Villains and Heroes, or Villains as Heroes? Essays on the Relationship Between Villainy and Evil PDF
Preview Villains and Heroes, or Villains as Heroes? Essays on the Relationship Between Villainy and Evil
Villains, Heroes or Victims? Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access At the Interface Series Editors DrRobert Fisher DrDaniel Riha AdvisoryBoard DrAlejandroCervantes-Carson DrPeterMarioKreuter ProfessorMargaretChatterjee MartinMcGoldrick DrWayneCristaudo RevdStephenMorris MiraCrouch ProfessorJohnParry DrPhilFitzsimmons PaulReynolds ProfessorAsaKasher ProfessorPeterTwohig OwenKelly ProfessorSRamVemuri RevdDrKennethWilson,O.B.E AnAttheInterfaceresearchandpublicationsproject. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/ TheEvilHub ‘VillainsandVillainy’ 2010 Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access Villains, Heroes or Victims? Edited by Dana Lori Chalmers Inter-Disciplinary Press Oxford,UnitedKingdom Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access © Inter-DisciplinaryPress 2010 http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permissionofInter-DisciplinaryPress. Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland, Oxfordshire.OX298HR,UnitedKingdom. +44(0)1993882087 ISBN:978-1-84888-008-5 FirstpublishedintheUnitedKingdomineBookformatin2010.FirstEdition. Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access Tableof Contents Introduction vii DanaLoriChalmers PARTI: Villains:Culture,ReligionandSpirituality TheBookofDedeKorkut:TheVillainsInand 3 OutofTurks DilekTufekciCan&MetinEkici LanguageandtheShadow:PostStructuralismas 11 OntologicalDivorceinGoethe’sFaust LukeStrongman Rahu,MarsandSaturnandtheVillainStars: 19 TheMakingofaVillaininThaiAstrology MatthewKosuta PARTII: VillainsandtheCommunity Why soSaracen?UsingVillainstoDefinetheNation 27 intheThorntonManuscripts DannyGorny FromEviltoEvil:RevisitingRavanaasaToolfor 35 CommunityBuilding AnitaShukla PARTIII: Villains,GenderandSocietalStructures TheSilentVillain:TheMinimalistConstructionofa 45 PatriarchalVillainyinJohnLeCarre’sKarlaTrilogy SaraMartin VillainsintheFamily:MonstrousMothers-,Daughters- 53 andSisters-in-Law Dikmen Yakalı-Çamoğlu PARTIV: HistoricalVillains WitchesandVillains:The BadGuysoftheSalem 63 WitchcraftTrialsinthe19thCenturyFiction MartaMaríaGutiérrezRodríguez Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access Bandits,Spies,MercenariesorTraitors?TheCounter- 71 GuerrillaofManuelDominguezandtheMexican AmericanWar (18471848) AdrianaPérez PARTV: VillainsinLife:Prejudice,StereotypesandIdeology VillainsinNaziTheatreandParaTheatre 81 DanaLoriChalmers HistoricisingRacialisedObjectsofHorror:The 89 BlackRenaissanceVillain AnnaFahraeus JarinkoChieandYa-SanTetsu:Representingthe 95 Face,HeartandUnderbellyofOsaka JasonChristopherJones PARTVI: Villains,HeroesandVictims:VillainousAmbiguity TheDisguiseofSubjectivityandtheLimitationsof 105 theSatanicCharacter Panagiota-NayaTsentourou CheatersSometimesWin:ShiftingModesof 115 VillainyinTheCheaters Ann-MarieCook WhoCanFindaVirtuousCTUAgent?JackBauer 121 andtheTragedyofaGoodVillain MonikaBokiniec JoinMeandWeCannotbeDefeated 127 DanielJ.Connell Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access Introduction DanaLori Chalmers Villains are ubiquitous figures in history, culture and literature. They embody ourimageofevil,defineoutsidersinourcommunitiesandprovideenemiesagainst which our heroes can fight. It is pleasant to imagine our villains as the ultimate expression of evil, with no redeeming features, no ambiguity, and conveniently identifiedbydarkclothing, hookednosesandblackcapes.Insuchanimagination, villains are not only easily identifiable, but they are matched against heroes who are as honourable as villains are deceitful, as kind as villains are cruel, as compassionateasvillainsarevindictive,and,ofcourse,ashandsomeasvillainsare ugly. The heroes of course, work towards rescuing the victims, who are both innocent and defenceless, and thus the story takes shape. By the end, this imaginary villain will be destroyed by the epitome of virtue that is the hero, the victim will be rescued (usually without suffering any permanent harm) and the worldwillgoonasabetter,happierplace. Unfortunately, most villains are not nearly as superficial as we may wish they were. The villains were face, inlife and inliterature, are complexand convoluted. Theyareneitherentirelyevil,norentirelygood. Theyarenoteasilydestroyedand are often not even easily identified. They inhabit the boundaries by which a communityisdefinedwhilesimultaneouslybecomepartofthecommunityitself.It isvillainsthathelpusrecogniseheroes,justasevilhelpsusappreciategoodness. Manyofthechaptersinthisbookexplore,notjustthevillain,buttheambiguity ofthe villaininliterature, religion, societyand history. These chaptersexplore the imageofthevillain,notonlyasavillain,butasitisoverlaidwithimagesofheroes and victims that both clarify and confuse all three categories. These brief essays represent the presentations and discussions taking place at the first international, interdisciplinaryconferenceonVillainsandVillainywhichtookplaceatMansfield College, Oxford in September 2009 as part of the research network Inter- Disciplinary. Net. The extraordinary collection of scholars from around the world and across numerous academic disciplines resulted in a discussion of villains that transcendedtraditionaldefinitionsandlimitationsandbegantoaddresssomeofthe trulychallengingquestionsarisingfromourimageofthevillain. In order to facilitate the representation of the depth and breadth of discussion which emerged during this conference, this book is divided into six thematic sections: PartI: Villains:Culture,ReligionandSpirituality PartII: VillainyandtheCommunity PartIII: Villains,GenderandSocietalStructures PartIV: HistoricalVillains PartV: VillainsinLife:Prejudice,StereotypesandIdeology PartVI: Villains,HeroesandVictims:VillainousandMoralAmbiguity Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access viii Introduction __________________________________________________________________ Withineachofthesesectionsarebetweentwoandfourpapers,eachaddressingan approach to villainy in a variety of contexts and through various academic and philosophical lenses. Most of the papers in this book address several elements of villainy and are not always easily categorised, for example, Anna Fahraeus’ chapter on the Black Renaissance Villain is as much applicable to the section on Historical Villains as it is to Villains in Life. The divisions of the sections in this bookarebasedsimplyonthe bestrepresentationofthedeliberationsemergingout oftheconferenceandthethematicconnectionsthatappeartoprovidethestrongest basisforfuturediscussion. Part I explores the villain within culture, religion and spiritualityas a means if identifying and classifying social evils. The first chapter in this section is DILEK TUFEKCI CAN and METIN EKICI’S analysis of the Book of Dede Korkut in which BDK is explored as a literary representation of the social mores of Turkish society. Tufekci Can and Ekici’s exploration identifies two classifications of villains:thosewithinandthoseoutsideofsociety-socialandideologicalvillains- eachwithdifferentcharacteristicsandmotivations. The second chapter exploring the cultural and spiritual villains is LUKE STRONGMAN’S exploration of post-structuralist ideologies relating to ontological ‘meaning making’ in Goethe’s Faust. Strongman explores issues of objectivism, subjectivity and the search for self through the lens of Goethe’s classicplay. Fromthe first two chapters exploring villainy within the contexts of Islamand Christianity, the final chapter moves to the less well-known villains in Thai Astrology. In this chapter, MATTHEW KOSUTA discusses the Thai astrological figuresofRahu,MarsandSaturnandtheirperceivedabilitytoinfluencepeopleto actinvillainousandcruelways. Part II moves the discussion from the heights of the cultural and spiritual worlds to the community itself. Both of the chapters in this section, the first by DANNY GORNY and the second by ANITA SHUKLA, explore the villain as a wayofdefiningandbuildingcommunities. Gorny’spaperidentifiestheSaracen’s in medieval romance as a means of defining early national identities. Shukla, on the other hand, analyses the treatment of Ravana in Hindu culture as a means of buildingculturalvalues. While Gorny and Shukla explore the villain as defining the boundaries of community, the two chapters in Part III examine the villain as it relates to gender and social structures within a community. SARAH MARTIN’S article on the patriarchal villainy in John Le Carré’s Karla trilogy begins the section by examining,notonlythepatriarchalcharacteristicsofthe villainyinthetrilogy,but also parallelsthisrepresentation withthe rivalpoliticalsystemsofthe Cold War – democracyandcommunism. Shifting from the political to the familial is DIKMEN YAKALI-ÇAMOĞLU’S study of representations of in-law women as villains in Turkish novels compared Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access DanaLoriChalmers ix __________________________________________________________________ and paralleled with life story interviews with Turkish women from 1923-1945 in which many of the interviewees perceived their female in-laws as the ‘villains’ in theirlives.Throughthisanalysis,shespecifiespowerandmoralityaskeyconcepts in defining the female in-law villain, particularly as they relate to the concepts of ‘body’and‘beauty’. While the first three parts of this book have focused the discussion on the villain in community or cultural life, Part IV shifts the focus to villains in history. In this section, MARTA MARÍA GUTIÉRREZ RODRÍGUEZ and ADRIANA PÉREZ examine the villains of the Salem Witchcraft Trials and the Counter- Guerrilla of Manuel Domínguez during the Mexican American War. In both articles, the authors challenge the identification of the ‘villains’ in the historical record, using a retrospective perspective to question how societies in history have chosentodefinevillains. PartVoverlapsthehistoricalperspectiveinPartIVhowevershiftsthefocusto examine the connection between villains and prejudice, stereotypes and ideology. Each of the three authors, DANA LORI CHALMERS, ANNA FAHRAEUS and JASON CHRISTOPHER JONES, explore the concept of prejudice in different settings. Chalmers examines the Nazi image of the Jew (as a villain) in German Theatre and ParaTheatre in the Third Reich. Fahraeus explores racialised black villains in Renaissance revenge tragedies. Jones takes a slightly different perspective, personifying the city of Osaka as a villain as represented through the Japanese animated film Jarinko Chie. Even as these papers explore the villains depicted through prejudice, each of the three authors challenges this imagery and the‘villains’itdepicts. The final sectionof thisbook exploresone ofthe keythemespermeating most of the works represented here and in the 2009 Villains and Villainy Conference: theambiguitybetweentheVillain,HeroandVictim. Thisambiguityisrepresented inseveralofthepapersexploredthusfar;forexample,Kosuta’sdiscussionofThai Astrology, Shukla’s analysis of Ravana, Rodríguez’s discussion of the Salem Witchcraft trials, Chalmers’ study of Nazi Theatre and Jones’ insight into Jarinko Chie. In fact, this final section could have encompassed almost every paper presented at the conference. As it stands, the four papers included are those in which a primary focus of the paper is exactly this ambiguity in the nature of the villain. Part VI begins with PANAGIOTA TSENTOUROU’S paper on the limitations of Satan’s character in Milton’s Paradise Lost. By comparing the character of Satan with other Renaissance Drama characters, Tsentourou both challenges Satan’svillainyandconfirmsit. ANN-MARIE COOK’S article examines the 1930 filmThe Cheaters in which thecustomarymoralconventionsaresubvertedsothatthecharactersoneperceives asvillainsare revealed to be victimsand vice versa. Cook relatesthe film’s moral Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access x Introduction __________________________________________________________________ ambivalence towards the villains to attitudes towards femininity and modernity in the1930’s. The third paper in this section explores a ‘good’ villain as depicted in the popular television show24. MONIKABOKINIECposits thatthe hero of24, Jack Bauer, commits acts associated with villainyand yet is perceived as a hero within theworldoftheshow. In a twist on a similar concept, DANIEL J CONNELL explores the villain in superherofictionandsuggestingthatperhapsthedelineationbetweentheheroand thevillain(andthevictim)isnotalwaysasclearasonemightimagine. Through most of the papers presented at this conference runs the theme of the singular ambiguity of the villain. While we may wish that villains in literature, historyandsocietycouldbeeasilyidentifiablebytheirblackcapes,thereality(and even the fantasy) is far more complex. As much as we may wish that we could eliminate all villains, there is some argument that eliminating the villains would similarlyeliminate the heroes – after all, without the villains, why would we need heroes? Wewanttohatethevillains–andyetinmanyofthesearticles,thosewho are perceived as villains in one context can be perceived as victims in another. Phrases such as the ‘evil villain’ and ‘innocent victim’ consequently take on new meaning and the meanings implied by such linguistic habits suggest potentially problematicsocialconstructions. The first international, interdisciplinary conference on Villains and Villainy resultedinanexceptionalcombinationofscholarshipand analysisofthe nature of villainsandthesocialrepercussionsofthisimage. Transcendingtheboundariesof traditional definitions, the analyses represented in this volume call into question ourinstinctiveand,perhaps,naïvedesiretodivideour‘good’and‘evil’characters into neat categories and respond to them accordingly. In fact, these analyses often suggestthatourresponsetoperceivedvillainyis,initself,villainous. Luke Seaber - 978-90-04-39934-1 Downloaded from Brill.com11/09/2020 11:20:02AM via free access
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