This isn't quite the same as the rooting for anti-heroes thread, but it could be related.
We were watching a random ep of The Black List the other night, a bunch of FBI agents are closing in on a group of armed people in the woods, and they're shouting "FBI! FBI!" -- and I knew I was supposed to be thinking, yay it's the good guys, woo hoo.
Except my thought was, hold on, just how bad are the bad guys? I mean what's their position, what are they protesting against, are they murderous fiends who deserve to be shot down, or are their actions justified? Should I be rooting for them instead? Can I blindly trust the FBI, here?
Have recent events -- and I'm not looking for a politics discussion, we've all seen the news, the phone footage, the assaults, the thuggery on the streets of major U.S. cities -- changed our perceptions?
Cops, FBI agents, secret service, people from other government agencies, have been the lead characters in our action scripts since whenever. In mine, anyway! Can we still write these guys as the heroes and assume the audience is going to cheer for them? Or do we need to do a lot of extra work to present them as not jackbooted Nazis prepared to turn on their own civilians and beat them or gas them on command? Has the trust and the support these characters used to automatically receive from the moment they were intro'd*, been diminished or even wiped out?
I'm thinking maybe yeah. You got any thoughts on this?
* unless of course they were intro'd as bad guys, bent cops, turncoat agents, up to no good.
We were watching a random ep of The Black List the other night, a bunch of FBI agents are closing in on a group of armed people in the woods, and they're shouting "FBI! FBI!" -- and I knew I was supposed to be thinking, yay it's the good guys, woo hoo.
Except my thought was, hold on, just how bad are the bad guys? I mean what's their position, what are they protesting against, are they murderous fiends who deserve to be shot down, or are their actions justified? Should I be rooting for them instead? Can I blindly trust the FBI, here?
Have recent events -- and I'm not looking for a politics discussion, we've all seen the news, the phone footage, the assaults, the thuggery on the streets of major U.S. cities -- changed our perceptions?
Cops, FBI agents, secret service, people from other government agencies, have been the lead characters in our action scripts since whenever. In mine, anyway! Can we still write these guys as the heroes and assume the audience is going to cheer for them? Or do we need to do a lot of extra work to present them as not jackbooted Nazis prepared to turn on their own civilians and beat them or gas them on command? Has the trust and the support these characters used to automatically receive from the moment they were intro'd*, been diminished or even wiped out?
I'm thinking maybe yeah. You got any thoughts on this?
* unless of course they were intro'd as bad guys, bent cops, turncoat agents, up to no good.
Comment