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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The quest for meaning is equally significant to our existence , the sheer fact of a
thing is seldom sufficient for us . That a thing is is rarely as important as why a
thing is . Even very young children do not put up with “ just because ' for long ,
they ...
The fact that nobody truly understands us is a source of anxiety that 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 ...
The simple fact of the matter is that , for the most part , villains do not play by the
rules . In Tim Burton ' s 1996 film Mars Attacks ! the Martian villains constantly
flout Earth conventions by opening fire on peace delegations , government
officials ...
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Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 35 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Heroes and Villains |
| Author | Mike Alsford |
| Publisher | Baylor University Press, 2006 |
| Original from | the University of California |
| Digitized | 7 Feb 2008 |
| ISBN | 1932792929, 9781932792928 |
| Length | 158 pages |
| Subjects | › Philosophy / Good & Evil Social Science / Popular Culture |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |