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. |
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... Star Trek , the Replicators from Stargate , and so on , have a single guiding intelligence , and an insatiable drive to bring the rest of the uni- verse under the control of that intelligence . The villain is not content with the social ...
... Star Trek's Captain Kirk argues in the classic series episode A Taste of Armageddon : ANAN7 : There can be no peace , don't you see , we've admit- ted it to ourselves . We're a killer species , it's instinctive ! It's the same with you ...
... Star Trek , and the Daleks from Doctor Who are regarded as so villainous is that they understand themselves as unrelated to anything other than themselves . Thus everything that they encounter is to be regarded as a resource , something ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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