Villain. Antihero. What’s next?

In folklore, vampires have been around for a very long time.  The legends and myths surrounding them (and similar critters) come from all over the world.  For fangbanging aficionados, I recommend an old book A Clutch of Vampires, by Raymond T. McNally.  I have no idea if this book is still in print, but it covers the broader brush-strokes of vampiric myths throughout the ages.  If you can find it, it’s a good read. 

Anyhoo, the vampire, in its modern incarnation, really took flight [get it?!?] after two things happened (in my opinion), both of which occurred in the late Victorian period.  The first event is the Jack the Ripper killings, in 1888.  The second event, the publishing of Dracula, by everyone’s favorite Irishman, a few years later in 1897.  [Just be clear, I don’t think ol’ Jacky was the first of his bloodthirsty tribe, but I’m betting that murders happening in the capital of the world’s largest empire (at the time, anyway) pushed the event into media-spectacle status; however, I digress…]

The mystery of this unknown assailant launched Jacky into celebrity status, sending ripples throughout London’s cultural hive-mind.  With Stoker’s aristocratic leach also making an appearance, this is the time period that we start to see romanticized monsters.  Initially, this took the form of Count Dracula (there were a few more before and after, but they just weren’t as charming), but that’ll change.

Before I start talking about serial killers, I need to divide this group of whackos into two distinct categories.  The first category is the real deal: the bona fide Slasher McGees. As far as I can tell, all serial killers (at least within the United States and within - say – the last 50 years) have weird, sexual hang-ups.  These sick frags are perverts that just BROKE.   I’m not a psychologist or forensic investigator, so I can’t say for certain what goes on inside their grey matter.  What I do know, real serial killers make for just unwholesome antagonists.

The second group of serial killers is the faux serial killers (what I’m calling “faux-rial killers”).   This group is purely fictitious, but audiences have seen them in one form or another.  Like the vampire, they’re romanticized monsters.  On film, two well-known faux-rial killers are Hannibal Lector and Jigsaw (from the Saw franchise).  Unlike real serial killers, these two Hollywood man-monsters don’t have odd obsessions with human nethers. Yeah, they might be on the broken side of the “crazy-not-crazy” scale, but it’s a sort of wicked that doesn’t make you want to wretch.    

[Two issues that will undoubtedly arise with the following:  One, when discussing Draky, I’ll be referencing the version that Coppola gave audiences from his 1990-something movie. I like that version, and (for anyone who’s read literature from that time period) it goes down a bit smoother.  Second, I know Jigsaw isn’t, technically, a serial killer; he never actually killed anyone.  It’s fiction.  Go with it.]

In Coppola’s version of Dracula, Draky becomes obsessed with Neo’s betrothed (the chica from Beetlejuice), believing her to be the reincarnation of his long-dead wife.  Over the course of the story, he performs odd acts of dastardliness that one might expect from a maladjusted Carpathian nocturnal marauder.  Keep in mind, despite his callous narcissism, Draky IS doing all this to become reunited with lost love.  In the end, Laurence Fishburne helps Neo kill Draky and bring peace between the vampires and the machines (I might be remembering that part wrong). 

Jigsaw, after being diagnosed with cancer or something, decides that some people don’t deserve the gift of life.  He puts these people in horrendous situations where they have to amputate body parts, kill other people, watch Jersey Shore, etc. in order to survive.   After they survive (in albeit mutilated and grotesque fashion), they presumably live happily ever after (some might call it PTSD). Jigsaw is understandably miffed that fate landed him a raw deal, while douchebags get to run around and be jolly and living.    The bottom line:  the goals of these two monsters were, at their cores (deep, DEEP at their cores) something that – once the layers of visceral rage are stripped away - an audience might identify with.  They both possess a crux that makes them identifiable as something resembling human. 

Jiggy and Draky are a far cry from a hero, but the possibility for empathy is there.  Monsters, by definition, don’t make for great heroes. They can, however, make for outstanding Anti-heroes.  The anti-hero is either: 1) a protagonist who could be a classical hero if not for an antisocial idiosyncrasy, or 2) a protagonist who wants to achieve the same goals as a “hero” but goes about doing so without PR in mind.   With faux-rial killers and vampires, contemporary fiction has two prominent examples of the “monster hero” – the antihero caught between his “nature” and his “morals.” 

Where Dracula is an undead abomination, the character Blade (from the Marvel IP of the same name) is a twice-damned human/vampire hybrid.  Unable to find a place in either society, the character Blade hunts naughty bloodsuckers and brings them to ashen justice. In the first movie [I’m not going into the comic – the continuity issues will make your brain bleed], Blade is found by an aged (human) vampire hunter who hugged him and reassured him that he’s a good boy (or whatnot). On the faux-rial killer side of the story, we have the character of Dexter Morgan [from the Lindsay novels and the oh-so-popular Showtime series]. Like the fictional serial killer of Hannibal Lector, Dexter experienced some horrible psychological trauma in his early childhood that made him all killy-killy-die-die.  However, unlike Dr. Fava Bean, Dexter had a mentor (in the form of his adapted father) that likewise hugged him and reassured him that he’s good boy (and such).  

Unlike the Doc and Draky, Blade and Dex have an anchor – a mentor from the muggle world – that grounds their monstrous impulses (whether the result of vampy DNA or just being loony).  With this relationship, a bridge is formed between what they ARE and what they COULD BE. They are a monster, but they want something resembling normal.  Tormented between their natures and “keeping their souls,” the results are “heroes” that are “gritty, dark, and edgy.”  [BTW, when describing an antihero, these three words are like Sarah Palin jokes:  they’ve been TO DEATH.  Move on.  If you’re writing an antihero, don’t use them. ]

What started in the Victorian era as a human-monster has slowly been evolving into a new type of popular hero.  In the last few decades, fiction has seen popularity rise for the antihero as the main protagonist.  Now, here’s what I want to know.  Why the fascination?  Why the withdrawal from the traditional knight-in-shining armor?  As a society, have we become jaded? As an audience, have we just become bored?  Is it a bad boy-rebel thing?  A cultural identification with the “ronin” archetype – the loner personified?  Does it have to do with economic uncertainty? Maybe audiences appreciate, now more than ever, the idea of a “hero” hell-bent on taking on the world.  Oh, if only I were a psychologist…..