Redeeming Villains in Stories - Right or Wrong?

[CensoredAlso]

I've been reading a lot on this topic lately and wanted to see if anyone had any opinions. In fictional storytelling, you often see the plot device of a villain being redeemed in the end, in other words learning his/her lesson and becoming a good guy. Darth Vader is probably one of the most well known, but of course there are many other examples.

Now there are some people (psychologists, advocates, parents, etc.) who feel that this plot device is harmful because it presents an unrealistic view of the world, particularly for children or women. After all the bad guys you meet in real life won't always become your friends (nor is it wise to assume they will!).

Still others defend the plot device, pointing out this is not real life, it's a story meant to deliver a moral message. And having the villain explain why he/she was wrong is just another way of getting that message across.

Just curious which side you guys would most agree with?

 

[Slackbot]

I think that, specifically, it depends on the story. Is it a copout, feel-good ending or an important part of the story?

In general, I think that it is a perfectly valid kind of plot. It gets the point across that the "bad guys" are people too, and that they can have changes of heart. Surely that is a better message than "if a person is bad, that's all there is to them." It's a strawman argument, and one that doesn't reflect the real world.

 

[Drtooth]

Now there are some people (psychologists, advocates, parents, etc.) who feel that this plot device is harmful because it presents an unrealistic view of the world, particularly for children or women. After all the bad guys you meet in real life won't always become your friends (nor is it wise to assume they will!).

Sigh... the over analysitic ones, right? People need to stop thinking in black and white. Some people who ARE jerks actually change when they get to know you, others seem nice, but become jerks... it happens. Everything is gray and if anyone thinks any tiny little bit of fiction applies to real life probably thinks you can fly if you tie a towel around your neck because you look like Superman.

This is something that's a bit of a cliche. Surely, everyone knows about Dragon Ball Z and how half the villains wind up becoming good guys because they have to fight along side each other because there's a bigger, more powerful enemy, and it would interfere with the lesser villains plans initially... then they become brothers in combat and eventually friends. Cliche.

Now, as for Darth Vader, and I'm not going into the whole prequel debate, is a different story... he wasn't a bad guy to begin with, but he had troubles in his past, and he was manipulated by his emotions, and became a villain because he was being manipulated by some very nasty people. There... now you don't have to see 1-3... but you get the point. His redemption at the end is a "What have I become?" story.. and that's a better message than Bad guys is bad. All too often people who've had problems wind up becoming completely different people... hence my comment about others becoming jerks.

All and all, it's an emotional climax or just a cliche... it's all story devices. And to complain that it has a negative impact on kids is like saying Romeo and Juliette promotes positive messages of suicide. We all know it's fiction, and it is a very feel good moment when it happens. people CAN change, better or worse... some don't.

 

[RedPiggy]

In fictional storytelling, you often see the plot device of a villain being redeemed in the end, in other words learning his/her lesson and becoming a good guy.

My entire bedroom is done up with characters who fit that theme, actually, LOL. I like the idea of goodness and badness being in a single character. I like characters with dynamic personalities.

On the other hand, I actually prefer characters who like who they are and have no conflict. I would much rather deal with Palpatine, Buffy's Spike, Endora of Bewitched, then deal with Anakin, Buffy's Angel, and Samantha ... all because the former group actually enjoy being what they are.

After all the bad guys you meet in real life won't always become your friends (nor is it wise to assume they will!).

Something I've noted on pokemon forums is that Team Rocket (specifically, Jessie, James, and Meowth) WOULD be "good guys" if it weren't for society screwing them over all the time. They went to Team Rocket precisely because they couldn't be happy in the civilian world. These are characters who couldn't pay their TR dues but could hold down jobs (at least for the length of the episode). These are characters who can, like Grover, just get a random job and be halfway decent at it (as long as they don't get distracted by trying to get Pikachu or random pokemon of the day). That's to be respected. How do our heroes treat them? Like crap! There was MAYBE some sympathy for James when he thought his parents died, but most of the time the "heroes" don't act like there is anything to like at all, even when the "bad guys" are supporting the "good guys". I sincerely can't imagine Ash risking his life to save JJ&M, even though they have risked it all several times (at least in the movies) to keep his ungrateful hiney in business. In the real world, a lot of our "repeat criminals" can probably be considered that way due to our own negative biases. Take the ex-con ... if they can never get hired doing something legal, they will go back to doing illegal things. We tend to force the creation and maintenance of our monster population and then blame them for it. *sorry, will try to end rant now, LOL*

Now, as for Darth Vader, and I'm not going into the whole prequel debate, is a different story... he wasn't a bad guy to begin with, but he had troubles in his past, and he was manipulated by his emotions, and became a villain because he was being manipulated by some very nasty people.

Yeah, LOL ... the Jedi. This is partly what I'm talking about: The JEDI boosted his ego, making him out to be a Messiah, and held him up to impossible standards while griping about him to his face and behind his back on a near-constant basis. Pretty much only Yoda and Obi-Wan could be considered halfway decent to him. When Anakin is suffering, they do nothing therapeutic other than to gripe at him that feeling bad would make him eeeeeeevil. Palpatine has a point that the Jedi can be just as arrogant ... and adding self-righteousness can make the insult more painful. NOBODY offers to help him. NOBODY is up front with him (even the two I mentioned had ulterior motives for keeping secrets). The ONLY guy who actually listens to him is the BAD GUY. It reminds me of an episode of Naruto, where Naruto is griping to Gaara, one of the former bad kids, about some sociopath bent on killing him. Naruto wonders how anyone could listen to bad guys. Gaara notes that Naruto must never have been truly lonely. People will take comfort from whoever gives it if they are desperate enough.

 

[D'Snowth]

All i can say is this...

The only decent example I can give on this subject is from an RPG I was a part of for about a year...

About halfway through the story it spanned well over a hundred thread pages, and lord knows how actual posts, we introduced a trio of three menions who worked for the story's main villain: the menions kept failing their master, and eventually went into hiding because he was going to kill them; our story's protagonists (basically fictionalized versions of ourselves) offered to look after them, if they were willing to redeem themselves... they had their reservations because being evil was all they knew, and all they were accustomed to, and the protagonists had reservations as well (mainly because the menions worked feverishly to kill us, and attempted to kidnap the secondary protagonists for the main villain). They agreed that being bad got them nowhere, and agreed to redeem themselves if the protagonists would help them change their ways.

Needless to say, this actually allowed for some very interesting character development for the story, which is part of what kept us alive for so long, was because we actually let the characters grow, change, and develop as the story continued. And, oddly enough, for those of you who follow my work, The Squirrely Squirrel characters were named after the three menions of our RPG (they were not actually based on the actual characters, but I wanted to name them after them).

 

[CensoredAlso]

Thanks guys, all fascinating points!

Sort of along the same lines, I recall an old commercial about young girls ending up in bad relationships all because "they believed in fairy tales." In other words, they stay in relationships with jerks because they've seen fictional stories that talk about redeeming the bad boy.

I mean I have no idea, but I am typically skeptical of blaming stories or the media for our problems. There are other factors involved, such as the type of home the girl came from. Was the father absent? Was the mother also in a bad relationship? Does the girl suffer from low self esteem? I think it's safe to say people do things for a variety of reasons and not just because "they believed in fairy tales."

 

[D'Snowth]

Thanks guys, all fascinating points!

Sort of along the same lines, I recall an old commercial about young girls ending up in bad relationships all because "they believed in fairy tales." In other words, they stay in relationships with jerks because they've seen fictional stories that talk about redeeming the bad boy.

I mean I have no idea, but I am typically skeptical of blaming stories or the media for our problems. There are other factors involved, such as the type of home the girl came from. Was the father absent? Was the mother also in a bad relationship? Does the girl suffer from low self esteem? I think it's safe to say people do things for a variety of reasons and not just because "they believed in fairy tales."

Part of it too is that the girl is pretty much blinded by love: they meet the guy, is so in love with him, she'll willingly dance while he pulls the strings. It's also kind of a "first come/first serve" thing: he's the first guy she's found that's her type, so she figures she better nab him before she loses him, because she probably thinks there's no other guy for her out there, so she'll take what she'll get.

 

[CensoredAlso]

because she probably thinks there's no other guy for her out there, so she'll take what she'll get.

But does that desperation come from buying into the "happy ending fairy tale" we're taught?

 

[Slackbot]

A person would have to be pretty disconnected from reality to make life decisions like that based on fairy tales.

Really, the question seems as silly to me as the complaint one SS viewer had about The Count being portrayed as a sympathetic character because that teaches children that vampires aren't eeeeevil.

 

[dwmckim]

Pretty broad question - so i'd have to say depends on the story and the character.

Though by and large, the best stories are ones that recognize that very few people are "all bad" or "all good" - and that very rarely are there ever really "true villains" - but rather people whose goals interfere with others or have their own reasons for doing something others would consider bad. If someone's a mixture of bad and good to begin with, redemption's not too big a deal since they should have good in them to begin with.

But there are exceptions to. Here i'll bring in my experiences as a One Life to Live fan (where there's the benefit of long-term continuing stories with the kind of character development you can't get in a lot of other forms). The best villains are not the cartoon character moustache-twirlers who are just total evil but those that are more complex and the viewer can at least see and understand why they do what they do. My all-time favorite character is Dorian Lord, who could be called one of the show's "villains" but the term's not that accurate because she's not so much a "villain" but someone who tends to stir up trouble. She's fiercely protective of her family and loved ones and many times does her misdeeds to protect them.

On the other hand, the show's trying to redeem one of it's both loathsome characters, Robert Ford, and while it may be working with the younger teen viewers, the more intelligent viewers aren't buying it. The character is someone who constantly takes advantage of barely legal girls - or in one case, a 30 year old who suffered from mental illness believing she was still 17. And this person had a job as a college instructor. Gloated and enjoyed his sick games. I do not want to see him as a viable love interest for any of the show's characters nor have a happy ending and the harder the show tries to redeem him, the more i'm not buying it.

Then there's one of the show's all-time most controversial villains, Todd Manning. His main storyline when he was brought on was as the leader of a vicious college gang-rape of Marty Saybrooke. Ordinarily, this would be a character beyond redemption, but they took full advantage of the kind of complexity the serial drama format has and we saw his redemption take place very slowly over a matter of years. He did remain a villain capable of many things, but he also carried the guilt over his rape and that was the type of thing he would never do again. (Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, the show's undone lots of his careful redemption and had him go BSC and tried to make him a romantic lead being fought over by people who should know better than to see him as a prize when he's never fully paid for his more recent deplorable acts...but at least for a good decade and a half, it was a well-done complex storyline)