On Villains and Villainy

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” – Gerald Seymour in Harry’s Game

When I first heard the Joker movie with Jaoquin Phoenix was being made, I admit I was disturbed in the slightest. Critics of pop culture have long criticized what has seemed like a gradual and unnecessary decent into what seems like an anything-goes mentality for entertainment’s sake. The inundation of sex, drugs, and violence in pop culture appears to be on one hand merely for the sake of titillation yet on the other hand a reflection of the Western world’s dark underbelly it seems the average citizen doesn’t want to concede exists nor accept their explicit or implicit role in.* It is, however, the glorification of the villain that has troubled me the most when it comes to pop culture. I can name countless movies, not to mention countless musical artists, whose villains and villainy outshine their protagonists.

[Perhaps the same can be said for the world at large.]

To be clear, I prefer my villains to be complicated, for their motivations to be more than evil simply because that’s who the villain cannot help being. Certainly, the new Joker movie is a reflective character analysis in this regard. Even the long string of Marvel movies were part of a story arc that centered around stopping a ‘mad’ Titan, Thanos, from wiping out half the life in the universe. His murderous methods aside – which we assume are wrong – it’s difficult to say what’s wrong with Thanos’ motivations for those of you who are aware of them. I think it’s fair to want interesting villains – the world is not black-and-white after all – but we’ve reached the point where in America’s culture at least, we’re literally rooting for the bad guy.

Case in point; at last night’s WWE’s Hell In A Cell Pay-per-View (I apologize for still keeping tabs on professional wrestling at my age), a character called The Fiend did not win the championship match and fans in the audience were audibly upset. This Fiend character is very popular among the internet wrestling community to the point that fans would rather see him crowned champion than have a face (good guy) retain the gold. I agree that the character is interesting and that the heel (bad guy) needs to win on occasion to maintain the delicate and eternal dance between good and evil alive for the sake of storytelling, but for a crowd to nearly riot when the heel doesn’t win indicates something is possibly wrong with either the Western psyche, the current rules of society, or perhaps a matter of definitions. (It is possibly all of these.) I can point to actual current events to make my case.

The election of Donald Trump to President of the United States in 2016 couldn’t make my point clearer, being of the opinion that Donald Trump is clearly a villain. Why; what has he done that is so wrong? I could name a number of things and not be nearly exhaustive: Asking foreign powers to interfere in U.S. elections, accepting the word of despots over his own intelligence community, cavorting with said same despots, backing out of treaties with traditional allies and treating them with contempt, rolling back environmental and civil protections, coddling white supremists and stoking xenophobia, ignoring the U.S. Constitution (this is perhaps because he’s clearly never read it), embezzling from his charities, doing nothing about gun violence, and generally acting like a third-grade schoolyard bully. While I understand the frustration of many modern American voters with the federal government, I was aghast to find out a large swath of the U.S. thought Donald Trump was the answer. In my opinion, I can’t say Donald Trump has never done any good as U.S. president – even a broken clock is right twice a day by accident – but does the good outweigh the bad? No, because all things considered, the person in question wouldn’t be a villain. Inevitably, then, we’re forced to think about what exactly makes someone a villain.

What is a villain? The definition of ‘villain’ is broad throughout various dictionaries, meaning anything from the antithesis of the protagonist in fiction to generally someone doing harm to others in reality. In either case, a villain is typically breaking the law. They are considered dangerous or have behaved heinously towards any given person or group of people. A villain is often considered immoral, and therein lies a problem.

To some people, Donald Trump is a hero, a freedom fighter even. He is a protagonist to all those who feel they’ve been ignored, stepped on, or otherwise aggrieved by the federal government. The current president of the U.S. doesn’t play by the established laws, traditions, or unwritten social contract. This makes him a terrorist to some (in that word’s broadest sense) and a hero to others who feel that the current laws, traditions, and unwritten social contract need to be revised or reset to reflect some unspecified glory somewhere in America’s history. (Possible interpretation: When they felt more entitled.) So if a villain can also be a hero, there must either be something wrong with our definition or perhaps there is no such thing as a villain, objectively speaking.

It’s easy to contend there is something wrong with the definition. Scores of English words are too broad in their definition to be of much use or are outright confusing; ask anyone studying the English language. I contend that in modern U.S. culture, the definition of ‘villain’ is so ambiguous as to be vague to the point that many people would not know when they are behaving as a villain. (I’m not sure which is worse, a villain who knows they’re a villain or one who doesn’t know they’re a villain.) It also seems wrong to label anyone who offends us or that we simply don’t like as a villain, but that does seem to be the manner in which many Americans now operate.

Do villains exist, objectively speaking? Not if all cultures are relative, something we have to assume if not all cultures can agree that murder is wrong. (There’s always a caveat.) Villains can exist within a given culture, certainly, as there is no doubt that people have existed that have flouted the laws of a society they are seemingly a part of. Again, though, this allows a villain to be a hero to society’s downtrodden or any one outside of a society that would like to see that society fail. So it’s hard to say villains actually exist anymore than we can now say heroes exist. Now we can see that heroes merely prop up the rules of society, and this would make them villains in someone’s eyes somewhere.

My original feelings towards the Joker movie have to be misgiven. After all, what does his nemesis Batman do but prop up the rules in Gotham City? Imagine Batman having grown up in 1930’s Germany; what would he have been but a Nazi superhero come WWII? Thank goodness he’s not, but Batman must be seen as a villain by some law enforcement agencies; there are procedures for catching and detaining criminals and subsequently putting them on trial. When this sense of fairness is broken can we agree this is something villainous? In the Joker movie, the central figure that is Arthur Fleck is driven insane by a thousand unfair psychological cuts, so can we blame him for the anarchy that ensues?  Can we blame a mass shooter who goes on a rampage because they think they’ve been treated unfairly?

Hopefully you are saying ‘yes’ because you agree that murdering innocent people, people who have not directly affected the shooter, are being murdered and we have to agree this is wrong no matter what society we belong to. Breaking two fairness rules – making two wrongs – does not result in a right, correct? Unfortunately, any given mass shooter or lawbreaker will have sympathizers. (To say nothing of laws that should be broken either because they are apparently unethical or quite ridiculous.) It would make more sense for a mass shooter to only kill the people that have affected them assuming the punishment fits the crime against them and we’ve never seen that.

If we invoke this rule of fairness which we, Western culture, seem to have forgotten as of late it might be easier to gauge who the villains are when the doctrine of fairness is broken. Given the current impeachment inquiry regarding Donald Trump, his proponents can argue for an investigation into the Bidens ad nauseum, and I’d be okay with that, but so should there just as well be an investigation into Trump as well. The fact that Donald trump obstructs justice in a manner that most of us cannot violates the fairness doctrine. I think it therefore reasonable to construe him as a villain. Then again, his proponents see this ‘unfair’ characterization as exactly what’s wrong with current American culture (despite these same people not wanting to do anything about solving the problem of mass shootings, which I view as villainous). I can’t imagine asking a Donald Trump supporter what they think made Obama such a villain because it seems like their definition is going to wind up being arbitrary. In fairness, though, I am willing to hear them out. Villains on the other hand hear no one out and simply assume they are entirely in the right.

How the 2nd Amendment’s ‘Militia’ Argument Fails

On October 1, 2017, a gunman (name withheld for fear of glorifying a villain*) opened fire from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay on a concert in Las Vegas, killing at least 58 people and injuring hundreds more. Upon storming the room, authorities found the gunman had killed himself and left a cache of automatic and other weapons and ammunition in his wake. Little is known about the gunman other than he was local to the area and had a fondness for guns and gambling. As of this writing there is no known motive. Predictably, gun control advocates are frothing at the mouth while fake news about the gunman’s motives is directed at both ends of America’s political spectrum. None of this matters; it is already mostly forgotten in just one week.

[* He was a white male, though.]

There was, without hesitation, conversation about enacting gun control. (Okay, more like there was knee-jerk reaction by some to cry foul and plead for gun control measures while gun enthusiasts clenched their arms wide-eyed and white-knuckled.) Now, whenever gun right advocates fear regulation – any regulation – they inevitably invoke their 2^nd Amendment right which states, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The central tactic of gun rights advocates is to argue that in order to prevent a tyrannical government from imprisoning its citizenry or otherwise running roughshod over their lives, the public must be properly prepared to resist armed government assault. While I do not oppose the 2^nd Amendment’s basic principle, gun rights advocates wish to invoke the amendment to oppose any regulations of the arms they claim they have a right to bear. The argument is fallacious on several accounts.

First, and so obvious it is always overlooked, is the fact that there are already regulations regarding weapons. By this I mean although I am fearful of the current U.S. government invading my life and creating laws that limit my freedom (if not throw me in jail outright for being an atheist), I cannot own the weapons necessary to actually oppose the government if its jackbooted thugs come gunning for me. I cannot own nuclear weapons. I cannot own a fully functional tank. I cannot own an anti-aircraft missile launcher. Why not? Would these things not be useful in guaranteeing my freedom from a tyrannical government? Naturally, the counter argument here is to claim the things I am talking about are weapons of mass destruction and personal firearms are not that. As we saw with the Las Vegas shooting, personal firearms can indeed be weapons of mass destruction. Even if ‘bump stocks’ were banned – well, they are but are still easy to get – wouldn’t personal firearms in the hands of many people constitute a weapon of mass destruction? Coincidentally, just prior to the Las Vegas shooting, a bill was headed to the floor of Congress that would ease the sale of silencers to the public. UH, WHAT DOES JOHN Q. PUBLIC NEED WITH A SILENCER? The answer is nothing; the bill is sponsored by the gun lobby (shocker) that values money over lives. Imagine the Las Vegas shooter had used silencers – he could have and thank goodness he didn’t – think of how many more people he would have killed before people knew what was going on and where he was shooting from. (Certainly, silencers don’t silence a weapon, but it sure suppresses the sound.) Remember that American citizens are constitutionally guaranteed the right to free speech but that this right is not without limits, nor should it be. However, gun enthusiasts never acknowledge this basic fact, probably because they’d lose a whole lot of ground in their argument by conceding it.

Second, think of how a government attempting an armed takeover of the lives of its citizens would actually go. Well, it wouldn’t. The U.S. government doesn’t possess the manpower to intern the entire country to say nothing of the volunteer army that would side with their own families in such a conflict. Even if the government went after people one by one, there are so many guns available in the country that all citizens would be armed before too long. What’s that, but the government has bombers and tanks and nuclear weapons? In that case, please reference the previous paragraph. It seems to have escaped the notice of the vast number of Americans that the U.S. government has zero interest in an armed conflict with its own citizens in order to control them because, well, the citizenry is already under control. Is anyone at this point still denying the tremendous amount of influence corporations and other organizations have with the U.S. government? How do you think the silencer almost got to the floor of Congress to begin with? The bill will still get there; Congress just has to wait until the next iPhone release and no one is looking. Even if we forgot the lobbyists, companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to name just three of many, are data mining people to learn how best to get them to buy their products. They also want you to update their software constantly so that you waste huge amounts of your free time trying to undo the havoc each update causes. Meanwhile, Facebook’s AI’s main purpose is to learn what your preferences are and keep shoveling your own shit down your throat. Meanwhile, the U.S. – nay, world – food supply is largely run by just ten companies. And let us not forget the banks which are happy to tell you that you can’t borrow money because your value as a human being is tied to your credit score. Strangely enough, I don’t see anyone taking up arms against any of these corporations or organizations that control their lives far more than the U.S. government ever will.

Now, given these criticisms, gun rights advocates will claim they need their guns to protect themselves from criminals. Problem is, it is QUITE clear given the wording of the 2^nd Amendment that this is not why there is a right to bear arms. Statistical data, now at least three years old, shows that the “more guns, less crime” mantra of gun owners is utter bullshit. Gun owners are also FAR more likely to shoot themselves – whether accidentally or in the act of suicide – than to use a gun against a criminal. Here, we might add that no one owning and/or concealing a gun at the Las Vegas concert could have stopped the gunman, so that right there defeats this argument for gun ownership. Fortunately, government controlled police had the tools and weapons necessary to address the situation and no one complained. Please insert ‘confused’ emoji here.

Finally, let’s stop pretending that the Founding Fathers (FF), who ratified the 2^nd Amendment is 1791, are gods who knew everything and didn’t make mistakes. We’re talking about many of the same people who wrote that “all men are created equal” yet owned slaves. There is simply no way the FF could have foreseen the circumstances its citizens currently endure. There is no one, and I mean no one who knows what life in the U.S. will be like over two hundred years from now. We can’t fully expect laws we make today to remain relevant that far into the future. So let’s stop treating the U.S. Constitution as if a gentle breeze blew it off God’s desk the very second He dotted the last ‘i.’ Had the FF foreseen current circumstances, I like to believe they would have been more clear about the 2^nd Amendment. But, if God couldn’t be clearer about ‘thou shalt not murder,’ why should we expect clarity from bureaucrats? Seeing how we cannot, maybe we need to come to our own conclusions that are relevant to life in America today.

Should there be a right to bear arms? In principle the answer is now maybe. Or, yes, if only to make the owner feel safer; we can’t have snowflakes worrying about sharing the street with a black man, after all. The reality is that America does need its gun because in the words of comedian Jim Jefferies, “There is one argument and one argument alone for having guns, and this is the argument: ‘Fuck off. I like guns.’” And that’s okay; we can like guns. And, maybe, we can have guns. But also maybe not before America gets a grip on its criminally insane mental problem.