Youth Incorporated Magazine

Can’t hate Ryan Gosling for slaying men in the The nice guys? Mallica Patel gives you a couple of examples of villains whose looks tricked our eyes into loving them

It was only recently that Colours Infinity introduced a new show called “The Royals”, a satirical drama about the life of the British royal family. With Elizabeth Hurley quoting sentences like “ I am the queen of England, I am always ready”, sneak peaks into the royally (pun intended) dysfunctional family, it is all about holding bare the reality in all the glam and admiration the royal family is drowned in. However, that is not what we wish to discuss here.
One of the main characters of the serial Princess Eleanor, a young, smart and extremely rebellious daughter of the royal family is provided with Demi-God of a bodyguard. In a strange sequence of events, on one such drunken night she sleeps with her bodyguard who later goes on to threaten her and goes on to tell her how he taped their entire act the previous night and black-mails her in return. In the following episodes, the bodyguard goes on to have his way with the princess in the bed and otherwise, and surprisingly the princess doesn’t seem to have much problem with him as she gets used to the ‘black-mail sex’ or in other words, consensual rape. The first impression of every viewer was to hate the bodyguard as he was blackmailing the Princess with a sex tape which is not only a grievous crime but also not a very idealistic premise in a relationship. Yes, the two individuals the Princess and the bodyguard go on to have a sweet little love story for themselves based on him controlling her and her giving into his demands and eventually, falling in love. I have to give it to the director for making the audience fall for the most un-chivalrous and unethical behaviour by the main characters. The Royals is the most recent example. Television and movies are full of examples of audience enjoying a romance where the characters don’t exactly have their moral compass facing north.
Take 50 Shades of Grey for example. Had Christian Grey not been the dashing millionaire that he is, how long would his ‘love’ story with the meek and naive Anastasia lasted? Would we have enjoyed the sex scenes and waited for them to kiss if he wasn’t breathtakingly handsome? And a handsome man can be a sadist and a sexually driven control freak, which derives pleasure by tying up and spanking and beating his sexual partner. That’s not crazy, is it?
My heart sank when I realized who the murderer, in Shonda Rhimes’, ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ was. I certainly did not want to see the murderer’s amazingly hot body covered in an orange jumpsuit. Well, I guess the creators too couldn’t stand to see that catastrophe as the creators craftily moulded the show in such a manner that in the second season he continues to romance the prettiest girl on the show as the audience heaves a sigh of relief. Bollywood too has similar instances. Take Don 2 for instance, how many girls did Sharukh Khan have swooning and blushing with his “jungli billi” statement? So much so that by the end of the second instalment of the movies we didn’t mind granting him immunity for all the wrong deeds he had committed as a Don. To the extent a slight romance between him and Priyanka Chopra didn’t go unrequited. The question I am trying to ask here is that, how is it that we continue to sympathize with the criminals on our favourite shows simply because of their looks? How is it that a handsome criminal is not faced by the same outrage as a not-so-handsome criminal is faced with? What kind of psychology are the creators playing with?
The logical explanation to this would be the constant togetherness of the two characters which makes us see them together. When we see the same two people every day on our screens whispering sweet nothings and kissing each other, on a regular basis we get attracted to them, criminal or not. There are instances when even the dashing looks have not enticed the audience to like the stalker Sharukh khan in Darr. Or the dangerous Ajax (remember the handsome Russian) in Deadpool, but then that is what the director wanted. If the director wants us to love the criminal we find ourselves doing that too. So maybe we are not bad people but mere puppets in the hands of directors who make us feel the way we do. So strong are the laws of attraction that looks dominate character. Such are the wonders of eyesight that the rest of all the senses go for a toss. As long as it’s someone as fictional as Loki in the Avengers films, here’s hoping that our sense of judgement does not fail us in real life.

Volume 6 Issue 1