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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... example , requires a consideration of issues such as right for who ? and good for what ? Plato argued that the good life - a key theme in classical Greek philosophy - was one in which each individual knew their place in the social ...
... example , make such excellent stock villains for film , novel and video game even today . We shall return to this point later . It should concern us greatly when , for example , political leaders institute foreign and domestic policy ...
... example Jean Baudrillard's work on Simulacra particularly in Simulacra and Simulation , University of Michigan Press , 1994 . Chapter Two : The Outsider - Heroes and otherness 1. Campbell , J. , The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Fontana ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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