Celebrating the Unpopular Arts
 

Not everything fictional characters do is justifiable

(This is a post from more than a decade ago on my own blog. Much like using Greg Hatcher’s old posts, it gives y’all more to read here)

I’m not sure what put thoughts of this into my head, but there’s one supposed rule about creating characters that’s often misinterpreted. To wit, that every character has rational (to them) reasons for what they do, and believe that what they’re doing is justified. Even characters who are Nazis, assassins or torturers don’t go around laughing maniacally that they’re evil. In their own eyes they’re not bad guys, they’re doing what’s right. Or at least what has to be done.

That makes sense. Some writers, however, seem to think “the character believes they’re justified” is the same as “their reasons are valid” or “they’re not bad people, just misguided.” And there I draw the line.

For one example, I read a fantasy novel back in the 1980s (I no longer remember the name) where everyone in the cast is really a nice person. Even the primary antagonist, who’s mind-controlling people, is doing what he thinks is best for king and country — doesn’t doing bad things with the best intentions make him sort of sympathetic? Another story from the same period involved two alien races who have been at war for centuries. In reality, both sides are good and honorable, they just have a few cultural misunderstandings to work out, after which everyone will live happily ever after.

Neither sounds like a bad concept. Misguided people exist, as do cultural differences. In the execution, though, everything got too sugary. There were no bad people; if the characters only Understood, they could work everything else.

No, sorry, not buying it. The truth is some people aren’t good or nice. Some people like to inflict pain on others, exploit others, assault others either physically or emotionally. I’m sure they all have rational reasons, but if their rationale is that nobody else’s pain matters to them … well, I’m not likely to feel much sympathy, no matter how much the author shows me of their innermost heart. Some of the death camp guards in WW II had rational, comprehensible reasons — it was safer than going to the Russian front — bur that’s a very bad justification. Trying to keep Adam Warlock sympathetic when he attempts to rape Sif — sorry, no excuse will do.

Some writers think giving characters a tragic/horrifying backstory or determining incident that shaped them will do the trick. It doesn’t. Even if it explains them, it doesn’t absolve them; if the writer assumes it does, I’m going to start checking out mentally. Partly because the concept’s been done to death; one thing I loved about the movie Black Widow is that it rejects that either serial killer Teresa Russell or obsessive pursuer Debra Winger have a neat, simple reason for what they do.

That said, I think Kirk Douglas’ SOB in the 1951 film Detective Story shows it can be done effectively. His Det. MacLeod is a hardcase who see his abusive, rotten father’s face in every crook he busts. When he discovers his wife once had an affair and gave up the baby (in the original stage play she got an abortion but that was verboten on screen back then) he freaks out and rejects her, even knowing he can’t go on without her. Finally he realizes he’s become the image of the man he thought he was fighting (“All my life, my father’s been inside me, laughing … or maybe crying.”). The end result is someone who’s repellent, sympathetic and tragic, all in one.

Art by Gene Colan (top) and Jack Kirby.

7 Comments

  1. Le Messor

    There’s a YouTube channel I watch sometimes called the REACT channel. They’ve recently started a series called ‘Villain or victim’ where their people look at a movie villain and vote on whether that character is, well, a villain or a victim.
    Every time it comes up, I think ‘the fact that you think they can’t be both is a lot of what’s wrong with today’s world’.

    One of the worst for me is Professor Snape. He’s been abusing and bullying kids through the whole book series, then you find out that as a kid he was abused and bullied, and suddenly everybody is on his side.
    My reaction was ‘then you know what it was like, and you have even less of an excuse!’

    I was trying to remember who those characters / actresses were in Black Widow, then I figured out you weren’t talking about a Marvel movie.

    1. No, it’s a 1980s thriller where Russell marries and murders multiple men. Winger is the federal agent on her trail.
      You have a valid point about Snape, absolutely. Someone made the same point about Regina in ABC’s Once Upon A Time: sure, Snow caused her a tragedy on the past but it was a little girl’s innocent mistake. Nevertheless the show over time began treating Regina as sympathetic when she’s devoted her life to tormenting Snow even as a child.
      My thought about the Snape flashbacks is that they never (IIRC) deal with Harry’s father turning out to be a mean-spirited dick.

    2. Der

      Oh men, Snape was yes, tragic, but he was a total douchebag that should´ve know better than to bully kids. And yes, I’m also surprised that no one ever mentions that James? a big douchebag too.

  2. Der

    This post reminded me of an anime I really enjoy: Code Geass.

    The main character is a dude that is doing good things(abolishing a dictatorship basically) but for all the wrong reasons(he just wants revenge) but I really love that, even if we the audience might justify the things he does, he totally knows that he is just manipulating people for his own ends and doesn’t really care that much about them.

    Also sometimes he does things that, if he explained it to their friends, they would forgive them for doing them. But he just doesn’t try to justify/excuse himself of all his wrong doings. Why should he? He just tales the blame becuase at the end, he is responsable of all the bad things he does. Love that. Also love that the anime is basically a big Haney-esque scenery chewing comic but anime.

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