  Because that is what one does.  I do it, you do it, my mom does it.

We all do it.  We can’t help it.  Collective subconscious, Jung, etc etc.

That being the case, we don’t necessarily have to attach to the hero to remain invested in the story.  Care about him, yes.  Maintain interest in his tribulations, certainly.  But we don’t need to form a bond to do so.

We do have to attach the the villain; we aren’t supposed to like them and certainly shouldn’t be rooting for them (okay, that’s not always true, but let’s play “for the most part” here to make my life a little easier) but there must be a connection.  And without the built-in impetus for that connection, as exists with the hero, the villain must have individuality and character development and something human.

Villains are a lot more work.

Hand rubbing and mwahahahaing are all well in good for Hammer horror and kid stuff (though I maintain for our kids to actually learn something about the world

image via comicvine.com

we need to project them being at least twice as smart as we think they are) but for a novel, TV show, or film to be great, horror, kiddie, or otherwise, I maintain it’s the villain who needs to be great.  He needs to have a revelatory motivation, a humanity that reminds us we’re just on this side of the line and have no idea what might tip us over.  We don’t have to see a reflection of ourselves in the hero — he’s saving us, doing something for us lately as it ere — but I’d argue we do have to see that reflected in the villain; if we don’t, he’s just some annoying guy doing annoying things that are annoying.

The villain needs to make us a nervous in that, with the tiniest and most accidental of shoves, the random chance of genetics, someone stealing our lunch money one more time, we could become him.  There are very few people/aliens/rogue cyborgs/mutants who are, or would be, evil simply for the sake of being so because society constrains us and punishes us; deep down, most of us don’t want to do community service or go to jail no matter how anarchist we may claim to be.

A psychotic villain can be terrifying but he’s mostly just unpredictable.

Sociopathic villains, and most humans are sociopathic to one extent or another (come on, you know you’d be smoking yourself to fairyland if it was legal in your state), are terrifying because they are contained only be the desire not to get caught.

Potentially good folk gone bad are the most frightening of all.  Because they don’t want to be who they’ve become but they’re too far down the road to come back.  Because it wouldn’t take much, would it?

Remember the phrase “going postal?”

So go forth.  Populate our imaginations with truly terrifying villains.

Give us something to remember.