Blog Post #7 BBG Chapter 14

In chapter fourteen of the Bedford Book of Genres they talk about heroes and villains. The idea of heroes and villains is not a novel one dating back since the beginning showing up in the bible and influencing literature, film, and all sorts of text. Any good story has a hero and has a villain; our protagonist and antagonist. The chapter goes into great detail talking about the characteristics of a hero and villain elevating the hero almost resembling a perfect ideal and the villain being a weak and cruel selfish character. The examples they give to be a hero is Superman the most selfless hero and champion of the people drawing many parallels to that of Jesus Christ which makes sense. He was the first hero fighting no one evil but the evil of all mankind and their sins. The focus of the chapter I’d like to highlight is thee differences presented in the hero because back in the day the hero was perfect and the villain imperfect corrupted but that’s not what heroes look like today. We love are dark superheroes like Batman. They are more grounded characters showing us while imperfect and selfish that they fight to protect what is right and to help save their cities. What gets really interesting is when we look at the villains because they are often twisted versions of the hero. They’re in fact the same but on opposite sides one for good and one for chaos and that’s more interesting to watch than good out ways evil. The book goes into deep detail about how for the writer to create a compelling villain there needs to be a reason why the character is doing what they’re doing. This is true its more impactful when you can understand and empathize with a villains motive to get that one last score to provide for his family yet we ultimately we root for the hero because we know what the villain is doing is wrong. One of my favorite and terrifying villains is The Joker because as much as we talk about how we need to understand the motivations of the villain with the Joker he has no motive except to cause chaos and it is more terrifying when he is juxtaposed to our hero because Batman is just one bad day form being his enemy.