Saturday, February 4, 2012

Bad People or Bad Characters?

There is this peculiar phenomenon with fictional characters where people will question you liking a character who is a bad person. The thing is though that I find that there can be this great dichotomy where you can hate a character for being a bad person, but love them for being a great character. A character is not necessarily a bad character because they are a bad person. Lost's Benjamin Linus is perhaps the best character of the tv series; he's a despicable person, weak, selfish, and manipulative. But he is played pitch perfect by Michael Emerson. Battlestar Galactica's Gaius Baltar is a terrible person; he only cares about himself and his own self-preservation. He screws over the human race on more than one occasion. But James Gallis portrays him amazingly.

People are complicated and messy. I don't want to see one-dimensional characters in regurgitated, over used, PSA style storylines. Often times the "bad characters" are the best characters. Simply by the virtue of the fact that they are the most dynamic and believable of the characters being portrayed. I shouldn't have to answer for liking them. If anything, people should have to answer for not liking these sorts of character, and should be able to muster up answers that go beyond simply: "They're a bad person".

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