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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... begins to lose its appeal when he starts juggling with your goldfish . At the end of the day we like to know that certain things in our lives can be relied upon , that certain actions will produce predictable results and that the trains ...
... begins to hit us in our early teens and which , while we learnt to cope with it , never really goes away . Yet it is this very uniqueness , the fact that we are other than everything else in the entire cosmos , which gives us our ...
... begins to sense that something is not right : MARVELMAN : John , I listened to your story just now ... rags to riches , redemption through honest toil . It's a great story . I really wanted to believe it , John . But then halfway ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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