Episode 98: Heroes & Villains, Part 1

[Gilberto]

Sean and Johnny talk about the state of heroes and villains in movies today, weighing the positive message of Avatar against the disturbing trends in modern thinking that are embracing remakes of Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave.

Indiana Jones and John McClane are helping regular guys discover their inner Batman while bad guys like Freddy and Jason give us a taste of pure evil. So what happens when the line gets blurred? Have we lost our knack for myth building? Will the characters of Avatar endure as long as Sherlock Holmes? Or have we lost the ability to create something new that will stand the test of time?

This blurb makes us sound a lot more profound than we really. We're pretty much just talking about movies.

media.libsyn.com/media/darkcrazy/TVAMD_heroesvillainsFINAL.mp3

[lynn]

You're funny guys, you nailed the point of revenge tragedy as a genre while reviling it for what it is. Those rape revenge movies are part of a long line of texts featuring revenge that serve to show you that in getting revenge you become the monster. It's not uplifting but there is a message. One of my favourites in this genre is "The Revenger's Tragedy" it's an old text. Forget who it is by. But it's full of macabre humour. Maybe that's what these things miss, that dark humour, it's all about the mess.
Something else that's funny is when Sean first heard Last house on the Left was being remade his reaction was "What's next, I spit on your grave?"
As for Heroes, I quite like Xander, from Buffy. He's got no superpowers, not even very brainy or strong or anything, in fact there's a reason he's always the "butt-monkey", but every time she needs help he rushes in to rescue Buffy or whoever because it's the right thing to do. It's all very well to save the girl when you're superman and nothing can kill you, but damn, that dude loses an eye and eats insects and everything and he's unfazed. Go Xander.

[Gilberto]

He became a hyena person once too. I like Xander because not even the writers show him respect, but he keeps on going. The powerless characters are always under appreciated.

[lynn]

But really, it's easier to be brave when you're a super-witch or the chosen one or something, but he's brave without anything. awesome. He's everyone who isn't Buffy.

[Gilberto]

He's also the moral compass. All the characters who develop super powers on the show become more and more corrupted by them. And they form a class structure that considers power people elite while disregarding normal people. Xander is constantly marginalized and ignored while Buffy turns to soulless Spike for help all the time. It's a statement about the writers too, because they're clearly more comfortable writing super-powered goons rather than frail human beings. That makes it a statement on society too. We find escapism in monsters but shy away from characters with strong ties to their own humanity.

[lynn]

Yeah, I love how Xander is just black and white, Spike's a vampire, kill Spike, Angel is vampire, kill Angel, it's not rocket science. Buffy's not that clever but she can't figure these things out?And she certainly doesn't listen to Xander. At least they left Xander the way he is, he didn't get superpowers. Maybe also speaks to Joss' love of super-powered women over men.

[Gilberto]

I think it's a metaphor for how the rich and famous hold themselves above everyone else. Buffy blindly follows anyone in the super powers club (robbing sporting goods stores with Faith, asking Spike to babysit her little sister AFTER he tries to rape her), but she thinks anyone normal is useless. Powerful people think they follow a different set of rules. This is a constant source of calamity for Buffy's gang, but through the whole series it's a lesson she never learns.

[lynn]

What does Buffy learn in that series? Dont sleep with vamp- wait no... kill all vamp- wait, not that either... don't trust baddies? No. Grow up? Don't let them get the first punch in? Listen to the adults who know better, don't send them back to England? Wait, Buffy sucks, why is she the hero of the show?

[Gilberto]

Yeah, Buffy pretty much learns nothing. Angel has more of a cathartic arc in his series (especially if you compare him to the devil-may-care yutz he is in the first episode of Buffy), but neither of them ever come to value the supporting characters they have. Neither of them would make it through the day without their useless friends, but they're always dismissing them and making unilateral decisions that prove to be disastrous. Maybe that's where Whedon's cynicism comes in. He's not a lazy writer and he's not ignorant of his characters' motivations, so it seems like the point he's trying to make is that powerful people hold themselves above everyone else and ultimately learn nothing. There's no dynamic quality to characters that are already seemingly superior to everybody else in practically every way.

[lynn]

Maybe that was why Firefly was so much better; most of the characters weren't superpowered and the one that was was just plain crazy. So everyone got to be and do and live, not just be powerful and boring.

[Gilberto]

True. And even though the show centered on Reynolds, he wasn't the star above the others. It was a well-balanced ensemble. I think the movie suffered from the fact that the story featured River a little more with all her ninja fighting and melee with space zombies. Book got marginalized into a side character instead of a member of the inner circle and Wash's death was pointless and hollow.

[lynn]

Wash's death was pointless and hollow, but perhaps that was the point. Not all deaths are heroic or meaningful. In fact most are not. But I thought it was a good way to go; "I am a leaf!" BANG dead. He went out on a high. But I agree that the marginalisation of the important side characters weakened the movie.

[ringoosu]

I think sometimes creators just get a little tempermental when their shows don't get picked up. Wheedon kills off Wash in the movie. Chris Carter offs the Lone Gunmen in an x-files episode appropriately titled "Jump the Shark." Both deaths were rather meaningless in the overall storyline, and really hurt me as a fan:(

[Gilberto]

Yeah, I think they don't consider the fans when they make those decisions. Serenity was a box office failure because Joss was more interested in writing it as a finale to the series than as a movie. New viewers were confused and fans were a little irritated, so there was no one pushing to turn that movie into a franchise. Getting a 12 episode show turned into a movie was an opportunity that he just wasted.

[lynn]

Yeah, the whole "somebody has to die to make us care about everyone" thing annoys me too.