Characterizing Evil: Pop-Demonology

[Abishai100]

If we look at the depictions of 'evil' in popular culture and pop-art, we find various characters/avatars such as the diabolical super-thief Goldfinger (from the James Bond spy series), Gordon Gekko (the unscrupulous stock-trader from Oliver Stone's iconic film Wall Street), and Black Manta (DC Comics' strange aquatic super-terrorist, mad scientist, and all-around nemesis of the valiant Aquaman).

These depictions of evil impact society's perceptions of norms and philosophical casualness.

The 'problem of evil' is a concern for almost every religion. Even transcendental religions/philosophies talk about the general 'undesirability' (and hence terribleness) of suffering.

How mainstream society presents ideas about evil through characterizations of 'super-bad-guys' shapes our 'digestion' of ethics viewpoints.

When I think of Black Manta (DC Comics), since I'm a big fan of comic books, I think about the 'routes of uncensored dialogue.'



Black Manta

 

[RedDragon94]

If we look at the depictions of 'evil' in popular culture and pop-art, we find various characters/avatars such as the diabolical super-thief Goldfinger (from the James Bond spy series), Gordon Gekko (the unscrupulous stock-trader from Oliver Stone's iconic film Wall Street), and Black Manta (DC Comics' strange aquatic super-terrorist, mad scientist, and all-around nemesis of the valiant Aquaman).

These depictions of evil impact society's perceptions of norms and philosophical casualness.

The 'problem of evil' is a concern for almost every religion. Even transcendental religions/philosophies talk about the general 'undesirability' (and hence terribleness) of suffering.

How mainstream society presents ideas about evil through characterizations of 'super-bad-guys' shapes our 'digestion' of ethics viewpoints.

When I think of Black Manta (DC Comics), since I'm a big fan of comic books, I think about the 'routes of uncensored dialogue.'



Black Manta


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Have you seen Deadpool?

 

[Abishai100]

Eye on Entropy

No, but I'm a fan of Deadpool (Marvel Comics), because I like the creative presentations of 'egregious justice,' which is an approach to art also seen in the films of Quentin Tarantino.

Speaking of strange egregiousness, in the episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" [10/11/1963] of Twilight Zone (the TV series), an anxious airplane passenger sees a bizarre fuzzy humanoid creature trying to tear some wires out of one of the engines on the wing of the plane. In the adapted Twilight Zone: The Movie, the same type of character, an airplane passenger, sees a wily and lanky creature trying to tear wires out of one of the engines on the wing of the plane.

This discrepancy between the fuzzy humanoid and a lanky humanoid in the TV series and the adapted full-length film suggests that artists are willing to use differing views on 'strangeness' to characterize fear and the supernatural. Why would a scary creature be fuzzy; why would it be lanky?

Maybe there's a connection between creature-modelling and fear-mysticism. How do we use art to represent chaos?