Good Guys, Bad Guys
The big Kahuna of bad guys on Lost, megalomaniacal Others leader Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson), has made a habit of insisting he’s one of the good guys. On the most recent episode – the last one we’ll see ’til the end of April – the villain of the show’s mysterious island had me so twisted up with this claim, I really don’t know what to think anymore. I mean, how can a guy who once killed a bunch of his own people with nerve gas be good? On the other hand, maybe Ben’s right that mysterious new player Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) – a wealthy businessman who has his own designs on the island – is more of a threat to the survivors of Oceanic flight 815. Or is that just Ben’s desperate spin on a situation he no longer controls?
This sort of hero/villain dichotomy is key in popular entertainment, from dramas like Lost and reality shows like Survivor, to hip-hoppers’ sometimes deadly beefs, to the antics of costumed characters in comic books. Usually in fiction (or even highly orchestrated “reality”), it’s easy to tell the black hats from the white. That’s part of what makes Ben so much fun. I feel sure he can’t be on the side of Right, but I get to torture myself with doubt and potential outrage: What if he really is the good guy?
But when this pop-culture craving for black-and-white distinctions bleeds over into real life, it leaves little room for the nuances that are all too human. Certainly President Bush and his minions have tapped into it with their constant insistence that the “war on terror,” and specifically the Iraq war, has been worth it. No matter how dire the situation gets or how badly we behave, we – as Ben Linus insists of himself – are still the “good guys.” And, because the bad guys want to kill us all, we are expected to excuse what would otherwise be considered evil behavior (especially if the other side were doing it).
Framing big issues in terms of absolute good and evil has become a habit of public discourse. It afflicts everything from celebrity gossip, like how the Heather Mills/Paul McCartney divorce was a battle between the evil harpie and the put-upon pop star, to politics. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can’t just be two Democrats vying for their party’s presidential nomination – they have to be avatars of Right and Wrong, and they must utterly defeat each other. Some pundits even warn darkly that the lack of middle ground will spell the Democrats’ defeat in November, even though Obama and Clinton are hardly diametric opposites.
Like the cartoonish pro wrestlers of the WWE, Obama and Clinton have taken turns playing the hero/villain. One day Hillary’s campaign engages in trash talk and cheap shots, the next Barack is taken to task for the way his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., has expressed anger over racial inequality in America and this country’s not-always-exemplary behavior around the world. Clinton recently asserted she would have left her church if her pastor had implied such things as the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself – as though Obama is somehow responsible for the man’s words. Her insinuation echoes more extreme opinions that Obama is a closet hater of whites because he didn’t denounce and reject Wright. Meanwhile, Clinton – so clear when it comes to saying what she’d do in a hypothetical situation involving someone else – has hardly disavowed statements by Geraldine Ferraro, who recently resigned from the senator’s campaign after saying that Obama is a presidential front-runner because he’s black. Then Ferraro compounded the drama by arguing that racism works in “two different directions” and that Obama’s campaign was “attacking me because I’m white.”
No doubt both candidates have engaged at times in mudslinging-by-proxy, but I just don’t see how anyone is responsible for someone else’s words or ideas. What the hell, ordinary citizens say way worse stuff than this every day by the water cooler, in the schoolyard, on talk radio, etc. In fact I’d bet that many, if not most, people have friends – perhaps even mentors – who carry opinions and prejudices they don’t agree with, and that might even make them uncomfortable at times. Should we expect better from our elected leaders? Yeah, but we also shouldn’t hold them to unrealistic standards, rules that not even a TV good guy (or bad guy?) could live up to.
Published: 03/26/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
