The difference btw "hero" and "antihero"--and that tiresome creature, protagonist

[truepenny]

So my list of eleven common characteristics of fantasy I can do without has sparked some discussion, particularly of # 7, in the course of which it has become clear to me that I have, once again, failed to say what I mean.

So, because I'm stubborn and a slow learner, I'm going to try again.

What I said was:

7. Social predators (thieves, assassins, etc.) with whom the reader is supposed to sympathize. Particularly if we're supposed to sympathize because of #4 [the correlation between beauty and goodness].

What it looks like I'm saying--and I freely admit this interpretation is right there at the front of the line--is that I object to social predators as protagonists. Which I don't.

My objection is to something more subtle, which is probably why I didn't articulate it well. So let's talk about heroes, antiheroes, and protagonists.

"Protagonist" is the fancy litcrit technical term, and means the character in the story who acts. In general, this is also the main character of the story (if your main character isn't your protagonist, your story may well be in trouble--I have historically had more than a little trouble with this) and also your viewpoint character (ObException: The Great Gatsby). These--"protagonist," "main character," "viewpoint character"--are all value-neutral terms, which is why I personally prefer them to the word "hero."

"Hero" has a lot of baggage to schlep around with it; calling a character a hero assumes that he or she (it even assumes the character's a he, hence the word "heroine") is Good, that he does the right thing and wants to do the right thing, that he stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and if in light of what America's been doing recently, you have some questions about how well those three things actually go together ... well, this is where the word "antihero" comes in.

An "antihero" is a protagonist who isn't a hero--aggressively so, even. My all-time favorite example is George MacDonald Fraser's Harry Flashman, who is a coward, a liar, a braggart, a bully, a lech ... and an amazingly engaging narrator.

This is where the word "sympathize" was the wrong word. Because as a reader, you can certainly sympathize with antiheroes. What I was trying to get at was the habit in fantasy novels of treating social predators as if they were unproblematically heroes, rather than highly problematical antiheroes.

I'm actually all in favor of antiheroes and morally ambiguous protagonists, and think fantasy could use more of them--as long as it treats them honestly.

Another way to put it is, I don't think murder should be sexy. Even in fiction.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm actually all in favor of antiheroes and morally ambiguous protagonists, and think fantasy could use more of them--as long as it treats them honestly.

Or, to come at it the other direction, fantasy already has plenty of morally ambiguous protags -- it's just that more of their authors need to recognize that fact?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you. That'll do nicely.

writing what you know...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

I think part of the issue is that social predation is lauded in our culture - the better the thief, the more accolades are often deposited upon them -

Good/evil being a matter of perspective...thief/assassin are equally problematic

Culturally we tend to laud the 'righteous revenger' and dress them up as apple-pie de rigour Delta Force/cop etc...

Thieves we laud equally with such transcendence as Halburton in Iraq, Gates with Microsoft, Enron committing economic treason with impunity and endless troves of men and women placing themselves under the knife to appear to steal youth in an effort to more completely deceive others...

Much of writing tends to reflect the known...

the trick of the thief is to avoid being caught in any form of public censure...

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I read #7 and briefly thought "But I really liked _Catspaw_, etc.!" and then immediately had, basically, the above conversation in my head. *G* So I'm with you.

"Oh, she's an assassin? Cool." should not be a normal response.
"Wait, she KILLS PEOPLE FOR MONEY?!" is more like it. (Not to mention more fertile ground for interesting storytelling instead of Mortal Kombat on paper.)

Viewpoint character other than protagonist

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

The Sherlock Holmes stories, narrated by Dr. Watson. This serves two purposes: Holmes's conclusions can be hidden for a while without unfairness, and the story can be told by a more interesting storyteller than Holmes.

Olaf Stapledon's Odd John. The protagonist is so highly intelligent that as narrator he would probably be incomprehensible to readers.

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

I loff Flashman with a loff that will never die.

Re: writing what you know...

[cleverthylacine]

I think it cheapens your argument considerably that you equate people spending their own money on cosmetic surgery (for whatever reason) to Halliburton killing millions of people and Enron ruining the lives of so many people by screwing up their pensions in a country that doesn't take very good care of elderly people to begin with.

If you believe that people ought to love their wrinkles and grey hair, go you. But a chin lift or even a bottle of Miss Clairol does not make you Ken Lay.

Re: writing what you know...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

Actually I was attempting to show the scope of the issue and how it gets into everything and everywhere if you look closely enough. My poorly made point was simply that theft is a lifestyle in our current culture, trafficking on anyone you can traffic on, deceipt at every level, use use use. We tend to think of theft as in car thief or museum thief (in the movies) instead of cultural rape and pillage supported at every level. What appears to be the consensus is that it is the possession and retention of wealth that matters, not on whose throat you cut to get there AND if it is possible for you to steal your way into something better then that makes you romantic or successful as well.

It's sort of like - does the person drinking a Starbucks coffee today know they are supporting stealing beans from a child in Chile? Does the person wearing athletic shoes made for twenty cents by a mother in China recognize their support of poverty and oppression? Does the person buying school clothing for their kids at Walmart talk about how they are stealing support from their local stores who put money into their kids schools? We steal land 'emminent domain', water, 'dammed rivers' - on every level. It's only bad when we are the ones being ripped off cause that makes us chumps - if we can be the ripper off'er, that makes us smarter than the chump.

I believe the concept of thief as hero is sustained by our chosen cultural perspective.

Regarding your wrinkles comment: What I don't see is normal looking women or elder men and women in vibrant roles in nearly any media outlet being presented or accepted as positive, successful human beings. In this culture, if you age you are automatically UNsuccessful.

Please keep in mind that all comments I've made here are My Opinion and not directed at any individual.

Re: writing what you know...

[teratologist.livejournal.com]

At the risk of cluttering up truepenny's journal (if you'd like we can take it over to mine instead), I'd like to explore this further...

I get what you're saying and agree with much of it. But one thing that most of your examples have in common, and that I think is critical to the definition of 'theft', is depriving someone of something. Halliburton deprives the U.S. taxpayers of services for the money they receive, and Iraqis of their lives. Eminent domain deprives people of their property, unfair trade deprives people of the product of their labor and of the opportunity to lead a healthy life.

But it's hard for me to see what having cosmetic surgery deprives other people of, other than their 'right' (which I would question whether they have) to see the person who had surgery as they 'really' (another problematic idea) are.

Unless you are arguing that people who have cosmetic surgery are depriving society of elderly/different-looking role models, in which case I would argue that it's more the image-makers who choose to highlight modified over unmodified people, not the subjects, who are the theives.

Re: writing what you know...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

:::before I get piled under stones:::

(please note this next comment is narrowed to those getting plastic surgery solely to look younger)

I suspect I might be arguing that people who purchase body dysmorphic type of surgeries are depriving themselves of the opportunity of natural aging acceptance (some aspects of personal truth and emotional wellness) - there are some significant studies out there now that are looking at the 'reduction of life span' of persons choosing these types of surgeries - so this can be looked at as self-theft. Plus, this type of surgery is an intentional action to perpetrate a deceit on others (another type of theft)

Re: writing what you know...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Deceit and theft are not synonyms. The terms of your argument are getting very muddled

Cosmetic surgery of various kinds may be pointless--or it may not, talk to a breast cancer survivor--but it's fully consensual. Even when it's wrong-headed (and I do think it sometimes is), it still falls into the category of the individual's right to control over their own body. Some of the plastic surgeons may be on shaky ethical ground, but that's not the point here, either.

I think there is a tendency in American culture to admire tricksters, i.e., people who get away with some major piece of deception. Heist movies are all about valorizing this particular archetype, and even though I enjoy them, I do get a kind of bitter aftertaste from them. (This may be one reason I like The Rock so much; it's a heist movie where the protagonist is the hero.) We also are predisposed to root for the underdog, so it's easy to take a criminal protagonist and elide them into a kind of Robin Hood.

But conversely, I haven't seen anyone speak admiringly of Enron, or Halliburton, or Bill Gates. They're just the excrescence of laissez-faire capitalism. There's a difference between the government not dealing with them as sharply as we might like, and their wrong-doing being condoned or approved by the culture as a whole.

[mmarques.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you explained more what you meant here, because I read #7 and thought, "What about Mildmay?" My sympathy towards Mildmay definitely kept me reading through the early parts of Melusine, when I was having great discomfit reading about Felix.

Re: writing what you know...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with your comments though I should clarify that cosmetic surgery is not the same as reconstructive or constructive surgery - I did try to be very clear on what my comment alluded to.

I am aware that deceit and theft are not the same thing but they are certainly related because deceit steals something that could be trust, honesty, potential, opportunity - these too are forms of theft (for me) and I do feel that theft (in general) is a pervasive cultural phenomenon. I am willing to exit the argument though :), this is your blog and I've wandered far afield.

No LJ, sorry..

[(Anonymous)]

Hi!

I just read both of your books (on Amazon's "recommendation," actually), in the space of..... 24 hours. No worries, I slept. A little. I adored them (despite the fact that I'm almost always not a fan of "world-building" fantasy novels in general- I tend to prefer the "our world with a twist" variety), which led me to the internet in search of possible sequel information, and I found your site.

Given the subject matter of this post, I'm curious- have you read Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles? Francis Crawford is, like Felix, brilliant, beautiful, and talented- and so full of self-loathing that he torments the people he loves and who love him ENDLESSLY by acting like a corrupt, hostile SOB, though he is always eventually revealed to have had a Secret Master Plan for the Eventual Good of All (or at least Scotland). I think he's often held up as a sort of anti-heroic prototype. Oh, and he's canonically bisexual, though there's a bit of "wait, did that just mean what I think it meant?" involved, given that the first two books were written in the early 60's.

Anyway, thanks for the great work- I can't wait for the next book.

Best,
Morgan

[handworn.livejournal.com]

An "antihero" is a protagonist who isn't a hero--aggressively so, even. My all-time favorite example is George MacDonald Fraser's Harry Flashman, who is a coward, a liar, a braggart, a bully, a lech ... and an amazingly engaging narrator.

You might also enjoy Ralph Poteet, in Loren Estleman's Peeper. A really funny book.

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

This sums up the problem I have with Eddings. I've read his books (if you teach fantasy it's almost unavoidable) but being expected to laugh and admire the clever way in which his characters mete out painful deaths to their enemies tro8ubled me severely. Murder should indeed not be sexy.

Re: writing what you know...

[jewelweed.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem I have with your analogy is that it presumes that people get cosmetic surgery only to control other's perceptions-- when in fact it may be something they do is simply for themselves.

An addendum: I lived for two years in a Muslim country and in a very conservative area with quite a bit of what some would call fundamentalism. Your argument is almost to the word the argument I heard from people against women wearing makeup, using hair conditioner (I'm not kidding) or being permitted to dye their hair when it goes grey. (I believe the Koran explicitly forbids it-- you can henna your hair red, but *not* black because it is presumed that the only reason a woman would do such a thing is to "fool" a man into thinking that she is still young, beautiful, and fertile. The men of course have a *right* to young, beautiful, and above all fertile women. Evil, evil women! It is always about making themselves more attractive to men!)

Re: writing what you know...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem I have with your analogy is that it presumes that people get cosmetic surgery only to control other's perceptions-- when in fact it may be something they do is simply for themselves.

Actually, I don't believe I presumed that - my comments related to body dysmorphia issues which can show up as simply 'for themselves' - if a person were able to live in a world absent of other people then their choices could be said to be 'simply for themselves' but we don't and our choices involve others - we can be conscious of that or not. Part of my comment concerned the rising data now relating body dysmorphic issues to reduced life span which gets into the areas of emotional wellness and/or empowered personal states coming from emotional wellness not physical appearance - since this is barely on the edge of the initial discussion (around cultural acceptance or celebration of theft) I would like to move this discussion to my blog if you wish to continue it.

Re: writing what you know...

[jewelweed.livejournal.com]

I didn't want to hijack the thread either, and I appreciate the point. :-) For me the word theft struck me as the wrong word because there is always an idea of "ownership" (and who owns your body in this case) behind it.

I friended you-- your blog looked very interesting. If I didn't have a deadline pinning me to the ground right now, I would be happy to carry over the discussion. Maybe some other time?

Thanks.

Re: writing what you know...

[mallory-blog.livejournal.com]

Anytime :)

[jewelweed.livejournal.com]

I rather liked your point #7 and thought about it for a long time during my drive home. I think I understood it the way you meant it.

I personally have no problem with a protagonist being a thief or an assassin or being wrong in some other profound way. What I get tired of is a default assumption that such a character is also uncomplicatedly good and heroic (and of course dashing and handsome, ready to do the right thing etc.) that you see in some stories. Pirates usually aren't that noble. The story has to dig deeper-- it has to discover something else about the person that exists in spite of it all.

What I expect from a story (a good story) is for there to be some consciousness on the part of the writer than anyone who gets paid to kill people is (at the very, very least) extremely damaged, and I would hope that even a thief (one who I am expected to sympathize with) would have at some point some misgivings about the whole thing, some shades of "God I would rather not...."

Anyway, I loved your list, and I have been busy mentally writing my own. :-)

Re: writing what you know...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you for bringing up such an interesting piece of contextualization.

(I should say, for the record and lest you feel like you've done something wrong, that I don't at all mind this discussion taking place in my blog. But y'all don't necessarily want me breathing down your necks, either.)

I do think you're right to point to the subtext here of controlling what judgments people (particularly women) are and are not allowed to make about their own bodies. Men have been railing against cosmetics for centuries for precisely the reasons you cite: it's all a ploy of those wicked wicked women to cheat men out of ... well, out of what, exactly?

What on earth are women taking from men by making themselves more beautiful (by, hello, male standards)?

They're taking away men's "right" to judge women by their appearance.

Now, obviously, the whole thing's much more tangled than that. I don't, personally, consider make-up empowering--but then, I'm not a femme. And, yes, I think women are destroying themselves in order to achieve an unobtainable standard of beauty which, if defined by anyone, is defined by male heterosexuals, i.e., people who are never EVER going to have to try to live up to that standard themselves. (There's a lot of that going around these days.) Never mind cosmetic surgery. Just consider what high heels do to your spine.

Re: writing what you know...

[jewelweed.livejournal.com]

I am very, very femme, so my take on all of this is decidedly empowering. :-)

However, I also am a former exotic dancer, and during my career I learned more about boob jobs than I ever wanted to know (including the really terrifying measures some women will go to if they cannot afford to go to legitimate doctors-- a woman just died in Worcester after getting under the table liposuction in someone's basement).

The really issue for me is how the "male gaze" gets internalized by women who then end up devaluing, judging, and harming themselves. Its an extremely insidious result of an extreme power imbalance.

I'd also add that all that said, it just isn't accurate to assume that everyone who gets cosmetic surgery is simply trying to fit in with how others look at them-- that just isn't true. Its a little like wearing high heels: in my motehr's generation they were de rigour-- most of the women I know who wear them now do so in a kinky or fetish context and effectively turn the tables on the paradigm. It really is a choice and is not at all about what other think. (And in eastern Turkey, wehre I taught English, wearing lipstick can be downright subversive).

Re: writing what you know...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. Thank you. You're articulating things much better than I am.

The fact of the matter is, you can't evaluate a choice unless you know the full context in which that choice is made. You can't assume the people making these choices either do or don't "know better." And you can't assume that a choice that's toxic for one person is toxic for another--as our different relationships with make-up show very nicely. *g*

Re: No LJ, sorry..

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Really weird timing - I just finished Mélusine and started The Game of Kings based on other peoples' recommendations, and presuming the only connection would be intrigue and clever people.