I was recently asked to consider the following topic throughout the course of a Worlds Debate round: “This house regrets the rise of the antihero in media.”
Barring jargon and extraneous thoughts, the issue at hand is our common humanity.
As a culture, do we admire characters such as Walter White, Don Draper or Olivia Pope because we are naturally able, and overwhelmingly willing, to justify their actions?
I posit that we, all too often, become entrenched by excuse justifications. That is, our popular tendency to discuss the “situations” that lead an individual to pursue whatever their dishonorable course may well be compelling but belie the whole picture.
We can no longer complacently choose to discuss individuals as either the consequence of external variables or the personification of their worst action.
Author Lillian Hellman describes the process of reconciling our interpretations of personalities with normalized values and mores through describing the process of writing.
Introducing her 1973 “Pentimento,” she states, “Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.”
This process of “seeing and then seeing again” must be applied to the antihero. White, Draper and Pope, while all arguably representative of less than admirable values at times, are nonetheless fully human.
The relevance of this distinction becomes clear when an actual liberation calculus is applied to evaluate the relative morality of an action.
Aquinas calculated such a system as if it were a trinity — action, circumstance and intention.
Subjective analysis of the character’s situation is admittedly inherent to a full discussion of circumstance and intention but full acknowledgement of the inherently human capacity to rationalize — an affirmation of the antihero’s humanity beyond their identity as it can be associated with “bad” actions — is necessary.
But why does this matter?
Napoleon Bonaparte, “The Little Dictator,” imposed Napoleonic Code wherever he conquered. (Examples include Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Poland ….)
It was the first modern codified system of law, designed to regulate civil society with reason, equality and freedom.
Granted the means of colonialism may well be called into question, the effect of instituting a legal tradition of logic is net positive.
I do not hope for my children to grow up in a world where it is acceptable to excuse every action as though it were necessitated by one’s surroundings — everyone is not Jean Valjean.
But everyone does have the capacity to exercise free will.
Evaluating antiheroic characters in this light leads us to hopefully better appreciate them as examples of how not to conduct ourselves, even if the outcome is positive.
The only matter to regret then, is what we all too often choose — complacency.
Remembering education, and affirming the power of choice, resolves many an evil.
I publicly admit that my father was right — “When you know what people are doing, and can take the time to understand them for who they are, there can be no surprises.”
Grant Beebe is the opinion editor of The Daily Mississippian. He is from Jackson.
