A few years ago, I endeared myself to yet another theatre troupe thusly: I was hired as a counselor for a children's drama camp, the product of which was to be a musical comedy set in a large and foreboding country house. This camp was overseen, and the play in question directed, by a woman I'll call Ms. Cooper. Now, Ms. Cooper and I were friends, near as I can recall, on the date of our departure to the Bataan Children's Theatre Death March. It didn't last long, more's the pity, and believe me when I say it will never recover.
My offenses on this trip included remorseless atheism and the pointing out of blatant child endangerment, but that's not what got the Chachapoyan Temple ball rolling. No, I was there mostly to provide in-depth acting instruction for a great kid, a bit of a prodigy, really, named Dylan. That's specifically why I was hired. Incidentally, one of my Achilles' heels is a deep-seated protective impulse toward prodigies, and I was a big fan of this kid from the day I met him.
So one day we're all in this communal rehearsal-slash-dining hall-slash-bug-infested internment camp center, plugging away at Ms. Cooper's puerile musical while praying for the end to a soul-sucking, Bradbury's-Venus-style spate of rain. Dylan was cast as the villainous owner of the mansion, probably because he was the only kid in camp who had even the slightest chance of assaying a character role. Ms. Cooper instructed me to take Dylan aside for more personalized work on his character, during which time Dylan asked me why his character was expected to punctuate his soliloquies with mocking laughter. "Is he crazy?" Dylan asked. "Do crazy people even laugh like that?" I thought that was a perceptive question for a boy of fifteen or, for that matter, an assistant director of thirty-four, and I was unable to help him justify all that cackling.
Dylan and I returned for group notes, which were, as per usual, of the incisive "speak louder," "learn your lines," and "isn't make-believe fun?" varieties. I raised my hand politely. Dylan and I had some questions, I began cautiously, that required the director-slash-playwright's input. Why, we inquired, does Dylan's character laugh so often? What was funny? From an actor's perspective, that laugh had to happen for a reason, and we couldn't provide one. "It's because he's evil," we were told, with a distinct subtext of "like, no duh." Okay, so here's one thing Dylan and I have in common: We're not big fans of directorial condescension.
I raised my hand again and pointed out that evil people do not really laugh all the time--that, in fact, they tend to run somewhat taciturn, less "I'll get you, my pretty" than "pass the salt." "Bank managers," I elaborated, driving my point home with what may have been unnecessary and provocative clarity, "do not say, 'I'm afraid I'll be denying you this farm loan, bwa ha ha.'" I asked if perhaps she were looking to establish a tone for the piece. She didn't know what that meant. I wondered if the play were intended to be read in a more cartoonish vernacular, and that any hint of thespian dimensionality was therefore completely superfluous.
Or, you know, words to that effect.
Okay, so basically I called her out in front of six-year-olds, and yes, that may have been what we in the theatrical trades refer to as "a dick move." On the other hand, she'd been yelling at Dylan all afternoon, even implying he wasn't talented enough to play her mono-faceted villain role, and I'd recently had to talk down two little girls who tripped over a copperhead on an unsupervised nature hike, so I admit I wasn't in my most diplomatic frame of mind. Be that as it may, my point, which Ms. Cooper never understood, remains valid: If you're a writer or otherwise creative personality, it pays to look closely at your villains. They say much about your view of the world.
There is a difference, at least in the real world, between a bad guy and The Bad Guy. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian who liked puppies, and it's said he gave his secretaries gifts on their birthdays. Lyndon Johnson was a bit of a knob, yet he advanced civil rights more than anyone could've dreamed. We find ways to forgive the offenses of people we admire and to emphasize the failings of people we despise. We are all a bit villainous way down deep, but we're also one of the few species capable of genuine altruism.
I read Animal Farm for the first time last weekend, prompting friends to ask how I'd managed to avoid it thus far. My return question is this: If we've all read it, why do we keep falling for one Glorious Leader Napoleon after another? Napoleon was obviously intended to represent Stalin, just as Snowball equaled Trotsky--but the takeover of Animal Farm has been repeated around the world, time and time again, in place after place including right here at home. What begins with the clearest of commandments often ends in "Some Animals Are More Equal than Others." And it happens when we allow ourselves, purely out of wishful thinking, to listen only to the Squealers who preach party line, facts be damned.
In the real world, villains are "the kind of people you'd like to have a beer with." The Bad Guy tells us exactly what we want to hear, gesticulating grandly toward heaven while his other hand slips into our pockets. The Bad Guy tells us those elitist eggheads don't know nothin' 'bout nothin', and the world's been the same since our granddaddies were knee high to a grasshopper, and there ain't no inconvenient truths that require our immediate attention, no sir, no how, don'tcha know. The Bad Guy tells us that if we do everything we can to protect his Smaug-hoard of staggering wealth, he'll make sure we don't starve. The Bad Guy tells us God never closes a door without shutting a window; then he closes the door.
I've met some vastly entertaining fictional villains over the last few years: Anton Chigurh, Dolores Umbridge, Second Selectman Big Jim Rennie. Any of these characters, frankly, could eat my own antagonist, Danny Murcheson, for mid-afternoon snack. But you know what all these characters, plus Orwell's Napoleon, have in common? Not a single one knew he or she was the Bad Guy. On the contrary, they believed they were the heroes, or at least just doing dirty work that had to be done, and that's what makes them more frightening than any "monologuing" dunderhead in the Legion of Doom. In the real world, self-deluding villains are as ubiquitous as talk radio, and as lovable as a Viennese house painter, and as lethal as a flood in New Orleans.
Bwa ha ha.