By Rose Benjamin
In books and movies, antagonists/villains are often portrayed as hideous beast-like people. Of course, there are exceptions, but writers usually tend to make their villain's appearance match their behavior. This may be to add to the reader/viewer's perception of the antagonist as a villain, having less empathy towards them. Many antagonists are already generally bad people, however, so it shouldn't be necessary to have them look weird. I think it is more likely that villains' appearance is designed to scare a reader or viewer, creating a more immersive experience. Different stories have different reasons and backstories for their villain's appearance.
One book published in 2004, The Legend of Holly Claus by Brittney Ryan, tells a story about Santa Claus having a daughter, which then awakens an evil warlock deep below the Earth. This warlock has been sealed inside a prison for a very long time, so it makes sense that he would be ugly. However, the narrator tells a slightly different story. In this book, the nature of warlocks is shown by the color of their mouths. Basically the lighter the color of a warlock's mouth, the more consistently "good" they were. The main villain's mouth is black because of how much evil he had done. The book does not explicitly say so, but it is likely that the rest of his appearance is also caused by his unethical behavior. In the case of this book, the villain is ugly because he is a villain.
In other stories, the cause is more realistic. Earlier this school year I wrote a blog post about the Serafina series by Robert Beatty. The main enemy the characters deal with in the series is a sorcerer who lives deep in the woods. The sorcerer has lived there, in the mountains of North Carolina, for a very long time, and is very old, so it makes sense that his appearance would be less than pleasing. (That is the realistic part, not the part about there being a sorcerer who has lived in the woods for all his life.)
Sometimes a villain generally has little personality or backstory, and is ugly for no reason. This usually happens so that the writer can focus on the story of the protagonists instead of going into detail about the antagonist. I hate to reference video games, but a good example of this would be the Zelda series. The main antagonist has taken several different forms throughout the series, and all of them have been quite ugly. The humanoid form he has taken in several games is known as Ganondorf, the demon king. (Side note: He was also born into the Gerudo, who are almost all female. It is somewhat weird how even in a population of all female people the villain is portrayed as male.) Ganondorf is weirdly ugly, even though his species generally is not. There is no obvious reason for why he is portrayed this way.
There is also the question of why so many villains are men. It could have to do with the stereotype that women should be quiet, calm, and submissive, but society also used to look at some women (not men) as "witches" who worshiped Satan. We read some about this in The Scarlet Letter. These evil witches are not as much shown in modern fiction, although they are common in fairy tales.
I liked reading through the points in this post. Speaking of the Scarlet Letter, I like to think that Chillingworth becomes uglier and uglier the more he torments Dimmesdale. I forgot if that was an actual point of the story but let's just pretend. I feel like in more recent content, villains are getting more attractive and the stereotypical ugly evil villain are getting more out of fashion. I think its because villains people can empathize with are more interesting and hot evil people are cool lol.
ReplyDeleteGood job Rose! This is definitely one of the more common tropes that I know of, and I think that you are correct; the villain's are often portrayed as ugly/disfigured/gross because we aren't meant to like them. Sometimes it is a result of their backstory, which caused them to become evil. I think Maggie is right though too. This trope has started to become less popular recently because of social pressures and such.
ReplyDeleteThe points you bring up in each example are really interesting. What I think is that the villains actions, personality or even name are things that the viewer finds as ugly and bad. In the modern world, being ugly isn't always a good thing haha. I think that what is happening is that the villains personality shapes their form; people with ugly personalities might looks physically ugly, but something that I find interesting is that this doesn't apply all the time. Like you said, there are situations where the villain ISN'T ugly. For example, if you have a sly or deceptive character, they might not always be ugly (or so I think)... Rather they usually have better looks but have a personality that isn't really good: all adding together to show that their literal appearance is deceptive!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I've noticed this trope everywhere, especially in Disney movies like with Ursula and Cruella. There isn't one older Disney that doesn't have an ugly villain. They have been creating new movies though that sympathies with the villains and gives them a backstory (Maleficent and Cruella). Like Maggie said this trope is starting to disappear because of social pressure.
ReplyDeleteI think the points you bring up are interesting and apply to other things besides villains. Authors want to make their characters visually match their personality. They know that the reader will make a mental picture in their head of the character and they do not need to hire an actor for the role. They can create whatever they want to improve the character and add that little bit of extra weight to the character.
ReplyDeleteThe appearance also sometimes has other purposes than to appear evil or good. For example, in the Star Wars movies, storm troopers are portrayed in masks without too many recognizable human features. This is because they are killed a lot and the director does not want a viewer to sympathize with them. This is a reason for a lot of non-human enemies, they will die eventually so the author does not want it to seem like they are human. It is better and seems more moral if thousands of fully masked, non-recognizable, people to be wiped out than fully developed, recognizable characters.
Thanks for the post, it was a really good idea.