[Note:] Notes on the Anti-Hero

Webster defines an anti-hero as "a protagonist or notable figure who is conspicuously lacking in heroic qualities" and it is a character type that has existed, surely, for as long as we've been telling stories. Common examples are characters like Raskolnikov of Dostoevsky's Crime & Punishment and Mersault of Camus' The Stranger, to give two examples from literature. In film the perhaps most well known anti-hero would be someone like Travis Bickle from Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Even leaving the world of fiction we can find "real life anti-hero's", at least as far as public opinion contrasted with common morality goes, in someone like drug kingpin Pablo Escobar who, amongst many, is thought of in positive light for his Robin Hood-esque support for the poor community of Medellín.

Perhaps I'm suffering from recency bias but I'd argue that there's been a rise in media portraying anti-hero's as of late, where the past example of Pablo Escobar may be a good shooting of point seeing to both the Netflix series Narcos (2015) and Colombian produced Escobar: El Patrón Del Mal (2012). Still, this may have more to do with stories about criminals being popular as a criminal protagonist essentially implies an anti-hero (outside of quite rare occassions). As a counterpoint we're also seeing characters who have previously been considered hero's to be adapted into stories where their moral direction is somewhat more complicated. An example of this would be of Batman in Christopher Nolan's trilogy (2005, 2008, 2012) where comissioner Gorden says "Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not a hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight". Still, Batman is very much a hero in the traditional sense of the word, but the appeal of a morally grey Batman is not too far of a stretch from the appeal of the anti-hero.

Now what led me to write this post is after watching James Gandolfini portray the character of Tony Soprano in the HBO series of The Sopranos. It isn't my first time going through the show but I think it's the first time where I can truly appreciate all the nuances of the show, from the writing to the acting. Previously I've held Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov to be the epitome of the anti-hero, the boy who believes himself to be superior to his peers, murders and robs a woman and her sister only to be suffering from guilt and regret for the remaining 750 or so pages. Here it is his amoral actions in the early stages of the book that give him the status of anti-hero but he will later "repent" his sins as he comes to term with the wrongness of his actions. However, after just finishing the season 2 closing episode of Funhouse, I've come to reevaluate who I accompany with the term anti-hero to be the titular character of The Sopranos.

What to me constitutes a great anti-hero is the tug-of-war between good and bad that we viewers are faced with. It is difficult to create a protagonist that is completely void of the "hero"-part of the term anti-hero, i.e. someone who is "lacking in heroic qualities" to the point that they are no longer likeable enough that we as viewers are "rooting for them" (in fact I fail to think of a single story where the protagonist is, by the general public, considered to be completely unlikeable). Instead, the difficulty lies in making their actions amoral enough that we despise them while still wanting them to succeed. A failed example of this tug-of-war is, in my opinion, Walter White, the protagonist of the tv-show Breaking Bad.

Returning to this tug-of-war that comes with the great anti-hero: this is what I think David Chase has succeeded so perfectly with the character of Tony Soprano. It is something we see in nearly every episode where perhaps the best example is in the season 1 episode College. In this episode Tony and his daugther Meadow are visiting colleges, bonding as father and daugther with the rest of the family back in New Jersey. Here we see Tony as a good, caring father who puts his family ahead. This is all quickly contrasted as Tony spots a man he believes to be an ex-mafia member who has been in hiding via a witness protection program after working as an informant to the FBI. Halfway through the episode Tony is knee deep in mud as he's choking the man to death with a wire.

Perhaps an even better example is the plot line in season 2 where a friend from Tony's childhood is allowed to join a high stakes poker game, only to gamble away money he doesn't have resulting in Tony and his gang shaking him for every last penny he has including his sons college fund. In the seasons final episode the two meet again at the high school graduation of Tony's daugther and the childhood friend is in shambles.

As I already mentioned, having a story centered around criminals is nearly always going to imply that your protagonist will be some alteration of an anti-hero since their criminal activities are in a sense already a type of "lacking in heroic qualities". What separates the cookie-cutter hero's from the truly great ones then lie in their lack of morality. Tony Soprano is a gangster, prone to violent outbreaks, occassionally abusive and with a history of violent criminal activities under his belt along with several accounts of murder. But isn't this expected from a mafioso? What instead makes him a great anti-hero is how he cheats the civilians, how he robs those already weak without an ounce of compassion or regret in himself. Again with the example of the childhood friend who gambles away everything he owns, when Tony finds him sleeping in a tent inside his now defunct store he says something along the lines of "Well what did you expect me to do? This shit is in my nature. Gamblers like you are my bread and butter" showing no remorse for what can undoubtedly be called runing a man's life where a big part of his family came along as collateral damage.

David Chase's writing, along with Gandolfini's fantastic acting performance, is what elevates Tony Soprano to one of the greatest examples of anti-hero's out there.

Picking back up from where we left off...

As it turns out, I haven't touched this blog in over three years. In fact, I had forgotten that this page even existed until someone from my past asked me about whether or not I still blogged.

Since then I haven't been able to shake the memory of this blog and all the others before it. More and more I've been remembering why I wrote and how important it once was. When I made this blog I was beginning to get into film and I wanted to expand my previous writing on music into yet another forum - hence dropping the "music" part from the "reviews music" moniker.

During these past three years I've gotten into literature as well, nearly forgetting that I was once interested in music at all. But 2019 feels like a year of reincarnation in many ways, and maybe this blog deserves its fair share of reincarnation too. In fact, one of the main goals behind these many blogs were to have a forum to write and express myself when it came time to write about the "year bests" of various media.

So it feels apropriate to bring this back up and running again, when the decade is nearing its end and we'll soon be closing of the 10's.

Cheers to the new times!