Over the past year or so, I’ve had a wide variety of avatars. I’d like to focus on a few in particular:
What do all these men have in common? They’re all men you love to hate (or hate to love). I pick them for my avatars because I love them. I don’t actually hate them, but they are depicted as the scummy, sleaze-ball types of men that one would ordinarily hate in real life, and the characters in the movies certainly don’t like them.
These are men of questionable character, little ethics, and virtually no honor. You wouldn’t want to trust them with anything personal or valuable, and you wouldn’t want to rely on them in a situation that demanded a bit of altruism. But then why do we love them?
Maybe it’s just their good looks. James Franco and Jonny Depp are certainly hansom gentlemen… but Rick? He’s a gassy old man who drools! ← So I don’t think it’s that.
Another reason might be that they get away with almost everything. They’re all quite intelligent men who know how to get themselves out of a bind, and they do it by deception and trickery. Maybe a lot of us wish we could be like that. But this is true of the villain in most action movies–they get away with a lot until the end when they meet their own demise. And it could be argued that it’s because we know they’ll meet an untimely demise that we don’t empathize with them, but then why does it make us happy when the good guy wins in the end (or feel disappointed in those rare flicks in which the bad guy wins)? One would think that if we wish we could get away with what the villains get away with, then we wouldn’t like to see them lose in the end.
If that were all there is to it–a slick intelligence that allows them to get away with anything and dashing good looks–I personally wouldn’t pick them for my avatars. No, I think the real reason I like them is because of the rare occasions when we see glimpses of a good heart beneath all the selfishness and insensitivity. Sometimes it only peeks through between the cracks, other times it shines with a blinding radiance.
Take Oz for instance…
The man who has no qualms robbing people of their money in exchange for lies and deceit can’t bring himself to lie and deceive a poor little girl confined to a wheel chair.
And here’s Jack Sparrow going down with his ship while the rest of the crew row to safety in Dead Man’s Chest:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfbLq2GWkz0[/youtube]
True, he was tricked into remaining on the ship–Elizabeth chained him to the mast while kissing him–but if you pay attention to the lead up to the kiss–the whole reason (or excuse) for Elizabeth to kiss him–we hear this: “You came back. I always knew you were a good man”.
And finally (Spoiler Alert!!!), here’s Rick Sanchez giving himself up to the Galactic Government to save his family at the end of Season 2:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF6ukC7dC-k[/youtube]
It’s almost as if these rare demonstrations of good cause us to like the characters more than ordinarily folk who act good all the time. It’s as if we become habituated to the characters who are always good, and so their good behavior ceases to impress us, whereas the men who are usually self-interested scum bags end up winning our hearts when they perform these rare, and sometimes overwhelming, good acts, almost as if we are overcome with a rush of joy to see they’re human after all.
Is this why we love the men we hate? Do the rare occasions when they betray a conscience, or a human side, reel us in with more force than all the good acts performed by those who are, by nature, good all the time? It’s almost as if it fills us with an overwhelming sense of relief to see that small glimmer of good, or maybe a compelling urge to show gratitude and love if only to reinforce the good that we see, like making a huge hurrah when a child who is struggling in school suddenly aces a test, more of a hurrah than that child’s sibling who gets straight A’s all the time.
In any case, it is perhaps their greatest trick: to find that perfect balance between a few good deeds and getting away with all sorts of nasty bad ones, such as to keep themselves in our hearts indefinitely.