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Michael F Thomas's avatar

I have a slightly different take. It’s not that we are being asked to empathize with evil characters because they are sympathetic; it’s that we are being asked to believe that what we thought was good is really evil (or at most vapid), and what we thought was evil was really just misunderstood. It’s not a call to a more empathetic world; it’s a call to moral inversion.

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Sarah Allen's avatar

I also feel like I've seen this disconnect. In some ways I think it's actually easier to see characters as human and nuanced than it is to see other people as human and nuanced, because we're given backstory and insight into the characters in a 30 or 60 or 90 minute time slot, and it takes MUCH more time and work with real people. As the Green brothers say, the work is to imagine people complexly.

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