Heroes and VillainsHercules, Jesus, James Bond, Luke Skywalker, Gandalf, Frodo, Harry Potter, Buffy Summers, Spiderman, Batman, Captain Kirk, Dr. Who, Darth Vader, Sauron, Voldemort, Lex Luthor, Dr. Doom, the Daleks, the Borg. Almost anybody living in the developed West would be able to group these individuals into two camps: the heroes and the villains. However, what criteria they may use to do this is less clear. Mike Alsford introduces us to a range of heroic and villainous archetypes on a journey through film, television, comic books, and literature. On the way, he addresses questions such as: What is a true hero? What is a true villain? Have we misunderstood these terms? What kind of societal values do our mythical heroes and villains represent? In trying to understand the extremes of hero and villain we are made more aware of our own ethical standards and given a space in which to explore contemporary concerns over notions of right and wrong, good and bad. |
From inside the book
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... its messy multi- facetedness , to recognise that the world cannot be made right simply by following a formula or a ... Its recognition of the limits of human reason and its identification of the world as infinitely complex , thus defying ...
... its reason for existence . Stormbringer needed to kill , for that was its source of energy , the lives and souls of men ... it's fruitless . No fruit for Buffy . ANGEL : She's wrong . BUFFY : Is she ? With Great Power Comes Great ...
... its tendency to abstract itself from its social context . Indeed he went on to criticise its encouragement of laissez - faire , materialismus , particu- larismus , and what he saw to be more damning than all of these , individualismus ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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