Villain as Hero

Because of a huge backlash by consumers and politicians against horror and crime comics, the four-color publishers got together in 1953 and created the Comics Code, which included a lot of guidelines for future publications. Among them were that criminals were not to be glorified and that the bad guys always get punished in the end. Time went by, the Code got weaker, and finally it lost its teeth. Cut to today, in which we not only glorify villains and anti-heroes, but we also make sure they live to spread amoral mayhem another day.

Last night, I watched episode three of the Punisher TV series on Netflix, often with my mouth wide open. I was forced to follow protagonist Frank Castle as he shot, stabbed, and beat numerous characters to death, until he was covered in blood but bearing no remorse for his actions. At the end of the segment, Frank agreed to his new comrade's plan to take down the "bad guys," with one condition: they all had to die. The comrade agreed.

This was far from my first encounter with Marvel Comics' Punisher, once one of the most popular characters in their massive stable. I've never been a fan of those comics, although, to differing degrees, I enjoyed the movie adaptations. But watching those movies is akin to watching a horror film: you get a visceral thrill out of the over-the-top antics, you revel in the bucketloads of blood, and then it's over two hours later.

The Punisher has a number of cinematic antecedents--Death Wish, Dirty Harry, Walking Tall, just to name a few--with sequels that allowed their protagonists to keep piling up the bodies. But, there have been more films featuring such amoral "heroes" that were one-offs, like The Searchers, Taxi Driver, Unforgiven, and Commando, meaning the ultraviolence eventually came to an end. With the Punisher TV show--and, worse, the comics--the killing and brutality go on and on.

Maybe it's the fact that the series, starring Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle, is fairly realistic, and its proximity to reality makes it uncomfortable viewing. At the same time, I love horror flicks, but those often feature larger-than-life killers like Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th) and Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street) whose victims usually have a sense of humor, dark though it may be. Bernthal's humorless character apparently lives in a world with no available laughs, despite the fact that the show is supposed to take place in the same continuity as the Avengers, Thor, and Ant-Man films.

Speaking of that sense of humor, it's one of the things Charlie Jane Anders of the website io9 states that an amoral protagonist needs if audiences are going to root for him. Others include creating a line the "hero" won't cross, having someone he cares about, showing how he lost his moral compass, making everyone else worse, and showing him do something unforgivable (so you want to work to like him again). Those are some of the ways, according to Anders, "you get your audience to root for a character who might throw an old lady under a bus."

But we're still talking about a sociopath. He may fight for the "good guys," and he may even believe in their cause, but he doesn't give a damn about his enemies' lives and he may not even care about those he protects or saves. And he'll do anything to win, including manipulation, torture, murder, and other despicable actions. While looking on in horror, the good-hearted souls are still thankful that this monster is on their side.

Probably the best example of such a protagonist would be John Rambo, as played by Sylvester Stallone four times. In the most recent installment, called simply Rambo, the brooding Vietnam vet had to save a group of missionaries--who were afraid of and repulsed by him--from massacre-minded military monsters in Myanmar (apologies for the annoying alliteration). After the climactic bloodbath, in which the award-winning war hero literally machine-gunned people into protoplasm, the lead male missionary looked around the makeshift battlefield, and then he faced Rambo with an expression of awe and timidly waved his thanks.

I'd say Rambo is the closest cinematic blood-brother (pun intended) to Frank Castle: a physically- and mentally-scarred war veteran who's lost his ability to feel anything for anyone or about anything, especially mass murder. Worst of all, to me, is the fact that these guys are always going to get away with it. While the PTSD-suffering Rambo went to prison, at the end of his first film (First Blood), for attacking smalltown cops, he was released in the next one so he could become The Killing Machine again, this time for the government. The Rambo flicks at least have the veneer of war, due mostly to where they are set (Vietnamese jungle, Middle Eastern desert, Burmese jungle).

The Punisher doesn't have that advantage; he always attacks in the city. Thus his jaw-dropping number of killings are treated as murders, which they are, leading to him being caught and put on trial. He escapes and takes on a new identity, but does this fugitive from justice lie low? Oh, no, he goes on killing!

George R.R. Martin said, "We'll follow reprehensible characters for years if they're fascinating." But is the Punisher such a character? He's a humorless brute with a boring personality and a monotonous agenda. There are other film and literary sociopaths (or psychopaths) who better fit Martin's quote. Hannibal Lecter is brilliant and suave; Alex (A Clockwork Orange) is brutally magnetic; Richard the Third is a master manipulator; John Wayne in The Searchers is, well, John Wayne; and even Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver is at least certifiably insane.

Ultimately, I suppose I just don't get the appeal of the Punisher, a man who will continue killing without remorse because no one--police, superheroes, nor writers--will ever stop him. A Facebook friend of mine told me that Frank Castle does what we want to do, making his activities vicariously satisfying. That idea is rather horrifying. When William Foster, Michael Douglas's character in Falling Down, intimidated, attacked, and even killed admittedly repugnant people, it was obviously wish-fulfillment for the writer, who so convincingly put politically and socially incorrect speeches into Foster's mouth. But at least he had the good sense to show, in the end, that Foster was the bad guy and had to be killed off. We'll never get that kind of ending for the Punisher.

REFERENCES: TV Tropes, Kristian Wilson (Bustle), Charlie Jane Anders (io9), "Mr. Saturn" (listal)

#comics #television #movies #fiction