If you want to know what most people will think of a character in a movie, watch the movie with the sound off.
Like Jordan Belfort eventually loses his wife and access to his kid in The Wolf of Wall Street. But that can happen to any Joe on the street anyway, and he didn't get to have drug fueled orgies like Jordan did. Walter White descends into chaos and death in the pursuit of using his singular skills. But before he dies he leaves an enormous amount of money to secure his family's security forever and he get to experience a moment of pure fulfillment, working for himself, achieving at the outermost limits of his abilities. Joe Sixpack can get cancer and leave his family a pile of debt after spending his life working middle management at a life insurance firm, achieving no self-actualization and leaving his family in financial destitution.
These programs think that they are portraying some sort of cautionary tale by saying "Look this person got to have everything, but then they lost it all due to the method with which they acquired it", without realizing that the common man on the street could do everything by the book and above board and still find themselves losing everything and in the same spot as the characters in these shows, and they didn't even get to have fun along the way!
Burning out due to doing something dangerous but fulfilling is much more appealing than losing everything you have due to some health problem...
It happened with books too: See "Liar’s Poker", by Michael Lewis. He says that he wrote it "so that fewer idealistic college kids would dream of working on Wall Street. ... Somehow that message failed to come across ... They'd read my book as a how-to manual."
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~pel/misc/The-End-of-Wall-Street... https://danwang.co/liars-poker-by-michael-lewis/
Michael Lewis also wrote "Moneyball" and "The Big Short" which were made into films.
I’m increasingly suspicious of the idea that humans are independent and rational, because so much humam behaviour can be explained as uncomplicated animal mimicry.
But first... SPOILER ALERT!
I mean the first time around I had some sympathy for the guy - he was a disappointed and somewhat embittered middle aged man still trying to do his best to support his family, and then he's given this crappy cancer diagnosis. I felt bad for him. Fair to say that by the time he just lets Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, choke to death on her own vomit whilst unconscious I'd entirely lost that and felt nothing but loathing for the character (which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the show, or think he was a great character).
But what I realised on revisiting the show a couple of years later is that Walter White didn't break bad. He was bad from the very beginning. I mean look at the way he interacts with people in the early episodes of season 1: he's largely an asshole. The only thing that changes is that, initially because he's driven to, he becomes much more comfortable with manifesting his assholery overtly.
> But what I realised on revisiting the show a couple of years later is that Walter White didn't break bad. He was bad from the very beginning.
Jesse's girlfriend got him hooked on heroin. Jesse was on a downward spiral and would surely die thanks to her continued interference. Walter saw the toxicity of both the drugs and the relationship and did Jesse a cruel but necessary kindness by letting her asphyxiate. It wasn't ethical, it wasn't humane, but it served a greater purpose (even if it was so Walter wouldn't be without an assistant).
He did far worse deeds for less grounded reasons as the series went on; there are better examples to choose from to make a case of villainy. If anything, what changes through the series is his disconnectedness from everything he was fighting for. As he lost his son's respect, his wife, his family, and his friend, his world became significantly more introverted and he was willing to tolerate greater and greater amounts of collateral damage in the interest of his own survival (since he had nothing left to care about but himself until the ending).
It's a great show, and I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
> Jesse's girlfriend got him hooked on heroin. Jesse was on a downward spiral and would surely die thanks to her continued interference.
Jesse was on a downward spiral, yes, but the other two points are less clear. They might be true from Walt's perspective.
> Walter saw the toxicity of both the drugs and the relationship and did Jesse a cruel but necessary kindness by letting her asphyxiate. It wasn't ethical, it wasn't humane, but it served a greater purpose (even if it was so Walter wouldn't be without an assistant).
It's impossible to tell how much Walt's letting Jane die / killing Jane had to do with helping Jesse. I think it's clearer Walt killed Jane to keep control over Jesse and to protect himself. And that worked out pretty well, for a while. Jane didn't fear Walt, and she knew too much about him for Walt's comfort and safety. So he let her die / killed her.
> He did far worse deeds for less grounded reasons as the series went on; there are better examples to choose from to make a case of villainy.
This is true. For me, Jane's death caused a major nosedive in sympathy for Walt. Definitely previous things he did were villainous and later things even more so. But there was something about Jane's death. A big step down in his descent.
that is exactly the issue - for him ends justify the means. That is his main, core, villainy.
>what changes through the series is his disconnectedness from everything he was fighting for.
natural result as evil means hollow out whatever ends he wanted to reach.
If you're a huge asshole before you got rich, now you're just a rich asshole. If you're an empathetic, kind person, before you got rich, now you're just a rich, kind person. He also lamented society benefits more from the latter than the former for obvious reasons.
He slowly gains this confidence and control. He goes from being talked down to and ignored to being powerful (though at massive cost), but there's something appealing to that story of taking control. There's also an element of masculinity tied up in this too - when he stomps on the bully's leg in the clothing store early on. I think it's just being the alpha monkey.
Skyler was pretty controlling and self-righteous, I found her to be a pretty unlikable character. She cheats on Walt primarily to hurt him and she was also hypocritical, breaking the law for Ted when it suited her and helping with the money laundering without taking accountability for anything.
Walt at least (early on) started with the goal of raising money to leave his family - though this obviously mutates pretty quickly.
the writers of the show did everything in their
power to communicate "This man is a moral monster
and a horror of a human being."
The qualifiers of his moral character only took on darker notes toward the end of the series, near the fifth and sixth season. But remained justifiable, within the context of the fatalistic continuity of the series, where characters are left with limited options, granted the hand they are dealt.
Throughout the rest of the series, Walter White is as laughable as any petulant straight man in a comedic duo (e.g. the Hardy role of Laurel and Hardy, Larry Appleton from Perfect Strangers, the Moe of the 3 stooges), while Jesse Pinkman plays the foil.
As a comedic duo, the two are rendered harmless, and thus, any morality is diffused by the beat of each joke, within the care free scope of a goof. It's all gallows humor, with a wink, shrug and a nod that everyone's hands were tied, so just go with the flow and enjoy the ride.
That's because nobody starts watching from the later seasons, they start watching from season one. In the beginning, Walter White is an overqualified for his work, struggling to support his family on a meager teacher's salary, and then a cancer diagnosis kicks in. Everybody identifies with him because most of us feel like we struggle with unfulfilling work and with money issues, and then the cancer diagnosis is the cherry on top - how can you judge somebody who's put in that position? Who will leave his wife saddled with debt and put in charge of raising her kids alone?
Breaking Bad reminds us that in human psychology, first impressions have outsize influence over our perceptions of other people. Battered women stay with their husbands because they still see the caring individual their husbands were when they were first dating, and hold onto hope that somewhere, their husband is still that person; if their husbands were originally abusive in the first set of dates they never would have stuck around.
It's very easy to fall into this mindset and I think a lot of people identified.
The dinner scene with her, Heisenberg and Jessie makes up for it though.
You got the wrong idea. I don't think anyone idolizes Tony. It's a great movie and Tony is a great character and Scarface tells an interesting story, not because the protagonist made himself rich. Same as Godfather, I like it and I like them not because they are rich, but it was because they made interesting choices. Let's talk about Scarlett in Gone with the wind -- was she rich? Was she poor?
Recently, I listened to Shit Town and it gave me an everlasting impression on me. The main character in the story was a very poor man. I liked him -- not because he is poor either, but because he is interesting.
Who cares about whether the character is rich or poor, the character's background is merely a medium to tell the story. Being very rich or poor or desperate is just a convenient choice to get the story flowing because the characters in such extreme circumstances tend to have interesting experiences and choices.
It's a horrible movie. Terrible acting, no story, shallow characters, it's almost a parody of the Miami drug scene.
If you'd like I can provide a short list of rap songs about selling drugs which contain lyrics positively representing scarface/Tony. People idolize him. He's a self made man who took what he wanted. He's betrayed in the end, but plenty of people look at that as the actions of outside actors and not the consequences of his behavior. I'm not going to go into possible alternative analysis for Tony's character/the events of the movie in which he's a heroic figure betrayed by Sosa and the government (which can also be viewed as a bad guy in drug culture), but it's there.
TL;dr- There are people who aspire to be Tony, understanding full well that Heavy Weighs the Crown.
I mean, what does Jay-Z have to say about Montana? Fuck Sosa, this Hova this is real life // This is what the ending of Scarface should feel like. Because he's better than Tony, and he's going to make it all work.
There are definitely people who idolize the Achilles bit, living gloriously and briefly, but I feel like the most common reason people celebrate that is that they get to downplay the messy ending.
>but plenty of people look at that as the actions of outside actors and not the consequences of his behavior.
That's the recipe for a great story/a great movie: The great moment in storytelling is when the viewer/reader starts to see the world as the protagonist sees it. The viewer stopped caring about whether the protagonist was objectively right or wrong/moral or immoral, the viewer starts caring more about whether what they did given the situation make sense or not.
That is - given the situation, could/would you have done the same? The answer for me in the cases of Tony Montana, Scarlett O'Hara, Michael Corleone were a really convincing yes.
And not everyone knows all the history of symbols.
umm. Andrew Jackson... look up the trail of tears
No one makes movies or TV shows about people who are heroically kind, empathic, or generous.
You think they're terrible. Ascribing to everyone the same moral code and then reasoning why they might ignore it seems like a poor basis for reasoning? To me it's about understanding what metrics really matter to people
Al Capone may have murdered a small town- but hey - at least he didn't bow to the man, working 9to5...
Nicely put. I don't really understand how the negative ending of Fight Club is supposed to stop people from identifying with it; it's not as though it shows another happier path people with the same sentiments ought to endorse.
"If you feel this way and commit to it completely, things will go wrong for you" is totally compatible with "many people feel this way", and if the movie wasn't relatable it's not clear to me how it would have anything useful to say.
* A generation of men raised with absent father figures is leading to listless depression.
* Every person has an idealized version of themselves in their head where they are powerful and purposeful.
* Modern middle class culture has no real danger in it, and we have lost our connection to the world of physical violence and dominance.
* Living for the acquisition of more IKEA furniture is a poor life decision.
And so on and so forth. Like most decently thoughtful and provocative film and writing it throws a lot of things at you and makes you think and reconsider your values a little. It has a lot of messages, some contradictory, some confusing or banal, and some intriguing.
Sure there are particulars. But is FC's consuming consumer that much different (metaphorically) from being a battery for the machines?
I don't think so.
There's something extremely surface-level about people's takeaways from film characters. They want a certain level of panache that the characters can muster, but they ignore that even the characters themselves are miserable.
*
The reason TV sociopaths are admired is that they are on TV. They have a story.
Do you really admire Tony Soprano? Which part? His loveless marriage to a crazy person? A mistress who is even crazier? His gigantic belly and panic attacks? The fact that no one actually likes him? That his daughter was dating a black guy? ("I wouldn't have a problem with that." Yes you would if you were Tony.) What part do you admire?
The answer you tell yourself is you admire his power, that he can do whatever he wants. No he can't. The whole show was nothing but repeated examples of how limited his options were. The things you think you admire-- having hot sex with the other crazy woman at his psychiatrist's office, eating microwaved Sysco at Italian restaurants, avoiding his wife-- can be done by anyone, you don't need to be Tony to do it. But when you do it.... it just doesn't feel the same. I know.
What people admire about Tony isn't his freedom; that thing you think is freedom is actually the lack of freedom. His story. His identity-- that he has one, an obvious one, a clear one. Tony Soprano is not free, his behavior is completely tethered to what makes sense for his character. He acts exactly like Tony Soprano would act. That's what people want: the limitations of that identity: if I know who I am, I know what I am capable of, I know my strengths and my limits, I know how I'd react to unknown dangers. And I want other people to know this. If other people know who I am, I wouldn't have to keep proving myself. Strike that: I wouldn't have to prove myself in the first place.
*
Translating to the present topic, what makes Jordan Belfort attractive is not his role as "rich stock trader crook" or the cars and yachts that go with it, it's that he has a role and is confident that that is his role, as opposed to, let's say, oscillating between "Maybe I should start day trading" and "Maybe I should write the great American novel" and "Maybe I should write an indie game" but never doing any of them because that would remove the option of doing the other ones.
0: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/why_we_love_sociopat...
In essence, those that get their 'plan' from the TV/gestalt just need to volunteer more and travel.
A while back I got very interested in Lucian Freud, moreso for the relationships he had with his portrait subjects rather than the portraits themselves. Long story short many of these relationships became romantic (many even led to children), but across both the romantic and non-romantic ones the subjects seemed to find Freud's keen (even selfish) interest in portraying them seductive. He could be demanding, cruel, temperamental, etc. but he was fundamentally a talented painter who was very simple to understand: he wanted to paint you, he was very interested in you, and didn't much care about how this affected you. For the reasons you outline, at least a broad subset of people find this kind of singular character (literally) attractive.
Similarly, I like horror movies a lot. But, it is not nearly the same as video of real person suffering (or realistic portrayal). I don't like those at all. Horrors are made to feel you fake bad and it is similar with most popular movies about sociopaths.
Something similar happens with Vic Mackey in The Shield: he starts as a morally grey antihero (if you forget he's a cop killer, of course) but gradually turns into something else. He's selfish, murderous and in the end doesn't really put his friends first, contrary to what he claims. He's a fascinating character, but not someone we should root for! (But we still do!)
It seems like this is an obvious read, right up until I see people mystified by these shows. "Better to be hated than pitied" is a simple enough sentiment, and if it comes alongside direction and certainty than all the better - even the certainty of having no way out.
Most people don't actually do that, thank god, because they have consciences. But it's simple enough to understand "I want to just commit to something, anything, and stop feeling empty" as a principle. Hell, Jim Profit literally slept in a cardboard box every night and people wanted to be him.
Same with action movies - main character does a lot of damage to everyone around, steal cars, hurt innocent people and we are supposed to ignore that. Happy end involves massive fight in the middle of city that would displace thousands of families. And so on and so forth.
People take the usual expected reading of movies and apply them to these too.
It is possible to make movies differently. I have seen movies that made me feel bad about violence and events and that made it clear that "this is not a cool thing". But the movies mentioned here are not like that - they sort of criticise it but are still made so that we feel happy about them. They show events from the point of view of perpetrator, but not much from point of view of their victims.
Very good game.
There's not a lot of replayability in subverting your own expectations.
One other thing is that he had great talent and competence as a chemist, which was often on full display. Many of the other characters in the show had no clear talents, or if they did, they it was more background or reputation than something clearly shown.
I think any character that shows extreme talent will attract fans, regardless how evil or unhappy they are, because people will divorce the talent from the other attributes and admire it on its own.
I want to be Don Draper because he is handsome, well dressed, and extremely intelligent. That doesn't mean I want to do everything negative he did. Although I wouldn't mind being able to drink at work.
When kids play Batman, one of them has to be The Joker. It could be that they like clowns or the color purple. It doesn't have to mean that the child is murdering cats in the backyard.
The idea of these characters who are so certain of who and what they are, and are driven by some greater purpose is very alluring, even if the personality is toxic and the purpose immoral.
That is to say, making a ton of money seems a lot harder than just not being an asshole.
To quote from the Wikipedia article: "semi-autobiographical book [...] describing the author's experiences as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the late 1980s".
Before reading Liar's Poker I was ignorant about, and extremely hostile to the financial industry, and the book brought about complete change. The book is at best ambivalent about high finance, but clearly also glamourises the industry.
Honestly, they don't try hard not make it look glamorous. This extravaganza is totally part of what makes people watch it.
Another reason might be that many people are simply greedy and the consequences for the main actors weren’t that bad in the end after all. I think the real Belfort made an appearance at the end of the movie and gives speeches nowadays...
In the 1980's Burger King was expanding and as part of this came a big advertising campaign centered around a nerdy-looking guy called Herb, who was the only person who hadn't been to a Burger King. If you could spot him in a Burger King restaurant, you could win money. It was a colossal failure, and instead of increasing customer volume, ended up having the opposite effect and decreasing it.
Why? Because the overt message of
"Herb the Nerd" <-> "The only person who hasn't gone to Burger King"
was shortened in people's minds to
"... Nerd" <-> "... Burger King".
It's fascinating: indirect/subtext messaging will beat direct messaging every time.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/ad_report_card/2004/0...
It's easy to come up with a few theories as to what sets it apart, but I would love to see a proper analysis of how it tackles the subject matter without glorifying the lifestyle unnecessarily--and what other films should learn from it if they aim to accomplish the same
Jordan Belfort might be doing terrible things (although not as bad as serial murder), but he looks and acts like he loves every minute of it. Bateman doesn't.
You could also compare The Hangover and Leaving Las Vegas. One makes a drug-filled weekend in Vegas look sort of fun, and one does not.
Also all the murdering.
These films of destructive and unhealthy people are usually aspired to because even when the characters hit their rock bottom, they still have more money, power, control, and agency than the average viewer.
hiking
hanging out with friends families
reading
learning
whatever that is not being mind-washing by the popular entertainment
Is a type of nonsensical logical reasoning.
I wouldn't say that people who idolize these characters have poor judgement or bad morale though. I mean, we shoot people or do illegal street racing in virtual environments for fun all the time, maybe it's just a human nature to entertain the idea of what we could have done if sociatal norms or laws wouldn't stop us.
Idealization of a persona usually doesn't mean wanting to become exactly that person but to have some quality of that person.
Maybe those people who actually do something are simply racionalizing their actions through these fictional characters?
Control over your own life is something that everybody craves and it's clear that these characters have it in abundance, even if it's only for a brief period of time - i.e. to the end of the film. But up until that point, they're seen as individuals who have broken free from their respective shackles.
I believe it is mostly due to the last scene of these movies where the hero dies in some crazy action scene. Lot of adrenaline, and it looks so "cool" on screen that you can't help thinking "wow this guy was awesome!".
One movie that dealt with that really well was "Goodfellas". During the 2nd part of the movie, the downfall is filmed in a very slow, almost boring manner. And the end is boring as f*ck, specifically to avoid this pitfall of glorifying the "hero".
When someone is narcissistically wounded, they are going to mimic the survival strategies of other high-status narcissists.
To me, it's just a ridiculous person acting like a teenager and having no intelligence or wisdom whatsoever.