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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... deal about my own preoccupation with weapons and women , images of the hero and their villainous counterparts have , in my view , served as iconic receptacles for a wide range of cultural values , aspirations and fears . What a culture ...
... deal of our time . Aristotle famously maintained at the start of his Metaphysics that ' All men by nature desire to know'.4 He goes on to argue that the highest manifestation of knowledge is wisdom , that is to say , the quest for ...
... deal , and would gladly sacrifice a great deal more , to sup- port and protect their children - and this without the aid of any actual superpowers . Terry Pratchett puts this rather succinctly in one of his Discworld novels ' Them as ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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