During the 1960's, humility, kindness and understatement were thought to be virtuous attributes. This was reflected in the popular culture of the time.
Today's society seems to require; arrogant, selfish and boastful behaviors.( As survival mechanisms?)
Anyway, who are your favorite anti-hero icons of both the past and present?
Two of mine:
- Gilligan (Gilligan's Island)
- Napoleon Dynamite
I suppose Voltaire’s Candide is a legitimate candidate. Here is a sample concerning how Candide steps up to the role of hero: “There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.”
Without doubt Frankenstein’s monster as portrayed by Boris Karlof on screen but with more scope in Shelley’s original work, would have to be my first choice.
A metaphor for mankind and a certain perspective of our relationship with God, the creature is misconceived, malformed and yet he is intelligent and capable of great compassion. Immature and rejected he wreaks a brutal revenge on his creator and they end up in an desperate pursuit of each other in the artic wastelands.
Favorite Anti-Heroes:
02 Oct '18 21:041 edit
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