Antiheroes

Not two minutes after I submitted "A Change in Spanking Policy – Part 3" to the LSF, I questioned whether my protagonist had morphed into a antihero in Part 3. It's interesting that the word "antihero" never even crossed my mind when I drafted or proofread Part 3. I then began to wonder how many other characters in LSF stories and indeed in this genre in general—either characters who seek to redress real or perceived injustices as in Part 3 of my story or those who have mixed motives in meting out corporal punishment—are antiheroes.

According to Wikipedia, a antihero is a protagonist "who lacks conventional heroic qualities and attributes such as idealism, courage, and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes do the right thing, it is not always for the right reasons, often acting primarily out of self-interest or in ways that defy conventional ethical codes." He or she is often morally ambiguous and may be acting with mixed motives. People may root for the antihero or at least not be totally turned off because the moral ambiguity makes the antihero seem more human.

"The Punisher," a vigilante comic book character who employs murder, kidnapping, extortion, and torture in a one-man war on the mob and violent criminals in general after his wife and two children were killed by the mob for witnessing a killing in New York's Central Park, is an example of a antihero.

What about someone who administers corporal punishment ostensibly for rehabilitative purposes but whose motives are really more complex? Such characters appear throughout the bdsm literature. If they are acting with mixed motives, that is if the desire for sexual gratification is one of the motives, can they not be thought of as antiheros?

Some have characterized Macbeth as an antihero. But was he? He may have started out with heroic qualities (e.g. bravery as a soldier) while at the same time harboring a potentially destructive hidden ambition for power. The witches' prophesies together with his wife's ambitions, which were perhaps greater than his own, were his undoing. As the play progressed he devolved from someone who definitely was not a villain to someone who definitely was. Some others have characterized Macbeth as a tragic hero. Yet a tragic hero, by Aristotelian standards, is someone who commits an evil deed without evil intent (think Oedipus), but this isn't the case with Macbeth. He knew what he was doing and isn't a classical tragic hero. Indeed, he isn't a hero at all.

The lying, cheating, murdering Tony Soprano who acted with occasional kindness comes closer to being an antihero in my book. Or perhaps it was the vulnerability he showed when a man, who could just about kill at will, had his insecurities laid bare when he had to contend with the women in his life.

Oh, so now you're trying to elevate the level of discourse on the Forum? (Aren't we supposed to be talking about stuff like the celebrities we want to see spanked?)

I agree that MacBeth is more if an anti-hero than tragic hero (or maybe a tragic anti-hero?)

I would agree that if the protagonist in a spanking story is a spanker with less than pure motives, he/she could be considered an anti-hero. That would include a disciplinary spanker who was thereby getting his/her jollies. (If it's an erotic spanking, he/she can get his/her jollies and STILL be a hero).

I've written a number of stories where the spankings are given for less than pure motives... But since the protagonist is on the other end of things (the spanker), I wouldn't consider the spanker to be either hero or anti-hero.

I would call MacBeth a villain, not a hero or anti-hero.

I'm with RSL, MacBeth was a villain. A good current example of anti hero is someone like Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. He's committed some truly heinous acts, but at the core of him is a man with a moral code, definitely skewed, but it is there.

If an anti-hero is a character fulfilling the dramatic role of hero with few of the expected virtues then I think Paul Newman's character, John Russell, in the film Hombre is one of the best around. If you want an anti-hero with none of the expected virtues then you can't do better than George MacDonald Fraser's character Harry Flashman.


Seegee has made a good call with Jaime Lannister although I think that he is better described as an anti-villain in that he fills the dramatic part of villain but with many unexpected virtues.

Did you mean to write "(the spankee)" here...??

--C.K.

You could say that about Jaime for the first 2 books, but he does a total turn around in the 3rd book to become a full on hero. Great call with Flashman, he is the ultimate anti hero. Mostly unrepentantly and unashamedly bad, but occasionally the good qualities shine through, and anyone who knows that he isn't actually what he pretends to be is conveniently killed or discredited. Mark Lawrence attempted to create a series built around a villain as hero with Jorg Ancrath in his Broken Empire series and a lot of people have enjoyed it (I'm not one of them), but it had done before by GMF with Flashman.

CrimsonKidCK
Yes I did. I think I got autocorrected. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I wonder why anti-heroes have been so popular as protagonists of good TV series in recent years - Tony Soprano, Dexter and Walter White spring to mind from the ones I've watched. There's no doubt they're intriguing, and we don't want them to get caught (do we?). Perhaps they reflect our morally compromised times?


The ancient Greeks had the Gods in control, so the tragic hero, as you point out, was truly an innocent, manipulated into committing evil deeds (though Freud might suggest that the motive was there in his sub-conscious - and to what extent are we responsible for that can of worms?). Shakespeare, updating the idea for his English renaissance times, made the tragic hero responsible for his own downfall. In this sense, I think that Macbeth was intended as a tragic hero, however we may judge him today, as were Othello and King Lear (who are less vicious, certainly, and therefore fit the definition better for us - though 'MeToo' might disagree about the Moor).


Yeah, there you go again, Cindy, raising the tone of the neighbourhood.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel are full of antiheroes. Faith. Angel himself. Spike.Or Buffy herself.
In Harry Potter, Dumbledore and Snape.One was presented to us as a hero, the other a villainat first, but by the time it all ended, it had changed.
Or how about the creations of the late writer Robert E. Howard? Conan, Solomon Kane, and many others. If you want to know Howard's work, read his writings, don't depend on the dreadful movies with his characters.
And while in the swords and sorcery vein, certainly Xena. And Red Sonja, based indirectly on another Howard character called Red Sonya.
Comic book antiheroes could be another whole thread, so many.