When I was working on Admiral, a novel with a somewhat ambiguous protagonist, I was focused on telling the story. I didn’t give much thought to how people would react to it. I had no expectations – or at least I thought I didn’t – but once folks started reading the book, I found myself surprised by how trusting they were of the Admiral himself.
It’s not unique to Admiral. This response isn’t a one-time thing that I just happened to notice with this novel – it’s an observable pattern in most forms of entertainment, not just literature. We trust our protagonists, and we’re often willing to give them the benefit of the doubt – even when there’s no logical reason for us to do so.
We assume the main character is good because they usually are, and I feel like that trains us to believe that simply being a protagonist makes characters good. And if they’re not good, we tend to stick with them regardless. There’s plenty of entertainment out there focused on questionable people. Writers make it work by pitting sketchy leads against villains who are even worse, and it’s a reliably effective tactic. A TV show following criminals brings in antagonists who are also criminals – but these are racist criminals – so we want to see our benign, inclusive criminals triumph over them. In books about serial killers, likable and sympathetic killers are pitted against nastier murderers. Naturally we want to see the worse, (usually less charismatic) villain go down.
We all have different views of morality, and I’m certainly not out to judge anybody. I have a thing for dark anti-heroes myself. What one reader considers monstrous, another might think is perfectly justified.
In the past, darker heroes tended to appear in redemptive stories – but as time goes by and the mainstream gets edgier, we encounter protagonists that drift toward the irredeemable. Bad people who do bad things, and while these stories tend to stop short of actively glorifying unwholesome behavior, they rarely end with these characters in prison. From what I’ve seen, they usually die. In the world of television, that’s about as close as we get to seeing these characters actually take responsibility for the things they do.
And they aren’t all criminals. The truth is, a lot of notable heroes and heroines in entertainment history are actually villains of one sort or another, but they’re charming, they’re funny, and they’re always up against someone worse – so we don’t mind. Does Indiana Jones actually have any claim on the artifacts he chases? What about Lara Croft? Or all the stories about cops breaking the rules? We don’t think about it.
It reminds me a bit of Stockholm Syndrome. The more time we spend with a character, the more invested we get, maybe whether we want to or not. I think sometimes time and exposure make us more tolerant of the things they do. We lose context and perspective, becoming desensitized.
I’m not bemoaning moral ambiguity in the mainstream; despite the shady things some of these stories do in the name of entertainment, thanks to a general drift toward realism in writing, stories about bad people are cautionary almost by default. No matter how twisted the ethics, a realistic show about outlaw bikers probably won’t make viewers want to go join the nearest MC – but within the confines of the show, they might want to see these dark characters come out on top.
Here’s a slice of a conversation I had with an industry professional when I was pitching some material:
Me: “He’s a student.”
Her: “So he’s young. And you said it was in a swamp. Like the Everglades?”
Me: “Louisiana.”
Her: “Okay. Louisiana. And the hero’s a student. Tell me more about these three bad guys.”
She assumed the protagonist was the hero, and that his opponents were the villains, just because he was narrating the book, and those three were in his way. In that case she happened to be right, but her assumption was based on nothing more substantial than the fact that the protagonist was standing over here and those three other guys were over there.
I completely understand why we tend to think that way – but placement and perspective don’t define characters, their actions do.
And suppose someone writes a story about a character that isn’t a hero or a villain. Can loyalty to a character get in the way of the themes being explored? Can the hero-protagonist-goggles that we unconsciously wear hide from us the fact that what a character is doing might not be heroism?
Furthermore, if we as the audience are so prone to seeing things in terms of black and white, where does that leave the storyteller who wants to talk about something a little more nuanced?
The Admiral’s story doesn’t have heroes or villains, but his behavior and the way people react to it helped me see the way we so readily accept and forgive our leading men and women. As long as a protagonist is presented as a hero, it doesn’t seem to matter if they really are one. I get why we accept these characters, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t – but I’m starting to think it’s something we might want to start paying closer attention to.
I just finished your book last night, so reading this was very timely. The revelation about the hero makes me rethink him as a hero. That’s a LOT of dead people!!
Looking forward to the next book!