The triumvirate of movie characters that edgy incels worship without actually understanding what they’re about or the fact that none of them were ever meant to be idolized.
Authors: “I have taken all of the worst personality traits and put them into the most egotistical and narcissistic sociopath villain ever! Readers will surely hate their guts!”
Authors: “I have taken all of the worst personality traits and put them into the most egotistical and narcissistic sociopath villain ever! Readers will surely hate their guts!”
Conversely though there’s a very strong argument to make that media creators are not the end-all-be-all on how their content should be interpreted. Not saying that any of the characters in the above comment should be idolized, but “this character is the bad/good guy because the author says so!” isn’t a great way to analyze media, either.
Yeah, there’s manyfaceted characters open to interpretation and then there’s characters written explicitly to scare people by being fundamentally against the norms and principles of humanity.
Then again, being unironically fascist is back in style just as the last people old enough to remember WW2 first hand are dying, so clearly all bets are off as far as norms and principles of humanity goes 🤷
Heinlein in 1959: writes extremely militaristic and some would say fascistic book with tons of xenophobia and racism projected onto an alien race
Paul Verhoeven in 1997: “Jesus fuck! That’s a BIT much for today’s audience!” directs over the top parody of fascism and militarism, including deliberately annoying and explicit propaganda infomercials
Most people in 1997: “Huh! I never knew Paul Verhoeven was a literal nazi!”
These characters represent the repressed feelings of many who feel under pressure by authority so they are exalted in the eyes of particular people, such as teenagers and young adults. Bateman, Joker and Tyler Durden have the common denominator of going against the norms so many feel related and entranced.
They’re cool - but they’re awful people. Tends to lend itself to conservative thinking in it’s the people who can’t handle my “truth” who are weak and therefor wrong. Basically selfish asshole mentality
Patrick Bateman isn’t even cool, though, only on the absolute surface. It’s a first person account of not just a sociopath, but a sociopath who’s EXTREMELY insecure and otherwise neurotic. Dude has absolutely no chill.
If he wasn’t a murderer who works out, they would have called him a soy boy cuck 😂
“Contrary to the memes of Tommy Shelby some of you post, you are not running an empire and dealing with betrayal, you have a shit job and your mates are fuckwits.”