Interesting thoughts. What gripes me about the double standard you mention is that it supposes the good guys are just automatically good, that consistently doing the right thing and making the right moral choices is something that just naturally happens for them and therefore they don't deserve much credit for it. There are two good examples of characters who actively work at being good in this discussion - Steve Rogers and Peter Burke - people who have chosen to be good guys who are constantly *working* at it.
Looking at stories from this perspective is one of the reasons I tend to be pretty unsympathetic to the bad guys. If the good guys are the good guys because they keep choosing to be then what does that say about the bad guys? Speaking in generalities (because Thor is the one marvel movie I haven't seen and my Smallville watching was sporadic) I feel that no matter how tragic the backstory beyond a certain point a bad guy is a bad guy by choice, at which point my sympathy runs right out.
Admittedly, if the writing is bad, you can end up with heroes who are presented as just default automatic good and they're harder to be sympathetic to.
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winterfish
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Date: 2012-05-21 09:30 am (UTC)Looking at stories from this perspective is one of the reasons I tend to be pretty unsympathetic to the bad guys. If the good guys are the good guys because they keep choosing to be then what does that say about the bad guys? Speaking in generalities (because Thor is the one marvel movie I haven't seen and my Smallville watching was sporadic) I feel that no matter how tragic the backstory beyond a certain point a bad guy is a bad guy by choice, at which point my sympathy runs right out.
Admittedly, if the writing is bad, you can end up with heroes who are presented as just default automatic good and they're harder to be sympathetic to.