When have you Rooted For the Empire?

Someone had to be the villain is a terrible way of thinking. Many Disney Movies could do without a Villain, you know. And pushing an animal who's no less evil than the pristinely saint like lions the movie pushes as the heroes is a terrible thing to do. Even without racism in account.

There is no racism, at all, in the Lion King (especially given the second film has an anti-racism message). There is a Medieval-esque royalty conflict, and that's it.

And no, most Disney films couldn't do without a villain. A lot of films could do without a villain, but Disney films are not amongst them. They're amongst the most memorable characters of the entire movie, or can you imagine the Lion King without this? It's one of the most visually striking sequences of the film, it has the catchiest tune and it's all because it's unbashedly evil. It's a tune about regidice, coup of state, a reign of terror (see the delightfully ham-fisted Nazi comparison), envy and wrath. And it's magnificent for it. The hyenas are amongst the best characters of the film ("For the death of the king!" "Why, is he sick?" one of the funniest moments). Love to Hate and whatnot.

I don't see a problem with making the Hyenas the bad guys either. They're animals, not a a persecuted ethinic minority. Particularly since this is not (and Disney does not even predent it is) an accurate interpretation of the lifestyle of lions and hyenas. The entire audience (except maybe the smallest of children) knows the story is an allegory for the story they're trying to tell (i.e a Hamlet-Macbeth hybrid with some tweaks). Making the hyenas the bad guys is entirely harmless.

edited 9th Jan '15 12:11:41 PM by Gaon

I wouldn't call it that harmless. Having always chaotic evil races in fantasy is problematic enough, same with cuteness used to demonstrate moral character. Pouring it all on a real life species just as native to the Savannah as the lions, however, was a very poor choice of ecological theme for a film built around the idea of balance, never mind being a bit too much of a fantastic aesop to stomach. Speaking of which, note how the good lions are only shown eating non-antropomorphized bugs, lest we remember they're really just as brutal killers as Scar and the hyenas. Makes me wonder how A Bug's Life crossover would turn out.

edited 9th Jan '15 12:22:37 PM by indiana404

Well Simba and the lions are not killing their own family members or eenacting coup of states over envy and power hunger, so there's definitely a line of divide here.

Serious Feelings of Disturbance are born in me when I read this post.

Lets just agree to disagree and move on. Neither side is going to convince the other.

I already said Im not on Scar's side or even the Hyenas'. I just dislike Mufasa that much.

edited 9th Jan '15 12:23:47 PM by AegisP

Because every work needs to espouse politically correct progressive messages or it must be run out of town as supporting someone's privilege? I don't see how you could enjoy anything in media if that's how you feel. I mean, I'm entirely in favor of most rights movements, but sometimes I just want to enjoy a movie without worrying if it's progressive enough.

Its not even Political Correctness. Its common decency. I cant believe this is so hard to grasp.

Any work that portrays all members of a race as unambiguously evil is just wrong.

I actually dont like much of the Disney Animated Canon s sans The Princess And The Frog. And no, its not because Im some sort of Social Justice Warrior.

So hyenas being Always Chaotic Evil in a cartoon is racism, now? Yeah, this goes back to what I said above. You are way too concerned about meaningless things.

I already dropped the racism argument. And yes, its wrong.

I cant believe a mod is being so confrontational.

Look in the mirror.

What the?

I dropped the matter. You brought it up again needlessly, you are trying to bully me into thinking the way you do. And Im the one who should look in the mirror?

EDIT:You know what, I've decided you guys are right. I am a jerk.

Ban me.

No, seriously, ban me. Im not having any fun at all in the forums and its clear you arent either. I admit I did take the whole "TLK IZ RACIST" thing too far. A Ll this yelling and stuff is taking a toll on me. I do like TV Tropes and I dont want to get to hate anyone in here. So its best we both cut our losses and I leave.

I dont hate you guys, you are awesome. You arent EVUL for thinking TLK isnt racist. I do still thnk its quite problematic and I dont like it at all. But I cant bully others and I cant stand this long pointless arguments either.

So... goodbye.

Lets meet again under happier circumstances.

edited 9th Jan '15 2:00:36 PM by AegisP

"You are way too concerned about meaningless things." Says a mod from TV Tropes.

You may be overreacting intensely here

I know I am. But posting in the forums been an extremely stressful experience for me, and I really dont think its going to get any better. After just one week,I'm totaled. Trust me. Its better this way. You will be happier. I will be happier. Everyone is happier.

If we are to part ways, then let it be with a smile.

Im not rage quitting,I will still read TV Tropes.

Well, that escalated and de-escalated quickly.

Anyway, I was thinking about the black box argument from a page ago, and I realized that quite a lot of the thread's perennial examples of rooting for the villains also fit that profile as well.

For example, it wasn't the use of aesoptinium that had me cheering for the RDA over the Na'vi - as unsubtle as the allegory was, resource wars are all but identical in function and development, and have caused substantial grief over not necessarily worthwhile pursuits. Instead, the tipping point was the involvement of the Space Ferngully Fairy, and the admonishing of humanity for not being lucky enough to be born on a planet that ever had one. It's never explained how the entity appeared in the first place, so using it as an aesop is not just fantastic, but downright silly.

The same can be applied to the supers in The Incredibles - their powers have neither a personal nor even a meta origin story, so the similarly unsubtle social commentary decrying Tall Poppy Syndrome actually has no solid ground to stand on. Meanwhile, the guy working to even the supernaturally crooked playing field does have a point, even if he's strawmanned as a jealous murderous gloryhound.

And in general, stories concerning matters of prophecy, destiny, divine calling or various other supernatural and religious themes, can be rather off-putting if they fail to shed light on how and why such things came to be the way they are. Forgive my Pythonese, but really - strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. It's hardly the most egregious reason for an audience to shift its character preferences, but I'd say it's worth looking into regardless.

Syndrome is a jealous, murderous glory hound. Just because he has a point doesn't mean he's not also a villain. This is something we often forget. Is he the kind of person you want in charge of producing and distributing technology that would give every human superpowers?

We are supposed to acknowledge that he may be right about leveling the playing field between supers and normals while at the same time considering him a sick, somewhat pathetic individual who has to be defeated lest his mania wreck the world.

edited 16th Jan '15 5:10:07 AM by Fighteer

I wouldn't say he's not a villain, but that's the thing - in fiction, anyone can be sent jumping off the slippery slope or kicking random puppies, even if it's barely tangentially related to their original motivation. Instead, I find his most believably damning trait to be in creating his own monsters to fight rather than seeking out some actual criminals.

And I'm still not sold on how he may have been intended to have a point - not when the most overly dramatic moment of his evil plan wasn't even about him playing superhero, but about how his technology would ultimately make superheroes obsolete by egalitarian mandate. The horror.

Mind you, the guy's concept itself exploits another black box superhero cliche - that of the self-made genius using inimitable gadgets, apparently in a world where reverse engineering or concurrent research don't exist. Realistically, and despite his intentions, him introducing the original technology would not have necessarily put him in charge of further developing or distributing it.

Which reminds me, just about every film that goes the other way - criticizing revolutionary inventions on the basis that only the rich and powerful would benefit from them - is too unversed in matters like economy of scale or purely scientific prerequisites to bother mulling over, let alone rooting for the obligatory MegaCorp on top. Suffice to say, we'll have affordable organ growing and genetic retrofitting technology long before we ever have to worry about fantastic classism concerning designer babies.

edited 16th Jan '15 7:09:17 AM by indiana404

So, because the story is not plausible, we can't acknowledge the roles of hero and villain? Sounds like overthinking to me.

More like it's a fantastic aesop to begin with, which is the core of the black box argument as well. Still, it would explain why the most popular villains come from franchises taking place in wildly improbable settings like fantasy realms or alien worlds. The trope namer literally has a magical force which makes people evil if they don't always remain all but perfectly stoic and emotionally detached, even from friends and family. So yeah, you can say the moral stance of such stories can be somewhat unintuitive, and prone to reinterpretation.

edited 16th Jan '15 7:51:54 AM by indiana404

That kind of reinterpretation annoys me when taken seriously. Sure, I can Fridge Logic my way to all kinds of hilarious and/or tragic conclusions about the story, but applying real-world logic to fantasy universes can only go so far before you're overthinking things.

For example, consider the world of The Incredibles. Supers undeniably exist. Some are good, and some are evil. Sure, the good guys cause a lot of collateral damage while saving the city/country/world, but if they didn't, the bad guys would be unstoppable. This is a world in which the Muggles really can't do much, and trying to be heroic only gets them killed. Muggle Power is, at best, a temporary solution.

Would the world be better off if there were no supers, or if everyone had the same power as the supers so that nobody could rise above the rest? Maybe, but that's a different world, and so you can't apply its moral logic to theirs.

From a Doylist perspective, the world of The Incredibles is fraught with moral dissonance, but from a Watsonian perspective, I can't see how any other internal morality could possibly have evolved.

Syndrome is supposed to be a sympathetic figure because of his initial motivation: he wants to be a superhero, gets rejected, then decides that the morality of his universe sucks balls and tries to change it. But his methods are reprehensible.

edited 16th Jan '15 8:14:27 AM by Fighteer

However, an internal morality did evolve - apparently, there actually were no evil supers - as the one villain we see was a regular mad bomber - so the popular consensus was that having them just wasn't worthwhile, so they'd better tug away the capes and live like muggles themselves. That's the regular kind of tall poppy syndrome.

And then along comes Syndrome, whose relatable evil manifests exactly as the attitude of Mr. Incredible - in wanting to play hero regardless of what the public thought of it - but who is also denigrated for the same attitude the public already has - that there should be no supers altogether. It's the Incredibles who stand against the moral stance of their own world, while the existence and imitation of their attitude, rather than their abilities, is the root cause for the problems presented in the story. No supers - no problems, stated by popular demand.

All in all, the story is meant to appeal to one's internal special snowflake, to be projected through it's main heroes. However, much like with poorly written YA fiction like Twilight, watching the events from a third person perspective precipitates a wholly different conclusion.

Well, we do see evil supers at the end, with those mole people. You may be right, though: the story doesn't exactly go out of its way to show us any threats that might demand the presence of a superhero prior to their Hero Insurance failure. We seem intended to take the claim at face value.

edited 16th Jan '15 8:15:48 AM by Fighteer

Well the population in their universe did come off as pretty corrupt, they'd probably sue any other figure that saved them, ones that maybe didn't have the same financial backup.

Out of topic from this debate, I might add another factor that plays into me Rooting for the Empire.

I tend to loathe heroes who win automatically. Like ones that don't even have to do anything to win. Invincible Hero doesn't even cut it since one of those may still need to do elaborate and clever stuff to beat the villain, even if it's no real effort to them. This is a character that has everything in their favour, even when they don't earn it. It's hard to root for a hero that doesn't stand a chance of losing or even being harmed, not even in a potential sense. It's like rooting for the rich lazy snob that has a silver spoon in their mouth rather than the working class guy that works and earns their keep.

edited 17th Jan '15 5:58:24 PM by Psi001

Yeah, this is what got me out of the Avatar franchise, particularly the sequel series - when your hero can turn into a flaming ball of destruction at writer fiat, and even gets New Powers as the Plot Demands with alarming frequency, I'm much more likely to sympathize with the villains, if only out of pity for being set up in a conflict more one-sided than a Moebius loop. Compare that to how Samurai Jack spent most of its first episodes describing exactly how the titular wanderer got so strong and capable, and then put him against a bonafide God of Evil for the rest of the series. It ain't just the guy's sword that's made of unbreakable steel, I'll give him that.

Regarding the former line of thought, I always find something disingenuous whenever whole societies are depicted as corrupt, incompetent, or even hostile to the heroes for its own sake. Same as when there are polite villains put against rude heroes. It again has to do with whether you project directly onto the heroes' point of view, as opposed to seeing them as independent characters from a third person perspective. It strains my suspension of disbelief, raising the question of whether the people concerned really are so ignorant, treacherous and malicious... or they're just seen through the eyes of only a small number of conceited jerks, and this is the version of the story we get. I've mentioned this with regard to the trope namer, but in general, a lot of fantasy tales rely on most of the world literally being out to get the hero by any means possible... conveniently justifying their own antisocial tendencies.

To contrast, does anyone know a fantasy story where the affable soft-spoken sorcerer is the good guy and the brutish barbarian is the antagonist, or at the very least the Butt-Monkey? I guess current Loki comics count - and the guy's popularity would say a lot about audience preferences for guile heroes over simple bruisers.

edited 18th Jan '15 1:26:18 AM by indiana404

The Dreamstone sort of counts I suppose (The Dreammaker compared to Sgt Blob or Zordrak), if still in an Unintentionally Unsympathetic degree. That show features nearly every single issue raised in this topic (the heroes ridiculously safeguarded, having petty stakes, and just being blander and Glunge-y and completely reliant on Protagonist-Centered Morality, not to mention the villains being so pitiful and having a damn good excuse for their villainy that they suck any sport out of it and make the heroes look more like they're bullying wimpy children), even if it cleaned itself up a bit by the last episodes.

edited 18th Jan '15 5:39:15 PM by Psi001