Evil in Popular Media - Essay Example

It certainly defies logic why this is so but then again the human mind is really hard to fathom. The enduring attraction of Count Dracula attests to this unusual curiosity. Villains become the fodder of speculations and conjectures but more than that, there is the abiding yearning effort to know more just for the sake of knowing; it seems knowledge is its own reward. People go to great lengths to visit his old castle in Transylvania and spend plenty of dollars there. Psychologists and sociologists attribute this unhealthy and unwholesome fascination as sort of an unexpressed death wish.

Yes, people can sometimes really have this unusual and inexplicable wish which they are not even aware of. This is why black films or film Noire has made a comeback in Hollywood. This death wish is the exact opposite of the survival instinct but as to why people can have this trait, nobody knows exactly. Some posit the idea this is the form of sexual inversion, a pseudo-sexual attraction of the opposite (Ellis 288). There are many plausible reasons why we root for antagonists and villains despite how much we know about their bad or undesirable side.

This can be due to their being authentic. Antagonists, whether in literature, film, television and even in real life (such as Hitler) are the kinds of people who are true to themselves, no matter what the odds are against them. Society is against them and yet they still pursue their dreams, do what they want, or persist whatever it is that drives them even if public opinion is definitely against them. Perhaps there is a hidden sense of communal grief when people prefer the macabre over what is normal.

This is amply demonstrated by Henry James short story “The Altar of the Dead” which people do still read today, a nice story about mortality (Stuart 128). Should not people instead celebrate life?Or what about the classic novel of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” whose character Quasimodo never fails to surprise us? Quasimodo got elected as the ugliest person in Paris and yet readers are fascinated with this grotesque character who has a gentle side to him that the French people at that time did not notice or chose to ignore because he was just ugly.

The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe never fail to astonish their readers even in this generation. In his stories, Poe cleverly exploited this aspect of human psychology that defies explanation to keep readers in thrall to the very end. His classic “The Cask of Amontillado” proved to us that the macabre brings its distinct share of thrills. How could anyone do a cruel thing to another person as to bury him alive? By the way, the term is immurement (to the wall alive).Fascination is disguised admiration, just as imitation is a form of flattery.

Antagonists are admired because they seem to be unique for being abnormal, unusual, or simply weird. In the larger scheme of things, this is why magical realism literature by famous authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (won the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature) has gained traction. People want to suspend disbelief and all villains and antagonists represent the dark side of numinous beings that terrify people but simultaneously fascinate and enthrall them (Heit 83).