Dying Is Easy; Redemption Is Hard
- Returning to the Fold from Aug 14, 2022, 2:48pm
Quick, letâs play Name That MediaâŚ
Yes, he tried to murder each one of us, individually and collectively. And sure, he dedicated his life to abusing power in pursuit of the power to oppress us. But when he found his own life under threat, he made a sacrifice to help us. And he died, so weâll just politely pretend that we misunderstood his heroic life all along and treat him like a worthy role-model for children.
Youâve almost certainly seen variations on the above speech in your favorite media franchise. If you havenât, then youâve seen the scene described by it, where a primary antagonist either realizes that the suffering that their side causes actually matters or discovers a third party with a plan to destroy the protagonists and the antagonists.
Regardless of which version you see, our antagonist grudgingly defects to the side of the protagonists, and usually dies in the final battle. Critics then debate whether the characterâs âredemption arcâ feels realistic.
Cliff-Diving
Of course, it doesnât feel realistic to anybody who actually cares. It canât, for reasons hinted at in the hypothetical eulogy at the start of the post. The character has had no âarc.â The character had a single action intended to pay for all the damage done. The âarcâ looks like this.
In short, the villain becomes increasingly evil over time, taking more worrying actions in every appearance, and ratcheting up the worry about the final confrontation. Then, at the peakâtapering off, because the audience becomes jaded, not as foreshadowingâall that âevilâ justâŚgoes away. All that shaded area under the curve, they want us to ignore and move on. The plot crashes.
Of course, things donât really work like that. Nothing constructive works like that, where a solution just appears.
Long and Bending Towards Justice
Rather, we would expect something more like this.
For the âredemption arcâ to work, we need the antagonist to change their ways, and we need to see it as a persistent change. We all know, I think, that the most abusive people take on occasional charitable works to bolster their reputations. It doesnât erase the abuse, but it does make people less likely to believe the eventual accusations. In other words, one act doesnât fix anything.
As I discussed in We Are What We Do, âgoodâ and âevilâ have no intrinsic relationship to people. We identify individuals as âgoodâ or âevilâ based on their reputationsâthe actions that theyâve takenâgiven the conditions that theyâve endured. Redemption, actual redemption, involves building or rebuilding a reputation.
A âredemption arcâ shows us what the antagonistic character does to atone for their transgressions, shows the character building trust with people, especially wronged people. The sacrifice doesnât end the arc; in a realistic world, it begins the arc. I find it important to make this distinction, because it highlights that every time we see one of these easy âvillain dies saving the worldâ stories, the story effectively cheats us out of the interesting half of the story. That half doesnât need to have a symmetric shape like Iâve implied in the graph, of course, but it does need to show steady progress.
As mentioned at the start of the post, many writers kill the âredeemedâ characters at that first sacrifice, probably precisely because writing that road back requires a lot of work. But we already have a tradition of lionizing the dead, so we just combine them and short-cut the work, at the expense of failing to satisfy anybody.
It creates another problem, too.
Why This Matters
You might find yourself askingâmaybe because of a section heading that youâve seen recentlyâwhy all this matters.
It matters, because it gives people the wrong idea about their own lives.
We live in a thick miasma of this sort of nonsense, of course. We have an entire industry working to convince us to trust the police no matter what they do. Another industry works to convince us that a manâs desire overrides a womanâs disinterest. We could also list media teaching us to ignore women and aspire to royalty. I wonât even get into modern journalismâs insistence on interviewing fringe activists to âbalanceâ their stories or reality televisionâs obsession with finding people to disgust the audience. These all teach us something toxic from an early age, that we need to unlearn.
And just the same, we each need to unlearn this issue of redemption.
Powerful people caught in abuse often demand to know what more could people possibly need from them. They said that they felt sorry that you felt so offended, after all. And maybe they donated a tiny fraction of their hourly income to a charity that they may or may not own. People who cheat on significant others want to know how to âmove past this.â On a more superficial level, artists who produce something mediocre ask why nobody judges them based on their best work. We all get caught in this, thinking that we fix relationships with a single, symbolically laden act that wins people over. Going back to my aforementioned We Are What We Do post, one instance that I particularly highlight involves the (generally) progressive-leaning person who calls themselves an âallyâ of disadvantaged groups, but does nothing to change their behavior or to amplify voices of those groups, and grows defensive when someone questions them.
Crossing to the Right Side of HistoryâŚBarely
The current iteration of this issue on my mind, though, revolves around conservatives and former conservatives.
For one example of how this goesâone that Iâve probably expressed concern aboutâconsider the public hearings of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. In these, we see constant sound-bites and quotes from people who stood with a corrupt and possibly illegitimate administration. They participated in the planning of overturning a free and fair election.
Now, more than two years later, they reluctantly turn their backs on their former colleagues to tell us about the wrong positions that those former colleagues had. As I mentioned in the June newsletter, they all have a serious âall true, except anything that makes me sound like a bad personâ vibe to them.
Many of themânot the entire group, because some still support a man who tried to overthrow the governmentâthen turn to Democrats about how they think that Democrats should win elections. And wouldnât you know it? Their advice just happens to involve pushing the party in a conservative direction, away from helping people.
And then they wonder why nobody rushes to embrace their advice. They did the one thing, made their dramatic gesture, and nowâin their eyes, at leastâthey should lead. ButâŚtheir reputation still consists primarily of supporting a fascist and bigoted administration.
In reality, they need to spend some time, probably a lot of time, showing that they belong. They need to amplify voices that donât belong to wealthy white men, oppose policies that we know harm people, and so forth. After weâve grown accustomed to that version of them, then they deserve a seat at the grown-upsâ table.
Redemption takes work. If it didnât, then our reputations would have no meaning.
Coming Soon
If anybody read this far down as a Republican voter who wonders about the goals and direction of their own party, I canât guarantee that itâll come next week, but I have some thoughts and advice on that, which will feel less harsh than the words that I have for a John Boltonânot part of the hearings, but has offered his obnoxious thoughtsâor Jeffrey Rosen. Watch this spaceâŚ
Credits: The header image is untitled by an uncredited PxHere photographer, made available under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
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