Gabrielle
Hunt
8
April 2012
Alternative
Topic 2 (Space Trilogy 4)
Hi,
My Name is Vader, and I’m a Villain
I was talking to a friend via
Skype and somehow (things happen) he started calling me The Villain. This
spiraled into a conversation about villainy and the perspective from inside the
villain role. Does an adolescent villain realize at some point that he’s
different from the other kids? Do his parents have to sit him down and tell him
that he’s a growing young man and may begin to have strange feelings at some
point?
Reality isn’t Megamind. Villains in real life aren’t
as clear cut as they are in Dreamworks movies. Even the worst of humanity is
still human and most think of themselves as the good guy protagonists in their
own biographical movies. The scientists at N.I.C.E. think they’re ensuring the
future of the human race. We rationalize and explain our flaws away.
The psychological “fundamental attribution error” is that we
attribute our failures to external causes and our successes to internal causes.
If I fail a test, it’s because my roommates kept me up the night before, not
because I was too lazy to study. However, when it comes to other people, we
tend to attribute their failures to internal causes. If the barista is snotty
to me, it’s because she’s a snot nose brat, not because I ordered a triple shot
skim raspberry coconut macchiato, but can you put it in the freezer for a
minute and do the Wobble? We don’t want to blame ourselves but are happy to
blame other people. We can’t admit to ourselves that, in this situation, we are
the villain, because we’re only doing what is natural and right given our
history and needs at this moment.
PS. I swear this cracked.com photoshop contest was posted after I
had that conversation: http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_351_21-famous-villains-during-their-awkward-teenage-years/
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