The misunderstood villain

“Wicked” is one example of this new paradigm the entertainment industry is feeding on. The wicked witch in “The Wizard of Oz” isn’t so much bad as she’s set up for a fall. Her green skin is the unsavory characteristic that makes her a target for ridicule and rejection. Galinda (the Good) is just too pretty to be bad, so she must be good. Right? She rides her popularity, prettiness and privilege toward her supposed dream future and pitches her emerald roommate to the wolves (or flying monkeys in this tale). Elphaba uses intelligence and empathy to battle her way through the prejudice that taints her life.  

Maleficent in “Sleeping Beauty” received similar treatment from Disney in their recent movies on the betrayed and embittered fairy who is just protecting her wounded heart when attacked by a power-hungry king. It’s Sleeping Beauty who befriends and saves her. It’s a little dark, but it’s pizza-and-popcorn-movie-night worthy.

The Damsel-in-Distress and Prince-Charming duo shuffled off the stage decades ago. It’s the drive of our society to find the “goodness” in everyone. It’s there. You just have to dig a little to find out what the turning point was in their lives that twisted their minds to embrace black vindictiveness. Evil is a response, not an inborn habitus. That’s the message that’s being spun into interesting stories.

We see this in the redesign of some heroes/heroines as bad seeds grown into  good apples via cajoling of loving sources. Like the Outlaw Flynn in “Tangled” and Street Rat Aladdin. Or Sandra Bullock’s character in “The Proposal.” The plot is great for building tension and engaging the audience’s sympathy for a character’s internal struggle. One caveat: This doesn’t apply to horror films or plots of good vs evil. In real life, evil, badness and meanness exists in people and may never be turned around. They may be corrupted way past salvation. A 19th century historian, Lord Acton, famously wrote: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That has been proven over and over and over throughout the human occupation of the planet. 

It probably started with the first Neanderthal that learned to wield a large club and ruled his clan with savage brutality. I imagine one of his bullied tribe members figured out the fulcrum-lever function of a stick, small rock and boulder. Then he waited on a bluff with a stout length of wood, levered over a rock and stuck under a boulder teetering at the edge. When his nemesis strolled beneath the site, downward pressure was applied to the lever, budging the boulder enough to roll over the edge, flattening the big man and his stick. Ta da! A hero is born. Another type of plot.

That’s how Dorothy became a hero, being credited for the death of another witch. It wasn’t really Dorothy’s doing. A tornado had tossed her house through some ethereal portal and crushed a witch. Dorothy was just swept up by propaganda and an enthused crowd of Munchins. But she got some fancy shoes out of the deal. Score!