Imaginary Worlds - My So Called Evil Plan

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Villains are having a moment. They’re getting their own movies, they’re inspiring hashtags that say they’re right. And they don’t want to take over the world. They want to save it -- at a very high cost. I talk with writers and podcasters Charles Pulliam-Moore, JR Forasteros and Bruce Leslie about woke villains, and what their popularity says about our frustrations in the real world. Part 1 of 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky, and this is part one of a two-part episode on villains. Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there? This fall, the movie that everybody was buzzing about was Joker. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me? men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me? Just the idea that the Joker got his own movie with a sympathetic backstory, no Batman to punish him, sparked a lot of anxiety and articles about whether the Joker has become a hero to toxic trolls. And the movie was a huge box office hit. Joaquin Phoenix might be the second actor to win an Oscar for playing the Joker

after Heath Ledger. But I don't think the Joker is a villain that a lot of people actually sympathize with. You know, I don't know anyone who didn't love Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, but I also don't know anyone who would want to be in the same room as him. J.R. Forasteros is a pastor and podcaster who focuses on fantasy worlds. I don't know anyone that would want to be a part of the Joker gang because he's as often killing his gang members as he is anyone else. And the Joker is a nihilist. He doesn't really have an ideology. He doesn't want to take over the world.

He just wants to watch it burn. Then again. I just want to take over the world's not that interesting anymore yeah we're sort of i think most of us have realized that would just be a lot of work so give us something that is more believable that's that's very true that's very true that's actually a that would actually be a poison pill for anybody A few years ago, I did an episode called Evil Plans about one of my pet peeves. When villains have evil plans that are so convoluted, I can't root for the hero to stop them because I don't even understand what the villain is trying to accomplish. But there are four villains that I keep thinking about.

Not the Joker, four other villains, that have broken out of their movies to become culturally important. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And when villains have good intentions that reflect our own hopes and concerns, that's an uncomfortable place to be. When you're sitting there wondering, does anyone else think the villain's actually making sense? I will reveal their evil plans while you're tied to a chair and then leave you to my incompetent henchmen just after the break.

I want to share something really exciting. Marvel released a new podcast about the Fantastic Four called Marvels, based on the graphic novel by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross. The show is set in New York City and does an incredible job of immersing you in the real world of the Marvel Universe and the lives of the people who inhabit it. The story takes place as the city braces for its first encounter with Galactus, but it's an audio drama that follows a journalist, student, and photographer's mission to unravel a superpowered conspiracy. If you want to give

Marvels a shot, just go to stitcherpremium.com and sign up with the code IMAGINARY. You'll get a free month's trial of Stitcher Premium, which will let you listen to Marvel's right now. That's stitcherpremium.com with the promo code IMAGINARY. Thanks. Before going any further, heads up, this episode is full of spoilers. So whenever I mention a movie or a TV show, you can assume that I'm going to reveal all sorts of plot details. Now, I was recently talking with Bruce Leslie, who is a fantasy writer and podcaster, and he mentioned something about villains that had never occurred to me.

podcaster, and he mentioned something about villains that had never occurred to me. Something that my eyes were open to a couple months back when I was at a writer's meeting where a guy was sort of talking about writing for comic books. And he said in most traditional kind of set up superhero comic books, you have to think of the hero as the antagonist and the villain as the protagonist because it's the hero who's trying to defend the status quo while the villain's trying to come in and rock the boat, so to speak. I thought that was fascinating and I kept thinking about it because people who usually push for change are cast as heroes and their opponents, people who are trying to preserve the status quo, are usually seen as obstacles at best. So if villains are pushing for change and the heroes are defending the status quo, are we misunderstanding heroes as villains and vice

versa? Or are villains being used in these stories to vilify the idea of social change to keep us complacent? Perhaps the biggest example of that question is Thanos, the very muscular purple alien from the Marvel movies. Beginning with the first Avengers film, Thanos was teased as the big bad that they're all going to have to face eventually. And when he finally puts his evil plan into action, we learn that he doesn't want

to get the all-powerful infinity stones just to be all-powerful. He is an eco-warrior who believes that overpopulation is draining the universe of its natural resources. And he sees only one solution. Acquire omnipotent power so he could eliminate half the living beings in the universe with the snap of his fingers. And this is personal for him. He watched his home planet die of overconsumption. Then he tried this experiment on a smaller scale, on the planet of his adopted daughter Gamora.

Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I'm the one who stopped that. Do you know what's happened since then? The children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear skies. It's a paradise. Because you murdered half the planet. A small price to pay for salvation. You're insane.

Little one, it's a simple calculus. This universe is finite. Its resource is finite. And the way that Josh Brolin plays Thanos, you can feel his sadness, even his reluctance to do something that he sees as his responsibility. And after the plan goes through, even Captain America, who is still deep in mourning, has to admit to Black Widow. You know, I saw a pod of whales when I was coming over the bridge. In the Hudson. Fewer ships, cleaner water. You know, if you're about to tell me to look on the bright side, I'm about to hit you in the head with a peanut butter sandwich. I'm about to hit you in the head with a peanut butter sandwich.

Again, J.R. Forasteros. Thanos wasn't wrong, exactly. Like, we have been living on our planet in a way that's destructive to our planet. And, you know, for him, of course, by extension, the whole galaxy. And by having to go for five years with his vision for the world enacted, we see, well, again, he's not wrong. Maybe he went about it in a wrong way. And of course, I'm not holding my breath that we're going to get a Marvel movie that examines the deep philosophical implications of the snap. And we see, did people really change their ways because of this traumatic event? They're just going to go on and we're going to get Spider-Man 15, but whatever. I think that Thanos speaks to a feeling

of helplessness that a lot of us feel around climate change. I mean, we want a political solution, but a lot of us are losing faith that there's ever going to be one. I mean, scientists have told us we're screwed. We just don't know yet how screwed we are. And we're just going to have to live with it if we can. So to watch a character take unilateral action on this, it's horrifying. But I get it. Which brings me to the second villain that I've been thinking about. Adrian Veidt, also known as the superhero Ozymandias in the graphic novel Watchmen. Now, Watchmen came out in 1986.

And Ozymandias is kind of like Thanos in the sense that he has lost faith in humanity's ability to stop an apocalypse from happening on their own. In this case, it's nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. So he came up with an insane plan. He invented a giant squid-like creature and made it look like this creature had emerged from a parallel dimension to destroy Manhattan. This event is so shocking, it brings the U.S. and the Soviet Union together in fear of a larger common enemy. And other characters learn the truth behind the hoax, but most of them decide to keep quiet for the sake of world peace. And the reason why I've

been thinking about Adrian Veidt is because he is back. The new HBO series Watchmen takes place more than 30 years after the graphic novel. Jeremy Irons plays Adrian Veidt. years after the graphic novel. Jeremy Irons plays Adrian Veidt. I envision a stronger, loving world committed to caring for the weak, reversing environmental ruin and cultivating true equality. You know, The Watchman, the original graphic novel, has a pretty ambiguous ending. We don't know whether Veidt's plan worked. And so it is fascinating to see what would have happened, to imagine a world that he molded that is actually more fair than our world in terms of social justice. They've passed a ton of progressive legislation, including reparations, but it has

sparked a racist backlash. And this liberal government is becoming just as fascist as the conservative government in the original graphic novel. I want my lawyer. Yeah, we really don't have to do that with terrorists. I'm not a terrorist. Like in this scene where a cop, who is also a masked vigilante, interrogates a suspect in an isolation chamber. Are you a member of or do you associate with members of the white supremacist organization known as the Seventh Cabinet? No. Do you believe that trans-dimensional attacks are hoaxes staged by the U.S. government?

I don't know. Maybe. Charles Pulliam Moore writes for the site io9 and Gizmodo, and he thinks one of the reasons why Adrian Veidt's plan is still villainous is because it's governed by fear. Yeah, I mean, like, everyone on the planet has a shared trauma that they can't escape from, right? Everyone knows that the squid descended on New York City. And even if you weren't there, you've read about it.

And it's this kind of like lasting testament to a moment in this world's history where the world stopped turning and millions of people died and more and more people are just living with, they're still living with the devastation and the fallout of it. In the show, there are actually support groups for people who can't get over the giant squid attack.

There's this thing, genetic trauma. Basically, if something really bad happens to your parents, it gets locked into their DNA. So when my mom got hit by the blast, even though I wasn't born until 10 years after 11-2, it's like I inherited her pain. Charles thinks that unresolved trauma is a key factor that motivates a lot of these evil plans. And he's particularly fascinated by villains that come from marginalized groups

because their desire for social justice was born from their personal experience. I think that the really interesting thing about villains right now because their desire for social justice was born from their personal experience. I think that the really interesting thing about villains right now is that more people are beginning to understand that villains and heroes are more or less the same in a sense that like, there are people who went through similar kinds of traumas, but just like came out differently. They have sort of responded to whatever the traumatic event in their lives was in just like drastically different ways. Which brings me to villain number three, Eric Killmonger from Black Panther. He was a member of Wakanda's royal family,

but he was orphaned, abandoned, and left to fend for himself in the diaspora. Now what do you want? I want the throne. Y'all sitting up here comfortable. Must feel good. It's about two billion people all over the world that looks like us, but their lives are a lot harder. Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all.

And what tools are those? Vibranium. Your weapons. Our weapons will not be used to wage war on the world. Wakanda's policy of extreme isolation is their original sin. They did it for the sake of self-protection, but they also turned a blind eye to centuries of slavery and oppression. is their original sin. They did it for the sake of self-protection,

but they also turned a blind eye to centuries of slavery and oppression. We let the fear of our discovery stop us from doing what is right. No more. I cannot rest. He sits on the throne. He's a monster of our own making. It is not something that Black Panther fully sort of like explores. Killmonger obviously brings it up and sort of makes it part of the reason that he wants to fight, but it's not something, it's not something that the movie really delves into

but it's something that you as an audience member just sort of implicitly understand and the thing that one of the things that i love about the movie is that it doesn't really settle on like a place for you to land right it sort of it leaves you know it leaves it up to you to be like all right like work through this like how do you feel about this? Well, what did you think of the hashtag Killmonger was right? I get it. The whole Killmonger was right thing. What it ultimately is tapping into is the fact that like, yes, America is a country that has been defined by anti black racism. That may sound like a controversial thing to some people,

but that's just like the reality of it. It's only in those moments where you see him really sort of showing his hand and showing the fact that he's not on the level and he will kill people who have like supported him. In those moments, you sort of like feel like, oh, maybe this Kilmarnock guy is not really someone that I want to be down with. But in terms of like the big picture, what he's ultimately fighting against is just like black oppression. And it's kind of hard to not want to cheer for him.

Which brings me to villain number four, Magneto. With Magneto and the X-Men, Charles Xavier is like, to me, my X-Men, let's make friends with the humans. And then the humans are like, and with Magneto, it's like he's always like, Charles, what are you doing? I told you, I told you, I've told you time and time again, they're going to try to kill you. Why do you look surprised? What's wrong with you? to try to kill you. Why do you look surprised? What's wrong with you? J.R. Forasteros thinks that the conflict between Magneto and Professor X taps into a lot of the same issues as Black Panther. I think about Ibram Kendi, who writes a lot about race and the history of racism. He talks about a particular category of racism called assimilationism, which is the idea that, you know, whiteness is considered

normative and that what is communicated to non-white people is that if you just try hard, you can become white and then you'll be fully human. And so essentially that is what Professor X is arguing for with the mutants is that if we just try really hard, we can demonstrate to the humans that we're human just like them and then they'll accept us. And what Magneto argues and what Dr. Kendi argues is that because it's a prejudice, it's non-rational. The most that will happen is what Kendi calls exceptionalism, which is the phrase, you're one of the good ones. You'll have to kill me, Charles. And what will that accomplish? Let them pass that law and they'll have you in chains with a number burned into your forehead. It won't be that way. Then kill me and find out.

Magneto's villainy also comes from personal trauma. He's not only a mutant, he is a Jewish concentration camp survivor. And in the prequel movie, X-Men First Class, he responds to Professor X's plea for peace with a post-Holocaust mantra. There are thousands of men on those ships, good, honest, innocent men. They're just

following orders. I've been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again. He has a very clear-sighted view of his own trauma that he never forgets. And it's always right there. And I think that there's a way in which a lot of these stories, the heroes in them sort of admonish the villains for not letting go of their pain. And they're like, oh, you should be able to grow past this. But the thing that makes the villains really kind of endearing is we don't always move past things. There are times where you can't let something go. And it's, you know, it's very nice to pretend that you can be the bigger person and you can sort of transcend your trauma. But there are moments where it's like, no, like this, like

you did this thing to me and I can't let it go. And it's always going to be, it has become a foundational part of my identity. And like Killmonger, Magneto inspired his own hashtag, Magneto was right. It was trending on Twitter after the movie Logan came out, which took place in a future where mutants had been mostly wiped out by humans. And JR says the comics are also going in that direction. To the point that I don't know how,

if you're following current X-Men continuity, but they just did a big relaunch with Jonathan Hickman as the writer. And it sure looks like, now that we're like three months into this relaunch, that Professor X has abandoned his optimism. And it looks like now the mutants are all just pursuing some version of Magneto's vision. I think one of the reasons why these villains resonate with us is because we can put controversial ideas into their mouths. The construct of a villain is like a safe space for us to explore darker thoughts and emotions that we don't want to admit that we've had. J.R. says there's actually a name for that, monster theory. Monster theory says that there are ideas about ourselves,

culturally speaking at a sociological level, that don't fit into the master narrative that we're telling ourselves. And so if we were to have to confront them, they would make us ask hard questions about ourselves. And so we attribute the qualities that we don't like about ourselves to this vulnerable population. Then once we've done that, we literally scapegoat them. We exercise them. We turn them into monsters. Because we have cast the monsters out from among us, they've taken that quality that we don't like and metaphorically removed it from us.

And again, it's all smoke and mirrors, right? Because the problem was us all along. So it didn't actually fix anything. It just made us feel better about not confronting those things. So we can continue to live unjust and inequitable lives without having to feel that tension. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes a column for The Hollywood Reporter that's always really interesting. And in one of his recent columns, he argued that these, quote, morally woke villains are a reaction to something that's happening in the real world. He says it feels like classic villains, Lex Luthor, Ernst Blofeld, have broken out of their fictional universes to take over our lives. But there's no Superman or James Bond to stop them.

And in the movies, taking over the world may seem like a hackneyed cliche, but it's scary when they seem to take over the real world. And so we imagine the woke villain who can fight fire with fire because the ends justify the means. But then the villains have really won because they've dragged us down to their level. That's why I think the most hopeful stories are the ones where the villains change the heroes' minds to a point. Like in Black Panther, T'Challa realizes that hashtag Killmonger is right. And as the king of Wakanda,

T'Challa has the power to end the status quo and take a bold step in the right direction. Wakanda will no longer watch from the shadows. We cannot. We must not. We will work to be an example of how we as brothers and sisters on this earth should treat each other. on this earth should treat each other. So if the hero sees merit in the villain's plan, and if the villain is motivated by altruism or trauma,

can the villain be redeemed? And if they can be redeemed, can we forgive them for all the evil that they've done? We will explore those questions in part two of our Villains miniseries. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to J.R. Forresteros, Charles Pulliam Moore, and Bruce Leslie. Now, I chose four villains to focus on, but I'm sure a lot more came to mind as you were listening. So tell me me which villain motivations

did you identify with? Which evil plans actually made sense to you on some level? You can post in the show's Facebook page. I tweet at emalinski and imagineworldspod. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman, and the show's website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org.