Final Analysis: Evil in Pop Culture

Well, my three-part series on evil as represented in three series of movies is now over, so I thought I would take this time to do a bit of a reflection on what I think these things tell us about our society.

Firstly, it seems to me that the evil that is portrayed in movies these days is less monolithic than we are meant to believe. Now, admittedly, my defense of Sauron was rather tongue-in-cheek, but I DO think that the portrayals of evil in Narnia and Star Wars are less than convincing. In Narnia there is obviously a text behind the movie which, presumably, fleshes out why the Witch-Queen is evil and would shatter my arguments in her favor.

Indeed, I think that some of these potrayals of evil are actually deficient because our culture has lost a sense of what evil actually is. Sin is evil. But what is sin? Is there such thing as sin? Is sin evil? These are questions that modern society fires at us. Protaganists in movies are frequently promiscuous; we are supposed to sympathize with people whose values we do not share, who engage in activity that used to be considered immoral.

Take a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, it was a good and enjoyable movie. However, although I enjoyed it, there was always a kind of irritant in the back of my consciousness- pirates are evil and, as such, should not be sympathized with or glorified. I mean, let us think about what pirates actually do: they steal, rape and plunder. Which of those three, exactly, is a good thing? And why, if that is their primary profession, should we glorify them in movies?

Instead, what we seem to be substituting for actual evil is big, "oppressive" government. The Witch Queen is a tyrant. The Empire is tyrannical.

Or, perhaps, look at other movies: Braveheart- an evil English monarch. See a pattern? The American desire for freedom, while not an inherently bad thing, seems to have gone too far. It is not unusual for us to see representations of evil in movies take on the form of corrupt government officials, overarching empires or deranged tyrants. Why this screed against government?

Surely, government is an evil, but it is also a very necessary one. I was having an argument at lunch today with a friend over the 1st century Jewish revolt against Rome. I came down squarely on the side of Rome, but he found it appalling that I would support a government without basic representation within the government (setting aside the Roman Senate, which can't really be called a representative arm of the government in any real sense). But I say, why is it appalling? Have we become so obsessed with the notion of "freedom" that we cannot even conceive of a system of government that isn't somehow loosely modelled after democracy? Is it so hard to believe that a monarchy might offer freedoms too?

It is this concern, I think, that we can take away from these movies. To be sure, tyranny is a bad thing, but I think we should challenge ourselves to consider that a governmental system different from our own is not necessarily a bad thing. It is quite easy to paint something as evil in America by making it appear to curb freedoms (for example, the Democrats' attempts to tar President Bush with the wire-tap "scandal"), but that does not always mean it is evil as such.

Finally, to poke a hole in the arguments I made, I should like to point out the ease with which it is possible to twist the meaning of something. If you asked someone who had seen Lord of the Rings whether or not Sauron was evil, they would almost universally respond that yes, he was. And yet, it was possible for me to mount a defense of his actions based on conjecture and by throwing around a great deal of politically correct wording. This, folks, is called propaganda, and we need to be aware of it. Calling the rings "tools of international diplomacy" was enjoyable, but it was hardly different from painting stripes on a cat and calling it a zebra.

And yet, we see this sort of thing happening all the time in our society. Someone does something and paints it in an entirely different light. Abortion isn't murder, it's an expression of a "woman's right to choose." Euthenasia isn't murder, it's the "right to die." The community cannot legislate against sexual deviance because that's an invasion of the "right to privacy."

I can (enjoyably, for me, at least) spin webs of complicated sounding concepts like "leaders of world communities," but that doesn't make what I'm saying about Sauron any less absurd. Asserting that the destruction of the One Ring is not only theft, destruction of property and homicide, as well as a usurpation of judicial authority is, well, just silly.

The moral of the story is, I think, that we need to be more discerning and critical in our society. What is evil is not always evil, but sometimes it most definitely is. And, conversely, sometimes what is portrayed as good isn't even remotely good or virtuous. Propaganda abounds in this "age of information" and the willing acceptance of huge amounts of it by (often large) chunks of our society is troubling, at best. When we see smear attacks levelled at the Church, we must be capable of dissecting them and returning them to their originator with a note that says "Perhaps you should have stuck to street-sweeping" (no offense intended to street sweepers).

*climbs off soapbox*

I shall start my series on church vestments very soon (possibly tomorrow). I'll do my best to make them interesting, reasonable in length (i.e. much shorter than the preposterously long evil series) and perhaps I'll throw in some pictures (a rarity at the AI!).

Oh and hey, perhaps I'll breakup the monotony of a series on vestments (well, monotony for some of my readers, I know I'll enjoy it...) with a return of the Prophecies of Interest! (cue dramatic music)

Saint John Bosco, pray for us!

Our Lady of the Snows, pray for us!