Video Transcript

Emily: In The Lord of the Rings, there is a scene where one of the characters, Boromir holds the one ring briefly before giving it back to Frodo, the ring-bearer. After Boromir says “I care not” we see Aragorn, who is charged to protect the ring and the ring-bearer, clutching his sword. With this one shot, we learn that Aragorn doesn’t trust Boromir to resist the temptation of power from the One Ring.

“Show, don’t tell” is powerful advice In writing, but also in filmmaking. Writers and directors will often take advantage of symbols, motifs, cultural references, and our intuitions to reveal what is really happening throughout a movie, without needing anyone to say it. One notable distinction, especially in older movies, is between the “good guy” and the “bad guy.” 

In classic Western films, “white hats” and “black hats” were a very common way to distinguish the protagonist and antagonist. This was originally more necessary in silent films to help establish visually who was the hero and who was the villain. In films of the Western genre between the 1920s and the 1940s, white hats were often worn by heroes and black hats by villains to symbolize the contrast between good and evil. And this tactic continues today. In the popular Star War franchise, the tension is built upon the fight between the light side of the force and the dark side.

Often, the most interesting stories involve villains who have compelling motives. In these stories, we can understand what motivates the villain and the irreconcilable differences between the hero and the villain. Think of the villains in Marvel movies: Loki has an unending jealousy of Thor’s possession of Mjolnir, stemming from feeling like an outsider as an adopted son. Thanos wants to save the universe from the same fate of overpopulation as his home planet, Titan. Kang manipulated people’s free will to stop a multiversal war with versions of himself.

But modern films are particularly characterized by the blurring of lines between heroes and villains. The drama of the characters Kylo Ren, Darth Vader, and Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars movies comes from their internal struggle with the choices between good and evil. Many characters in Star Wars wrongly commit acts of evil in the pursuit of what they think is a “higher good.”

In many films, the distinction between the “good guys” and the “bad guys” is part of a person’s identity. But the tension comes from the struggle with their actions. “Good guys” sometimes fall and do things they regret, and “bad guys” sometimes have a redeeming act or some redeeming qualities. Take Breaking Bad for example. Walter White starts by doing something wrong so he can pay for a cancer treatment, but it ultimately leads him into a moral death spiral. Jesse, on the other hand, has an opposite character arc. He starts as an immoral drug dealer but eventually redeems himself. This creates tension between what we, as the audience, decide is the “identity” of the character – either a good guy or bad guy – and the actions we see these characters choose throughout the show. 

Perhaps this tension is riveting for us as an audience because we feel a similar tension in our own lives. Not many of us want to be the villain, but we can still relate to having performed some deeds we’re not proud of. And many of us still hold out hope that we are “good” people, despite our actions. When we look at our life to determine if we’re a “good” person, we’re faced with evaluating our actions against certain standards. But we also have a deep hope internally that we’re fundamentally “good.”

During the 1950’s and 60’s, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer and Soviet dissident, wrote the work The Gulag Archipelago exposing the Soviet Union’s inhumane treatment of its citizens. Many atrocities befell the Russian people at the hands of the Soviet government. Solzhenitsyn recounts his time in the Gulag, a Soviet labor camp, and how horribly humans treated other humans there. 

It would be very understandable to simply conclude that people capable of torturing or killing others are bad, evil people. Solzhenitsyn not only saw these things but experienced them personally. But in one of the most moving quotes from the book, Solzhenitsyn shares what he’s realized from his years of reflection in the Gulag. He says, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?”

We all want to be the good guy. And when we look at our lives and are honest with ourselves about who we think we are, what are we really comparing ourselves to? Is it to the other “good” people and their actions? Or, do we need to first look at the pieces of our own hearts?