by Tim Morrise_>“Bad-ass” comes to mind when thinking of words to describe recent popular antiheroes of film and television. Daniel Plainview, Walter White, any Lannister: we are living in a golden age of morally solvent characters, who ain’t afraid to draw blood.
_>Consider that of the lot, Cersei Lannister is the only character who gets to be a woman, and even her most striking choices revolve around mass murder. In interviews, Lena Headey has said several times she thinks Cersei is jealous of Jamie and shei wishes she was born a man so she could kill people with swords. It seems orchestrating terrorist acts of mass murder for her constitutes “settling.” _>I bring this up not to say there’s any umbrage to be had with Cersei-as-violent (Cersei in her own right is novel) but in most of these anti-hero cases, we have characters taking matters into their own hands, righteousness be damned, and usually doing so in emulation of traditionally masculine ideals, the pinnacle of which is violence. This even applies to someone like Cersei, who even if she is a vengeful Matriarch, is played like someone who kills in emulation of men. _>What I find fascinating is the way anti-heros and violence become interchangeable, to the point of stagnation in terms of what we call an “anti-hero.” There isn’t much variation in the types of actions anti-heroes tend to take; most primarily engage in physical violence , while emotional violence is sparse. Here is where we get into why I think *the most* interesting and revolutionary television character on TV right now is Rebecca Bunch.
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ContributorsThe contributors for Cashiers of Cinema are a menagerie of creators devoted to Radical Aesthetics. Meetings are held at the dumpster behind Winkie's. Archives
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