Fascinating article! You have me paging through villains in my mind to see how they fit in your categories or linear combinations thereof. A Wall of Text is in order.
1. The villain as the true hero in the Leftist mind has been a long time in coming. In 20th Century fiction, the Rebel is often motivated by envy. Dr. Evil envies Austin Powers' mojo. This conflict spoofs quite a few Hollywood productions. Evil genius gets thwarted by Joe Studley is not just limited to the James Bond franchise. The trope goes back at least to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Orthis character in "The Moon Maid." And in the same book, the maid in question is fleeing the wrath of the Kalkars, the underclass of her species. And let us not forget Brown Limper Staffer from "Battlefield Earth."
Since envy is a good thing in the Leftist mind, turning villain into protagonist makes sense for Lefties.
2. Back when the liberal ninnies took the fun out of Saturday morning cartoons, we got a brief moment of incredible honesty with "The Super Friends." There, the cackling villains turn out to be good intentioned.
And thus I think an excellent punishment for good intentioned liberals who push bad policies would be to force them to binge watch Superfriends. Worst offenders should have to watch "Clockwork Orange" style.
3. With that being said, the villain as the interesting character predates the Woke era. The villains were the stars in the 60s "Batman" series. Or consider the villains in Jack Vance novels, especially "The Demon Princes."
4. Do you mean your four villain archetypes to be a complete set? I have a hard time fitting many villains into just these four categories or combinations thereof. Even the Arthurian legends had other types of villains. In "Le Morte D'Arthur" there are several types of villains. There are perilous castles run by lords who take pleasure in imprisoning knights to rot. There are dangerous damosels who capture knights for sexual pleasure. And then there are cowards and cheats, such as King Mark.
5. Was Zeus a hero or a Lovecraftian Old God who must be appeased else bad things happen? The Golden Age for the Greeks occurred when the Titans still ruled. Prometheus gave Man fire; Zeus punished Prometheus sadistically for doing so. Likewise, the Romans had the Saturnalia, a remembrance of a more egalitarian age when Saturn (analog to to the Titan Chronos) ruled.
4. No, I don't think it is a complete set, it was just a typology of villains I noticed that happened to line up with chronological changes in our culture. I noticed the postmodern villain first, and then reasoned backwards from there. The map is not the territory; there's lots of other villainies.
5. This is such a good question. I struggle with this a lot, because there is a strain of thought within the Greeks that sees the Olympian gods as the lords of order, benevolent, and wise. We see Zeus fight Typhon, for instance. This becomes particularly vivid when we see the Stoics begin to use Zeus to refer to God, and in the use of Zeus Hypsistos and Theos Hypsistos almost interchangeably for God Most High. But at the same time by our standards even Apollo (Nietzsche's symbol of rationality) seems capricious, emotional, and downright nasty -- hardly a paragon of order and rationality.
But there is an awfully big strain of Greek thought that treated the Olympian gods the way the National Enquirer treats movie stars. Zeus was always morphing in all sorts of forms in order to seduce Earth women, and then he had to hide the evidence from his wife Hera by hiding the Earth women or transforming them into cows or whatnot.
The biggest moral takeaway I got from reading Greek myths was beware of what you ask for, because you might get it good and hard. The gods were kind of like computers in this respect. Ask for eternal life? No problem! You just keep getting older and older and older. Too bad you didn't ask for eternal youth.
The other moral lesson was you can't get ahead as a human. Only part of Hercules ended up in the heavens. His mortal half ended up in Hades along with the rest of humanity.
Technically, Zeus was a tyrant, a usurper.
It really shouldn't be all that surprising that the Greeks of Hellenistic Era were looking into Judaism, and when Paul came around they found his message quite appealing.
----
With that being said, I have found it interesting that Zeus had lost much of his importance during the Hellenistic Era. The big split was between Apollo and Dionysus by the time of Christianity. And for the Romans Jupiter gave way to Sol Invictus.
Maybe my study of Greek mythology centered too much on later accounts, after Zeus was downgraded.
I would, however, frame the Ancient Villain differently, at least in his earlier incarnation. The Ancient Villain does not rebel against the Natural Order; he *is* Nature itself. Untamed. Fanged. Out to prey on the unsuspecting. The civilized Ancient Hero defeats Chaotic Nature and imposes the Order of civilization by force of arms. Note the bestial and animalistic nature of many Ancient Villains - often serpentine, sometimes lupine, quite often aquatic. Even Humbaba, who was potentially humanoid, resided in a primordial Cedar Forest.
The idealization of nature come much later, and could probably be traced to monotheism. If there is a benevolent Creator God, then the nature He created must be good, only to be despoiled by the actions of Man. But in the ice age, and in the civilizations coming immediately after it, nature was monstrous. Vile. Bestial. Out to devour the unsuspecting.
(Ironically, Postmodernism follows the monotheistic idealization of nature, while Modernism had certain echoes of the bestial nature which had to be conquered by the rational, technological, civilized hero).
I'm largely persuaded by recent readings of chasokampf theories and the widespread existence of theories of cosmic order within the Proto-Indo-European world to see the ancient conflict as cosmos opposed to chaos, rather than order to nature. The primordial monster of the chaoskampf is usually a dragon residing in deep water, with the ocean standing in for chaos. Hints of this remain in the opening verses of Genesis, for instance. Same for Egypt's Apophis.
That said, "the ancients" is an exceptionally broad group that encompasses thousands of cultures over thousands of years, so I don't claim to be arguing with any particular level of specificity. Certainly civilization vs nature is a huge theme. Is Zeus vs Typhon similar to Marduk vs Tiamat (cosmos vs chaos) or is he symbolic of civilization vs nature? Theogony had already occurred and Typhon was the spawn of Gaia, so it's totally viable to argue for the latter. My essay is just a map to thinking about villainy, not the full terrain of villainy, so as to speak.
Thanks for being a subscriber, by the way! You're the first one. You may append the title First in Woe to all legal documents going forward... :D
Fascinating article! You have me paging through villains in my mind to see how they fit in your categories or linear combinations thereof. A Wall of Text is in order.
1. The villain as the true hero in the Leftist mind has been a long time in coming. In 20th Century fiction, the Rebel is often motivated by envy. Dr. Evil envies Austin Powers' mojo. This conflict spoofs quite a few Hollywood productions. Evil genius gets thwarted by Joe Studley is not just limited to the James Bond franchise. The trope goes back at least to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Orthis character in "The Moon Maid." And in the same book, the maid in question is fleeing the wrath of the Kalkars, the underclass of her species. And let us not forget Brown Limper Staffer from "Battlefield Earth."
Since envy is a good thing in the Leftist mind, turning villain into protagonist makes sense for Lefties.
2. Back when the liberal ninnies took the fun out of Saturday morning cartoons, we got a brief moment of incredible honesty with "The Super Friends." There, the cackling villains turn out to be good intentioned.
And thus I think an excellent punishment for good intentioned liberals who push bad policies would be to force them to binge watch Superfriends. Worst offenders should have to watch "Clockwork Orange" style.
3. With that being said, the villain as the interesting character predates the Woke era. The villains were the stars in the 60s "Batman" series. Or consider the villains in Jack Vance novels, especially "The Demon Princes."
4. Do you mean your four villain archetypes to be a complete set? I have a hard time fitting many villains into just these four categories or combinations thereof. Even the Arthurian legends had other types of villains. In "Le Morte D'Arthur" there are several types of villains. There are perilous castles run by lords who take pleasure in imprisoning knights to rot. There are dangerous damosels who capture knights for sexual pleasure. And then there are cowards and cheats, such as King Mark.
5. Was Zeus a hero or a Lovecraftian Old God who must be appeased else bad things happen? The Golden Age for the Greeks occurred when the Titans still ruled. Prometheus gave Man fire; Zeus punished Prometheus sadistically for doing so. Likewise, the Romans had the Saturnalia, a remembrance of a more egalitarian age when Saturn (analog to to the Titan Chronos) ruled.
1/2/3. Good points!
4. No, I don't think it is a complete set, it was just a typology of villains I noticed that happened to line up with chronological changes in our culture. I noticed the postmodern villain first, and then reasoned backwards from there. The map is not the territory; there's lots of other villainies.
5. This is such a good question. I struggle with this a lot, because there is a strain of thought within the Greeks that sees the Olympian gods as the lords of order, benevolent, and wise. We see Zeus fight Typhon, for instance. This becomes particularly vivid when we see the Stoics begin to use Zeus to refer to God, and in the use of Zeus Hypsistos and Theos Hypsistos almost interchangeably for God Most High. But at the same time by our standards even Apollo (Nietzsche's symbol of rationality) seems capricious, emotional, and downright nasty -- hardly a paragon of order and rationality.
But there is an awfully big strain of Greek thought that treated the Olympian gods the way the National Enquirer treats movie stars. Zeus was always morphing in all sorts of forms in order to seduce Earth women, and then he had to hide the evidence from his wife Hera by hiding the Earth women or transforming them into cows or whatnot.
The biggest moral takeaway I got from reading Greek myths was beware of what you ask for, because you might get it good and hard. The gods were kind of like computers in this respect. Ask for eternal life? No problem! You just keep getting older and older and older. Too bad you didn't ask for eternal youth.
The other moral lesson was you can't get ahead as a human. Only part of Hercules ended up in the heavens. His mortal half ended up in Hades along with the rest of humanity.
Technically, Zeus was a tyrant, a usurper.
It really shouldn't be all that surprising that the Greeks of Hellenistic Era were looking into Judaism, and when Paul came around they found his message quite appealing.
----
With that being said, I have found it interesting that Zeus had lost much of his importance during the Hellenistic Era. The big split was between Apollo and Dionysus by the time of Christianity. And for the Romans Jupiter gave way to Sol Invictus.
Maybe my study of Greek mythology centered too much on later accounts, after Zeus was downgraded.
Interesting analysis!
I would, however, frame the Ancient Villain differently, at least in his earlier incarnation. The Ancient Villain does not rebel against the Natural Order; he *is* Nature itself. Untamed. Fanged. Out to prey on the unsuspecting. The civilized Ancient Hero defeats Chaotic Nature and imposes the Order of civilization by force of arms. Note the bestial and animalistic nature of many Ancient Villains - often serpentine, sometimes lupine, quite often aquatic. Even Humbaba, who was potentially humanoid, resided in a primordial Cedar Forest.
The idealization of nature come much later, and could probably be traced to monotheism. If there is a benevolent Creator God, then the nature He created must be good, only to be despoiled by the actions of Man. But in the ice age, and in the civilizations coming immediately after it, nature was monstrous. Vile. Bestial. Out to devour the unsuspecting.
(Ironically, Postmodernism follows the monotheistic idealization of nature, while Modernism had certain echoes of the bestial nature which had to be conquered by the rational, technological, civilized hero).
I'm largely persuaded by recent readings of chasokampf theories and the widespread existence of theories of cosmic order within the Proto-Indo-European world to see the ancient conflict as cosmos opposed to chaos, rather than order to nature. The primordial monster of the chaoskampf is usually a dragon residing in deep water, with the ocean standing in for chaos. Hints of this remain in the opening verses of Genesis, for instance. Same for Egypt's Apophis.
That said, "the ancients" is an exceptionally broad group that encompasses thousands of cultures over thousands of years, so I don't claim to be arguing with any particular level of specificity. Certainly civilization vs nature is a huge theme. Is Zeus vs Typhon similar to Marduk vs Tiamat (cosmos vs chaos) or is he symbolic of civilization vs nature? Theogony had already occurred and Typhon was the spawn of Gaia, so it's totally viable to argue for the latter. My essay is just a map to thinking about villainy, not the full terrain of villainy, so as to speak.
Thanks for being a subscriber, by the way! You're the first one. You may append the title First in Woe to all legal documents going forward... :D