It’s not like cheering for the bad guy is a new cinematic trope. Hoping that he or she (but mostly he, of course) eludes capture once again; cheering when anyone threatening his or her continued freedom is taken out—it’s all par for the course. Me, I loved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to no end when I was a wee little thing (and so began my love for Paul Newman. Or has it always really just been Butch?). Picture Butch/Paul, riding around on his bicycle to an MOR Burt Bacharach tune, charming the bejeesus out of Sundance’s sweetheart, Etta (and me, and the world).
No one wanted Butch and Sundance to get mowed down in Bolivia, did they? No.
Of course, the fact remains that the real-life Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid (called Harry Alonzo Longabaugh by his mom) were outlawed bandits who terrorized poor helpless bank clerks. History states they never killed anyone, so maybe they really were loveable ruffians with solid consciences. Ones to be cheered for because they really weren’t hurting anyone, now were they? (Except The Man, and damn The Man!). A dubious conclusion, no?
Given the priming my young self underwent in loving cinematic bad-guy protagonists, the following statement might be unexpected: I am so, so tired of caring about the bad guy. Like, exhausted. Having just burned through the meth-fuelled murder romp of Breaking Bad (egomaniacal drug dealer and kingpin) and now heading lightspeed through the meat-cleaver-fuelled murder romp of Dexter (sociopathic serial killer), stopping in between to visit Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of an unfortunate shitbag in The Place Beyond the Pines (small-time bank thief with a bad temper), I can honestly say I’m tired of pulling for cinematic criminals. No matter if they’re played by Ryan Gosling or not.
Without question, nuance in character development has stepped up leagues since the “bad guys wear black, good guys wear white” 1969 world of Butch Cassidy. Arguably, the mixed bag of tricks that comprises every human being—a little bit country, a little bit rock’n’roll—is more skillfully portrayed in current film and television than it ever has been before. But that still doesn’t make me any more willing (*spoiler alert*) to cheer when Dexter’s Season 2 arch-nemesis, Sgt Doakes, is blown up in the season finale, just in the nick of time to ensure Dexter escapes capture by the law, once again.
Deep down even Dexter was pulling for Doakes’s survival. Instead, we were given smithereens.
I get it: mixed feelings—that’s what these shows and films aim at when they hold up a cut-and-dry criminal as their hero. They make you care about them, despite their shortcomings. They make you pull for a mob boss/drug dealer/thief/ psychopath, even while offering a healthy dose of sympathy for these characters’ foils—Dexter’s Sgt Doakes, Walter “Heisenberg” White’s Hank Schrader, Luke (Ryan Gosling)’s Avery (Bradley Cooper). The writers and directors “edgily” dole out the good and bad in for these characters, engendering a love-hate relationship within the viewer. I get it, all right? Nothing is black and white—it’s all shades of grey. We’ve all got many sides.
Dexter takes out murderers who are a menace to society; Walt cooks and sells meth to support his family; Luke robs banks to provide for his newborn son. Ostensibly. These are their excuses for their actions, and they’re also ours.
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| (from bluchickenninja) |
And maybe that’s it. Like a screw-up cousin who’s asked you to bail him out one too many times—I’m just done. Over it. Over you. Done. Oh, sure you’ve got a heart of gold. Whatever. I can’t take it anymore.
But, then, there’s also this to consider when it comes to today’s revered TV and film criminals:
After Truman Capote got chummy with Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, two drifters who slaughtered a family, to write In Cold Blood, he was reportedly never the same again. Whether it was the criticisms leveled at him following publication (Tom Wolfe called it “pornoviolence”) or whether he was scrambled up after spending so long embroiled in the world of two likely sociopaths, who can really say for sure. Either way, the experience changed him.
After you read In Cold Blood, after you’re given the gory details of the close-range shooting of the Clutter family, you don’t get the warm fuzzies. You don’t think, “Oh neato! Let’s replay that murder scene.” Despite the fact the killers clearly had a hard, hard life and found no sympathy in the cold, cold world, you don’t find yourself hoping for a fortuitous last-minute escape. You also don’t find glee in Capote’s multisensory insight into the hangings of Hickock and Smith. Rather than thrilled or excited, the whole thing makes you feel sick.
After you finish Dexter Season 2, you can pop in the special features disc and troll through an animated version of Dexter’s trophy box, the one with all the blood samples take from his kills. Then you simply select a slide, which then shows a clip of the victim’s murder. Because after all, he’s “everybody’s favourite serial killer,” right? Why not give him a gory encore.
If Truman Capote's nuanced, encompassing, engaged, and engaging portrayal of Hickock and Smith and the Clutter Family was pornoviolence, I do not know the name for the kind of shit we're into now.
That's it. I'ma go watch me some Care Bears.
