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.
Inspired by your post and the experience of watching the movie, I went back and read the book. It was an interesting contrast with the movie. I wrote a post about the similarities and differences that I saw in how evil is portrayed in both iterations of Wicked:
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.
You got it Sarah. The time we're allowed to spend with these fictional characters through story is what creates that empathy. If we gave real people half that time and grace, things would be different.
I guess the problem with society glorifying empathy is it is pointless.
Not that empathy is bad nor is it necessarily good. It's just a feeling. Feelings without action are useless. Feeling good about understanding the Wicked Witch doesn't help the Wicked Witch. Same with the Joker. Many would say they empathize with the Joker but then never help the poor or be friendly with social outcasts. It's another version of virtue signaling. It makes you seem virtuous without the pain of actually being virtuous.
The same is probably true of our society. Everyone says they empathize with the poor or the social outcasts but very few spend a weekend at a soup kitchen. Sure they say they pay money or they ran a 5k where the proceeds might go to the poor. Very few actually do it.
As far as going across the political aisle, many say they are empathic but in public can't stand hearing opposing opinions.
"Feeling good about understanding the Wicked Witch doesn't help the Wicked Witch." You nailed it, Mike. Empathy is an active emotion, at least it should be. Yet we are not acting enough for in any part of society.
I think these “redemption” stories are not popular because they elicit empathy for the villain but because they allow the viewer/reader to vicariously live out the villain’s revenge fantasy. Just like Trump rallies are never about empathizing with people’s struggles or pain but rather about letting them vicariously live out their worst impulses.
Empathy does still exist, but you need to look for it. And most of the time, it endures and has an impact outside of the screens than on it.
The point of being empathetic is to feel feelings other people (or fictional characters) are feeling at a certain moment. And it is not possible to do so if you have not felt those feelings yourself in your own life. Basic feelings are universal, but more complicated ones required for empathy need to be learned.
Complaining about a lack of empathy in politics is pointless because it has always been constructed as an adversarial system. The current problem in U.S. politics only exist because one party currently is ideologically more adversarial than the others, whereas it can fluctuate at other times.
I get your point, and yes, despite my extreme subtitle, I believe empathy exists. But I'm being genuine when I say it does not feel like that at all. It feels like we've entered into this us vs you cycle for every issue, be it political or not. The empathy is there, but trying to find it feels impossible sometimes.
I have to agree with you again Kern. It’s hypocrisy. And I see it all around me. Mothers who are fighting for climate justice who live in Montreal’s wealthiest area, flying all around the globe, running their air conditioning, and are expecting poorer people in poorer regions to make the sacrifices. Others who preach tolerance and can take the most vicious fights on line in name of that tolerance. I could go on with examples but I’ll stop here. It’s not unique to one side on the political divide. Both sides are guilty of the same intolerance. It makes me so sad because I truly believe that we have more in common than we’d like to admit. I don’t think I can find empathy for a murderer, but I will certainly sit through a tough conversation with someone who holds different political views than me, as uncomfortable as it may be. I’ll do that coffee.
That is exactly it, Imola. The distance between our words or ideologies and our actions is so far. And yes, I used the extreme example of a murderer to prove a point - that we are capable to extend empathy extremely far in theory, but not in reality. In reality, there are lines we can hold to, but right now, very few of us seem willing to cross that line and offer any true empathy, even an ear.
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
Why is this? I think one big reason is that the consequences of destructive / cruel behavior are hidden from the audience in two ways.
First, we aren’t made to empathize with the victims. A storyteller uses craft to control who we care about, and how much we care. Our brains just don’t care about anonymous victims, even in mass numbers — we care about individuals and their relationships, fears and dreams. One shot of one little girl holding a teddy bear (or the Alderaanian equivalent) and looking up at the Death Star, and it might actually register that Darth Vader killed her and two billion other people to make a point to Princess Leia.
Second, violence is routinely sanitized. Robert McKee says the first rule of comedy is that the audience should believe that whatever misery the characters go through, none of it really hurts. There were two versions of the scene in A Fish Called Wanda where a dog gets run over by a steamroller: one with blood, one without. When test audiences saw the blood, the spell of the comedy was broken, and they felt depressed and uncomfortable. The version without blood kept them subconsciously feeling like none of it was real.
This effect carries over to more serious movies. To get a rating that attracts wider audiences, the blood and suffering we see is minimized. But I think on some level, this means the pain and death is not real to our brains. We see Kylo Ren killing Han Solo, but we don’t see the bleeding wounds. I really think that if we did, more people would have a hard time sympathizing with someone who killed his father.
So if you want a sympathetic villain, make us feel like their victims weren’t important (or even better, that they deserved what they got) and gloss over any death and pain they cause. I haven’t seen Wicked or Joker, but I bet these two factors are in play - am I right?
Wow, surprised I didn't catch this comment. You just wrote half an essay, Liana. And I must agree with your point about violence being "routinely sanitized." It's like it doesn't even register in our brains as violence anymore when we see it or are exposed to it. I'm not all the way in on your point about not making victims important. I think that's hard to accept because what would it take for a human life not to feel important?
Often I feel the contrary: that violence on screen has become desanitized and extreme. I'm at home on the evening trying to watch a show and suddenly I'm seeing the depictions of graphic murders and maiming and rape etc... often I catch myself thinking "Why am I watching 100 persons get gunned down at 9pm when I am trying to relax?" (Squid Game) "Why am I watching a graphic rape on screen?!" (GoT) etc.
It is not normal to bear witness to so much unabashed violence on screen.
Don't you think violence's depictions has become worst? Maybe this over-the-top race to extreme content leads to our brains not registering it as violence?
Yes, I totally agree Allice. Violence on screen has become so commonplace that it doesn't register as obscene anymore. In fact, we celebrate it. Think about movies like John Wick (and similar movies). The stars murder people unconscionably and we cheer them on. If we actually sat back to think about these things, it's a disturbing critique of our culture, which is partially why I wrote this piece.
I think the mistake people make is in thinking that because there's a REASON someone does something, that this somehow excuses what they've done. So we plumb the depths of a villain's backstory in order to find out what made them a villain, and people make the totally erroneous jump that because they had <insert bad thing here>, now we should empathize with them.
The problem is that practically no one does things for NO REASON whatsoever. There's always a root cause, a tragic childhood, a vicious mentor. Read the life stories of everyone on death row here in America and you'll see a long line of sadness, neglect, abuse, and untreated mental issues. Same goes for tyrants and warlords.
What I find far more interesting and inspiring arenthe loads if people whonalso suffered hardship, terrible childhoods, bullying, war, etc and DON'T let themselves become the villain. How did they find the strength of will to rise above their circumstances and still treat other people with grace and kindness, or at least learn how to function in a society that is so at odds with their background?
Thinking about the villains we’re supposed to sympathize with, I notice they are generally minorities, (or maybe poor and disabled in Joker’s case) so people are being trained to excuse crimes committed by minorities against acceptable targets like “rich white people.”
Love reading this piece! I don't think it's only fictional characters, I feel there are a plethora of movies and documentaries that are asking us to emphasize with actual murderers and/or swindlers or put them on a pedestal by describing them as charming yet trouble. I am thinking of series about Anna Delvey, Andrew Cunanan whom we're supposed to understand in Versace or the last one about the Menendez brothers.
If we look at Anna Delvey's case she literally has had her redemption being interviewed by renowned magazines, and people loving to read about her.
There is a thing in society where I feel once someone has charisma, grit, and is kind of good-looking, then everything can be forgiven.
I have issues with both the romanticization of villains AND real felons.
Great points, Emmanuelle, especially your insight about documentaries. There does seem to be this obsession with adding nuance to why someone committed horrible, heinous acts.
I think it is called sanitizing or clean washing evil for what we call entertainment. Have you noticed everyday in the Toronto news there are homicides galore, barely a day goes by without crime.
I am reminded of a prophetic original quote of Charles Baudelaire (published posthumously in 1869) which is still reverberates today. Progress ? Nothing has changed:
"Every newspaper, from the first to the last line, is only a tissue of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, impudicities, tortures, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, crimes of individuals, an intoxication of universal atrocity. And it is with this disgusting aperitif that civilized man accompanies his every morning meal. Everything, in this world transudes crime: the newspaper, the wall, & the face of man. I do not understand how a pure hand can touch a newspaper without a convulsion of disgust"
If you read me that quote today, minus the newspaper reference, I would've thought it was from this year. And yes, the daily news in Toronto has become alarming. I've had to stop watching because it's depressing and just sad to see what's happening in our city.
Because of your recent post about the cost of putting ourselves out there, I read this piece for the first time. I don't mind humanising villains in fiction but what I really want to see is a more compassionate society, one which practises restorative justice and where strengthening our psyches to move beyond whatever holds us back (whether traumas or insecurities) is a norm. That dissonance between our fiction and our reality is pointed out very well in your piece.
I never saw Wicked the movie, though I did see it at theatre several years ago. I assumed the story for the movie wasn't adapted beyond what was necessary for a different medium. Perhaps I was wrong. I recall my takeaway from Wicked, the stage play being the reminder that narratives and history are permitted and approved by the powerful. My takeaway had been that the Wicked witch wasn't wicked at all but villainised by the 'anointed' who were the truly wicked ones, through propaganda that villainised the innocent and purified the wicked.
Your take is making me curious about the movie, but also curious about whether other people experienced the theatre production the way I did. I think I saw it through my politics and felt the producers and directors did too. But could be me, with a hammer, thinking everything is a nail.
Actually, I would love to have an amicable coffee date with my moral opposite and discuss their perspective. However, I suspect they would hate to speak to me. They are likely to ascribe all kinds of false beliefs to me because they are going to view people like themselves as "good" and people like me as "bad," whereas I know that I am chief of sinners, and that's why I'd be fine with speaking to another sinner.
When I first watched Maleficent, I could understand what turned her to hate. She learned the hard way the true nature of our species, in reality we are not allowed sweetness and light. The wolf is the victim of a malicious campaign of fear and hate, even in our civilised society yet we anthropomorphise them either as cute, or relentless killers.
Very good insight. I do think there is a huge disconnect and I feel the same way about the 'shadow daddy' motif as well. Quite frankly, I am sick of humanizing villains because writers are completely ignoring their autonomy and free will to choose good. People are more than their circumstances. Let's do better.
This false redemption arc is prolific in literature. I'm disturbed by the deeply entrenched trope in YA romance and romantasy that almost exclusively has the female character falling for the dark, brooding love interest. At this point, it's toxic. Back when Twilight became a sensation I used to point out how dangerous that was to have young women reading a relationship that so blatantly flies past red flags with zero consequences. Edward Cullens being a vampire was among the least of Bella's dangers in that relationship. They all do this now—excusing bad behavior because the guy just loves her so much. The only series I can think of off the top of my head where the girl ends up with the good guy (not the dark, misunderstood guy) is the Daevabad series by Shannon Chakraborty (and the Hunger Games, but that wasn't really a romance/romantasy).
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.
I can see your point, Michael. And I really dig the term moral inversion.
Inspired by your post and the experience of watching the movie, I went back and read the book. It was an interesting contrast with the movie. I wrote a post about the similarities and differences that I saw in how evil is portrayed in both iterations of Wicked:
https://open.substack.com/pub/holyfoolishness/p/wicked-and-the-tedium-of-evil?r=47x2cm&utm_medium=ios
Ahh love this! Just saved your post to give it a read later.
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.
You got it Sarah. The time we're allowed to spend with these fictional characters through story is what creates that empathy. If we gave real people half that time and grace, things would be different.
I guess the problem with society glorifying empathy is it is pointless.
Not that empathy is bad nor is it necessarily good. It's just a feeling. Feelings without action are useless. Feeling good about understanding the Wicked Witch doesn't help the Wicked Witch. Same with the Joker. Many would say they empathize with the Joker but then never help the poor or be friendly with social outcasts. It's another version of virtue signaling. It makes you seem virtuous without the pain of actually being virtuous.
The same is probably true of our society. Everyone says they empathize with the poor or the social outcasts but very few spend a weekend at a soup kitchen. Sure they say they pay money or they ran a 5k where the proceeds might go to the poor. Very few actually do it.
As far as going across the political aisle, many say they are empathic but in public can't stand hearing opposing opinions.
"Feeling good about understanding the Wicked Witch doesn't help the Wicked Witch." You nailed it, Mike. Empathy is an active emotion, at least it should be. Yet we are not acting enough for in any part of society.
I think these “redemption” stories are not popular because they elicit empathy for the villain but because they allow the viewer/reader to vicariously live out the villain’s revenge fantasy. Just like Trump rallies are never about empathizing with people’s struggles or pain but rather about letting them vicariously live out their worst impulses.
Must say I never considered that angle. Human emotions are so complicated that I think you may be articulating something profoundly true.
I would like to be wrong about this.
Empathy does still exist, but you need to look for it. And most of the time, it endures and has an impact outside of the screens than on it.
The point of being empathetic is to feel feelings other people (or fictional characters) are feeling at a certain moment. And it is not possible to do so if you have not felt those feelings yourself in your own life. Basic feelings are universal, but more complicated ones required for empathy need to be learned.
Complaining about a lack of empathy in politics is pointless because it has always been constructed as an adversarial system. The current problem in U.S. politics only exist because one party currently is ideologically more adversarial than the others, whereas it can fluctuate at other times.
I get your point, and yes, despite my extreme subtitle, I believe empathy exists. But I'm being genuine when I say it does not feel like that at all. It feels like we've entered into this us vs you cycle for every issue, be it political or not. The empathy is there, but trying to find it feels impossible sometimes.
It's become a value that is not being valued like it should.
Yes! I totally agree with that.
I have to agree with you again Kern. It’s hypocrisy. And I see it all around me. Mothers who are fighting for climate justice who live in Montreal’s wealthiest area, flying all around the globe, running their air conditioning, and are expecting poorer people in poorer regions to make the sacrifices. Others who preach tolerance and can take the most vicious fights on line in name of that tolerance. I could go on with examples but I’ll stop here. It’s not unique to one side on the political divide. Both sides are guilty of the same intolerance. It makes me so sad because I truly believe that we have more in common than we’d like to admit. I don’t think I can find empathy for a murderer, but I will certainly sit through a tough conversation with someone who holds different political views than me, as uncomfortable as it may be. I’ll do that coffee.
That is exactly it, Imola. The distance between our words or ideologies and our actions is so far. And yes, I used the extreme example of a murderer to prove a point - that we are capable to extend empathy extremely far in theory, but not in reality. In reality, there are lines we can hold to, but right now, very few of us seem willing to cross that line and offer any true empathy, even an ear.
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
Why is this? I think one big reason is that the consequences of destructive / cruel behavior are hidden from the audience in two ways.
First, we aren’t made to empathize with the victims. A storyteller uses craft to control who we care about, and how much we care. Our brains just don’t care about anonymous victims, even in mass numbers — we care about individuals and their relationships, fears and dreams. One shot of one little girl holding a teddy bear (or the Alderaanian equivalent) and looking up at the Death Star, and it might actually register that Darth Vader killed her and two billion other people to make a point to Princess Leia.
Second, violence is routinely sanitized. Robert McKee says the first rule of comedy is that the audience should believe that whatever misery the characters go through, none of it really hurts. There were two versions of the scene in A Fish Called Wanda where a dog gets run over by a steamroller: one with blood, one without. When test audiences saw the blood, the spell of the comedy was broken, and they felt depressed and uncomfortable. The version without blood kept them subconsciously feeling like none of it was real.
This effect carries over to more serious movies. To get a rating that attracts wider audiences, the blood and suffering we see is minimized. But I think on some level, this means the pain and death is not real to our brains. We see Kylo Ren killing Han Solo, but we don’t see the bleeding wounds. I really think that if we did, more people would have a hard time sympathizing with someone who killed his father.
So if you want a sympathetic villain, make us feel like their victims weren’t important (or even better, that they deserved what they got) and gloss over any death and pain they cause. I haven’t seen Wicked or Joker, but I bet these two factors are in play - am I right?
Wow, surprised I didn't catch this comment. You just wrote half an essay, Liana. And I must agree with your point about violence being "routinely sanitized." It's like it doesn't even register in our brains as violence anymore when we see it or are exposed to it. I'm not all the way in on your point about not making victims important. I think that's hard to accept because what would it take for a human life not to feel important?
I'm left wondering about this....
Often I feel the contrary: that violence on screen has become desanitized and extreme. I'm at home on the evening trying to watch a show and suddenly I'm seeing the depictions of graphic murders and maiming and rape etc... often I catch myself thinking "Why am I watching 100 persons get gunned down at 9pm when I am trying to relax?" (Squid Game) "Why am I watching a graphic rape on screen?!" (GoT) etc.
It is not normal to bear witness to so much unabashed violence on screen.
Don't you think violence's depictions has become worst? Maybe this over-the-top race to extreme content leads to our brains not registering it as violence?
Yes, I totally agree Allice. Violence on screen has become so commonplace that it doesn't register as obscene anymore. In fact, we celebrate it. Think about movies like John Wick (and similar movies). The stars murder people unconscionably and we cheer them on. If we actually sat back to think about these things, it's a disturbing critique of our culture, which is partially why I wrote this piece.
Absolutely fascinating comment
Indeed!
I think the mistake people make is in thinking that because there's a REASON someone does something, that this somehow excuses what they've done. So we plumb the depths of a villain's backstory in order to find out what made them a villain, and people make the totally erroneous jump that because they had <insert bad thing here>, now we should empathize with them.
The problem is that practically no one does things for NO REASON whatsoever. There's always a root cause, a tragic childhood, a vicious mentor. Read the life stories of everyone on death row here in America and you'll see a long line of sadness, neglect, abuse, and untreated mental issues. Same goes for tyrants and warlords.
What I find far more interesting and inspiring arenthe loads if people whonalso suffered hardship, terrible childhoods, bullying, war, etc and DON'T let themselves become the villain. How did they find the strength of will to rise above their circumstances and still treat other people with grace and kindness, or at least learn how to function in a society that is so at odds with their background?
Very good points, and I think in your description of what you find more interesting, you described the heroes.
Thinking about the villains we’re supposed to sympathize with, I notice they are generally minorities, (or maybe poor and disabled in Joker’s case) so people are being trained to excuse crimes committed by minorities against acceptable targets like “rich white people.”
This is an interesting take, Jessi. I'd have to really research to come to some kind of agreement, but interesting none the less.
Most of the sympathetic villains now seem to be female, minorities, or both.
And if a villain gets a redemption arc, this applies too.
Love reading this piece! I don't think it's only fictional characters, I feel there are a plethora of movies and documentaries that are asking us to emphasize with actual murderers and/or swindlers or put them on a pedestal by describing them as charming yet trouble. I am thinking of series about Anna Delvey, Andrew Cunanan whom we're supposed to understand in Versace or the last one about the Menendez brothers.
If we look at Anna Delvey's case she literally has had her redemption being interviewed by renowned magazines, and people loving to read about her.
There is a thing in society where I feel once someone has charisma, grit, and is kind of good-looking, then everything can be forgiven.
I have issues with both the romanticization of villains AND real felons.
Great points, Emmanuelle, especially your insight about documentaries. There does seem to be this obsession with adding nuance to why someone committed horrible, heinous acts.
Top ! Powerful post Kern.
I think it is called sanitizing or clean washing evil for what we call entertainment. Have you noticed everyday in the Toronto news there are homicides galore, barely a day goes by without crime.
I am reminded of a prophetic original quote of Charles Baudelaire (published posthumously in 1869) which is still reverberates today. Progress ? Nothing has changed:
"Every newspaper, from the first to the last line, is only a tissue of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, impudicities, tortures, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, crimes of individuals, an intoxication of universal atrocity. And it is with this disgusting aperitif that civilized man accompanies his every morning meal. Everything, in this world transudes crime: the newspaper, the wall, & the face of man. I do not understand how a pure hand can touch a newspaper without a convulsion of disgust"
If you read me that quote today, minus the newspaper reference, I would've thought it was from this year. And yes, the daily news in Toronto has become alarming. I've had to stop watching because it's depressing and just sad to see what's happening in our city.
Because of your recent post about the cost of putting ourselves out there, I read this piece for the first time. I don't mind humanising villains in fiction but what I really want to see is a more compassionate society, one which practises restorative justice and where strengthening our psyches to move beyond whatever holds us back (whether traumas or insecurities) is a norm. That dissonance between our fiction and our reality is pointed out very well in your piece.
I never saw Wicked the movie, though I did see it at theatre several years ago. I assumed the story for the movie wasn't adapted beyond what was necessary for a different medium. Perhaps I was wrong. I recall my takeaway from Wicked, the stage play being the reminder that narratives and history are permitted and approved by the powerful. My takeaway had been that the Wicked witch wasn't wicked at all but villainised by the 'anointed' who were the truly wicked ones, through propaganda that villainised the innocent and purified the wicked.
Your take is making me curious about the movie, but also curious about whether other people experienced the theatre production the way I did. I think I saw it through my politics and felt the producers and directors did too. But could be me, with a hammer, thinking everything is a nail.
Actually, I would love to have an amicable coffee date with my moral opposite and discuss their perspective. However, I suspect they would hate to speak to me. They are likely to ascribe all kinds of false beliefs to me because they are going to view people like themselves as "good" and people like me as "bad," whereas I know that I am chief of sinners, and that's why I'd be fine with speaking to another sinner.
Ha! That's the kind of honest spirit we need, Jared.
When I first watched Maleficent, I could understand what turned her to hate. She learned the hard way the true nature of our species, in reality we are not allowed sweetness and light. The wolf is the victim of a malicious campaign of fear and hate, even in our civilised society yet we anthropomorphise them either as cute, or relentless killers.
Very good insight. I do think there is a huge disconnect and I feel the same way about the 'shadow daddy' motif as well. Quite frankly, I am sick of humanizing villains because writers are completely ignoring their autonomy and free will to choose good. People are more than their circumstances. Let's do better.
This false redemption arc is prolific in literature. I'm disturbed by the deeply entrenched trope in YA romance and romantasy that almost exclusively has the female character falling for the dark, brooding love interest. At this point, it's toxic. Back when Twilight became a sensation I used to point out how dangerous that was to have young women reading a relationship that so blatantly flies past red flags with zero consequences. Edward Cullens being a vampire was among the least of Bella's dangers in that relationship. They all do this now—excusing bad behavior because the guy just loves her so much. The only series I can think of off the top of my head where the girl ends up with the good guy (not the dark, misunderstood guy) is the Daevabad series by Shannon Chakraborty (and the Hunger Games, but that wasn't really a romance/romantasy).