Spoiler for the first season of The Punisher
Source: http://de.marvel-filme.wikia.com/wiki/Billy_Russo
There's this thing that fanfom often does with conventionally attractive villains (that are most often white guys). By virtue of their good looks their actions are excused*. They are reinterpreted as misunderstood and shipped with the respective hero. Some people hate this, some love it and I'm not here to discuss the merits of or problems with this trope. I'm here to talk about how the Netflix show The Punisher subverts it.
Meet Billy Russo (Ben Barnes). He’s attractive and he’s evil, so he could be a classic example.
His apparent attractiveness is not even something the fandom only constructed, the show itself constantly has other characters commenting on it. The show also doesn’t pretend that he isn’t despicable. After a misdirection in the first few episodes he is consistently presented as cold, uncaring and selfish. A sociopath who has limited to zero regard for other people and who fakes any empathy.
This, however, usually doesn’t deter fandom. No matter how abhorrent a character is, if they have a certain level of conventional attractiveness, people will woobify them (again, no judgement, I know there are reasons for this).
This show stops this process in its tracks by making it explicit. Billy’s not only conventional but exceptional good looks are constantly made obvious in the universe itself (nearly every episode someone calls him some variation of ‘pretty’). Furthermore, it is made clear that he himself uses his attractiveness as a weapon to appeal to people and to manipulate them. He, for example, sleeps with the Homeland agent investigating an issue he is part of to push her into a more comfortable direction and find out what she knows.
In the course of the show his attractiveness is deconstructed when it is revealed that he was sexually assaulted as a child, even mentioning the word ‘pretty’ (“when a grown man tells you you’re pretty, you know nothing good is coming”). So naturally, being called pretty is something he resents. He kills another Homeland officer, who has called him ‘pretty’ on more than one occasion, with the angry words “who’s pretty now”, even though he’s been shown to be a disaffected killer before.
Still, the show does not use his past as a justification for his actions (on the contrary, the character himself explicitly rejects the idea that he has just lost his way). His world revolves around himself, other people are only a concern insofar as to how they relate to him* (exemplified with the fitting line “This doesn’t serve me!”). Therefore, hurt he inflicts does not matter, since other people do not matter, but hurt he receives is a grievous offence that calls for retribution. Nevertheless, he is not needlessly cruel or malicious (going so far as to openly mock his boss for his bloodlust). Yes, he does torture and murder and kidnap, but it’s always a means to an end. For example: meeting Frank at the carousel where his family was murdered and wounding two innocents is not because he revels in pain and loves making Frank relive his trauma but instead those are tactical decisions to throw Frank off his game and give himself some edge.
All of this makes for an uncomfortable (but interesting) character.
In the end, his face is cut up to the point where it will definitely not be pretty anymore even if it heals properly. It’s done precisely to take his good looks away from him. Frank promised to make him suffer the way he suffered. Considering Billy never had a family and indeed does not have a single person who he cares about, this promise is not easy to fulfill. Frank finally decides that his looks are the one thing he can still lose - in addition to his reputation, his power, his money - that will make Billy feel the loss.
I’m just glad that the showrunners decided on this way to do their villain. And I haven’t even started to talk about the beauty that is his dynamic with Frank, our protagonist. That, however, is a talk for another time.
Satori over and out
*Tvtropes calls this “Draco in Leather Pants” - and while yeah, this page does paint female fandom negatively and is quite judgy while pretending to be neutral, it’s still useful as a collection of instances of what I describe in the beginning.
*It’s the same thing I that I mentioned in my Peter Pan post. And while that comparison - Billy Russo is like Peter Pan - might seem completely out there, it does make sense. Hear me out. Billy never really had a childhood - abandoned by his mother, the assault, the horror of the foster system - and thus, he’s never able to properly grow up at least not in any normal or healthy way which makes him retain a child’s narcissistic Peter-Pan-like worldview.
