Heroes and Villains
All human beings are like actors in a film. I can play the good guy or the bad guy – both roles are open to me. Sometimes I play the hero. Sometimes I play the villain. But I am neither the hero nor the villain – I am the one who is acting out both parts. The hero is limited, and so is the villain. They follow certain rules of conduct and conform to the principles of being good or being evil. The hero cannot do anything that is not in accordance with his script. Certain avenues of life are forever closed to him. He has got to be totally proper. He cannot be friends with a villain. He can never smoke, drink, or have an eye out for more than one girl simultaneously. The hero cannot tolerate imperfection or deviation from the norm. The villain cannot ever meet the norm. He has always got to be an outcast, a totally messed up case. He cannot have any goodness within him, he cannot appreciate the beauty of nature, and he cannot ever fall in love. The villain has got to be so bad and so ugly, that his death becomes a joyous event to the spectators.
The movies are black and white, with an infinite gap between the hero and the villain. All the other colors – the millions of colors that are somewhere in between white and black – are left out of the picture. The movies are created by human beings and for human beings, so they are a reflection of human psychology. The images that we form about ourselves and others are just as dualistic as the characters in the movies. At any point in time, we either view ourselves as good, or we view ourselves as bad. We seem to never be able to see the complete picture, which is that we have all have the seeds of both good and bad within us, and these seeds are capable of sprouting into action at any given moment.
How childish it is to think that the hero has no evil within him – no lust, no anger, no greed. Certainly, the hero seems to enjoy violence – the way he shoots and kills his enemies in cold blood, without a shadow of remorse. The hero does not see anything worthwhile in the villain, he does not see the humanity behind the actions, and so he is able to murder him without a second thought. Does this reflect our own attitude? Once we label somebody as an enemy, as a bad or evil person, do we cease to see that person’s underlying humanity? Do our actions then become brutal, barbaric, and inhuman?
