Villains

Writing my post about Star Wars and watching Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord got me thinking about villains, particularly those that break the axiom that everyone thinks they’re the hero of their own story.

Shakespeare in particular has a number of examples of characters that are all too eager to play the villain.

Iago is gleefully aware that is playing the villain. And even though he’s not the title character in Othello, he is essentially the main character. Othello is either a colossal dope that kills his wife because he’s so dumb he believes everything Iago says, or deep down he wants to believe what Iago says. Iago is the one doing things in that play. Othello is just reacting, poorly, to what Iago has set in motion.

Richard III is the title character of his play and he says in his opening monologue that he can’t be the hero so he’ll be the villain. I recently saw a production of Richard III at A Noise Within theater where Richard was played brilliantly by Ann Noble, playing Richard like he’s the Joker. Or given that the production was set with a 1970s motif, she played Richard like a 1970s punk chaotically destroying the establishment dweebs surrounding him. I’ve seen other versions of Richard III where I liked the production, but this was the first time I realized that the character can be fun.

I think modern writers are less likely to have villains who don’t think of themselves as “the hero of their story,” but they do exist and there are some great examples.

Twin Peaks has had a huge influence on me, and while many have issues with parts of the second season, I think that Windom Earle, the villain from that season was a gleeful, unrepentant, bad guy. Dale Cooper’s former mentor and current nemesis doesn’t go ahead and assassinate Agent Cooper, he toys with him. Earl sets up elaborate scenarios for Cooper to play through. Earle doesn’t just murder drifters, he puts them in giant papier mache chess pieces to leave as clues for the do-goders to find. And at the end of the day Windom Earle is seeking knowledge and power for his own ends. An astute reader of my recent work might realize that Windom Earle is one of the inspirations for the character of Eleanor in The Many Worlds Interpretation of Azure Cove, the former mentor and current nemesis of Dr. Sarah Huber.

I mentioned the Joker earlier, and I think that’s another good example. The Joker doesn’t think he’s a hero. He might think he’s the protagonist of the story, but hero? That man knows that he’s a villain. And he delights in it. In many ways the Joker is more fun than the hero. Batman is all-black mopey scowls. The Joker is colorful and always smiling. Bruce Wayne is a billionaire and is somehow a hero? Batman is on the side of the cops and the bankers. Like Ann Noble’s portrayal of Richard III, the Joker is delighting in creating chaos to destroy those institutionalists. The Joker remains a villain. He kills people and harms others with his mayhem, but he does it in a manner that the audience reading the comic or watching the movie can enjoy. The audience experiences a catharsis in imagining the vapid, soul-crushing institutions being brought down a peg.

And so we come to Maul. I didn’t think much of Darth Maul in the movies. He was a scary-looking villain that could fight two Jedi at once and win. It was satisfying to see him defeated. In the tv show, he comes into his own as a gleeful villain. He’s the funny one now, or at least the entertaining one. He’s the one pulling the strings while the other puppets dance for his delight. It also got me thinking that he’s also the outsider, the disrupter taking on the institutionalists. Even in the movies when the Jedi were the guardians of order protecting the institution of the republic…and it maybe a tangent, but is there a better example of counterproductive dopes than the Jedi? Constantly making bad decisions because of adherence to misreadings of prophecy like tragic heroes in Greek classics… I digress. In the Maul show the Jedi are now hunted, and Maul playfully scolds them for not joining him. Now it’s the Imperials, the Sith, and the Syndicates that make up the institutions Maul is fighting and poking fun at while he does.

I suspect it will end badly for him. It usually does for these villains. But I am certain that he will have fun while it lasts, and so will we the audience.