antihero

File:Clint Eastwood - 1960s.JPG films commonly feature antiheroes as lead characters whose actions are morally ambiguous. Clint Eastwood, pictured here in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), portrayed the archetypal antihero called the "Man with No Name" in the Italian Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns.]]

An antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero or two words anti hero){{cite web |title=Anti-Hero |url=https://www.lexico.com/definition/anti-hero |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200806044801/https://www.lexico.com/definition/anti-hero |url-status=dead |archive-date=6 August 2020 |website=Lexico |publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=26 September 2020}} or anti-heroine is a character in a narrative (in literature, film, TV, etc.) who may lack some conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers morally correct, their reasons for doing so may not align with the audience's morality.{{cite book|last1=Laham|first1=Nicholas|title=Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times |date=2009|publisher=McFarland & Co.|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|isbn=9780786442645|page=51}}

Antihero is a literary term that can be understood as standing in opposition to the traditional hero, i.e., one with high social status, well-liked by the general populace. Past the surface, scholars have additional requirements for the antihero.

The "Racinian" antihero is defined by three factors. The first is that the antihero is doomed to fail before their adventure begins. The second constitutes the blame of that failure on everyone but themselves. Thirdly, they offer a critique of social morals and reality.{{Cite journal |last=Kennedy |first=Theresa Varney |date=2014 |title='No Exit' in Racine's Phèdre: The Making of the Anti-Hero |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2014.0114 |journal=The French Review |volume=88 |issue=1 |pages=165–178 |doi=10.1353/tfr.2014.0114 |s2cid=256361158 |issn=2329-7131|url-access=subscription }} To other scholars, an antihero is inherently a hero from a specific point of view, and a villain from another.{{Cite journal |last=Klapp |first=Orrin E. |date=September 1948 |title=The Creation of Popular Heroes |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/220292 |journal=American Journal of Sociology |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=135–141 |doi=10.1086/220292 |s2cid=143440315 |issn=0002-9602|url-access=subscription }}

Typically, an antihero is the focal point of conflict in a story, whether as the protagonist or as the antagonistic force.{{Cite journal |last=Petersen |first=Michael Bang |title=An Age of Chaos? |date=2019 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26907483 |journal=RSA Journal |volume=165 |issue=3 (5579) |pages=44–47 |jstor=26907483 |issn=0958-0433}} This is due to the antihero's engagement in the conflict, typically of their own will, rather than a specific calling to serve the greater good. As such, the antihero focuses on their personal motives first and foremost, with everything else secondary.{{Cite journal |last=Klapp |first=Orrin E. |date=1948 |title=The Creation of Popular Heroes |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2771362 |journal=American Journal of Sociology |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=135–141 |doi=10.1086/220292 |jstor=2771362 |s2cid=143440315 |issn=0002-9602|url-access=subscription }}

History

File:Kerouac by Palumbo.jpg and other figures of the "Beat Generation" created reflective, critical protagonists who influenced the antiheroes of many later works.]]

An early antihero is Homer's Thersites, since he serves to voice criticism, showcasing an anti-establishment stance.{{cite book |last1=Steiner |first1=George |title=Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism |date=2013 |publisher=Open Road |location=New York |isbn=9781480411913 |pages=197–207}} The concept has also been identified in classical Greek drama,{{cite web |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/27600/antihero |title=antihero |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |date=14 February 2013 |access-date=9 August 2014}} Roman satire, and Renaissance literature such as Don Quixote{{cite web |last1=Wheeler |first1=L. Lip |title=Literary Terms and Definitions A |url=http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_A.html#antihero_anchor |website=Dr. Wheeler's Website |publisher=Carson-Newman University |access-date=3 October 2013}} and the picaresque rogue.{{cite book |last1=Halliwell |first1=Martin |title=American Culture in the 1950s |url=https://archive.org/details/americancultures00hall_904 |url-access=limited |date=2007 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |location=Edinburgh |isbn=9780748618859 |page=[https://archive.org/details/americancultures00hall_904/page/n82 60]}}

An anti-hero that fits the more contemporary notion of the term is the lower-caste warrior Karna in the Mahabharata. Karna is the sixth brother of the Pandavas (symbolising good), born out of wedlock, and raised by a lower-caste charioteer. He is ridiculed by the Pandavas, but accepted as an excellent warrior by the antagonist Duryodhana, thus becoming a loyal friend to him, eventually fighting on the wrong side of the final just war. Karna serves as a critique of the then-society, the protagonists, as well as the idea of the war being worthwhile itself – even if Krishna later justifies it properly.{{Cite book |last1=Kotru |first1=Umesh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tBMfCAAAQBAJ&q=Daanaveera |title=Karna The Unsung Hero of the Mahabharata |last2=Zutshi |first2=Ashutosh |date=2015-03-01 |publisher=One Point Six Technology Pvt Ltd |isbn=978-93-5201-304-3 |language=en}}

The term antihero was first used as early as 1714,{{cite web |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antihero |title=Antihero |website=Merriam-Webster Dictionary |date=31 August 2012 |access-date=3 October 2013}} emerging in works such as Rameau's Nephew in the 18th century, and is also used more broadly to cover Byronic heroes as well, created by the English poet Lord Byron.{{cite web |last1=Wheeler |first1=L. Lip |title=Literary Terms and Definitions B |url=http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_A.html#antihero_anchor |website=Dr. Wheeler's Website |publisher=Carson-Newman University |access-date=6 September 2014}}

Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,{{cite book |last1=Alsen |first1=Eberhard |title=The New Romanticism: A Collection of Critical Essays |date=2014 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |location=Hoboken |isbn=9781317776000 |page=72 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DDHKAgAAQBAJ&q=anti+hero+romanticism&pg=PA72 |access-date=20 April 2015 |via=Google Books}}{{cite book |last1=Simmons |first1=David |title=The Anti-Hero in the American Novel: From Joseph Heller to Kurt Vonnegut |date=2008 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=9780230612525 |page=5 |edition=1st |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KZnFAAAAQBAJ&q=anti+hero+romanticism&pg=PA5 |access-date=20 April 2015 |via=Google Books}} such as the Gothic double.{{cite book|last1=Lutz |first1=Deborah |title=The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-century Seduction Narrative |date=2006 |publisher=Ohio State University Press |location=Columbus |isbn=9780814210345 |page=82 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=47I-p5s49vQC&q=antihero+%22gothic+double%22&pg=PA82 |access-date=20 April 2015 |via=Google Books}} 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. The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process that Northrop Frye called the fictional "center of gravity".{{cite book |last1=Frye |first1=Northrop |url=https://archive.org/details/anatomyofcritici0000frye_e1u9/page/34/mode/2up |title=Anatomy of Criticism |date=2002 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=9780141187099 |location=London |page=34 |url-access=registration}} This movement indicated a literary change in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic narratives.

Huckleberry Finn (1884) has been called "the first antihero in the American nursery".{{cite book |last1=Hearn |first1=Michael Patrick |title=The Annotated Huckleberry Finn: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) |date=2001 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York |isbn=0393020398 |page=xvci |edition=1st |url=https://archive.org/details/annotatedhuckleb0000twai |url-access=registration}} Charlotte Mullen of Somerville and Ross's The Real Charlotte (1894) has been described as an anti-heroine.{{cite book |last1=Ehnenn |first1=Jill R. |title=Women's Literary Collaboration, Queerness, and Late-Victorian Culture |date=2008 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing |isbn=9780754652946 |page=159 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o9_qvJNKE98C&q=antiheroine+%22Real+Charlotte%22&pg=PA159 |access-date=7 April 2020 |language=en |via=Google Books}}{{cite news |last1=Cooke |first1=Rachel |title=The 10 best Neglected literary classics – in pictures |url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2011/feb/27/ten-best-neglected-literary-classics |access-date=7 April 2020 |work=The Guardian |date=27 February 2011}}{{cite book |last1=Woodcock |first1=George |title=Twentieth Century Fiction |date=1 April 1983 |publisher=Macmillan Publishers Ltd |isbn=9781349170661 |page=628 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fgKwCwAAQBAJ&q=antiheroine++&pg=PA628 |access-date=7 April 2020 |language=en |via=Google Books}}

The antihero became prominent in early 20th-century existentialist works such as Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915),{{cite book |last1=Barnhart |first1=Joe E. |title=Dostoevsky's Polyphonic Talent |date=2005 |publisher=University Press of America |location=Lanham |isbn=9780761830979 |page=151}} Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (1938),{{cite book |last1=Asong |first1=Linus T. |title=Psychological Constructs and the Craft of African Fiction of Yesteryears: Six Studies |date=2012 |publisher=Langaa Research & Publishing CIG |location=Mankon |isbn=9789956727667 |pages=76 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MFkDP6Lym9YC&q=La+Naus%C3%A9e+anti-hero&pg=PA76 |via=Google Books}} and Albert Camus's The Stranger (1942).{{cite book |last1=Gargett |first1=Graham |title=Heroism and Passion in Literature: Studies in Honour of Moya Longstaffe |date=2004 |publisher=Rodopi |location=Amsterdam |isbn=9789042016927 |page=198 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sc6QqZCpHgYC&q=l%27etranger+anti-hero&pg=PA198 |via=Google Books}} The protagonist in these works is an indecisive central character who drifts through his life and is marked by boredom, angst, and alienation.{{cite book |last1=Brereton |first1=Geoffrey |title=A Short History of French Literature |date=1968 |publisher=Penguin Books |pages=254–255}}

The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s as an alienated figure, unable to communicate.{{cite book |last1=Hardt |first1=Michael |last2=Weeks |first2=Kathi |title=The Jameson Reader |date=2000 |publisher=Blackwell |location=Oxford, UK; Malden, Massachusetts |isbn=9780631202707 |edition=Reprint |pages=294–295}} The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s was typically more proactive than his French counterpart.{{cite book |last1=Edelstein |first1=Alan |title=Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and why America's Heroes Disappeared |date=1996 |publisher=Praeger |location=Westport, Connecticut |isbn=9780275953645 |pages=1; 18}} The British version of the antihero emerged in the works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.{{cite book |last1=Ousby |first1=Ian |title=The Cambridge Paperback Guide to Literature in English |date=1996 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=New York |isbn=9780521436274 |page=[https://archive.org/details/cambridgepaperba00ousb/page/27 27] |url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgepaperba00ousb/page/27}} The collective protests of Sixties counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence, though not without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.

During the Golden Age of Television from the 2000s and into early 2020s, antiheroes such as Tony Soprano, Gru, Megamind, Jack Bauer, Gregory House, Dexter Morgan, Walter White, Frank Underwood, Don Draper, Neal Caffrey, Nucky Thompson, Jax Teller, Alicia Florrick, Annalise Keating, Selina Meyer and Kendall Roy became prominent in the most popular and critically acclaimed TV shows.{{cite web |last1=Reese |first1=Hope |title=Why Is the Golden Age of TV So Dark? |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/why-is-the-golden-age-of-tv-so-dark/277696/ |website=The Atlantic |access-date=31 October 2021 |language=en |date=11 July 2013 |quote=A new book explains the link between the rise of antihero protaganists and the unprecedented abundance of great TV (and what Dick Cheney has to do with it).}}Faithfull, E. (2021). How House brought the "savant anti-hero" into the mainstream and changed TV dramas. www.nine.com.au. https://www.nine.com.au/entertainment/latest/house-savant-anti-hero-medical-drama-9now/0e030210-8bfe-424f-b687-f2e36e6f0694Pruner, A. (n.d.). Hear us out: Gregory House was TV's last great doctor. https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/hear-us-out-gregory-house-was-tvs-last-great-doctor/

In his essay published in 2020, Postheroic Heroes – A Contemporary Image (German: Postheroische Helden – Ein Zeitbild), German sociologist Ulrich Bröckling examines the simultaneity of heroic and post-heroic role models as an opportunity to explore the place of the heroic in contemporary society.{{Cite web |last=deutschlandfunk.de |date=2020-03-05 |title=Ulrich Bröckling: "Postheroische Helden" - Man hüte sich vor Helden! |url=https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/ulrich-broeckling-postheroische-helden-man-huete-sich-vor-100.html |access-date=2024-11-10 |website=Deutschlandfunk |language=de}} In contemporary art, artists such as the French multimedia artist Thomas Liu Le Lann negotiate in his series of Soft Heroes, in which overburdened, modern and tired Anti Heroes seem to have given up on the world around them.{{Cite web |title=Soft Heroes |url=https://dda-geneve.ch/fr/artistes/thomas-liu-le-lann/oeuvres/soft-heroes |access-date=2024-11-10 |website=Documents d’artistes Genève |language=fr}}{{Cite web |date=2021-05-10 |title=Thomas Liu Le Lann: Wer ist Milo? |url=https://www.gallerytalk.net/thomas-liu-le-lann-dittrich-schlechtriem-milo/ |access-date=2024-11-10 |website=gallerytalk.net |language=de}}

=Comic book anti-heroes=

In American mainstream comic books, anti-heroes have become increasingly popular since the 1970s. The comic book version is generally a variation on the formula of superheroes. As Suzana Flores describes it, a comic book antihero is "often psychologically damaged, simultaneously depicted as superior due to his superhuman abilities and inferior due to his impetuousness, irrationality, or lack of thoughtful evaluation." Particularly well-known comic book anti-heroes include Catwoman, John Constantine, Peacemaker, Wolverine, Punisher, Marv, Ghost Rider, Elektra Spawn, Lobo, Harley Quinn and Deadpool.{{sfn|Flores|2018|p=146-147}} These characters have all been adapted into feature films, as well.

References

=Bibliography=

{{cite book |last1=Flores |first1=Suzana E. |title=Untamed: The Psychology of Marvel's Wolverine|date=2018 |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=978-1-4766-7442-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L4liDwAAQBAJ}}

External links

Category:Heroes

Category:Stock characters

Category:Protagonists by role

Category:Superhero fiction themes

Category:Tropes