Posts in the "“Anti hero” doesn’t mean “bad guy”!" Category

• Something Some Shade of Gray This Way Comes

  "Anti hero" doesn't mean "bad guy"!

  Like Brad, I’ve always gravitated more to the smuggler than the knight, the Han Solos instead of the Luke Skywalkers. I generally find the choices anti-heroes make, and the paths they take, more unexpected, and their narratives more compelling.

  I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore, but when I do, it’s usually a show like The Sopranos, The Wire, or Deadwood. Not surprisingly, these were all put out by HBO, who had a ridiculously hot run there for a while creating really meaty shows about conflicted and contradictory (and in many instances, really unsavory) characters. Anti-heroes abound.

  While the term “anti-hero” is open to interpretation, and seems to suggest different things to different people, the definition that seems to have the most traction is an anti-hero is a central character (if not the sole protagonist, certainly one of the bigs), who occupies the position in the story that often would be held by the archetypal “good guy/gal”. Only the anti-hero is usually outside the bounds of respectable/acceptable behavior, and often deeply flawed—he might be a corrupt cop or a ruthless politician; she might be a thief or a selfish arms dealer. But regardless, the anti-hero isn’t beholden to the rules that your run of the mill hero fights so hard to maintain or protect. The anti-hero might not be pure eeeeeevil, but he or she isn’t scared of breaking bones or laws. The ends justifies the means. Sometimes the means justify the means. (more…)

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• Step away from the paladin. Slowly…

  "Anti hero" doesn't mean "bad guy"!
  

  Bradley P. Beaulieu

  I like antiheroes.

  Why do I like antihoeroes?

  Well, because they challenge my expectations. I grew up reading heroes and heroines that fell into a pretty nifty heroic box. It starts with fairy tales, of course, but moves on to guys like, well, Bilbo and Frodo. Natch. And Sturm Brightblade and King Aurthur and Rand al’Thor and Luke Skywalker.

  But damned if they aren’t boring after a while. It’s not Luke we like, is it? It’s Han. It’s not Sturm, but Raistlin. Why? Because there was something about those characters. In Raistlin we knew early on that that was something not quite right about him. He didn’t act like Gandalf at all, did he? He had his own agenda and his own methods. And yet he wasn’t all bad. He certainly had a soft spot for his brother, Caramon. But at the same time he was singularly focused on his goals, and at times he did some pretty nasty things to get there. And in Han’s case… Well, there’s something about the rogue, isn’t there?

  Corwin of Amber was an interesting study. Here was a guy who woke up with amnesia and had to piece together his past before his family managed to kill him. His quest wasn’t terribly heroic, at least in the beginning, and we saw him acting pretty ruthlessly to (a) stay alive and (b) figure out why someone was trying to kill him. That it was his family that was after him made it all the more interesting. Corwin wasn’t a bad guy, but neither did he evoke the typical traits of the hero. (more…)

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• Everyone is the Hero of Their Own Autobiography

  "Anti hero" doesn't mean "bad guy"!
  

  Carol Wolf is the hero of her own autobiography, and Tay is her supporting actor, though he doesn't see it that way.

  One of the best things about starting out as a writer by writing plays, is that your characters talk back to you. Literally.

  For example, you sit down at the first rehearsal of your play, with the actors reading around the table, and at the end of the reading one of the actors says, “Why do I pour out my sister’s glass of milk?” And the fact is, the reason Jasper pours out his sister’s glass of milk is that I need the glass to be empty so that Aunt Ada can hilariously fill it with the potion she has made, causing the girl to speak the truth at the worst possible moment . . . But you can’t say “Just because,” to an actor. Actors can’t do something “just because” and be true to their character. And since they are creating a whole world (the world of the play) by being true to its realities, and their conviction is what convinces the audience, and if they don’t have that, they’re just a bunch of people messing around on stage. So you cannot arm your actors with lies. So in the rewrite, Jasper poured out the milk because he has been warned that the milk has been cursed, and then he thinks it’s true because of the effect it has on his sister.

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• Good Guys Wear Black

  "Anti hero" doesn't mean "bad guy"!

  As a kid I became aware of the classification ‘anti-hero’ relating to 70s movies (Travis Bickle, Paul Kersey), but my definition of  the term starts with a paperback ‘pulp’ novel series, Don Pendleton’s The Executioner. 

  Begun in 1969, The Executioner told the story of Mack Bolan, a decorated Viet Nam vet, whose family is destroyed by the Mafia (father gets in with the sharks, kills mother and self, brother is killed by mobsters, sister is forced into prostitution).  Bolan returns to the States and, using his military skills, declares war on them.  He spends the next thirty-eight books (from #1 War Against the Mafia to #38, Satan’s Sabbath) murdering hundreds, thousands of mobsters and causing all kinds of mayhem among organized crime.  However–he never kills civilians, and always goes out of his way to save them.  He’s known as ‘The Executioner’ on the battlefield, but also as ‘Sergeant Mercy’ because of his concern with the innocent victims of war.  He never hurts cops, and always plans for getting the non-combatants out of harm’s way.  Brave, honest, dedicated to his friends and his sense of honor, Bolan is a perfect ‘classical’ hero…plus, he kills a lot of bad guys.

  That is an anti-hero. 

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• How do you like your heroes?

  "Anti hero" doesn't mean "bad guy"!

  Anti-hero is one of those terms that seemed really obvious when I looked at this week’s theme – taking it quite literally, the antithesis of heroic – but then I started thinking that it depends what you define as heroic, and I found this definition: “the central character in a play, book or film who does not have traditionally heroic qualities, such as bravery, and is admired instead for what society generally considers to be a weakness of their character”.

  The first part of the above is self-explanatory – the second part I found much more interesting in considering what makes a hero or anti-hero, because it argues that the perception of what is heroic, or not heroic, is down to the society in which you, or your characters, are living. The culture I’m part of traditionally idealises traits such as bravery and strength – the hero who fights for his or her castle/country/planet/children/lover, often making personal sacrifices to do so, and generally acting for altruistic reasons. When it comes down to big budget film industry, Hollywood is dominated by heroes who run around saving the world, sometimes in tights, sometimes in a fighter jet, sometimes in court. These characters might be heroic from the start, or they might discover heroic qualities within themselves along the way, but with the hero narrative you know by the end they are going to ‘come good’ and perform their world-saving destiny with suitable panache. (more…)

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• The Thin Gray Line

  "Anti hero" doesn't mean "bad guy"!
  

  Paul Tobin

  The topic of this post is near and dear to me, because I’ve seen way too many outright bad guys portrayed as heroes… meaning absolute merciless killers considered as “anti-heroes” rather than as… well… merciless killers. When an author (for prose, film, comics, television, etc) wants an anti-hero, the most common (and laziest) way to portray that is by having the hero commit countless numbers of variably-leveled crimes, and that’s fine. But only to a point. For me, one of the quintessential anti-heroes is Dashiell Hammett’s “Continental Op” character, especially in Red Harvest. He’s always forced to lie in his reports to the agency… he has a string of petty crimes and a string of fairly major crimes as well. He’s broken a couple hearts he knew damn well he was breaking. He’s broken a few men that he took a measure of pleasure in breaking. He’s broken a few bottles after a long night of drinking. He’s broken the law and he’s broken nearly every moral code. But he has a line that he doesn’t cross. He’s not an outright murderer. He doesn’t torture. He’s doing a job that he thinks needs to be done. He’s moving the world in a direction that he thinks it needs to move and he’s willing to die not for the glory of it all, and not even because he necessarily thinks it’s the way of justice, but simply because that’s who he is. It’s what he does.

  And then there’s the other side of the coin.

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