Somebody once said about someone (Rousseau, perhaps?) that when a person confesses publicly to some act of wickedness; the thing to worry about is the un-confessed evil: that concealed act which was too shameful to confess.
We are all familiar with the motivations ascribed to what might be termed Hollywood Villains (whether on movies, TV or major novels) - motives such as greed (wanting money), or power (wanting to 'take over the world'). More recently, baddies may indulge in coercive promiscuous sex and be motivated by ideas of racial 'supremacy'.
But we need to realise that Hollywood Villains are produced, funded and censored by mass media moguls specifically, and facilitated by The Establishment in general.
Our major fictional villains are - in effect - written by the major In-Real-Life villains.
Which is to say, the people who have been, for decades, providing our conceptual models of evil are the same group responsible for the covert global coup of 2020.
Since They are prepared to advertise their own lust for money and power, sex and racism; what evils are they shielding by this confession?
If Big Finance is happy to be depicted as obsessed with money and willing to murder for it - what horror is that concealing? If Big Pharma is happy to be seen putting profits above health - what is their covert motivation that is worse? If media bosses are happy to depict themselves as involved in dystopian surveillance, propaganda and manipulation in order to expand their own businesses - what is it that they are keeping back?
In general - what is being left-out is active-evil, evil for-its-own sake: 'pure' evil.
Active-evil is when Big Finance arrange murders despite losing money; Big Pharma diligently engineer human disease and suffering despite losing profits; when senior media executives bankrupt their organisations by relentless propaganda.
What is not depicted is villains who put evil first: whose delight is to destroy virtue and beauty, whose satisfaction is to lie and corrupt, who lust to foment fear and mutual resentment; and for such goals who are willing to work hard, destroy corporations, suffer financial losses...
Villains and baddies who will risk their own livelihoods and lives in order to do evil.
For example; we know one specific actively-evil practice: that (to a remarkable extent, and especially at the very highest levels) The Global Establishment are motivated by what is euphemistically termed 'human trafficking'; including the kidnapping, brainwashing and sexual abuse of children.
For this they are prepared to expend vast time, energy, resources - and to risk disgrace and death.
When did you last see a Hollywood Villain thus depicted? By comparison with the reality of evil, the officially-sanctioned mass media baddies begin to seem like saints.
I know this isn’t directly related but I noticed that starting in the 1990’s people starting rooting for pop-culture bad guys (not necessarily or just in films). I assume they were encouraged to do so.
ReplyDeleteIn popular culture, people with traditional virtues are often portrayed as vicious hypocrites who are secretly monsters.
@BB - I would say that it began in the late 1960s - eg. Easy Rider. I wrote about this 'anti-hero' phenomenon in my mini-book Addicted to Distraction (linked on the sidebar).
ReplyDeleteThis post is incredibly apropos and just what I needed to see today for some reason.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest obstacles to most people in terms of admitting or accepting the evil that does get revealed, despite the censorship (because there is just too much to contain) is that they can't believe that evil exists. Or rather, evil that goes beyond greed.
I still run into legions of people whose model of the moral world stops at, "they'll do anything for money." Or, "look at how greed controls those evil corporations."
The truth was hard for me to stomach at first: that money and control are means to an end far darker than the endless accumulation of money.
Impressive. Thank you
ReplyDeleteVillains who do what they do just "For the Evulz" are common enough to have their own TV Tropes entry, the classic example being Heath Ledger's Joker from the Christopher Nolan Batman films.
ReplyDeleteHuman traffickers as baddies aren't unheard of, either. What were those Liam Neeson movies called?
"Taken". First one, not bad.
Delete@Wm - First, Christopher Nolan is atypical - he is at the 'art house' end of the mainstream. But secondly I think you'll find that almost all of these examples are Not of evil but of insanity. The 'For the evulz' characters are, in practce, depicted as insane - and indeed there is usually an 'explanation' for Why they are insane (some Freudian-esque fake reason, typically - a trauma, especially a childhood trauma - is common). So they are not *really* evil. For the obvious reason that there can be no concept of evil in mainstream materialism and without God (and a Christian type of God, at that).
ReplyDelete