On Fascinating Vilains

Annamaria on Monday

Though I have been a world away from the USA since this strange year began - like a lot of the rest of the world, it seems - I have kept in touch with the news from Washington.  I have refused to be totally captivated.  Actually, I have been spending a lot of time playing with my imaginary friends Vera, Tolliver, and Kwai Libazo in East Africa in 1915.  There's a war going on there, and many, many people are suffering.

But, I have to admit that I am very much distracted by the real-life suffering of my fellow Americans who are caught up in the chaos of the first month or so of Trump.2.  I have begun to wonder why Trump makes for such good television.  God knows I do not enjoy seeing his face or hearing his voice.  I am quite sure he is the villain of this story.  Which set me the thinking of villains that I have found fascinating.  Hideous.  Horrifying.  But riveting.  I am not suggesting that that Donald J. Trump has the soul of serial killer, but I do see parallels in his style and behaviors.  Which may be clues to his appeal as a television personality.

Here are my top two villains in crime fiction.  Both are the creation of a novelist writing a crime novel, but both have made it - BIG TIME - to the screen. 

• Alex, created by the brilliant Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange.

 

• Hannibal Lecter,  brainchild of Thomas Harris in Silence of the Lambs

I confess that these are the kind of characters I would normally avoid.  And while seeing Silence of the Lambs, I did hide under my sweater a few times until David told me it was safe for me to look.  With A Clockwork Orange, however, I saw that film the day it opened, then read the book during the next week, and saw the film again a week later.  

So what do these villain's have in common, and what do they have to do with the predicament the world now is in?

Both Alex and Lecter are evil.  Alex is the world's worst juvenile delinquent.  He revels in the violence he creates, enjoys inflicting pain and suffering. Like Alex, Lecter is a serial killer and certainly the most famous cannibal in literary history.  Both of these men, in addition to a blood thirst, has an artistic bent.  Alex has an intense passion for great music, especial that of Ludvig von Beethoven.  Lecter, Harris tells us, can draw  from memory the the panorama of Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo.  Not your run-of-the-mill bad guys.

They both approach the world with absolute confidence.  Not the teeniest whisper of self doubt.  Both have the capacity to charm those around them into giving them what they want.  They see themselves as irresistible.  And often they are.

These evil ones keep ratcheting up the outrages they perpetrate.

I am concentrating here on the film version of the stories, since I am thinking about what leaves the whole world, pretty much regardless of the viewers' politics, wanting to know what comes next from Donald Trump.

Two moths ago, I suggested here that what won Trump the election was this strategy of making his candidacy a fascinating TV show. The other side talked about how they would take a sane and useful approach in governing for the good of people.  Talk that was and never will be at all entertaining. 

Like all the best TV series, especially the ones that deal with crime, whether because we love or hate them, we always want to know what the villain is going to do next. Even if this villain is already a convicted felon.  Even if he is continuing to break the law left and right. (Well, mostly RIGHT!)

What about you, when it comes to stories?  What would you write?  What would you want to read?

Either way, whether we like it or not, Trump's behavior is a page-turner.

        PS: there is no right place to say this above, but I want to add that Anthony Burgess made up a futuristic language and wrote his book (in 1962) A Clockwork Orange in that language, which he called Nadsat – a conglomeration of English, Russian, and Cockney rhyming slang.  What with Trump's latest shenanigans with Putin, do you think we might all be speaking Nadsat before long?

"Horrorshow," Alex would say.

In Natsat it means "GOOD" If you're a villain.

    PPS: If you want to read the story of a brilliantly drawn, evil villain - worthy company to the two above.  I highly recommend Deadly Harvest by our own Michael Stanley.