(no subject)

[malymin]

Does anyone know of any like, critical theory writings on... I guess "madness coding" of villians and antagonists in fiction?

Like how antagonists are often queercoded to invoke normative audiences' disgust for female masculinity and male effimacy, sex between members of the same gender, any kind of gender "boundary crossing" ranging from drag and crossdressing to transgender and intersex bodies (and a refusal to even care about the differences between these groups), etc. The way marginalized audiences may identify with and rehabilitate these archetypes and characters, or even create them in times and place where they're the only allowed form of queerness in mainstream media.

I know there's a lot of writing on queercoded villians, and on how antagonist factions in fantasy settings may be racially coded even if they're not physically members of real ethnic groups - the way Rowling's goblins are antisemitic, that Orcs in fantasy are often invoking antiblack and anti-native cultural tropes, et cetera. There's also some theory on physical disability and villian-coding, from what I understand, though there should probably be more.

But how can I begin to find writings, on, like... how if a work of fiction wants you to believe a character is evil and impossible to reason with, they'll make them "crazy" or "insane" or "mad." They'll invoke an "inhuman" lack of empathy, they'll give them an "evil split personality", or they'll make them hallucinate and have delusions and odd tics. Even if they don't label the character as having a specific mental illness diagnosis (or slur for such), they'll give them traits associated with the most stigmatized mental conditions to signify that they're monsters.

And where can I find more writings that talk about how this is ableism, in depth??? Rather than taking for granted that it's totally fine to treat mental illness symptoms and evil as synonymous?

Comments

[seaglassgarden]

i don't have any recs for you unfortunately, just commiseration since i had some similar thoughts when researching novels in college that used the same approach to representing morality. far too much scholarship will identify a link between "failure" and disability without seriously analyzing why that link exists in the first place

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Does anyone know of any like, critical theory writings on... I guess "madness coding" of villians and antagonists in fiction? <<

I haven't seen any, and I have read a lot. But I can suggest some places to search:

* Any of the Meta communities here. Those are the meetpoints of folks who love writing about writing. It's quite possible that someone will have what you want.

* Your local library. Librarians know how to find things.

* Any library of a university with a Literature (English, Rhetoric, Creative Writing etc.) department. There you want to ask about the thesis and dissertation archives. They keep a copy of everyone's. It is quite possible that someone has done one on this or similar topics. You might check the Psychology (Counseling, etc.) department in case someone came at it from the other end.

* You might try library collections that are about disability or about diversity and inclusion. However, the vast majority of content I've seen in those fields is about physical, visible disabilities or differences. The examples I've seen for invisible or mental ones are almost all specific rather than collective. There are essays about how autism is a different way of experiencing the world, or the importance of not ignoring chronic fatigue, but not a lot yet for broader categories of discrimination or tolerance. It's mostly aimed at obtaining physical accommodations, and that often devolves into a battle because one group's accommodations make space hostile or unusable to some other group.

>> Like how antagonists are often queercoded to invoke normative audiences' disgust for female masculinity and male effimacy <<

True.

>> The way marginalized audiences may identify with and rehabilitate these archetypes and characters, or even create them in times and place where they're the only allowed form of queerness in mainstream media. <<

That's part of Identity Literature as it evolves toward acceptance.

I never have the patience to wait for other people to catch up. New trait? Trait-having hero! Done.

>> But how can I begin to find writings, on, like... how if a work of fiction wants you to believe a character is evil and impossible to reason with, they'll make them "crazy" or "insane" or "mad." <<

It's very common. However, it's not always the same cause. For example:

* Some authors do it deliberately because they want a "crazy" villain. They almost never bother to specify what the condition is, because it doesn't matter to them (like failing to specify why a character uses a wheelchair). Very rarely will you see one that does specify, and those are usually better written. Other times, you can tell from the backstory; for instance, many villains (and heroes) clearly suffer from some sort of traumatic stress condition.

* Some authors are just too lazy to come up with an explanation and either throw in "crazy" to cover it up, or that is just what readers conclude.

* Related but slightly different, the character is not meant to be mentally ill, but clumsy writing makes them look irrational so again, readers conclude "crazy" as an explanation.

>> Even if they don't label the character as having a specific mental illness diagnosis (or slur for such), they'll give them traits associated with the most stigmatized mental conditions to signify that they're monsters. <<

Common.

>> And where can I find more writings that talk about how this is ableism, in depth??? <<

I have not seen this. It sounds like a very interesting angle. I propose that, if you don't find it, you should start writing it. Maybe that'll prompt some other folks to chip in. If you do, I'd love to see a link to it, especially during marchmetamatterschallenge.

>> Rather than taking for granted that it's totally fine to treat mental illness symptoms and evil as synonymous? <<

Take care not to conflate things.

* An antagonist is just someone who causes problems for the protagonist. They aren't always evil or villains. Sometimes they just have opposing goals.

* A villain is an antagonist who is generally a bad person and/or has nefarious goals. They aren't necessarily evil but are problematic.

* Evil goes beyond ordinary levels of badness. However, a person can be evil without necessarily being a villain or antagonist.

* Any of that can cross with mental illness or injury, but none of it has to. A villain might be perfectly sane, just greedy or whatever; a mentally ill person might be a protagonist.

And that right there would be a good topic in an essay about the portrayal of mental illness in storytelling.

When I'm writing, if it's more than a bit character, I try to figure out exactly what their damage is. A wheelchair user with muscular dystrophy will behave differently from one who has shrapnel damage. A manic-depressive character will behave differently from one with social anxiety. And so on. Quite a lot of my characters -- good, middling, and evil -- have traumatic stress because the kinds of things that put people on a character path often are traumatic. For instance, since most people in prison have a history of child abuse (even though most abuse survivors do not become criminals), I often put that in a villain's backstory.

Ah, here's a reference you might find interesting: The Emotional Wound Thesaurus. It details a bunch of bad things that can happen to people, the likely impacts, traits and beliefs that may come from it, and plot points it may influence. And there's no slant to it; this isn't for villains or heroes, just characterization in general. It's so flexible that I have sat down with a single entry for a shared event and then riffed a whole family of characters who each responded to that event in different ways. While the book does not focus on mental illness, it is full of things that can cause mental injury, so it refers to possible developments such as anxiety or obsession.

That's a good foundation if you want to ask questions like, how would it look if people took mental illness and injury more seriously in storytelling and built characters -- protagonists and antagonists alike -- whose hardships have given them particular problems? Instead of using "crazy" as a generic excuse for irrational character choices or sloppy writing.

Anyhow, I hope you can find the kind of materials you're searching for.