Villains: The Ones We Love to Hate

Everyone knows we are supposed to hate the villains in the story. They are the bad guys, the ones who are throwing a wrench into the safety the hero so desperately wants to hold onto. But for some reason, the villain is often times the audience’s favorite character, even more so than the hero. I want to try to take a peek into why that is in this post today.

First off, lets define a villain. Dictionary.com says: a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel. And: a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot. They are criminals, lawbreakers, offenders, felons, convicts, malefactors, and wrongdoers.

Villains are not anti-heroes. That is a fully different category and I would just like to make that distinction.

Okay then, let’s start off with some examples, now, shall we?

First off is going to be a lot of people’s favorite villain: Loki from the Thor and Avengers films. Loki got a lot of fans very excited because he is an extremely charismatic character (ahem, who kills innocent people, I would like to add) and is able to draw sympathy from the audience. It does help that he is played by Tom Hiddleston who is just an all-around amazing guy, but that’s beside the point.

The Joker, Batman’s arch-nemesis, has always been one of the fandom’s favorite villains. This may be how much screen time he gets (in the films, television series, and graphic novels), but it can also be how he is portrayed by the ones writing and acting as him. Everyone has their favorite Joker (either Heath Ledger or Mark Hamill for me) and their own reasons for loving that portrayal. But no matter who you like more, it is a fact that he is one of the first villains people had a cult following for that I can remember.

Maleficent from the Sleeping Beauty animated movie is my favorite character from that movie. For me, she is the most dynamic character of them all. Yes, she is the “Mistress of All Evil” (her words, not mine) but she also has her reasons for being so angry. She was the only person in the kingdom who was not allowed to go to Aurora’s christening. This would be seen as a major slight against her and one does not go around pissing off super powerful beings that can turn into dragons without some sort of retaliation happening. If we go off of the more recent Maleficent film, the audience is shown a much more complex character who is actually a victim of betrayal by a former lover in the form of King Stephan who essentially (in the words of the director and Angelina Jolie) raped Maleficent by drugging her and taking her wings from her. (That will always be the most painful and heart-wrenching scene to watch in that film.) But in this character, we do get two very different narratives for the same fairy tale in these two movies.

The Disney villains as a whole are almost all lauded on the internet. While some are favored over others (looking at you hunter who brutally killed Bambi’s mom), it is a general consensus that people are in love with Disney villains. Hell, there are even two movies about their children on Disney channel called The Descendants (I actually really enjoyed these movies). I think the overwhelming love could be that their songs are just so freaking catchy.

Monsters are usually the villains in stories, that is just a fact. Look at vampires, zombies, werewolves, and witches in old narratives and you will most definitely find an angry mob chasing after them with torches and pitchforks. But in recent years, they have become love interests and heroes. This is something people who created these stories hundreds of years ago would die again at seeing. Instead of being warnings against the world, they have become (for the most part, sorry zombies) sex symbols and overall almost good guys? I don’t know, I am just as confused (but secretly happy) as you are.

Cersie Lannister from Game of Thrones is easily the worst. But I still love her. She redeems herself in her love for her children, but even that is not everlasting. She kills and does not feel bad about it. She kicks ass and takes no prisoners if she can help it. She is brutal and the best at what she does out of all of her family that we see. Cersie is most definitely a villain, her deeds have shown her as that, but she also has her reasons. Throughout her narrative, she goes through so much, from her mother dying at her youngest brother’s death, to being married to someone who does not love her. And this is just what is shown in the first episode. There are still almost seventy to get more out of.

The Night King, also from Game of Thrones, is one of Tumblr’s favorite characters from the series right now. Is it because he is the most viable for the Iron Throne right now? Is it because he creates millions of jobs at once? Is it because he is like a honey badger and does not give an f? Who knows? But it is known that people love him.

Tate from American Horror Story Season One: Murder House is another one of Tumblr’s favorite characters. This one stresses me out more than the other villains because he is something we see in real life very often. For those of you who have not seen the show, he is a troubled kid who is obsessed with this girl (Violet) who has moved to LA in this super creepy haunted house. SPOILER it comes out that he was involved in a mass shooting at his school. Again, something we see way too often nowadays. I am not a fan of this character, but he is seen so often on the internet as a favorite, I had to include him.

The Stormtroopers from Star Wars are objectively villains. They work for the bad guy, they try to kill the good guys. That’s kind of the definition of a villain’s henchman. So why does the internet love them so much? They are not that great at their job. It is cannon that they cannot shoot for their lives. Honestly, if the character they were shooting at was three feet in front of them, they would somehow miss. I think people like them because they are inept at their job (much like the Disney henchmen in that respect).

Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my favorite villain from the show. Now, I only got about five seasons into it before Netflix rudely took it off their streaming service, but he just seems like a cool dude. His sarcasm and biting wit, not to mention his British accent, all give him the “cool points” to make him a loveable villain.

Professor Umbridge is one character (from Harry Potter) that almost everyone can agree that they hate with an absolute passion. But why hate her so vehemently and still be able to love so many other villains? Because we have all had an Umbridge. She is something in the world we have struggled with in our formative years and we cannot see in her the parts of us we see in other villains. She is just straight up evil with no redeeming qualities.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the possible reasonings people love villains so much.

Freedom is something every person strives for. Villains just take their freedom a bit further. Instead of stopping at the freedom to choose and to live a life they have made for themselves, they want freedom from societal rules and laws completely. They want the freedom of chaos.

These villains all have power over their situations. They control the outcome of their plans. They do not let themselves become the victim, though they make plenty of their own. For the most part, these villains are competent and brutal in their actions. This is something people want in their lives. Control and power. For people who have neither in their lives, this can be attractive and will possibly cause them to love the villainous characters more.

Villains, apparently, help us confront our shadow selves, according to psychiatrist Carl Jung. The shadow self is a part of a person they do not want to look at. It is the darkness that hides in man’s heart and lets them do the unkind, and potentially harmful, things. By confronting our shadow selves, we have the opportunity to become a better and stronger human for it. For Jung, keeping these villains (both real and fictional) alive can show people that there are worse people than themselves out there. They also are doing what we do not want to do, therefore fulfilling the urges of our shadow selves so we do not have to.

Finally, heroes are shown as good, almost pure, for the most part. They are harder to connect with because of it. Not only do they almost always do the right thing, even thinking of the wrong thing spins them into turmoil. Humans, by nature, cannot always be this good. We have many sides, some of which are not so nice. I know that I sometimes struggle with being the “hero” of my own life (ie being good) so it can be difficult seeing someone who does not have the same struggle on screen or in a book and fully connect with them. It is because of the flaws that villains are more approachable to the audiences than the heroes. Yes, they show that these flaws can turn a person evil if not treated in the right way, but in their flaws, they are seen as human.

This all being said, there are more and more cases of all the characters becoming more complex in recent narratives. Heroes are struggling, villains get tragic backstories to allow redemption arcs. The line between hero and villain is becoming blurred. So I understand that these ideas will not hold up throughout time the more complex characters get. Who know, maybe one day we will live in a world where the anti-hero prevails.

Now, I have some questions for you! What are your thoughts on the villain? Do you just hate them as a whole because of the evil they do? Or do you see them as something that can be related to? Do you love to hate them, or hate to love them? Do you have any thoughts on the hero vs villain debate in popular culture? Leave your answers in the comments below!

That just about does it for this post. If you want to find me on social media, I am dsbookie at Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Goodreads!

I’ll see you all next week!

XOXO

Dana