I just saw Venom, and along with it a preview for Captain Marvel. Very enjoyable movie, and interesting preview. But I realized something that has always struck me as hollow about the Marvel Universe, and most other movie universes* from DC to Star Wars to Harry Potter to Indiana Jones. That is this: Evil is not evil until it is truly seductive, and Good is not good unless it is truly repellant.
Let me explain.
In most movie universes, most of the time, the Good guys are so obviously good that you cannot imagine anyone who is mentally healthy not siding with them. Likewise, the Bad guys are obviously evil. They offer nothing that would make a person of good conscience side with them (unless, of course, they are holding one of their family members hostage). You can only imagine someone who is a sadist, suicidal, or mentally ill, siding with the “Bad guys” in these movies.
But in real life, Evil is seductive. It is not usually obvious when some leader, or some group, or some ideology is evil and degrading and destructive. It presents itself with lots of concrete benefits that any “reasonable” person would want for themselves, their family, and their community. No one goes into Evil thinking it is evil. They go into it thinking it is good, or at least will lead to good eventually. Evil is only embraced after a thousand “sensible” compromises. Evil is not truly evil until we can imagine why solid citizens— our friends and family and neighbors— would side with Evil, and vote for Evil, against goodness, with a good conscience. Evil must tempt good people to be truly evil.
Also in real life, Goodness is usually not very attractive, and the “Good guys” are often not very likable. Goodness often calls us to costly sacrifices of ourselves and even our families, without any assured benefits for either. Good people are often the ones that question and protest and deconstruct the very systems that have kept society stable (because often the stability of society is built upon oppression and degradation of certain groups we have been trained to see as less than fully human). Good people are thus often critical and angry and uncompromising for the sake of groups of people that are despised by the majority. In most cases, it should be easy to sympathize with those who reject “the Good guys” and the ideas they represent.
Another way of saying it is this: Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and Cardinal Richelieu are only clearly Evil in retrospect. At their time, in their societies, they were very persuasive and convincing, and it was very easy for good people to think they were doing the right thing in supporting them. One cannot imagine saying that about Voldemort or Darth Vader or Thanos. And after all, many Nazis were respectful to their parents, kind to the elderly, patriotic and courageous, and contributed to charitable causes.
Likewise, great sages and prophets like Jesus and Socrates and Buddha and Gandhi and Martin Luther King are only clearly Good in retrospect. At their time, in their societies, good people were very divided about them. Some saw them as ushering in a new age of truth and justice. Others saw them as tearing the very fabric of society by demolishing the ways of the ancestors which had guided society for ages. There is not this element of contested and complex goodness found in most movie protagonists. Even with figures such as Han Solo or Mad Max or Wolverine or Venom, even if the character is somewhat complex, the “cause” they support is unambiguously good.
Now even as I write this, I am aware of the manifold problems associated with binary morality of black/white and evil/good. I know it becomes easy to demonize and scapegoat people once they are on the "wrong" side of that binary. I fully understand that all alleged “Good guys” and “Bad guys” are fictions and caricatures, and that every person is an inseparable amalgam of tendencies toward life and death, cooperation and predation, altruism and selfishness, good and evil.
And yet, lest we get lost in the murk and mire of a privileged relativism that declares everything morally equal so long as I remain comfortable, I think we do have to recognize a certain duality to life. Some actions make us sick, and others lead us to health. Some activities are death dealing, while others give life. Some choices lead to ever greater oppression, bondage, and injustice, while other choices lead to ever greater liberation, freedom, and justice. Some social movements seek to raise up certain groups at the cost of diminishing others. While other social movements seek to raise up all people, starting with the most vulnerable.
So I do think we are called to morally discern which trends and movements and activities trend toward goodness and justice, and which trend toward evil and injustice. And I think one of the many roles of fiction is to help us imagine and rehearse what this discernment can look like and feel like. So I worry that our storytelling is not doing its job when it makes Evil unequivocally repulsive and Goodness unequivocally attractive. Good story telling should help us imagine the perplexity people feel when actually confronted with Evil that is seductive, and Goodness that is repellant.
*And please note, this is a criticism mainly of movie universes. Written universes— even the books and comics that some of these movies are made from— have a lot more narrative room and time to create complex good guys and bad guys which distract and confuse our moral categories and ethical intuitions.
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