Things I've Noticed About Religious Villains

Things I've Noticed About Religious Villains

Alright Y'all this one's going to be different today. But I've been thinking about this post for a few days questioning whether or not I should actually upload it. Despite the small voice in the back of my mind shouting 'bad idea! bad idea!' I'm doing it. I should probably get my impulse control checked. 

Well I regret it a little

There are a lot of articles wandering about the internet on how to write equality. Now I say equality because of course these articles are usually about one specific thing, race, gender, etc. Basically, their advice boils down to this, if you have a certain, let’s call it a ‘controversy’, then you should make sure that said controversy is either on the side of the angels or on both sides of the conflict.

This kind of article is usually geared towards the poor sods who have accidentally (or on purpose but let’s not get into that) put a controversy in their book on the side of Evil without having them portrayed elsewhere. This is seen as the villainizing of a group of people because, after all the only representation they got was as a villain. Now putting aside some of the witch-hunting this whole issue results in, it’s a valid point. After all a wish to represent other people that aren’t like you only works if you represent them right.

              However, I’ve noticed that for some reason this idea doesn’t seem to apply to religions.

 I know, I know I brought up religion and that sucks 

but just hear me out because I think this is a legitimate point that a good bit of people have over looked. So, here we go.

              Religious antagonists usually fall into one of two categories, The Fanatic, who wants to burn everything, and the Suckers, who were duped into the whole thing (hint: mob mentality usually comes into it at some point). Now, putting aside the fact that almost all of these Religious antagonists are some sort of monotheistic group that looks very familiar (come on guys there are a lot of different religions out there, pick on the polytheistic every once in a while) lets go back to our rule about equality. Surely one or two of these people aren’t all bad?

              The problem is they are. Occasionally we’ll get a guy who does terrible things for a ‘good reason’, you know the drill conversion, the saving of eternal souls, etc. but that’s about as non-evil as they get. But why? Why are religious groups excluded from this rule? Why is it okay to villainize a religion but not any of the other hundreds of taboo subjects? And even if you ultimately decide that it’s perfectly oaky to do such a thing wouldn’t it be better to do otherwise?

              Wouldn’t’ the story become so much deeper? More realistic? More compelling if we saw that not everyone in said group was exactly the same? I think it would. Just look at Avatar the Last Airbender, a kid’s show mind you, which made its classic war against good and evil all the more three dimensional by showing that not everyone in the fire nation was a monster. Would it have been nearly as amazing as it was if they had left that part out?

Heck for an even more on the nose example all you have to do is look at one of my favorite Disney movies, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (a highly under-appreciated beauty if I do say so myself). Now I’m sure anybody who has seen the movie remembers this nightmare inducing villain

              For those who’ve missed out on this movie and the book, the charming fellow above was a judge in the catholic church and he was absolutely despicable. Now if this was the only person who has anything to do with the catholic church that would be kind of crappy. But the great thing about it is that he isn’t. 

There’s another priest who is perfectly happy to help the protagonists. Because of this arguably small detail it makes the whole world so much more real, after all the real world doesn’t’ have large groups of people who are pure evil so why should literature? Just something to think about.