Jeri Smith-Ready

Anti-heroics

Yesterday I saw (saw, as opposed to watched, which means I actually had a real live cinema outing for the first time since, umm, Batman Begins last June) Thank You for Smoking. A smart, funny, pitch-perfect satire.

Thank You's protagonist is Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry--the least sympathetic character you could imagine, aside from a dictator. Yet from the first moments, Nick had the audience on his side. He used his gift of spin to create a reality in which he was the hero and the usual do-gooders--an anti-tobacco crusading Senator, a spunky young female reporter--became the villains.

Such is the triumph of the well-drawn anti-hero. In a novel, we don't have access to an actor with the facility and luminosity of Aaron Eckhart, so we have to find other ways to charm the reader.

Perhaps this is why most anti-hero novels are written in first person. The reader is allowed no emotional distance to criticize the AH's motives and acts. Either they happily go along for the ride, or they toss the book away in disgust, unable to make that moral and imaginative leap.

For instance, right now I'm reading Stolen by Kelley Armstrong, a novel with a female werewolf protagonist. In the first third of the book, Elena kills several men who are trying to capture/hurt/kill her, hunting one of them down as a wolf and tearing out his throat (after toying with him to prolong the enjoyable chase). She then jokes about it with her fellow werewolves.

Obviously werewolves believe they don't need to adhere to the same morality as normal humans. Anything goes to protect the Pack. I can buy into that worldview for the time it takes to read the novel, but I can see where another reader might not be comfortable in Elena's head.

• Who's your favorite anti-hero? (Mine is Lucifer in Requiem for the Devil, but obviously I'm biased. Hee.)
• What makes them so sympathetic, you root for them to overcome the "good guys"?
• Are you just as happy with an anti-heroine, or are there some dastardly deeds --lying, cheating, stealing, killing--you only condone in male characters?

I'm off for a long day of writing and pretending the Internet doesn't exist.

Labels: movies

• posted by Jeri @ 8:08 AM
• 12 comments