If not Heroes Then...

If not Heroes then…

Well of course if you think about heroes, then the next thing that pops into your mind has to be villains.  And as any of the actors in the movies about the “super” hero who favors bats will tell you, it’s the villains who have the best roles and lines. Not to imply, as one who prefers the written word, that we should look to films for our guidance. It is, however, on the big screen that we see the largest portrayal of the evil in this world.

If the heroes of the world help us to defeat the villains, what is it that the villains do? Well some of the traditional villains take things, like candy from babies. Admittedly that isn’t much of a villainous thing to do, unless of course you’re the baby being robbed of your sweet. They pick on the less powerful, abuse children, and generally work to make life miserable for the rest of us.

Sometimes those “crimes” are perpetrated on a small scale, one small boy or girl at a time. Other times the villains go global and start wars to conduct their chicanery. At any scale the villain perpetrates his abusive activities without opposition until our former subject, the hero, intervenes and saves the day.

Are villains always obvious? Well in the good old days the villain always wore a black hat, or kicked sand in the face of the less fortunate. In today’s world they often wear a $2,000 suit and work their evil out of offices in sparkling clean buildings. In the past the bands of villains ravaged the country side, taking sheep and anything else that wasn’t tied down. In today’s world they are likely to meet their victims at seminars for investing. The end result is the same though and when the villains are finished the unfortunate investors are left with little in the way of savings or sheep.

There are of course other villainous types around. Those who steal from the unfortunate in the more traditional way are still with us. Every major city has the “muggers” who assault their victims in the street and take their money and valuables.

Must a villain take the property of others to be classified a villain? I think not. There are those who simply cause harm. They do this intentionally or in some cases without premeditation. Those muggers may simply be assaulting their victims for the “fun” of it. Reveling in seeing others suffer. Still other villains act without thought of those who will be injured by their actions. The person who has been drunk so often that the police have taken away their driver’s license, and yet still goes out and drinks to the level where they no longer can control a car and crash into buildings or worse yet people.  Are they villains since they will claim that they hadn’t planned to injure anyone. It just happened. I suspect that most of us would see them as villains. Although sadly in these cases the heroes rarely can be there to intervene and save the day. The police are usually reactive and do not have the ability to stop the dunk driver from drinking. (Side Note #1: To be fair police have in a number of instances set up check points during anticipated times of extreme revelry, to stop the drivers who have over imbibed from continuing to drive on the roads.)

So without any attempt at summation, we have villains who do not wear black hats, do not take other’s possessions, but still cause harm. It is that activity which may most accurately define a villain, they cause harm to others. That harm may come in the form of physical abuse. Here we have the traditional sand kicking bully, or the hockey mask wearing murderer. The harm may result from the villain depriving individuals of their savings, or means of earning a living. (Side Note #2: I’m not deliberately leaving out those who cause harm by charging individuals for substandard housing. Surely those who provide the buildings that are barely standing and have little heat or running water should not be left off of the list of villains.  They too cause harm of the most grievous nature, to those who rarely have the ability to fight back. I would love to read about a caped figure flying in and saving the unfortunate from the poverty into which they have fallen. OK this side note is taking on the characteristics of a separate piece and so it must end.) Some villains trap individuals in schemes that have no good outcome. (Side Note #3: Those of you who are about to sign up with the “you too can earn thousands working from home scheme” this means you.)

It is the job of writers to come up with really good villains, so that the heroes will be able to trump them and look heroic. I’m going to take my own advice and go off to think up a really good villain.