Spotted this on fictional villains:
"Traditionally, the majority of our cherished sociopathic antiheroes in TV and film have been men. Think Tony Soprano, Walter White, Patrick Bateman, Dexter Morgan, Don Draper. I’ve always found it difficult to love mob movies and series: Despite being ostensibly about the horrors of brute violence, “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas” and all the rest have a singularly passionate fanbase that seems to really have fallen in love with their central villains.
This is a notion the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum has labeled the “bad fan,” a viewer who misses the critical lens through which a character is presented and instead goes all-in on identifying with them. She traces this dissonance back to Norman Lear’s “All in the Family,” the groundbreaking satirical sitcom of the 1970s whose bigoted lead character Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, spawned, despite Lear’s intentions, genuine fans of the character’s behavior, those “who shared Archie’s frustrations with the culture around him, a ‘silent majority’ who got off on hearing taboo thoughts said aloud.”
"Opinion: It’s time to change the way we think about sociopaths," Sara Stewart, CNN, April 20, 2024
The idea is, you're not necessarily supposed to identify with the villain. The author might be trying to show you something about the villain, but even if that information is delivered from the villain's perspective, that doesn't mean the author hopes you'll identify with the villain's personality or choices.
I wrote a book about fictional eunuch villains called Painting Dragons.
See also my old blog post: How literature teaches us to be better people
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