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
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... social restrictions and laws.5 By the end of the civil war individualism had come to occupy an important place in the American vocabulary . Ralph Waldo Emerson , for example , saw the road to perfection as involving a society of self ...
... social contract , a socio - political tool for maintaining social cohesion in the face of the natural freedom of humanity . Locke argues that in their natural state all human beings find themselves in a state of perfect freedom to order ...
... Social Science Bulletin , VII , p.185 Murray , R. H. , Individual and State , London , Hutchinson & Co. , 1946 Nietzsche , F. , On the Genealogy of Morals , ( 1887 ) , Dover Publications , 2003 Nietzsche , F. , Thus Spake Zarathustra ...
Contents
Myth and Imagination | 1 |
Heroes and Otherness | 23 |
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility | 63 |
Copyright | |
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