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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... Plato , Descartes and Kant , all of whom sought to estab- lish an absolute and primarily rational perspective on the world , implicitly ( at least ) throwing doubt on the role and value of imagination . The quest for certainty It seems ...
... Plato , the world is made up of the shadows cast onto the cave walls by objects passing across some unseen fire ... [ Plato ] directly or indirectly , and can hardly be understood if Plato is ignored'.14 The idea of a real world beyond ...
... Plato talks about evil then animal imagery is not far away . What he has in mind is not any particu- lar animal but a monstrous hybrid that stalks us and seeks to subvert the pure rationality of our soul.32 The beasts that lurk within ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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