Cartoonish Bad Guys or a Fear of the Realistic
Faced with a ‘bad guy’, do we squirm or accept the reality?
One of the fundamental issues with writing coherent fiction is the need to fashion characters which are at once believable and attractive and engaging to read. Spend any time in the real world, however, and you will quickly understand why this is a problem: not everyone is engaging, interesting, or exciting.
To put it (absurdly) simply, many characters are relegated into two very black and white categories; good and bad. Both suffer from the need for engagement, and both suffer from the over-simplification of character traits causing stereotypical archetypes. There are numerous examples throughout fiction of bad guys so bad that they are the baddest of the bad (if you see my point), and good guys who are so virtuously good that only good thoughts enter their very good minds.
I have reviewed books for nearly six years now, and in that time I have read the best and worst of fantasy fiction. I’ve encountered characters that all but jumped off the page and those who were flat and utterly uninteresting, or worse, predictable. But I have also encountered a problematic trend amongst fellow reviewers when attempting to appropriately categorise fictitious antagonists.
I was writing a review for ‘Caliban’s War’ by James S. A. Corey the other day when I came across this comment made by another reviewer;
But you should also be aware that there’s … a couple of at best cartoonishly characterised bad guys.
Putting aside my exponentially growing fanboy-ish love for the pseudonymic work of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, I was somewhat caught off guard by this commentary of the antagonists in the book. I had noticed no such “cartoonish” characterisation and had to take a moment to understand the feeling behind the comment.
I wrote in my review the following;
The good guys are flawed, facing off against situations no one should ever be forced to deal with, and make mistakes along the way. The bad guys are greedy monsters out to line their own pockets or protect their interests at the expense of anyone; they are not the “cartoonish” oafs some reviewers might have you think, rather, they represent realistically portrayed men and women who have overstepped the bounds of human decency. Sometimes I feel that this realistic portrayal and the simple-minded justifications which drive individuals such as these make some reviewers uneasy, as if the presence of such realistic evil in their fiction is just too much.
It was an interesting moment as a reviewer, where I realised that bad guys may in fact be very stereotypical while still being entirely believable. That stereotypical behaviour, however, seems to strike a discordant note with some, who I suspect would rather a flawed but redeemable bad guy.
The example at hand – Caliban’s War by James S. A. Corey – has no real bad guy other than maybe one United Nations Fleet Admiral. There are a number of faceless bad guys, working behind the scenes from their multi-billion dollar facades: greedy, possessed of such self-importance that no action they ever commit could ever be wrong, let alone brought to light, they live a life above everyone else; untouchable, for the most part.
And you can’t help but see similarities to those same financial giants and old-money royals in society today who are similarly untouchable, seemingly beyond the everyday-legal systems by virtue of their wealth and standing, if not completely, than at least partially. Furthermore, and more along the lines of the stereotypical bad guy, are any number of historical figures who have wielded the power of life and death over their subjects, intent, in their minds, upon taking the right course of action no matter the death toll and international horror their actions might cause.
One wonders then, with these very real-day examples littering the newspapers and history textbooks, why reviewers are so dismissive of similarly portrayed bad guys appearing in the pages of our fiction. As I wrote in my review, I wonder if maybe it is not linked intrinsically to the desire to ‘escape’ from the real world and its panoply of horrors: Open up a book only to find similarly egotistical maniacal devilry displayed, and no wonder that readers might recoil, while simultaneously dismissing the portrayal of evil as unnecessary or stereotypical.
The portrayal of evil in Caliban’s War is disturbing in the way that human life is treated by some; nothing more than figures on a cost-sheet, dismissed as necessary sacrifices in the goal towards scientific or military dominance. The uncaring attitudes taken by those in hidden-power ignore basic human rights, untold millions of lives thrown away in the name of progress. And when push comes to shove and things go wrong, that same self-serving attitude that has driven their decision making and ethics is warped in size, shrinking from the system-wide concern of billions to the selfish concern of one.
It is a frighteningly accurate representation of humanity, and that in and of itself may be the fundamental concern of some reviewers. What could be worse, really, then having the worst parts of humanity reflected in front of you?
