On villains
Sep. 6th, 2014 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorSo, I am very much enjoying my new tumblr, but there are two problems with it as a medium for conversation. One is caused by my choices, the other by the nature of tumblr.
The first is that, well, my tumblr is themed: it's called Things-That-Are-Great, and that's what I post. There's plenty of politics in there, but it's all uplifting-- "look what these awesome queer women of color are doing!"-- and goes along with art and photography and kittens and humor and such. So when there's something I'm mad or sad about, it's just not the right place to put it.
The second is the nature of tumblr itself; you can't comment on a post (except to "like" it) without posting it yourself. So to have a conversation with someone, you need to post the same thing over and over again for each thing either of you says. And if someone else says something interesting, you have to also post that to get the whole conversation, and that's... well, I like it better here, I'm just saying.
So here is where I'm commenting on this tumblr post.
The OP's orignal point seems to be that villains have been hurt in the past. zarabithia's point seems to be that you can distinguish between villains and victims, that people choose to harm others or not.
I agree more with zarabithia and the people who follow, but... it's complicated.
One of the things we talk about in my trauma group is how, when you've been badly hurt, it leaves you with a lot of pain. And then you have choices about what you can do with the pain. The harder, braver thing, the thing that you need a lot of strength and/or support to manage, is that you deal with it. You mourn and grieve what you lost, you come to terms with the world being a place where things like that can happen to you, you find directions to use your anger in that help you accomplish your goals. You face your fears and find ways to overcome the irrational ones and take precautions around the rational ones, and don't let either run your life. You come to understand yourself as unlucky rather than bad, and change your worldview so it doesn't include you deserving what happened to you. You learn coping skills so that the pain doesn't overpower you as you slowly, slowly, slowly, with significant effort, stop being in so much pain. It is a lot of work, I have so much respect for people who do it.
But another option, another thing people can do with that pain, is to try to get rid of it by inflicting it on someone else. Because you don't have to change your whole worldview if you can just shift your place in it: if it's inevitable that there be some people who are abusers and some who deserve to be abused, then it makes all kinds of sense to try to be the former rather than the latter. Because you don't have to feel the fear if you can scare and hurt other people enough to know they can't threaten you. Because having been hurt brings enormous anger, and you usually can't actually take that anger out on the one(s) who originally hurt you, but that doesn't make the anger go away, and it's much easier to instead take it out on someone else. Because hurting other people is kind of a coping skill, in that it lets you feel more in control, less helpless in the face of your feelings and memories.
So... are villains all victims? Maybe not all-- you can get a lot of mileage out of obliviousness and/or detached looking out for your own interests without taking in the real impact of your actions. But the characters shown in that post... yeah, I think it's absolutely the case that they wouldn't be taking these actions if they hadn't been hurt.
But that doesn't change the fact that they are choosing those actions. (Except, well, I haven't seen Winter Soldier yet, and am vainly trying to avoid spoilers, but what I've gathered from fandom tells me that Bucky Barnes isn't actually choosing the actions he's taking, what with being mind-controlled and brainwashed and all. Which doesn't make the damage he does count less. It's just that it's the fault of the people using his body as an instrument.)(Actually, it might be much more complicated than that; I really need to see that movie to say anything intelligent about it!) I realize that Loki and Gollum and Davy Jones may not have had access to therapists and DBT groups and medications, per se, but those things are only tools that people use for the basic task of dealing with your own pain instead of inflicting it on someone else.
And part of what makes some of these stories good is when these characters learn that. Maleficent is a great example; the scene where she realizes that she took her anger out on an innocent and now can't undo it is amazing. I still wish that Anakin's backstory as it's portrayed in the first three Star Wars movies were anything as interesting as Darth Vader's eventual turning on the Emperor.
Or sometimes the stories are about how the characters don't learn that-- about how very, very hard it is to take your own pain back and own it rather than putting it on others. That's why Gollum and Magneto are two of my favorite characters in their canons, because they come so close to learning to deal, and the tragedy of the stories comes from them not managing.
But the fact that dealing with your pain is difficult doesn't justify the actions of people who choose to export it. Because it doesn't change the fact that they cause harm. It doesn't change the fact that they do to others what was done to them.
In fact, by hurting people, villains take part in the system of people being hurt, and so support that system. They're not saying "it's wrong to hurt people," they're saying, "it's inevitable that people be hurt, so I'll do it instead." In some ways, they're actually justifying the actions of people who hurt them in the first place, because they're reinforcing their worldview-- that the world is composed of abusers and abusees.
That worldview is hard to break. That worldview is one that I've seen in a lot of people, and it takes a lot of work to get out of. Zarabithia says the original quote "grossly furthers the idea that all victims are potential abusers. Which has real life ramifications, because this is actually something that survivors of child abuse fear and one of the reasons they do not always come forward." I see the point, but the thing is-- yeah, if you have the worldview that people inevitably harm each other, that does mean that every interaction you have with someone else could lead to them hurting you, and it only makes sense to be ready to hurt them first. Realizing that there are other possible patterns, other ways of interacting, isn't automatic. You have to have significant interactions with people who aren't abusing you. Or at very least, see examples of them so compelling that you start to wonder whether your worldview might be missing something.
Lots of survivors of abuse manage to change their worldviews. Lots of survivors of abuse realize that there are different ways to be, that not everyone in the world is inevitably going to try to hurt you, that you have options besides hurt-or-be-hurt. You can choose to deal with your own pain, you can choose not to inflict it on other people. It's just that it's not easy.
Villains are usually victims. Not all victims are villains.
And not all people who have been hurt stay victims forever.
--R
The first is that, well, my tumblr is themed: it's called Things-That-Are-Great, and that's what I post. There's plenty of politics in there, but it's all uplifting-- "look what these awesome queer women of color are doing!"-- and goes along with art and photography and kittens and humor and such. So when there's something I'm mad or sad about, it's just not the right place to put it.
The second is the nature of tumblr itself; you can't comment on a post (except to "like" it) without posting it yourself. So to have a conversation with someone, you need to post the same thing over and over again for each thing either of you says. And if someone else says something interesting, you have to also post that to get the whole conversation, and that's... well, I like it better here, I'm just saying.
So here is where I'm commenting on this tumblr post.
The OP's orignal point seems to be that villains have been hurt in the past. zarabithia's point seems to be that you can distinguish between villains and victims, that people choose to harm others or not.
I agree more with zarabithia and the people who follow, but... it's complicated.
One of the things we talk about in my trauma group is how, when you've been badly hurt, it leaves you with a lot of pain. And then you have choices about what you can do with the pain. The harder, braver thing, the thing that you need a lot of strength and/or support to manage, is that you deal with it. You mourn and grieve what you lost, you come to terms with the world being a place where things like that can happen to you, you find directions to use your anger in that help you accomplish your goals. You face your fears and find ways to overcome the irrational ones and take precautions around the rational ones, and don't let either run your life. You come to understand yourself as unlucky rather than bad, and change your worldview so it doesn't include you deserving what happened to you. You learn coping skills so that the pain doesn't overpower you as you slowly, slowly, slowly, with significant effort, stop being in so much pain. It is a lot of work, I have so much respect for people who do it.
But another option, another thing people can do with that pain, is to try to get rid of it by inflicting it on someone else. Because you don't have to change your whole worldview if you can just shift your place in it: if it's inevitable that there be some people who are abusers and some who deserve to be abused, then it makes all kinds of sense to try to be the former rather than the latter. Because you don't have to feel the fear if you can scare and hurt other people enough to know they can't threaten you. Because having been hurt brings enormous anger, and you usually can't actually take that anger out on the one(s) who originally hurt you, but that doesn't make the anger go away, and it's much easier to instead take it out on someone else. Because hurting other people is kind of a coping skill, in that it lets you feel more in control, less helpless in the face of your feelings and memories.
So... are villains all victims? Maybe not all-- you can get a lot of mileage out of obliviousness and/or detached looking out for your own interests without taking in the real impact of your actions. But the characters shown in that post... yeah, I think it's absolutely the case that they wouldn't be taking these actions if they hadn't been hurt.
But that doesn't change the fact that they are choosing those actions. (Except, well, I haven't seen Winter Soldier yet, and am vainly trying to avoid spoilers, but what I've gathered from fandom tells me that Bucky Barnes isn't actually choosing the actions he's taking, what with being mind-controlled and brainwashed and all. Which doesn't make the damage he does count less. It's just that it's the fault of the people using his body as an instrument.)(Actually, it might be much more complicated than that; I really need to see that movie to say anything intelligent about it!) I realize that Loki and Gollum and Davy Jones may not have had access to therapists and DBT groups and medications, per se, but those things are only tools that people use for the basic task of dealing with your own pain instead of inflicting it on someone else.
And part of what makes some of these stories good is when these characters learn that. Maleficent is a great example; the scene where she realizes that she took her anger out on an innocent and now can't undo it is amazing. I still wish that Anakin's backstory as it's portrayed in the first three Star Wars movies were anything as interesting as Darth Vader's eventual turning on the Emperor.
Or sometimes the stories are about how the characters don't learn that-- about how very, very hard it is to take your own pain back and own it rather than putting it on others. That's why Gollum and Magneto are two of my favorite characters in their canons, because they come so close to learning to deal, and the tragedy of the stories comes from them not managing.
But the fact that dealing with your pain is difficult doesn't justify the actions of people who choose to export it. Because it doesn't change the fact that they cause harm. It doesn't change the fact that they do to others what was done to them.
In fact, by hurting people, villains take part in the system of people being hurt, and so support that system. They're not saying "it's wrong to hurt people," they're saying, "it's inevitable that people be hurt, so I'll do it instead." In some ways, they're actually justifying the actions of people who hurt them in the first place, because they're reinforcing their worldview-- that the world is composed of abusers and abusees.
That worldview is hard to break. That worldview is one that I've seen in a lot of people, and it takes a lot of work to get out of. Zarabithia says the original quote "grossly furthers the idea that all victims are potential abusers. Which has real life ramifications, because this is actually something that survivors of child abuse fear and one of the reasons they do not always come forward." I see the point, but the thing is-- yeah, if you have the worldview that people inevitably harm each other, that does mean that every interaction you have with someone else could lead to them hurting you, and it only makes sense to be ready to hurt them first. Realizing that there are other possible patterns, other ways of interacting, isn't automatic. You have to have significant interactions with people who aren't abusing you. Or at very least, see examples of them so compelling that you start to wonder whether your worldview might be missing something.
Lots of survivors of abuse manage to change their worldviews. Lots of survivors of abuse realize that there are different ways to be, that not everyone in the world is inevitably going to try to hurt you, that you have options besides hurt-or-be-hurt. You can choose to deal with your own pain, you can choose not to inflict it on other people. It's just that it's not easy.
Villains are usually victims. Not all victims are villains.
And not all people who have been hurt stay victims forever.
--R
