This post about nerdy fanboys missing the point of the media they enjoy is pretty spot on. Of course this is a small subset of the fandoms, but they sure are annoying. And yea, characters like Rorschach and Ozymandias from Watchmen are great to watch, but if you are idolizing them you are missing the point big time. Same goes for Tyler Durden from Fight Club and so many others (see the meme below). Not to mention the complete misinterpretation of The Matrix (looking at you red pillers). Fanboys are straight up missing the obvious points of these stories. Anyway, here is the post started by daggers-drawn:
The “you missed the point by idolizing them” Starter Pack includes: Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver, Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty, Tyler Durden from Fight Club, Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street, Tony Montana from Scarface, Donald Draper from Mad Men, Walter White (Heisenberg) from Breaking Bad, Alex DeLarge from A Clockwork Orange, Rorschach from Watchmen, Arthur Fleck from Joker and Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
Again, these are great characters, but they are toxic, terrible humans. They aren’t meant to be idolized. What do you think? Got any more characters to add to the list? Leave a comment below!
V for Vendetta. Great character fighting for a great cause, terrible human being.
“What they did was monstrous “ – V
“And they created a monster” – Evie
V, I think, had some admirable qualities, in particular that he focused his negative actions primarily on those who were the architects of his misfortune and that of others they made outcast. I also feel that he always intended to ride that tube train to parliament, even had he not been mortally wounded. He knew that the world he sought to bring about was not one he would ever see himself, there was no tree waiting for him save perhaps the tree of liberty watered with his blood.
Alexander Hamilton
Fanboys aren’t the only one’s that miss the point. Humbert Humbert, is not a good person, and that’s the point, just because he is the narrator does not make Lolita a novel that endorses pedophilia.
In literary terms this is referred to as “surprised by sin” after Stanley Fish’s article about how Satan isn’t the hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost and if you feel that he is then the fabulous lines Milton gave him in the poem have seduced you. It wasn’t new when Milton did it, Dante does it with Francesca in the Divine Comedy (which Milton had certainly read). Francesca speaks beautiful lines of love poetry which mask her inability to accept her own culpability regarding her sin. Dante demonstrates the seductive nature of Francesca’s poetry by having his fictionalised self swoon at the end of Francesca’s tale and it’s only later in the poem that he learns to recognise the true nature and ugliness of sin. The pre-Raphaelite painters were the nerdy fanboys not getting it in the 19th century when they continuously depicted Francesca and her partner-in-sin Paulo in numerous romantic depictions of love. Also Tchaikovsky in his piece “Francesca da Rimini” though he at least sees the reality of their situation – that their punishment is eternal – by having the winds begin again at the end of the Francesca’s tale.
People that aspire to wealth & power, especially those that lean authoritarian lack the ability to understand satire or nuisance, so these films actually popularize the toxic messages & personalities they aim to skewer. Truly ironic & sad.
ppl not realising the Matrix which was made by a pair of trans women is a Trans alegory still blows my mind I admit i didn’t see it at the time but it’s SUPER obvious in hindsite
I only actually saw it once, and that was in the theatre when it came out. I was 18 at the time. I saw why people were crazy about the special effects, but besides that, I saw mainly ideas that I had thought through when I was much younger about the nature of reality and perception and so on. I figured that a lot of people were really into it because they hadn’t thought through those ideas, but to me they were things that I had exhausted myself with.
I had pretty much the same experience with Fight Club. The only reason that I saw it more than once is I had roommates in college who were obsessed with it ( and Zoolander) and wanted to watch it a million times.
Just going to include this reel here, because the dude in it gets it.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/499099418843745
Gregory House. Incredibly brilliant, morally consistent, broken nutcase.
The boys. If Superman was evil and owned and operated by disney also evil.
First, just because you’re the protagonist does not mean you are the hero. Paul Atreides is meant as a warning against messianic figures, among other things.
Second, satire is usually aimed at a specific person, a time and/or place and tends to lose its edge over time. If it is not refocused/sharpened, it can easily be mistaken for glorifying the thing it is satirizing — Warhammer 40K comes to mind.
Third and last, some folks just don’t “get it.”
Light Yagami. He is NOT a hero; he is a villain protagonist.
I have my own issues with Alan Moore and I find it hysterical that folks miss them because they are to busy defending or explaining him
Why is this noun gendered? How about just saying nerdy fans. For that matter, why use a judgmental adjective like nerdy? How about just saying some fans.
I will argue that ‘awesome’, in its literal meaning as an adjective, not its colloquial useage, is a correct statement.
I absolutely LOVE Fight Club and the Watchmen. And Starship Troopers; and V for Vendetta; and several other major works of this genre. And like more people than one might suspect, I love them precisely BECAUSE I get them. They’re brilliant satires, and they do exactly what a satire should – provide a stern warning about the topic through a lens of speculative fiction and mild humour. Those who miss their point and idolise what they’re satirising are the kind of people who were always going to miss the point, even if it was flat-out stated to them point-blank.
I mean, it’s kind of hard for any student of history to not notice the strong similarity to Nazi uniforms of the Federation troops in the Starship Troopers movie; or the SS-like lightning marks used to denote rank on Career Seargeant Zim’s lapels. Or that the ‘heroes’ of The Watchmen all display compulsively violent desires towards the criminals they capture, even to the point of outright psychosis in Rorschach’s case. Or how easily the genius hero justifies ‘killing millions to save billions’ by turning humanity into the galaxy’s worst xenophobes (the graphic novel) or getting them to blame a super(in)human scapegoat (the movie).
These are stories that need to be told, and they should be admired for telling it as it is through a fantastical vehicle. The superhero fantasy REALLY IS authoritarian and fascistic – a desire for us to possess a level of command and control over reality that none of us should ever have and which none of us, even the most incorruptible, could ever be trusted to wield by society at large. And yes, movements that claim to free us from alienation often DO re-create it to the benefit of fascistic demagogues peddling hateful ideologies. And it’s important to face the inevitability of these facts, even if only through the vehicle of speculative fiction – because facing them gives us the warning to never take ideas or social messages at face value just because it sounds good to us on our first hearing.
No doubt the authors encountered admirers of the thing satirised in their time; and no doubt their praise for it disturbed them deeply. But I find myself wondering how often they misread their fans’ reactions, and thought them praising the satirised when they were really praising the satire. Because I honestly have to say that I do indeed consider the fact that Watchmen is a satire that shows the true nature of the superhero fantasy for what it is to be ‘awesome!’. And I consider it so because I recognise that the genre NEEDS that satire, to remind us of what it really is and why it must always remain a fantasy to us. Why we can’t allow figures like Batman to actually exist. Why we must always discourage vigilantism and punish the vigilante. Why we must always, ALWAYS beware movements of ‘belonging’, or political campaigns of ‘us against them’.