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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... evil and villainy is there ever room for the limiting statement ' this we do not do ' ? In Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings we encounter one of the starkest representations of the use and abuse of power in con- temporary heroic ...
... evil in the beginning . Even Sauron was not so . I fear to take the ring to hide it . I will not take the ring to wield it.'8 This is a common motif in heroic narratives , the hero's abhor- rence of the weapons and methods of evil ...
... evil in the world . The so- called free will defence broadly argues that even God could not enforce good behaviour upon human beings without com- promising their very humanity . Immanuel Kant argues that ethical judgements are the ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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