Billy Russo and turning the conventionally attractive villain trope on its head

Warning! Mentions of sexual assault

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.

Peter Pan was wrong

aka never growing up turns you into an amoral, self-centered person that only cares about instant gratification

(Source: Disney's Peter Pan)

I’ve just now read Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. Of course I know the story already. I have seen the Disney movie and a theater play, so I know what’s going on. The story is universally regarded as a fun and whimsical tale of childish imagination. Never having to grow up and instead spending your days having adventures on the island of Neverland seems to many a dream come true. Shirts with the slogan “Peter Pan was right” are worn, because being an adult isn’t all that /it’s cracked up to be/ and really being a child had been so much nicer and simpler and thus, Peter Pan was right in refusing to grow up.

What struck me in reading, however, is the way in which Peter is portrayed. Because he isn’t portrayed to be the friendly and playful fun guy he is in the movie (and in pop culture). It already begins when he leads the Darlings to Neverland. He has absolutely zero regard for their safety or comfort, they matter to him so little, that he momentarily forgets they’re even there. It is mentioned that Wendy is scared for their lives, because they are utterly at Peter’s mercy here.

When they reach Neverland the disconcerting instances and descriptors of Peter’s behavior continue:

• The most obvious unsettling aspect is that he’s super murder happy. Adventures for him often mean killing people (or animals) and he rejoices in a kill with glee. “He might have forgotten it [an adventure] so completely that he said nothing about it; and then when you went out you found the body” “‘There’s a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us’, Peter told him. ‘If you’d like, we can go down and kill him.’”
• While the children admire Peter as their leader, it is clear that they are also very scared of him. He demands complete obedience and punishes disobedience. He is unpredictable in his moods and his judgements. The lost boys are willing to kill for him without a second thought and after making a mistake one of the boys actually expects Peter to kill him for his failure. Furthermore, he always wants to be the best in everything and does not allow for competition.
• Something more subtle that I found very unsettling is that make-believe is real for him and he for example does not need to eat because if he pretends he’s eating he will get nourishment from it. The boys, however, don’t. So, they often go hungry. Everything is a game to him, even the things that genuinely scare and hurt the children. It’s obvious that he doesn’t care for the children where they don’t concern him, because he does what he wants and what he feels like doing without any regard for anyone else. He has apparently no concept of time and his memory is unreliable at best. Later, after Tinkerbell dies, he even forgets she ever existed.
• Even when Peter does something heroic, it is made clear that his motives are mostly selfish. When he comes to rescue the children from the pirates, he doesn’t really do it because he wants to save them, but because he wants to kill Hook once and for all.
• The following sentence is to me one of the most unsettling: “The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out” Not only do the children Peter snatches up regularly get killed on the island, the sentence implies that Peter himself kills them when they get older.  

In the end we follow Wendy as she grows up and has a daughter of her own. Peter Pan comes to take her daughter away to Neverland and her daughter after that and so forth. He stays exactly the same but has forgotten most things he did before like he has forgotten Tinkerbell’s existence. The children in the real world grow up and change and make new experiences and learn new things and build a character and a life while Peter can do none of those things. He comes to the window from time to time to take a girl with him to be his mother for a while until they leave to live their lives. He stays lonely, moving from one exciting adventure to the next, because that’s all he can do. While the end is written in a much happier tone than that, it still makes me sad.

Over and out

P.S. The Honest Trailer of the Disney movie mentions some of this as well.

Female Villain Archive 4: Hela

(Source:  https://nerdist.com/thor-loki-encounter-hela-first-time-ragnarok/)

First of all, I am so glad to be able to include Hela in this list. Because there was the danger of her not being interesting or noteworthy at all and at the worst a sexy seductress. Don't get me wrong, she is plenty sexy (everytime she was on screen, you could hear me whisper 'I'm so gay'), but that's not what she is about.

Spoiler Warning for Thor: Ragnarok!

What Hela (Cate Blanchett) is about, is war and conquest. Imprisoned by her father Odin (who continues to be the absolute worst father in the history of ever) when he couldn't control her anymore, she is now, after his death, back with a vengeance. In earlier days when Asgard was young, it wasn't peaceful at all. Odin and Hela conquered worlds together and waged war together. And all she wants esentially is to restore Asgard to its old imperialist glory. But Odin has - quite literally - painted over that past and Asgard's populace is not willing to help her with her plan. So she kills them. Simple as that.
As is typical for Marvel villains she is rather one-dimensional in her murder happiness and doesn't have the most complex motivation. She is, however, strong enough and a big enough danger that the only thing that can stop her is the apocalypse.
Another thing I like about her is that through her being the resprensentation of aggressive imperialism that can only be defeated with the destruction of the previously imperialist nation, the movie is notably anti-imperialist. Nice.

What is Black Mirror about?

What prompted this, is a post I read on the internet. (I know. I know.) The post said something along the lines of "how many more variations of 'thomas edison is a witch' can Black Mirror come up with". The obvious criticism here is, that Black Mirror is not only uninventive but that all their episodes have the same reactionist theme of  'technology is bad and we should all be afraid of it'. On the surface that might even be true. The show is, after all, named after the smartphone screen and freatures bleak dystopias that aim to teach us something about the present. In the folowing, however, I will argue that this interpretation of Black Mirror is far too simplified and that, in fact, the show doesn't present the message that technology is bad per se and rather abuse and misuse of technology is bad. Additionally, it showcases how technology can be used to amplify the worst in people and society as a whole.

Using a few episodes as an example, I'll explain what I believe to be the "moral" of the respective episodes and no, it's not going to be 'technology is bad'. (While I'm tempted to, I won't discuss all episodes, 1. because I'm not finished with the newest season and 2. because that would take too long.)

 

Examples:

15 Million Merits: The plot takes place in a future clearly very different form our world and still what it criticizes is present nowadays, too: consumer culture and the monetization of just about anything. Technology here is just the framework.  

The Entire History of You: On first glance every problem in this episode wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the 'grain' imbedded in one's brain recording everyone's every move. In the end the main character even cuts his out to be rid of it. BUT the actual source of the problem isn't the grain itself, it's the main character's (somewhat obsessive) jealousy (and the fact that his girlfriend cheated on him). These are conflicts that happen with or without technology. Furthermore, the episode calls into question the human desire to know everything for sure and to have a record of everything. The technology of the grain is here just a means to an end.

White Bear: It doesn't even feature technology all that heavily and criticizes an apathetic (or even extatic) spectator culture and lust for violence.

The Waldo Moment: While this episode features a criticism of social media, it's about how social media can be misused by those in power and by the masses who don't reflect on social media hypes. Furthermore, the plot of this episode sadly and scarily did somewhat happen in reality even without futurized technology to aid it.

Nosedive: Social media again, this time as a source for validation. The plot, however, would work just as well without social media and did in fact in similar stories. Nosedive criticizes the reliance on outside validation and using someone's social standing as a determinator for their life.

Shut Up and Dance: This is just straightforward blackmailing. No criticism of technology at all. Just a, don't be an asshole and be careful who knows your darkest secrets.

San Junipero: This episode, one of BM's only happy episodes, actually shows us how technology can be good. Allowing the main women to lead a happy "life" together in a computer generated heaven after their death.

Men Against Fire: Here, the propaganda strategy of dehumanizing enemies (around ever since humans came together in groups and started fighting against other groups) is taken to the max with the help of technology. It is the strategy itself and not the implants that is the main focus.

USS Callister: The antagonist is the creepy asshole who put these people into the simulation against their will, not the simulation itself. In the end, the people manage to escape him and lead a happy life (so is the implication) in the simulation that is used in the real world as an immersive video game.  The fact that this simulation exists, is not presented as in any way harmful. Harmful is what the creepy asshole does with it.

So yeah, I hope I have shown that BM is much more than simple progress and technology critique. And even if it was, the issues it raises are varied enough not to be repetetive (at least in my opinion). Furthermore, I believe that just because BM cautions against the abuse of technological advancements (and the related phenomena) and shows how dystopias could theoretically grow out of them if we continue on this "slippery slope" (a nod to Margaret Atwood), it doesn't mean that BM condemms technology as a whole and tells us we should move back to the Stone Age. Knowing the risks of something is a first and necessary step to responsible use and further development. 

Over and Out

Fun Character Concepts #1: 10K from Z Nation

These are going to be short examinations of character concepts I enjoy. This list won’t ever be finished nor will it have some kind of ranking. I also don’t pretend to be the first one to describe these concepts nor can I guarantee that they will be free of well-known tropes. This is just for fun.

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I’ve seen him referred to as “apocalypse puppy”. This term already suggests the deeply paradoxical nature of his character: on the one hand something young and sweet and innocent and on the other hand something gruesome and brutal and decidedly not innocent. This dichotomy is what makes him as a character interesting and appealing. 

But who am I talking about exactly?

This is 10K. When we are first introduced to him, we don’t even see him as he snipes a zombie about to eat one of the others. The first time we really see him, he’s walking down the road and answers a “do you need a ride?” with a shrug. He’s noticeably young (and going back to season 1 after watching season 2 and some things from season 3, it’s especially striking how young he looks) and dressed in urban military gear complete with a sniper rifle and more weapons (more weapons than he should reasonably be able to carry as we’d see a few episodes later). He doesn’t talk much and when he does, it’s to remind the audience of how young he is and how sheltered he lived before the apocalypse (“never seen porn”). He has very limited social skills, mostly because he spent at least a year all on his own, but he has all the other skills that might be helpful in an apocalypse. As the son of a hardcore survivalist, he knows how to hunt and fish and is an expert in killing zombies, not only as a world class sniper but also with a slingshot or whatever’s at hand. The name he gives the group, and us, is ’10 000’, the amount of zombies he wants to kill and when we first hear the number, he’s already at over 1 000 (his given name, as we find out later, is Tommy, making the clash already obvious in his names).

So, in a fight he’s absolutely lethal. The one with the undisputed highest kill count (which doesn’t only include zombies, but also living people). He’s ridiculously competent in anything pertaining survival. And he’s super awkward in any and all prolonged social interactions. When forced into those, his face and body language convey discomfort or confusion. The way he deals with emotion is distinctly child-like.

All of this creates a compelling dissonance.

Furthermore, the concept presented here differs from these related ones, which I will call ‘apocalypse child’ and ‘murder puppy’. An ‘apocalypse child’ (like for example Carl from The Walking Dead) is forced to grow up quickly due to the less than ideal circumstances (mostly, however, surrounded by people that care about them). They are typically serious and emotionally distant. Only very rarely do they show signs of still being a child at all. The ‘murder puppy’ in contrast is overly emotional, mostly in a childishly enthusiastic way. They might kill without remorse (or even with joy) and smile brightly at their friends immediately after. These characters often seem unsettling due to the mixture of childishness and murder-happiness.

10K is neither. While he is more serious, he still retains some of his childish innocence (at least in season 1 and 2) despite being older than your average ‘apocalypse child’. And while he likes guns and revels in zombie kills it never reaches ‘murder puppy’ heights.

In season 2, another character says about him “he’s a child with a gun” and while it is meant as an insult, it’s technically right.

Introducing Hopepunk! - "There is good in this world and it's worth fighting for"

In different genres of media there is this prevalence of things being extremely dark. Life is hard and unfair and it turns you unfeeling and cynical. There are whole TV shows centered around the constant disillusionment with the world as a whole (Gotham, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and House of Cards, just to name a few examples). To counter that phenomenon, popularly called "grimdark", a tumblr post proposed what they called "hopepunk". It's not about turning a blind eye to the world's problems, but about seeing and recognizing the problems and instead of reacting with tired acceptance and cynicism, reacting with activism and kindness.

This aforementioned tumblr post gave the following excerpt as sort of the definition of what hopepunk is about:


The world may be dark and it may seem hopeless, but we cannot give up. We will not allow this grim and cruel reality to steal our kindness and our softness and to turn us hard and uncaring. On the contrary, we will be even kinder, even more caring, we will fight back. We will not give up hope and we will not give up ourselves, because we believe that there is something worth saving, something good and salvageable. We trust that one day in the future, maybe not soon, maybe not even in our lifetimes, but one day in the future our fight will bear fruit.
This is the essence of hopepunk (the post elaborates on it a bit more and very eloquently).

The post also talks about real world examples of hopepunk, but I want to focus on media examples, because I sometimes have the feeling that a lot of shows, movies, etc. seem to show us that cynicism is inevitable and that softness equals weakness and hopepunk is the opposite of that.

Wonder Woman is what comes to my mind almost immediately. It is arguably about Diana's disillusionment with humanity. In the beginning she believes humans to be wholly good and innocent and puts all the blame on Ares. Then she learns that humans are deeply flawed and that killing Ares won't end the war and return the world to peace and for a few moments she is close to giving up. But what is really important about this movie, is her reaction to the disillusionment. Instead of being cynical and turning away from humanity, she continues to fight for it, because she has seen with her own eyes the potential and the good that there is in humans despite their flaws. She continues to be hopeful and kind despite what Ares wanted to make of her.

The world of Mad Max: Fury Road is post-apocalyptic and undeniably terrible. And yet the plot starts (the actual plot, not the Max part of it) because a beaten and broken woman cared more than anyone could have expected of her. Imperator Furiosa who has suffered at the hands of the cruel ruler does not continue on his legacy of cruelty. Instead she decides to risk everything to try and safe his slave brides and take them to a green and safe space. And then when the green space turns out to be long gone, a desert in its place, they turn around to topple the tyrant, because there is hope. Despite all there is hope. An old woman takes seeds with her, not because she expects to be there to see them grow, but because she believes someone will and that's all that matters.

Hopepunk is also a strong theme in the original Star Wars movies (and Rogue One, too). Hell, episode 4 is called "A New Hope". The galaxy is under facist rule, but there are people not willing to take it. They face almost insurmountable odds and in their struggle they often lose. Hope is sometimes all they have. When an imprisoned Leia sends a message with R2D2, when the rebels fly to destroy the Deathstar, when Luke tries to save his friends and so on. Characters routinely choose love over duty and in the end Luke only manages to defeat Emperor Palpatine because he still believed in the good in his father despite all evidence to the contray. All the main characters in Rogue One die, but the movie frames their stories not as failures but as successes, because while they personally might have died, their sacrifice was worth it, because it brought hope.

There are almost certainly some more examples. These are just the ones I came up with right now. Hopepunk stories are some of my favorites because they carry an optimism I often find myself lacking. That makes them so important for me. Related to that, characters that embrace the hopepunk attitude are also some of my favorite characters.

Over and out

P.S. There are some quotes I associate with hopepunk:
"Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage not weakness." - Katherine Henson 
"Be soft, don't let the world make you hard./ Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place." - Iain S. Thomas
"All this pain and loneliness and misery and it just made him kind." - from Doctor Who, a show that, too, carries a lot of optimism 

Add-on: Related to this, is the symbolism of outfitting Captain America with a shield (to protect) and the Doctor with a screwdriver (to fix) instead of traditional weaponry.

Female Villain Archive 3: Amy Dunne

(Source: https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Rosamund-Pikes-Character-In-Gone-Girl-Was-So-Frighteningly-FuckedUp-It-Was-Brilliant/#.ejhuzy9t3)

Spoiler Warning for those who have neither read the book nor seen the movie, but still want to. 

If Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), from Gillian Flynn's novel Gone Girl and the movie with the same name, is actually a villain, is up for debate. She is, however, such an interesting and outstanding character that she more than deserves the mention. In her book Gillian Flynn plays with well established thriller tropes to create something different. The female murder victim of the abusive husband is not actually dead. Not only that, but she meticulously staged the whole murder as well the history of abuse. Even though both the novel and the movie start out with the husband's, Nick's, perspective, the audience questions his innocence as he begins to look more and more guilty. When it is revealed that Amy staged her kidnapping and invented most of the incriminating diary entries, the game changes. Amy morphs from 'the victim' to an 'angel of vengeance' who wants to punish Nick for his wrongdoings. As the audience uncovers more about her past it becomes clear that this isn't a new development, that she has been like this long before she ever met Nick. Amy had always punished wrongdoings of friends, lovers and even strangers with carefully planned extreme means. Amy rejects notions of femininity while outwardly conforming to them. She is an imperfect character that suffers under the pressure to be perfect always and forever.