BW Media Spotlight

The “monomyth” of the Hero’s Journey, the path a character goes to become the hero of the story and savior of (insert size of geography here), is one that’s getting brought up quite a bit, usually as pet character syndrome and token representation seem to have ignored this so that they’re beloved doesn’t appear weak. However, there is another journey that doesn’t get mentioned enough, the path to villainy. I say it doesn’t get mentioned but there are writers to seem to be more interested in how a character turns evil than turns good. The usual line is that villains are more fun to write or perform because absence of morality means they get to act out in all those fantastic ways the proverbial “we” want to. Not being part of that “we” I heavily disagree but that’s another topic.

Recently the Literature Devil posted a video about the “Villain’s Journey”, who zags where the hero zigs and becomes evil. It’s a fascinating video and I would have made it a daily quickpost but there’s one aspect of this comparison of heroes and villains, most notably Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as well as Batman and the Joker, that I don’t think he really got into. While he does a good job exploring when the two parings have different responses to temptation but not really as much into why they made those choices. Namely I want to focus on the forming of the hero’s conscience…and the villain’s lack of same, and how that played a role. And it comes from their various life stories.

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