The expendable
protagonists and useless foot
soldiers of villainy are the unimportant characters our fiction slaughters
in droves. They are the sacrificial nonentities used to demonstrate threats,
provide easy drama and grimly amuse us.
The Red Shirts of Star
Trek and the teenagers of horror movies are the expendable protagonist archetype at its finest. The stormtroopers
of Star Wars are the useless foot soldier of villainy at its
best. All these imaginary victims have one very poignant thing in common: they
are mortal and only human.
The Red Shirts are men and women dressed for work.
Teenagers are our silly selves. The stormtroopers would not be so popular if
robots rather than human beings dressed like robots. Our favorite sacrificial
characters are the ones most like ordinary people.
Harm to our own stirs primal empathy, even if we hate the
victims. Their pain may be our pleasure or their doom our amusement but only
because the opposite can be equally true. The appeal of the expendable is their
familiarity, even when this familiarity arouses our contempt.
We all fancy ourselves important… but know the
inconvenient truth. Our lives are insignificant and our deaths inconsequential.
Our only safety is being lost in a crowd. Our wits and prowess are no greater
than that of a Red Shirt. We never lose our teenage silliness. We are no more
“individual” behind our masks and wearing our armor than an Imperial stormtrooper. We know who these fictional characters really are.
Our fiction has its heroes, masterminds, sidekicks,
henchmen and monsters. Each type has its distinct appeal in countless forms.
The expendable protagonists and useless foot soldiers of villainy are no
different in this regard.
You can't be important if you don't try your damndest to be important. Most people strive to so as little as they can. If they are curious, they are a Red Shirt. If they are submissive, they are Storm Troopers. If they take showers in haunted houses...
ReplyDeleteHilarious... and rings true. Yes, people are not important because they FEEL important. Other nonentities caring about them does not revoke their own nonentity status: a whole lot of nothing is nothing at all, one person or many. Sadly, they are many... but as fiction they provide an endless supply of victims.
DeleteInteresting, the familiar does indeed stir our primal empathy for the Red Shirt "Just doing his job." or the silly teenager who falls victim to the killer. The relevance given to these characters in fiction is also the false relevance nonentities give to themselves.
ReplyDeleteYes. Thoughts and feelings are not enough. "What have I done to deserve this?" is not the right question. "What have I done to deserve better?" is the one to ask.
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