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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7 . . . to take up arms against a sea of troubles Like it or not , it would seem that
coercive power , the use of force , is ... The plight of the good and the noble of
Middle Earth – be they great elven lords or ordinary hobbit gardeners – seems all
but ...
14 The old adage ' all that is required for evil to flourish is for good people to do
nothing ' would seem to express a fundamental truth about the nature of our
world . Sadly it would seem , and all things being equal , humanity does tend
towards ...
18 It seems to me that at the very heart of the notion of the villain is a refusal to
submit to the social contract – for whatever reason - and a wilful attempt at
exploiting the fact that the rest of society chooses to be bound by it . The simple
fact of the ...
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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 |