This is a revised version of a little musing I had a while back. I used to teach with Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity as a course reading, and part of what I did in those classes were mix tapes and top 5 lists. Here’s one of those lists that seems oddly ripe for revision in the Trump America:
“you know, Mr. Kent, you were right about me. I AM the villain of the story.”
-Lex Luthor, Smallville
One of the odd truths of popular culture is that while the Hero’s Journey works for almost everything, some of the most compelling and identifiable characters are not the heroes but the villains. I’ve written about the odd appeal of Lex Luthor before, as he is technically more-cynical Batman with no mask. But here’s a top five list of villains that are easy to identify with. Luthor, of course, appears here again. Bear in mind I’m not claiming these are the five best villains. That list would absolutely demand the Joker sitting at the top.
1) Lex Luthor, arch-nemesis of Superman
Give me the prompt “bad guy” and a pen and I’ll end up writing you a Lex Luthor story. He’s so easy to hate—rich, smug, bald—but he’s also so easy to root for. His is the story of a strange twist of fate: he’s the pinnacle of mankind (super-smart, rich, highly productive, not entirely unattractive in spite of a little baldness). But alas, Lex is cursed with the enemy we all must face made real: the Superman. Sure, Clark Kent is wholesome and all-American and bulletproof and invincible save for the presence of a chunk of his home planet. Sure, he can fly and melt stuff with his eyes. Rah, Rah, America.
Only Superman isn’t American at all. He’s an illegal immigrant, an alien baby from a devastated planet. He’s perfect (and we aren’t). Thanks to our sun (which gives us skin cancer), he’s super-powerful. He spits in the eye of everything we wish we could be by being gifted perfection. He doesn’t even have to earn it. But somehow people assume he’s a wonderful person just because he’s super strong and fast and eye beams and freeze breath and such.
No… Americans are Lex Luthor. Greedy and calculating. Inferior because they believe perfection is real. Gullible and vindictive.
I look at Lex Luthor and I see the best and the worst of myself.
And in my dreams, he puts a Kryptonite dagger through Kent’s heart because that’s the way the story should end. Superman is the monster in this story.
2) Boba Fett – The Empire Strikes Back and a little of Return of the Jedi
He’s no good to me dead!
Fett didn’t say much, or really do much, in the Star Wars universe, but for my generation he’s sort of the plastic fantastic John Lennon. I include him here because all we knew about Fett is that he was a bounty hunter and he looked pretty bad-ass. So in sandboxes and on toy shelves all across the country in the 1980s Boba Fett was pioneering the Anti-Hero for a generation who would often think of the bad guy as cooler because he was more visually appealing (think more Sarah Palin and less Dick Cheney).
The Fett that existed in the movies was a jackass. He captured Solo in a moment of opportunistic greed, traded him for some gold to a big fat slug, then when Luke came to rescue Han, Fett got bitched out by a giant throat lined with teeth. It was a hard-knock life for the Fett man, and we all knew it.
But he looked so cool that as a little kid, you imagined him saying and doing so much more. His cult status is not about what he ever did. It’s about what a whole generation of kids thought he might do. He was Clint Eastwood from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly only sci-fi, a certified G and a Bonafide Stud. And you can’t. teach. that.
3) Verbal Kint/Keyser Soze: The Usual Suspects
The first time you see the movie, it’s not quite clear who the mastermind is, but if you’re like me, you feel bad for poor Verbal. Why’s he in this mess? The guy seems simple and genuine.
Then you’re witness to what I consider the best few minutes in modern movie history, and just like that, the Devil tells his greatest lie. As I watched the film the first time, everyone with me hoped beyond home that Chaz would catch Verbal… but not me. Every single time, even while in the shock of the reveal, I cheer for Verbal Kint to vanish into thin air.
That’s how Kobayashi tells it, anyway.
It’s just a perfect moment, the ultimate trickster executing the perfect trick.
4) Lucifer (from the TV series and DC comic)
The very best of villainy are the villains who want to be redeemed. And what villain needs more redemption than the ruler of hell, the chief demon himself? Lucifer is a shifty sort with his own odd sense of morality.
But then there are the two things that make him so relatable:
A. He loves people and human life more than most humans seem to. He revels on it
B. He won’t lie. Ever.
Combine all of it together and Lucifer is a fascinating figure if not a touch unrealistic at his core.
5) “The Cowboy Outlaw” (from the same-title Brian Dewan song)
I wanted to include some sort of colonial nod here, but as I thought about cowboy and indian stories I thought only of this song. Those who don’t know Dewan probably cannot fathom the level of “creepy” he channels on this track, wherein he shares what I believe is a true story about an old west outlaw who was hanged, then left in a chair, and somehow mistaken for a dummy and sold, then painted with varnish, and over the years traded from carnival to carnival.
I’ve heard the song hundreds of times, and I always hope at the end that they’ll fail realize he’s really a person and find out who he is. But… no.
The idea of a varnished cigar store Cowboy appeals to me on some level as delicious irony. And at the same time, I can imagine the luck, boldly dying as what you are only to live multiple lives as a lampoon of your life’s work, a joke given form.