Hollywood Bad Guys

They are the indispensable part of just about every Hollywood movie. In the Charlie Chaplin era they twirled their big handlebar moustaches; in Westerns they wore black hats; and by the time James Bond was on the scene they were fully-fledged megalomaniacs. But Hollywood baddies have evolved over time. In some ways they have become a cultural weathervane. And culturally controversial. Is it true that muslims have got, or are getting, a bad press? Is Hollywood’s portrayal of good vs evil just American cultural imperialism? And why do so many bad guys seem to have British accents?

In the 1950s it was quite simple. The sci-fi and horror movies of the 50s reflected insecurity about communism with rubber-suited aliens (and occasionally their human dupes) invading or subverting America. Cue the US military, or a humble maverick citizen, to bring them crashing down, as in Invaders From Mars (1953). The classic westerns made it black and white too. Just airbrush the annihilation of the natives, as well as the appropriation of their land, from history and presto! You get good old fashioned cowboys and indians. (The real cowboys were actually mostly black.) If it was cultural vandalism it didn’t matter as by then there weren’t many native Americans left to protest against it. It was an early example of historical revisionism, flavoured with blatant racism. As John Wayne famously said: "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." Thanks John, I’m glad we’ve cleared that one up.

Dr No kicked off the James Bond era in 1962. The villains tended to be, once again, communists in the guise of the KGB, or else preposterous megalomaniacs. The latter did reflect a shift, however. They tended to be maverick (and Western) capitalists, with untrammelled power and influence, even to subvert usual cold-war politics. Suddenly, capitalism could be scary. SPECTRE (Special Executor for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) was a sort of multi-national corporate entity, with operations and influence everywhere. A bit like McDonalds, but with Ronald as a serial killer. Out-of–control Western-style corporatism and commercialism was portrayed as a Bad Thing, notwithstanding the absurdity of building cities under the sea (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977 ) or in space (Moonraker,1979). By the era of The French Connection (1971), ruthless drug dealers had appeared on the silver screen. They were ideal baddies. Generally foreign (Latin American, or for Popeye Doyle, French), they were ruthless, sadistic and threatened the American way of life. In Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies a psychopath (Dirty Harry, 1971) gave way to corrupt cops (Magnum Force, 1973). Well, everyone can agree that you wouldn’t want a psychopath living next door. What would it do to property values? But cops as villains…now there was something new.

The Vietnam War, Watergate and the Iran Contra scandal dented confidence in authority figures. Could Hollywood still rely on the US Government to save them from aliens? (Either the intergalactic type, or the foreign variety?) Apparently not. Patriotic mavericks were what was needed. And suddenly, as in Dr Strangelove (1964), M*A*S*H (1970) and Three Days of the Condor (1975), corporate America, the CIA, the army, the government, or even the president could be the enemy. As the 1980s progressed, James Bond persisted with the KGB / Bill Gates-turned-psycho theme, but the search for baddies was about to get tougher. The end of The Cold War, in 1989, had at a stroke deprived the movie moguls and scriptwriters of tailor-made bad guys for action blockbusters and thrillers. This only intensified the search for villains. With the commies gone, Hollywood increasingly turned to raiding the vaults of history. Nazis were fair game; everyone could agree that Hitler’s boys had been on the wrong side of history. So from the knockabout fun of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) to the more serious Schindlers List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Pianist (2002), jackboot-wearing stormtroopers slotted neatly into the bad guy roles. Imperialists and slave-traders were also given the villainous roles in films such as Amistad (1997). Such portrayals are rarely contentious. There aren’t many willing to defend slave-traders as being unfairly traduced.

But Hollywood has always taken liberties with history – the portrayal of native American ‘Indians’, for example, and the silliness of virtually every version of Robin Hood. But historical liberties were turned into travesties in films such as U-571 (2000), which portrayed American sailors as recovering the German enigma ciphering machines from a submarine, when in fact it was the British Royal Navy ship, HMS Bulldog, which did the heroic deed. In a way every country’s film industry is a reflection of how a nation’s self-image and mythology, what they believe about themselves and how they believe others should view them. For The United States, its movie industry also serves a role in cultural affirmation : seeing themselves as being on the ‘right’ side. In many blockbuster movies, such as Independence Day (1996), Armageddon (1998) and Pearl Harbor (2001), it’s the Americans who save the day – as well as, quite often, the human race – with only a few token foreigners thrown in as backup. (Josh Hartnett in Pearl Harbor: “I think World War Two just broke out!” Message to Josh: it actually broke out a whole 2 years before you lot were forced to join in, mate.)

Other films such as The Patriot (2000) and Braveheart (1995) also subverted the historical record. What these films also had in common was the portrayal, as bad guys, of identifiably English-accented characters. Think General Zod in Superman 2. Think Scar, the devious panther in The Lion King. Or the cockney-accented Orcs in Lord of the Rings (Hollywood is American after all, they don’t go for class distinctions.) The devious, untrustworthy, snobbish and often vicious baddie in Hollywood often seems to be British, or more specifically, English, and comes with a posh public-school accent. Maybe it’s America’s roots in it’s Revolution against the British Empire. Or maybe it’s a lingering inferiority complex the Yanks seem to have when faced with British accents. Or maybe it’s just that the English don’t seem to have a grievance-chasing lobby group ready to march around in little circles outside American movie theatres, and then boycott your film. Hollywood has often, it seems, delighted in portraying an evil British baddie getting his comeuppance against an American hero. In any case, the Brit as baddie seems to be a Hollywood, and indeed an American, cultural stereotype. Or is it?

In fact James Bond, Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002), Obi Wan Kenobi’s characters in the Star Wars series, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia and others show that there are plenty of quintessentially British characters who wear the white hat, so to speak. True, talented British actors such as Alan Rickman, Charles Dance, Jeremy Irons, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman often get cast as baddies, sometimes very British ones. But these actors often turn out a German/eastern European accent as required by the role – think Irons in Die Hard with a Vengeance (German) or Oldman in Air Force One (Kazakh, apparently). In fact a lot of nasty bad guys are quite American – think Ray Liotta, Christopher Walken, Ed Harris and Willem Defoe playing all those psychos, hitmen, gangsters and nutters. John Lithgow may have played a dastardly, and very English, baddie in Cliffhanger (1993), but in virtually every other movie he’s been in he’s been a very American evil-doer. Similarly Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford and Richard Gere have all had goes at being thoroughly unpleasant (and clearly American) characters in movies. Think also how many Hollywood movies have portrayed Americans themselves variously as white supremacists, rednecks, hillbilly simpletons, ignorant hicks, devious lawyers, gangsters, CIA fiends and crooked politicians and you get the picture. Recently it would seem that other nationalities, particularly Russians, east Europeans, Latin Americans and currently the French, have more feel aggrieved about (see table below). The ‘British baddie’ character beloved of whingers over here is in fact buried beneath an avalanche of foreign, and indeed American, villains.

Hollywood portrayal of foreign villainy is undoubtedly a reflection of American cultural prejudices, ignorance and stereotyping, which after all comes from a nation that prides itself on its insularity. If anything, we should take comfort from Hollywood’s portrayal, through these very stereotypes, of the American public in a negative light - as insular, ignorant and only able to relate to the lowest common denominator and to the most simplistic characterisations. If I were an American movie-goer, I’d start a pressure group to lobby against such offensiveness about me. The 9-1 attacks changed shifted the cultural ground on which movies, and villainy, have been set. The cry has often been raised that Hollywood has characterised Arabs, and Muslims generally, as bad guys, unfairly stereotyping them and reinforcing or even creating prejudices in the minds of movie-going audiences. But does this accusation stand up to scrutiny? The table below, whilst not definitive, suggests not. Arabs and Muslims have very rarely been portrayed as baddies; in Rambo 3(1988) the Muslim Afghans, the mujahadeen, were portrayed as the good guys, on Rambo’s side. In fact aside from a handful of films like True Lies(1994) and Rules of Engagement(2000) not many blockbusters have taken this route. In fact the Sean Penn thriller, The Interpreter, was originally about Muslim terrorists blowing up a bus in New York. But Hollywood quickly rewrote the script and the bus got blown up by African terrorists from the little-known republic of Matobo. ''We didn't want to encumber the film in politics in any way,'' said Kevin Misher, the producer. But by trying not to, he instantly made a different kind of political statement. Nowhere in Hollywood’s anthology has Tom Cruise been shown jetting off to Baghdad or the Hindu Kush to duff up the Taliban or the Mahdi Army. Perhaps because with his boyish looks he has a credibility problem - he might in real life be taken in as a concubine by some butch Afghan. A forthcoming movie about the 9-11 hijackers, United 93, may yet open another chapter in this story. To date, however, Hollywood has so far left Al-Q’aeda and Islamic fundamentalism relatively unblemished by criticism, and tiptoed around Muslim sensibilities, even to the extent of rewriting scripts - which hardly proves Muslim grievances. At least, not yet. Villains and villainy as part of mass entertainment have always reflected cultural assumptions and prejudices, and Hollywood surely stands guilty on that count. When Hollywood has stuck its nose into geo-politics the results have been simplistic, and even historically misleading, and have served only to reflect the American world-view and cultural assumptions. But a lot of accusations of targeting specific groups fall wide of the mark. The explosion of blockbuster movies which began in the 80s and 90s produced a plethora of baddies, including the usual drug lords, but also a liberal sprinkling of corrupt cops and CIA/US government agents, conniving American politicians, Latin American generals, smooth-talking Central Europeans, British toffs and gruff Russian mobsters (see table below).

The US itself is frequently portrayed as being flawed and having nasty undercurrents. In fact Hollywood still has a liberal streak, despite all the gore and violence that today accompanies action blockbusters. Corporatism, capitalism, the CIA and the US military-industrial complex are more often than not the ‘bad’ guys. Even the Christmas classic and annual tear-jerker It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) had plucky James Stewart fighting back against ruthless capitalists. It’s just that Jimmy didn’t chainsaw nasty Mr Henry Potter’s head off at the end like he might today, given what CGI can do for you. In fact there are a myriad of groups complaining that they have been negatively portrayed in Hollywood. But despite their villainous roles, you don’t see white people complaining about their portrayal, do you? Well actually you do now. The latest offended groups are blond men (yes really – apparently they’re disproportionately more likely to be twisted, amoral sociopaths than their darker-haired cousins). Albinos seem to be psychos and killers rather a lot these days– in The Firm(1993) , Matrix Reloaded (2003), Die Another Day (2002), and Blade 2 (2002) – and a pressure group is already complaining. At least albinos are white, no-one can argue about that. The scriptwriters must have thought they were safe from accusations of hate-mongering from minority groups. Oops, wrong again. I’m still waiting for a fight scene between an African-American albino and a Caucasian albino to see if racial stereotyping is independent of colour. If that makes sense. The unfortunate thing is that virtually every film has to have a villain of some sort, otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a film. So there will always be someone complaining. But doesn’t it reflect a lack of cultural confidence to object to ‘your’ group playing the villain?

Perhaps sensitive to who the bad guys are, a new trend has started – aliens as baddies. They have no specific race, no historical or cultural grievances, and we don’t even know that they really exist. The perfect choice! Someone who can’t complain because no-one knows if he exists to complain. Of course, if we ever find they do exist, they could be pretty annoyed. Have you seen Starship Troopers? Predator 1 or 2? Let’s hope aliens never get discovered and come down to live amongst us – like in Alien Nation. Because then the scriptwriters will really be stuck.