Antihero

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This article is about the character type. For the 1999 action film, see Anti-hero (film). For the punk band, see Anti-Heros. For the Marlon Roudette song, see Anti Hero (Brave New World). For the album by Auryn, see Anti-Heroes (album). For the album by Lee Konitz and Gil Evans, see Anti-Heroes (Lee Konitz and Gil Evans album).
Revisionist Western films commonly have an antihero as the lead character who is morally ambiguous. Clint Eastwood, pictured here in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), portrayed the Man with No Name, an archetypical antihero, in the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy.

An antihero, or antiheroine, is a protagonist who lacks conventional heroic qualities such as idealism, courage, or morality.[1][2][3][4][5] These characters are usually considered "conspicuously contrary to an archetypal hero".[6]

History[edit]

The antihero archetype can be traced back at least as far as Homer's Thersites.[7]:197–198 The concept has also been identified in classical Greek drama,[8] Roman satire, and Renaissance literature[7]:197–198 such as Don Quixote[8][9] and the picaresque rogue.[10] Although antiheroes may sometimes do the "right thing", it is often because it serves their self-interest rather than being driven by moral convictions.[11]

The term antihero was first used as early as 1714,[5] emerging in works such as Rameau's Nephew in the 18th century;[7]:199-200 it is used more broadly to cover Byronic heroes as well.[12]

Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,[13][14] such as the Gothic double.[15] The antihero eventually became an established form of social criticism, a phenomenon often associated with the unnamed protagonist in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground.[7]:201-207 The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process that Northrop Frye called the fictional "centre of gravity."[16] This movement indicated a literary change in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic narratives.[16]

The antihero became prominent in early 20th century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915),[17] Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée (1938) (French for Nausea),[18] and Albert Camus' L'Étranger (1942) (French for The Stranger).[19] The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by ennui, angst, and alienation.[20]

The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s was portrayed as an alienated figure, unable to communicate.[21]:294-295 The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s (as seen in the works of Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, et al.) was typically more proactive than his French counterpart, with characters such as Kerouac's Dean Moriarty famously taking to the road to vanquish his ennui.[22]:18 The British version of the antihero emerged in the works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.[8][23] The collective protests of Sixties counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence,[22]:1 though not without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.[21]:295

The antihero also plays a prominent role in such films noir as Double Indemnity (1944) and Night and the City (1950),[24] in such gangster films as The Godfather (1972) and Goodfellas (1990),[25] and in Western films, especially revisionist Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns. Lead figures in these Westerns are often morally ambiguous, such as the "Man with No Name", portrayed by Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).[26]

A notable antihero who appears in a small screen Western is Cullen Bohannon (portrayed by Anson Mount), in the historical fiction series about the building of America's first transcontinental railroad, Hell on Wheels. Some other prominent television antiheroes include Nancy Botwin in Weeds, Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) in All in the Family, Donald Draper (Jon Hamm) in Mad Men, Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) in Rescue Me, Bunker's upwardly mobile former neighbor George Jefferson (Sherman Helmsley), who moved on up to headline the spinoff series The Jeffersons, Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) in How to Get Away With Murder,[27] Detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) in The Shield, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) in Dexter, based on Jeff Lindsay's novels, Detective Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) in NYPD Blue, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) in The Sopranos, Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey) of House of Cards and his British counterpart Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson), based on Michael Dobbs' novel, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) in Scandal,[28] and Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in Breaking Bad.[29][30][31]

Numerous comics series and their onscreen adaptations also feature notable antiheroes, among them multiple iconic antiheroines. Examples of prominent comics series antiheroines include: Catwoman from DC/Vertigo; Elektra and Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) from Marvel/Max; Female of the Species from Dynamite Entertainment; and Andrea (Laurie Holden), Carol (Melissa McBride), and Michonne (Danai Gurira), from Robert Kirkman's Image Comics series and its eponymous TV adaptation, The Walking Dead.[32]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Antihero". American Heritage Dictionary. January 9, 2013. Retrieved 2013-10-03. 
  2. ^ "Anti-hero - definition". Macmillan Dictionary. Retrieved 2013-10-04. 
  3. ^ "Antiheroine - Definition and More". Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. August 31, 2012. Retrieved 2013-10-03. 
  4. ^ "Anti-hero:". Oxford dictionary (British & World English ed.). Retrieved 2014-09-06. 
  5. ^ a b "Antihero - Definition and More". Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary. August 31, 2012. Retrieved 2013-10-03. 
  6. ^ Jonason, Peter K.; Webster, Gregory D.; Schmitt, David P.; Li, Norman P.; Crysel, Laura (2012). "The antihero in popular culture: Life history theory and the dark triad personality traits." (PDF). Review of General Psychology. 16 (2): 192–199. doi:10.1037/a0027914. Retrieved 5 February 2017. 
  7. ^ a b c d Steiner, George (2013). Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. New York: Open Road. ISBN 9781480411913. 
  8. ^ a b c "antihero (literature) - Encyclopedia Britannica". Britannica.com. 2013-02-14. Retrieved 2014-08-09. 
  9. ^ "Literary Terms and Definitions A". Web.cn.edu. Retrieved 2013-10-03. 
  10. ^ Halliwell, Martin (2007). American Culture in the 1950s (Transferred to Digital Print 2012 ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press. p. 60. ISBN 9780748618859. 
  11. ^ Laham, Nicholas (2009). Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co. p. 51. ISBN 9780786442645. 
  12. ^ "Literary Terms and Definitions B". Web.cn.edu. Retrieved 2014-09-06. 
  13. ^ Alsen, Eberhard (2014). The New Romanticism: A Collection of Critical Essays. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. p. 72. ISBN 9781317776000. Retrieved 20 April 2015. 
  14. ^ Simmons, David (2008). The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 5. ISBN 9780230612525. Retrieved 20 April 2015. 
  15. ^ Lutz, Deborah (2006). The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-century Seduction Narrative. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. p. 82. ISBN 9780814210345. Retrieved 20 April 2015. 
  16. ^ a b Frye, Northrop (2002). Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin. p. 34. ISBN 9780141187099. 
  17. ^ Barnhart, Joe E. (2005). Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Talent. Lanham: University Press of America. p. 151. ISBN 9780761830979. 
  18. ^ Asong, Linus T. (2012). Psychological Constructs and the Craft of African Fiction of Yesteryears: Six Studies. Mankon: Langaa Research & Publishing CIG. p. 76. ISBN 9789956727667. 
  19. ^ Gargett, Graham (2004). Heroism and Passion in Literature: Studies in Honour of Moya Longstaffe. Amsterdam [u.a.]: Rodopi. p. 198. ISBN 9789042016927. 
  20. ^ Brereton, Geoffery (1968). A Short History of French Literature. Penguin Books. pp. 254–255. 
  21. ^ a b Hardt, Michael; Weeks, Kathi (2000). The Jameson Reader (Repr. ed.). Oxford, UK ; Malden, Massachusetts.: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631202707. 
  22. ^ a b Edelstein, Alan (1996). Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and why America's Heroes Disappeared. Westport, Connecticut.: Praeger. ISBN 9780275953645. 
  23. ^ Ousby, Ian (1996). The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780521436274. 
  24. ^ "A Guide To Film Noir: The Anti Hero". cargocollective.com. Retrieved 2016-09-11. 
  25. ^ "Classic Ten – Greatest Anti-Heroes". amc.com. Retrieved 2016-09-11. 
  26. ^ "The Man With No Name". weirdwildrealm.com. Retrieved 2016-09-11. 
  27. ^ Rosen, Lisa (December 18, 2014). "The Envelope: 'Murder's' Annalise and other TV women leap darkly into antihero scene". The Los Angeles Times. 
  28. ^ Kennedy, Greg (April 23, 2016). "The rise of the anti-hero and the lure of the dark side in television". The National. 
  29. ^ Cenzhang, Sam - Daily Arts Writer (November 13, 2011). "'Hell on Wheels' spins out of control". The Michigan Daily. 
  30. ^ Ward, Kate (June 19, 2013). "Thank James Gandolfini for Walter White, Don Draper, and Every Great Antihero on Television". Bustle. 
  31. ^ Levin, Gary (June 20, 2013). "Gandolfini's Soprano paved the way for cable antiheroes". USA Today. 
  32. ^ RazielWraith (December 14, 2016). "Antiheroes CONCEPT". Comic-Vine.  line feed character in |title= at position 11 (help)

Further reading[edit]

  • Simmons, David (2008). The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Heller to Vonnegut. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-230-60323-8. 

External links[edit]

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