Bad People
Do you know why American Psycho is one of my favorite movies?
If you said Christian Bale’s shower scene, you are only half right.
It’s because American Psycho goes out of its way to emphasize how good and polished the villain looks; how absolutely normal and decent he looks and the effort he puts into it to look this way. It slaps you over the head with a very important message: you can’t tell who’s a villain just by looking at someone.
For anyone now thinking “Well yeah, duh. We all know that.” Consider this: we only really know it when someone brings it up. Intellectually we might know it. But emotionally, a bad guy looks like, well, a villain.
The very fact that I can say — or write as the case may be — look like a villain, and trust anyone listening or reading this knows what I am talking about, points to us having certain ideas about what bad people look like. (not to be confused with bad-asses. Those have a look as well. But are not necessarily bad people.) When bad people a.k.a. villains aren’t going around twirling their waxed mustaches, they spend their time playing dress up with black leather and bondage gear. Acceptable alternatives are military uniforms, black suits (but only if bald) and lab-coats, depending on their Modus Operandi. Their faces should have face paint, metal parts, scars or razor sharp cheekbones. Bonus points for any combination thereof.
Or, at the very least, a Lime Green smoke should be following them around. — Especially when they break out in song.
Lime Green burning flames, or Lime Green liquid suggested to be poison, potion or acid will suffice as well. Just just as long as it’s Lime Green.
Why? Well if the villains didn’t have all this nonsense, how would we be able to identify them as villains? Story tellers want watchers (and to some extent readers) to tell right away when someone has evil intent. This builds up the tension. Makes for a much more exciting story.
Sadly it also enforces a false believe that we would recognize a bad person when we see them. And because we all subconsciously believe we would be able to identify people with malicious intent based on appearance alone, we also have a belief that anyone could influence whether or not they fall victim to a bad person based on their behavior. It’s simple, yeah? Don’t hang out with villains.
And then, things don’t make sense.
“This guy is a bad guy? Are you sure? Where’s the leather bondage gear? Where’s his scars?There must be some mistake. There’s not even Lime Green anywhere near him.
What did you do to push this totally normal looking person to do the bad thing?
You must have done something, because if you didn’t do something…If you just did normal stuff with a normal person, and you weren’t safe…Well, that means I am not safe doing normal stuff with normal people.
I can’t not be safe going through life, I can’t deal with that kind of anxiety.
What did you do?”
