Big Ed's PlaceNo one’s a villain in their own mind
I recently caught an old movie showing on television–the Running Man, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. There’s a ‘kick the dog’ scene early on, and it reminded me how much I get irked at poorly drawn villains.
A ‘kick the dog’ scene is one where the villain does something nasty or evil simply to demonstrate how nasty or evil they are. In the Running Man, the villain fired a janitor for the sin of spilling water on the villain’s shoes. After accepting the janitor’s apology, of course. It’s a trope (a scene used so often in fiction/film/TV that the audience knows what it means) and so I’m sure y’all can come up with your favorite examples.
The thing is, it’s gotten to the point where it irritates me enough to take me out of the story. Because no one’s a villain in their own mind. Despite Iago’s protestations and despite the skulking of countess Hedleys tying women to the railroad tracks, that’s just not the way people think.
Hitler wanted to make the world a better place for the Germans and the Aryan Race. Osama bin Laden wants to re-establish a Muslim based world, without the ‘evil’ of the West. Even your petty crook often sees himself as a daring bandit, demonstrating how clever or powerful he is by ripping of “those chumps” or “those people who deserve it.” Think about how we romanticize pirates. Isn’t it cool to call out yar har! and “avast ye matey” and talk of booty and plunder, and gloss over the murders committed by the same pirates? I’m sure the pirates downplayed that end of it as well. We romanticize Westley from The Princess Bride, when, as the Dread Pirate Roberts who never lets any of his prisoners live, he has to have murdered a great number of people.
I think it’s partially the nature of being human. We have no choice but to be the protagonists in our own stories. There’s also some good psychological literature on how people justify bullying or being prejudiced (and some day I’ll post about it). The point is, people find some rationalization or some belief system that allows them to be the hero, and not the villain, in their own mind.
So, back to fiction–why take the trope shortcut? It doesn’t take that many more words to give the villain a more realistic motivation and improve the piece. Taking an example from my own work–Hayley in Dealing with the Devil. Hayley’s a freaking sociopath, who manipulates and abuses those around her. But what’s going on in her mind?
When I wrote her, I imagined that her dominant mental conversation was all about how great she was and how much fun it was to show how great she was. She was a ‘hero’ by being so clever and so ‘powerful.’ And she was even doing a favor by passing on some of her skills and attitudes to her ‘little sister’ (Regan). She’s even sees herself as generous for the favors (well, she calls them that) she does for her friends. I think it comes across well, making her far nasty than someone who’d just kick the dog.
There are some other good examples. I love Silence of the Lambs, because you see how both villains think and operate. I like the movie Heat, which also gives you both the villains and the cops point of view. I haven’t seen the Sopranos, but from what I’ve heard, it does the same.
Which makes it so annoying when I do encounter the ‘kick the dog’ trope. Take The Running Man–c’mon. Can’t you have simply replaced that 30 second scene with a discussion about how the death of Arnie would be so spectacular to see? Show the lust for ratings. Show the complete disregard for the humanity or the innocence/guilt of the condemned. Hell, throw in a dialogue line like “Burn, baby burn!” which demonstrated how evil some Enron folks were and are. It wouldn’t have been than much harder, and it wouldn’t have taken more screen time.
And so I’m irked at the writer, completely losing the fun of an escapist old movie, replaying on TV.
A good post on this subject: http://ohgetagrip.blogspot.com/2009/07/putting-villain-into-villanelle.html