At the risk of sounding incredibly vain, I'll mention a few of the characters whom I have used to "construct" my villainous persona. By that I mean creating those components of a villain in roleplay that are necessarily inventions because in real life I don't want to do horrible things to damsels. Another way of putting it is that the personalities below intersect with my own if I were actually living out my fantasy life. To some extent, they reveal the "hidden me" obscured by the tedious conventions of everyday life.
Some are real historical personages, some are famous characters from fiction. Some (not many) have traits I admire; more have flaws I guess I also possess.
I wanted to avoid the obvious cliches -- I mean, I know my nom de guerre is Sylvester Sneakly, but that's just because I want to trap Penelope Pitstop. I do not want the high-pitched voice of Paul Lynde. Nor should I have to: my real life voice is pretty low (not gravelly) and (I am told) mellifluous. I guess I give good phone lol.
Most of the names here are from English language literature and history. There are great differences in cultural attitudes to villainy. In most Anglo-Saxon melodrama, the villain is exceedingly smart and powerful, making him a very capable threat to hero and heroine alike. All you need to add is a sporty loucheness, and the heroine is really in dire distress! The French tradition often has the most genuinely terrifying villains being extremely stupid. Stupidity is dangerous because of its random destructiveness. It reveals much of French attitudes that evil intelligence is less feared than evil stupidity -- at least you can reason and negotiate with the former. I think the French really have a point here.
However, I am more in the English than French speaking world, though I grew up with both. I find playing evil intelligence a lot more fun than playing stupidity. So here are the 'villains' (or not) I channel while I have our heroine in my clutches:
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680):
The notorious wit and rake of the English Restoration, an indiscriminate boozer, hustler, and fornicator with both men, women and probably other things. He died, horribly but inevitably, of the pox (syphilis) in his early 30s. Oops -- don't you hate when that happens? A movie about his life, The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp, was released a few years ago. It was savagely panned by the likes of Entertainment Weekly. To be sure, the technical aspects of the movie are terrible (editing, sound, etc) but all the performances are startling. I am a huge Johnny Depp fan and he gives Rochester all the wit, danger, and charisma of the real person. I think the real problem many people have with the film is that it truly depicts the spirit of the Restoration -- a period whose people would look on our times with derision, laugh at us and make us feel small.
Anyway, enough digression. Rochester was smart, very handsome, with a rapier wit and absolutely no compunction about using others to suit his ends. A true model villain for me. Great at parties. Decent poet. Rochester, appropriately enough, kidnapped his future wife when she was eighteen. Just bundled her into his carriage, and took her. She stayed with him to the end. In that respect at least, my kind of guy lol.
Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642):
The villain of the Three Musketeers; also, in history, the architect of the France we know today, who saved the country from the collapse caused by the Wars of Religion. His will was inflexible, his energy implacable.
Here is a synopsis from a new biography on Richelieu by Anthony Levi. "For a man who might justifiably lay claim to being the father of the French nation, Cardinal Richelieu , the first minister of King Louis XIII's council, was quite remarkably unpopular. His overtaxed countrymen, ever rebellious during his lifetime, lit bonfires to celebrate his death, and "it may well be true," according to his new biographer, "that it is impossible to name any historical personage in French public life who has provoked more hatred." [Richelieu was] a complex man of manipulative intelligence and inexhaustible nervous energy, capable of good humor and charm as well as violent mood swings."
Captain Nemo (20 000 Leagues Under the Sea):
Jules Verne's classic villain. A tortured soul, inscrutably bent on revenge against civiliation, Nemo is both cultured and estranged. I like drawing on him as an explanation of villainy - some tragedy in the past, some injustice, that has warped a clever mind into twisted evil and total paranoia.
Cary Grant (1904-1986):
The ultimate male movie star. How boring today's leading men are by comparison. He was suave, debonair, but there was a hard, impenetrable centre to him - probably the result of growing up Archie Leach, a poor boy with an insane single mother, eking out a hardscrabble existence on the London vaudeville stage before moving to New York with nothing more than the shirt on his back. He could, and did, play both hero and villain at a time when Hollywood did not often let you mix and match types as an actor.
Joker and Riddler (Batman comics and movies):
Both Batman villains intrigue me. I have found Joker a bit too brutal for heroines, Riddler a bit too fey, so I like drawing on both of them, each balancing the other's limitations, for camp value. Plus, I can do the Riddler's demented cackle just like Frank Gorshin did.
Edward III, King of England (1327-1377):
A vastly tall, blond Plantagenet, "with a face like a god" according to contemporaries, Edward III launched what has come down to us as the Hundred Years' War. I can recall the thumbnail sketch of him in Desmond Seward's very readable book on the war --- I am quoting purely from memory, so it won't be perfectly accurate:
"Edward III was one of England's most formidable kings. No one will ever know what drove him -- a father complex or simple megalomania -- but for over thirty years he ruled the country with a demonic energy. The cult of chivalry, so much admired in its day, has obscured the man beneath, yet a personality nevertheless emerges: extravagant in friendship, hardhearted and cruel in enmity, he was also a relentless womanizer who eventually ruined his health. He saw himself as the perfect hero-king, but for all this he was also practical and clear-headed: his motto was 'It is as it is.'"
Except for the womanizing part and the crown (and if my face is 'that of a god' it's not an A-lister deity) -- wow, that's pretty close to the real me.
To this day the upper (male) echelons of British royalty carry the title KG after their names, which stands for Knight of the Garter and originated as a military decoration in the Hundred Years' War of the 14th and 15th centuries. The Order started when Edward, making "outrageous advances" to the Countess of Salisbury, the beautiful nineteen year old daughter of one of his closest friends, removed her garter from her leg, put it on his arm, and dared anyone to say anything with the line "Honi soit qui mal y pense" (shame on him who thinks ill of this". The slogan -- and the garter! -- can be found on Royal Coat of Arms to this day.
Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice):
"Hardly a villain!" all Jane Austen fans will protest. Entirely the point. Cold, sneering, distant, Mr Darcy eventually wins Elizabeth Bennet, mostly through irritating her to the point of distraction. A lesson for all "nice guys" out there.
I especially liked the portrayal by Matthew MacFadyen in the recent movie based on the book. I seldom like Jane Austen's men -- the world they inhabit is too closed, too girly to appeal to me. I know I am not being fair to Jane Austen, whom I admire from a distance -- but she did set her novels in what she knew: the rather privileged (although fragile) and fairly useless world of late 18th century English gentry. There are only so many tea parties I can handle. Anyway, MacFadyen does a great job of being a man in this movie, not a little cardboard cut-out whose sole purpose it is to eventually fall in love with the deserving heroine.
And -- in case I am giving you the wrong impression by all the reprobates above -- no, I am not promiscuous, alcoholic, bisexual, paranoid, distant, or delusional. But it is fun to pretend.
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My word.
ReplyDeleteI feel totally unqualified to comment on your historical figures' influence on your villainy.
My 'influences' are so much more pedestrian, I believe, owing to the fact that I really was a "TV Baby" from the early '60's (until about the mid-80's -- there was too much of a "Seen that done better" sense about 'modern' popular entertainment).
If I were to give it some thought, I would likely mix in a few influences such as:
(1) The old rotating-leading men series called "The Rogues" -- starred David Niven, Richard Long, and Gig Young. Sophisticated, well-educated 'reprobates', in their own ways, but always working for 'good'. I like to take the 'sophisticated reprobate' part, and combine it with
(2) Your previously cited "Joker" character from Batman. I needed the sense of humor, and I also needed his true dangerous malice to mix with my Villainy; additionally,
(3) As an enormous sports fan growing up (I am, still, to this day, to a large extent) I always admired the athlete who would do 'whatever was necessary' to win -- the Pete Roses, the Jerry Sloans, all the way through to the Danny Ainges (who, I absolutely *despised* as a player -- but for whom I had grudging admiration for getting the job done with a limited skill set).
Of course, I also liked the Bad Boys of Wrestling, before it became *too* stylized. My favorite characters were guys like Jake 'the Snake' Roberts, who would use the "DDT" to knock his opponents out, and who would then 'pour' a 15 foot python over the body of his vanquished victim -- and, mind you, Jake the Snake was a *Good* guy! You were supposed to pull *FOR* him!; and,
Ted Dibiase, "The Million Dollar Man". No one cheated with such relish and enjoyment as he did. I used to love how he would stuff a $100.00 bill in his beaten opponent's mouth -- only to have his 'valet' Virgil come along behind him, and take it away.
I think what I'm saying is that I like (1) Intelligent, (2) conveniently charming, (3) physically-capable, (4) goal-oriented, and (5) most assuredly, unapologetically dangerous personages as my Villainous templates.
I draw upon all of those traits, in varying combinations, to construct my Villain, in any given scenario.
But, your post does inform me that I am going to start reading fewer True-Crime books, and more Historical Non-Fiction, just to round out my Villainous Database.
:D
-- the 'evil' TRU