It’s awards season and that means Hollywood — and what we’re all watching — is front and center. The Oscars will be here before we know it and the Emmys made a big comeback earlier this month after a year of tumult and strikes.
And one big theme of the best television and movies to emerge of late is our collective love of the antihero. Those every-complicated, often downright awful characters who have dominated much of popular entertainment in recent years.
So, does it matter if we like the characters on these nominated shows? The Show explored that idea with Melissa Kirsch, deputy editor of culture and lifestyle at the New York Times. She recently wrote about it for the Morning newsletter.
Full conversation
MELISSA KIRSCH: People often harken back to Tony Soprano as sort of like the archetypal antihero, but when I was looking at the Emmy nominees this year, I was struck by how many of the shows centered on these like complicated, dangerous, like, apparently, you know, if they were in your actual life, unlikeable men.
"Barry" was one of the big shows this year about a hit man, "Shrinking" with Jason Segel about this kind of therapist of questionable ethics. There was this show about a CIA operative with kind of like a dirty past called The Old Man. And you know, some of the big ensemble shows or the bigger shows that were nominated for Emmys like "The White Lotus" and "Succession," you know, have as their focus these kind of generally unlikable people. So I can't say why there are so many of them, but I can say that like people definitely like to watch people that they wouldn't necessarily want to go get a beer with or maybe wouldn't leave their house to watch their plants while they were on vacation.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. But it does sort of spark this debate that is still ongoing, I think at least for me, right, that why do you want to watch some show where there's no one to cheer for really. Like, like who are you supposed to like or even maybe relate to in these casts, you know? But it sounds like you, you're not quite convinced by that argument. Tell us why.
KIRSCH: Well, I guess if you look at these characters, I see them all as like very human, you know, and I, I don't know that the people in my life are and in your life, too, I'm sure in all of our lives we're complex people, we're flawed people and, you know, what a show can do or what a movie can do is kind of like magnify a certain part of somebody's personality so that because we, somebody who's creating a television show needs to have a villain, so they're going to highlight the kind of worst qualities of that person.
But like, ideally a character who's compelling to watch has like a many-faceted personality and that there are things in that person, maybe not the fact that they are a hit man or you know, like a ruthless titan of business, maybe those aren't the things that you identify with, but that there's something there that there that you see a human being in them and not just a cartoon.
GILGER: I think that makes sense. Is there a sense of like, like living vicariously through characters like this in a way too, especially when it comes to sort of the excesses of many of these characters?
KIRSCH: I think so. I mean, I think we like to watch people ... that we would never get anywhere near. There are many people with many theories about why true crime is so popular, but I think one of them is that to be a spectator to our worst nightmares somehow is delicious and fascinating to us. And so I, I do, I think that, you know, we, we want to get up close to the raw and ugly parts of human nature and observe them and perhaps see them mirrored in ourselves or see qualities that if we made different decisions in our lives might be magnified in us like there but for the grace of God go by. I mean, I like to get up close to kind of nasty, ethically compromised characters and like learn what makes them tick and sort of find that humanness in them, find in them what I can see in me.
GILGER: Is there a fear though, Melissa, that that that sometimes people and maybe because there's just so many of these characters now and they're so popular that like people miss the point, like that you're not necessarily supposed to cheer for this hitman or serial killer or whatever it may be because, you know, they are awful.
KIRSCH: Yeah, I, I find that interesting. I think that, you know, the argument that you were making like, you know, well, there's nobody to root for, there's nobody to cheer for. I, you know, I think people certainly cheer for villains all the time, so they do find somebody to cheer for. But does somebody have to be likable in order to be compelling? And to me, the answer is no.
And I think to, you know, legions of viewers or whatever, the answer is probably no, that we want to watch people even if we don't like them, but I think that there's something interesting about the like somebody's personal preference though that they would prefer not to like spend their time with somebody that they don't like, that these characters do feel real to them and, you know, we do have these kind of parasocial relationships with people on our screens and that we prefer not to have them with people that we find odious.
I mean, I think that I had thought you, you know, in, in my piece I had sort of argued that not everybody's going to be likable, but that doesn't mean that they're not worth watching. But I do think that there's something to be said for, you know, not wanting to spend your time with people real or imagined who you don't like.
GILGER: I think that's fair. I definitely feel that way sometimes about these characters. But I wonder, do you think that these antiheroes are becoming sort of heroes in our culture, like where a lot of people are, do you think they're just really cool and like kind of forget the fact that they're doing terrible things.
KIRSCH: Oh, I hope not. I mean, that seems like a really dangerous road to go down. However, you know, I, I guess we do, you know, when I think about a show like "Succession," where I am kind of rooting for despicable people to prevail. I don't know what that says about me. I hope that in these fantasy worlds where we do want to get up close to, to the uglier sides of human nature we, you know, we kind of flip the allegiances that we may have in real life for the, you know, for the, the kind, respectable people.
I hope that we would still maintain a boundary between, you know, real life and fantasy, you know, I think that it's dangerous if we don't, but I, I, I hope that's not true. I hope, I hope that people are just, you know, excited to watch really complicated characters that can sometimes get ugly and they're not kind of having, you know, like moral confusion.
