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
Results 1-3 of 33
... have learned to our cost , very easily gives way to notions of genetic purity ,
ethnic cleansing , slavery and genocide . ... what I propose to do is to explore the
notion of humanness in a tangential way by considering how we understand the
...
These Sophists opted , in the main , for a pragmatic approach to existence , one
which rejected any notion of cosmic absolutes in favour of a sceptical and
relativistic approach to life and truth . Plato was well aware of the destructive
potential of ...
4 Perhaps the Joker's notion of 'one bad day' does indeed make sense but so
then does the idea of what you do with the memory of that day That the Batman is
often portrayed as being only a hair's breadth from the dark side is a ...
What people are saying - Write a review
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 35 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
3 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
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 |