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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: ltgalloway on August 02, 2009, 03:20:20 AM
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Hello,
This could have gone under Media, but it relates more to story and character than anything else.
I was wondering if anyone knew of some other examples (specifically in literature but film too) where the story is told primarily from the perspective of the antagonist. Everyone is the hero of their own story but I really like how this type of story telling can add some perspective to the motivations for villains. Not so much a redemption story, but what drives the character to commit evil acts.
Some that come to mind are:
Novels
Grendel by John Gardner
Films
The Assasination of Richard Nixon starring Sean Penn
Falling Down starring Micahel Douglas
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On top of my head, The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger
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Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake spend at least equal time inside the head of the antagonist, Steerpike.
Several classic noir mystery novels such as The Postman Always Rings Twice are told from the perspective of what would be considered the villain in a more traditional mystery -- often a hard-luck guy who is driven to murder by his own personality flaws or the machinations of a glamourous femme fatale.
Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels feature an amoral sociopathic killer as the protagonist. More recently the Dexter series of novels and TV program are told from the POV of a serial killer.
And while I haven't read it, I believe Mists of Avalon is told primarily from the viewpoint of Morgan Le Fay, usually the villainess in traditional Arthurian legend.
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Oh yeah, and the Parker books by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake.) I just ordered the graphic novel of the first one off Amazon and it looks like it's gonna be great -- the whole thing is rendered in an early 1960's ad. art style by a guy named Darwin Cooke (never heard of him, but apparently he's quite big in comic book circles.)
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Yes the Mists of Avalon is from the viewpoint of Morgan Le Fay called Morgaine, and also of Vivianne and Gwenwhyfar who are equally cast as villainess and heroine. It's actually a good read if you don't mind the intimidation factor *cough*and time*cough*.
Perfume by Patrick Suskind is enormously creepy and in the viewpoint of the murderer. I think they made a film based on the book, but I can't see how that would be effective in getting accross all the nastiness and the freakiness.
Wicked by Gregory Maguire is of course the villainess' perspective and is not bad. I enjoyed it, personally, but I don't recommend the sequels or bothering with the other fairy tales he worked with.
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Yes the Mists of Avalon is from the viewpoint of Morgan Le Fay called Morgaine, and also of Vivianne and Gwenwhyfar who are equally cast as villainess and heroine. It's actually a good read if you don't mind the intimidation factor *cough*and time*cough*.
And the rotten writing, don't forget that.
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I don't judge, I just read :P
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On top of my head, The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger
Don't know as I'd consider Holden Caulfield to be a villain, or even an antagonist -- he struck me as really just a whiny, spoiled brat who can't get his act together.
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I don't judge, I just read :P
Judging what's bad and what's good with the objective of being able to do better seems to me the essence of what an Author Craft space on the forum is for, no ?
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Don't know as I'd consider Holden Caulfield to be a villain, or even an antagonist -- he struck me as really just a whiny, spoiled brat who can't get his act together.
Heh...that's more than I remember. All I know is that I read the book and really didn't care for it, don't remember much else other than that. Except maybe possibly for some sorta scene in a strip club?
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Don't know as I'd consider Holden Caulfield to be a villain, or even an antagonist -- he struck me as really just a whiny, spoiled brat who can't get his act together.
There are much much better "growing up dysfunctional" novels out there if that's your thing, some of which do much better at the antihero-protagonist. (A Clockwork Orange. The Wasp Factory. Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence.)
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Heh...that's more than I remember. All I know is that I read the book and really didn't care for it, don't remember much else other than that. Except maybe possibly for some sorta scene in a strip club?
I don't recall that, but it's been a while (and I can't possibly be confusing it with the scene in The Graduate.) He whines about Olivier's Hamlet, which is actually brilliant.
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Judging what's bad and what's good with the objective of being able to do better seems to me the essence of what an Author Craft space on the forum is for, no ?
I'm embarrassed that I can't remember the name of the wonderful older author who served on several panel discussions at MileHi40, but she's won all the major awards several times over. I promise to go through my material to refresh my memory. She's also a fixture at Clarion, I believe. And now you know that my mind is not capable of holding information... CRS and all that.
Her strongest advice was to read the bad books and the bad movies. If you can figure out where they went wrong--then you are well on your way to being a good writer!
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Judging what's bad and what's good with the objective of being able to do better seems to me the essence of what an Author Craft space on the forum is for, no ?
yes - ish? Analysis does not implicitly require a judgmental attitude.
I mean when you, neurovore, refer to 'writing' what are you really referring to? There are so many aspects of writing: character development, plot development, pacing, literary devices, voice(s), etc.
And it's a taste thing, to boot.
I haven't read Mists recently enough to say if Bradley did a good job with all of those categories or not. But I enjoyed the method of presenting the story, even if I didn't love the pace. She did a good job developing most of the characters, but left some woefully in the Mists so to speak. But those characters (Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot) are the ones that everyone already writes about so it was intentional. You have to be a little more specific than "rotten writing" if you want to get me talking about a piece.
But no, I'm not going to categorize people's work as "bad" or "good" or "rotten" because there is bad and good in every piece, and it's an individual's tolerance for each thing that determines wether or not they like someone's writing.
So sorry, but I just disagree that judging is something you 'should' do in Author Craft. You can, surely, but 'should', nah. I prefer discussion to blatant dissing on people's work, personally.
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yes - ish? Analysis does not implicitly require a judgmental attitude.
I mean when you, neurovore, refer to 'writing' what are you really referring to? There are so many aspects of writing: character development, plot development, pacing, literary devices, voice(s), etc.
And it's a taste thing, to boot.
I haven't read Mists recently enough to say if Bradley did a good job with all of those categories or not. But I enjoyed the method of presenting the story, even if I didn't love the pace. She did a good job developing most of the characters, but left some woefully in the Mists so to speak. But those characters (Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot) are the ones that everyone already writes about so it was intentional. You have to be a little more specific than "rotten writing" if you want to get me talking about a piece.
But no, I'm not going to categorize people's work as "bad" or "good" or "rotten" because there is bad and good in every piece, and it's an individual's tolerance for each thing that determines wether or not they like someone's writing.
So sorry, but I just disagree that judging is something you 'should' do in Author Craft. You can, surely, but 'should', nah. I prefer discussion to blatant dissing on people's work, personally.
I have to agree. Blanket Judging (good, bad, rotten, etc) is what the Media Favorites board is for. Author Craft needs more specific detail about one thinks its bad, especially as how such relates to whatever the topic at hand is.
As far as antagonist Stories, offhand i can think of mostly tv and film:
-Darkness is a comic book series (related to Witchblade) that from the POV of a guy who is a supernatural force of evil working for the NY mob as a hitman.
-Payback is a decent Mel Gibson movie about a pretty evil dude looking to get some stolen money back.
-As mentioned before the Dexter Series (books go venture in the supernatural, tv series stays more psychological)
-The Number 23 with Jim Carey
-Fight Club (sorta)
-Some parts of Sin City
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I mean when you, neurovore, refer to 'writing' what are you really referring to? There are so many aspects of writing: character development, plot development, pacing, literary devices, voice(s), etc.
It's been years since I read it, and I disliked it enough that I'm really unlikely to go back and reread at this point, so there's a limt to how far I can take this, but as I recall; the prose was uninteresting, and the accuracy of the historical period (to be fair, I'm a hard sell on this one as I happen to know a fair bit about it, probably more than the average reader) is blloody awful; the people think far too much like moderns.
And it's a taste thing, to boot.
I reject that one a priori; if all there is to Qualitiy is individual taste, nothing can ever be made any better, so there's no point in trying.
But no, I'm not going to categorize people's work as "bad" or "good" or "rotten" because there is bad and good in every piece,
I don't agree here too; there are a handful of books I see no bad in, and probably a larger number in which there is no redeeming feature.
So sorry, but I just disagree that judging is something you 'should' do in Author Craft. You can, surely, but 'should', nah. I prefer discussion to blatant dissing on people's work, personally.
I really don;t see any way to become a better writer that does not start with seeing what's bad and what's good and then figuring out why; nor do I think analysis of why a book fails is necessarily "blatant dissing" - it's nothing personal, it's nothing to do with a personal opinion of the author, it's just the same sort of critique I want of my own work; an honest assessment of what in it works or doesn't untempered by unhelpful false-kindness.
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-Payback is a decent Mel Gibson movie about a pretty evil dude looking to get some stolen money back.
Payback, as Lee Marvin's Point Blank before it, is an adaptation of Night of the Hunter, the first of quite a long series about an amoral criminal by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. I've not read most of them - I prefer Westlake's comic mode - but they're a good example of what this thread is about.
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I cant think of any titles off-hand, but I seem to recall several books that are from the POV of Jack the Ripper.
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Payback, as Lee Marvin's Point Blank before it, is an adaptation of Night of the Hunter, the first of quite a long series about an amoral criminal by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. I've not read most of them - I prefer Westlake's comic mode - but they're a good example of what this thread is about.
The first in the Parker series, mentioned earlier. I believe the title is just Hunter; Night of the Hunter is a 1950's film starring Robert Mitchum as a murderous holy man, which also qualifies it for this list.
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Road to Perdition, graphic novel and movie (the latter has some of the most gorgeous cinematography ever; anyone who can make things like vintage refrigerators look beautiful is doing something right.)
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does it count if the hero was so poorly done that I ended up cheering for the villain? I know a few of those... :P
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Does the Count of Monte Cristo and descendant antiheroes such as V for Vendetta count ?
A lot of what makes Monte Cristo endure as an archetype, IMO, is that Dumas got a very compelling balance of sympathy there between "this person has been wronged and wishes to avenge said wrongs" and "this person is actually unhinged"; too many subsequent antiheroes fail in the direction of "this person is sympathetic and therefore when they do something awful it's excusable by the extreme circumstances" rather than succeeding at "this person has done something awful so maybe we are not meant to be entirely comfortable finding them sympathetic."
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a whole list of 'em here:
dreaded tvtropes link (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist)
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I wasnt even thinking anime, but two very good examples are DeathNote and Code Geass. Both are stories told from the villain's POV, and both calculatingly and methodically bring the world to its knees, as a shadowy God of Death that can kill anyone any time, and one as an Evil Overlord building his Legions of Doom and ultimately his Sky-Fortress of World Domination.
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a whole list of 'em here:
dreaded tvtropes link (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist)
And thank you SO much for posting a link to a site that I got lost in for hours, to the point of forgetting to cook dinner. ;D
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a whole list of 'em here:
dreaded tvtropes link (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist)
Awesome find. Exactly what I was looking for! Thanks and thanks to everyone else who have offered suggestions!