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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... responsibility for the deaths of those around her , but also in the way that the tradition of the solitary Slayer is dismantled by her . We shall return to this point later . What actually makes Buffy such a classic solitary heroic ...
... responsibility is of a very particular type . Someone will say , ' I did not ask to be born . ' This is a very naïve way of throwing greater emphasis on our facticity . I am responsible for everything I am abandoned in the ... world ...
... responsibility without being able , whatever I do , to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant ... To make myself passive in the world , to refuse to act upon things and upon Others is still to choose myself , and ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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