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Nov. 28, 2004 A person asked me, ‘what inspires you to write antagonists?’ If you don’t know what an antagonist is, it’s an adversary or opponent, it’s also usually linked to evil. What inspired Wes Craven to create Freddy Krueger? Believe it or not, a bully named after the same name. What inspired Victor Miller to create Jason Voorhees? What inspired Thomas Harris to create Hannibal Lecter? What inspired anyone to create some of the most magnificent villains of all time? Honestly? A number of things. Could be fear. Wes Craven was obviously afraid of Freddy Krueger before he became the international villain that he is today. Who wouldn’t be afraid of an old man with burnt skin, long fingernails, and humor that is only equivalent to God’s weird sense of humor. The other inspiration is, we feel for the villain, we want to be the villain. Want an example? Okay, ask a fan of slasher flicks if they liked Halloween 3 or Friday the 13th part 5. They would probably say that Friday the 13th part 5 was okay, but it wasn’t the best, and that Halloween 3 was absolutely horrible. Why? Not to give away spoilers, but these movies have been made since the 80's, so I will tell you why. The reason is both Friday the 13th part 5 and Halloween 3 were missing the antagonists that spawned the franchises. Jason was dead and buried in part 5, yet a “Jason wannabe” was inserted instead. The story was more about the protagonist, Tommy Jarvis, than Jason, which didn’t settle well with the Jason fans. They wanted to see the rematch of a lifetime between good and evil, and they got it in Friday the 13th part 6, which I can honestly say is the best one out of the Jason series. You would have to be a fan of Jason in order to understand. Halloween 3 had NO, repeat, NO Michael Myers. Instead we get a rubber mask factory creating masks that made little children regurgitate roaches. Ewwww. I’d rather have Michael Myers stalking his family members with a butcher knife in his hand. Why? Because those that watch horror films, like myself, have this bond with that character, kinda like an old friend. And just like an old friend, we know what they are capable of doing, how they walk, how they talk, how they kill, what they are capable of doing. Do we know it’s evil? Yes, we do. Do we like it? Honestly? Yes, we do. Can you imagine the Exorcist without the Devil haunting the soul of Linda Blair? Nope. But do we take these movies seriously? Not really. It’s one thing to watch a horror movie about a hockey masked killer stalking people, we know it’s just a movie, but watching Osama Bin Laden praise the deaths of American lives is a different story. We don’t praise the evil in the real world, we hiss at it. Whether some people like it or not, we’re all evil in some shape or form, but to understand evil makes us understand good a lot better. Take Darth Vader for an example. He was evil, in the purest form, yet in the end he turned good by saving his son from the clutches of the Emperor. The theory in knowing evil can lead you to knowing good is equivalent to Sigmund Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego theory. If you are not familiar with this theory, let me enlighten you. Sigmund Freud described this theory through the person’s mind or “self” as he calls it. The Id, is the part of yourself that seeks gratification or pleasure at any cost, whether it would be sex, food, water, shelter, clothing, etc. The Id is often described as the “baby,” in which pleasure has to come at all costs and pain should never come at all costs. It’s also called the “baby” due to the fact that the Id cannot reason with failure or anything negative; it’s as if self-gratification is the key to the Id. The Ego is the one that stands in between the Id and Superego. The ego is the part where a sense of conscious is around; for example, a child may take a cookie, but won’t due to a parent being around. The Superego is the moral standpoint that in some ways “calms” the Id and reasons with it with taboo nature and what distinguishes between what’s right and wrong. In my last article, “Christianity: Some followers preach hypocrisy,” I asked the question, “how do you know what’s evil, if you’re not exposed to it?” How would we know to do good, when we don’t know what bad is? Can we really say that sins are really the acts of evil? Take Greed for instance. If you would ask the average college student why they go to college, they would tell you, “so I can get a better paying job.” Is this called Greed? In some sense, yes. Anyone can get a mediocre job and make it through life, they may struggle from time to time, but they would still survive, but we don’t condemn people going to college, in fact, we embrace it, and why shouldn’t we? You want your kids to live comfortably? Right? But saying that sin is evil is quite ludicrous. Anton LaVey claimed that there are two types of sins, indulgence and compulsive sins. Indulging sins consists of committing sins that is just enough for you to handle, and compulsive sins are sins that lead your life to an uncontrollable state. To indulge in sin is committing sin as long as no one gets hurt. For example, lust, you can lust after your own girlfriend, your wife, your husband, or your boyfriend. You can have sex with your partner and not feel damned about it, because you really didn’t do anything wrong, you’re having sex with the person you picked to be your partner. To use lust in a compulsive way would be to cheat on your spouse, and not think about the consequences. Obviously, if you were to be caught by your spouse, you would hurt their feelings, or worse, break their heart. Another way to use lust in a compulsive way is to have sex with multiple partners and eventually retrieve a sexually transmitted disease, in which some diseases can be fatal. I bet that 15 minutes of sex wasn’t worth your entire life. I’m not promoting anyone to do evil things, but inspiration in creating evil is to be educated not trained toward evil. Like I said, in order to know what’s good, you have to know what’s evil. To be quite honest, even God has some evil inside his/her soul, we don’t call them “acts of God” for nothing. Hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, etc. It all depends on the way that person perceive things. ------------ About the author Eric Schomburg: An Apocalyptic Dream is now out for purchase. Check out both books at http://www.geocities.com/schomburg2002. Email: schomburg2002@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. 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