We all, I trust, are familiar with the notion of “the dark side”. Made famous by George Lucas in the Star Wars movies, the term became synonymous with all things evil. The “dark side”, of course, is the domain of the bad guys, the ones who lie, cheat, steal, and otherwise do their very best to make our lives miserable. Sort of like Republicans. I never quite understood, by the way, why there wasn’t a corresponding “light side”. Seems like there should have been.
Anyway, Paul Lester and I have been having a little fun with the term lately, mostly with respect to cameras and stuff. I’ve called Nikon the “dark side” and he’s called digital the “dark side” (as opposed to film). Again, all in fun. He also had a post, though, in which he talked about “shadows” and the dark side of our own personalities. In a comment, I pointed out that we often openly root for the bad guy in movies. I mentioned that when I first saw the final installment of Star Wars the audience appaluded and cheered when Darth Vader made his initial appearance. They loved the guy. Nobody stood up and cheered for the hero when he first appeared.
Since then, I’ve been thinking about it (a lot). Why is it that we often root for the “bad guys”? Why do we make folk heros out of outlaws? True, we do it for the Abe Lincolns, Mother Theresa’s and Nelson Mandelas as well, but we seem to really get into elevating our villains, whether they be real or imaginary.
American movies are full of lovable bad guys. The real star of the most recent Batman movie – The Dark Knight – is The Joker (played so well by Heath Ledger). In the classic Silence of the Lambs, we worry about Jody Foster’s FBI character, but we also want Hannibal Lector to escape, presumably to continue his cannibalistic ways. And he does. We also come to admire Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, even though he isn’t even human. Yes, he does turn into a “good guy” in the latter installments of the series, but he wreaks tremendous amounts of havoc in the original story. But we forgive him his murderous excesses. The list goes on and on – Michael Myers (Halloween), Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street), and Agent Smith (the Matrix series). We’re horrified by what these characters do, but it is them that we pay to go and see.
It’s not just fictional bad guys, either. How about Jesse James. Butch Cassidy. Billy the Kid. All have been raised from the depths of criminal behavior to the lofty pedestal of folk hero. Why? Because they represent what most of us are jealous of – the courage to step outside normal, accepted behavior. There is nothing exciting or romantic about obeying all the rules. We pay homage to our saints, but we secretly admire (and sometimes not so secretly) our most famous sinners.
Need a more recent, ”real-life” example? In 2006, a guy named Ralph “Bucky” Phillips escaped from prison and went on a shooting spree in western New York that eventually attracted national attention. By the time it was all over, a number of people were dead or wounded. Among the dead was a New York State Trooper who, along with 2 other officers, was ambushed by Bucky. These men never saw their attacker.
Bucky is currently serving a life sentence. He actually pled guilty (or in his own words, “guilty as hell”). So what’s my point? Simply this: While Bucky was on the run, he became one of these “folk heros”. The longer he evaded police, the more popular he became. As police threw more and more men into the manhunt, the more people there were who openly hoped that he would avoid capture or death. At the height of this nonsense you could actually buy “Where’s Bucky?” T-shirts. The topper though, in my opinion, was the restaurant that proudly began serving “Bucky Burgers”. Not surprisingly, they sold quite a few. Right up until “poor” Bucky got caught.









