Alan J. Pakula's 'Paranoid Trilogy': Klute

            The first film in my analysis of Alan J. Pakula’s “Paranoid Trilogy” is the 1970’s sinister surveillance thriller, Klute. Fueled by the second wave feminist movement, Jane Fonda’s own activism at the time, and Pakula’s interest in Psychoanalysis, this is one of the first films of the period, certainly of the genre, to explore the interiority of women beyond their convention and utility to the story. In turn, this film both sparked and mirrored a general feeling of mistrust in the populace that permeated through the decade. This sense of ennui created by this film was not something Pakula manufactured and injected into the culture. Instead, because Pakula immaculately frames the story through Bree (Jane Fonda)’s perspective, it allows the viewers the opportunity to understand the experience of being a woman in public. Effectively transferring a woman’s fear, anxiety, unease and sense of powerlessness to the audience. Pakula wanted to emphasize that, in this film, the ‘Paranoia’ in question might just be the average Tuesday for a woman. A revelatory concept at the time. The following brief paper will engage how the burgeoning torrent of social change of the 1970’s became the backdrop of the films production pedestaled by a primordial second wave that dared to see women outside of the socialized gender roles assigned to them; while simultaneously ignoring the dangers brought on by institutional regulation and oversite.

 

PLOT

        Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) is an actor and model that is constantly struggling and trying to get out of a life of prostitution. Yet, the sense of power she gets when she’s with a “trick” is intoxicating, especially when it is so aggressively juxtaposed with the sense of powerlessness of being a woman in 1970’s New York. John Klute (Donald Sutherland) is a private detective that is looking for a missing person who may or may not have been one of Bree’s former clients. As the mystery continues to unravel, Bree is sucked back into her old life completely; complicated by her former Pimp (Roy Scheider) and an unknown stalker. As she and Klute get closer (to solving the mystery and each other) Bree must confront her own feelings and the personal embodiment of misogyny that threatens her.

 

HISTOTRICAL CONTEXT

           Anomie is the social condition of normlessness that often occurs simultaneously or after periods of immense social change. It is identified and measured by a period of instability that illustrates the dynamism of the social structure as the volatility of social institutions and interaction strain between individuals are in a verdant and often perplexing state of flux after such a calamity (Durkheim 2014)        

The 1970’s was a period of transition. This was a time at the tail end of the second wave feminist movement; much of which was codified by the two most liberal Supreme Courts the United States has ever had to date. The Warren Court and The Berger Court were responsible for many of the landmark Civil Rights decisions in US History:

            Under the Warrant Court (1953-1969)

·         Brown v. Board of Education (Struct down Jim Crow Segregation in Schools)

·         Loving v. Virginia (allowed marriage between races based on Privacy)

·         Miranda v. Arizona (Cops must make people aware of their rights)

·         Gideon v. Wainwright (Right to an appointed attorney if you cannot afford it)

·         Griswold v. Connecticut (Allows married couples to access contraceptives)

·         Coopper V. Aaron (Ruled States cannot delay desegregation)

·          New York Times v. Sullivan (limits public official’s ability to sue defamation)

·         Engel v. Vitale (outlawing prayer in schools)

·         While these were not court cases, this Court presided over the passage of landmark Civil Rights legislation in Congress: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 Civil Rights Act of 64 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965

  

Under the Berger Court (1969-1986)

·         New York Times v. United States (allowed for the publishing of the Pentagon Papers about Vietnam)

·         Miller v. California (Obscene material was protected under the First Amendment)

·         Roe v. Wade (Women have federal protections for body autonomy (abortions))

·         US v. Nixon (Executive privilege does not extend to Presidential communication with advisers)  

·         Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (Upheld Affirmative Action in School admissions but disallowed racial quotas)

·         While these were not court cases, this Court did preside over the establishment of Title XI and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

These two liberal courts, in succession, transformed the social and political landscape for generations. This became a period for socialist principles, of a unity between marginalized groups.  This was a time of “Sisterhood” where women started to understand solidarity and similarities with all women, while recognizing their different experiences (Zeilinger 2012).

            One example of the “sisterhood” existence during this time was through The Jane Collective. This was a consortium of women who counseled women and referred them to underground abortions from 1969 until 1973 when the first legal clinic opened after the Roe decision (Kaplan 2019). As the demand grew over this time, and the ability to outsource the underground abortions safely became more tenuous, The Jane Collective became medically trained to perform the procedure themselves. They only charged cost (on the necessary medical supplies) and no one was ever turned away for their inability to pay (Kaplan 2019). They understood that women’s body autonomy was a moral right, regardless of the archaic laws that governed them.[1]   

            The seeds of this intersectionality would come to embody the social justice movements in the future. While there was/is resistance to this change as these issues got codified into law during the 60’s and 70’s, people slowly started to adopt these more justice-minded principles publicly. It wasn’t that many of these people started to believe differently, they just did not want to be sanctioned for beliefs that have since become taboo at large. This contributed to the movement of discrimination and oppression from the overt language and institutional regulation into a more covert form of influence and control; while establishing reliable scapegoats regardless of their support for the policies behaviors and decisions of oppressors. This is because, regardless of truth, everyone tries to revise their morality publicly to always be on “the right side of history. We see this whenever a White Politician from a southern state invokes Martin Luther King Jr. by poorly paraphrasing the one quote that every Racist Republican leader references to elevate them beyond their racism in the eyes of the general-public[2]. A practice which uses Dr. King as a deflective prop rather than revered as a whole person.  To be clear, it’s not that these ideas have finally reached individuals that have been socialized to steep in various forms of vitriolic values and won them over. These individuals instead saw a culture shift and did not want to be ridiculed, ostracized or lose power. Therefore, they fain a social justice mindset.  As El Akkad (2025) astutely states: “One day everyone will have always been against this”     

The 1970’s was a decade chalk full of transitions; from civil rights the end of the Vietnam war, and a rash of serial killers to a string of high profile assassinations. The US was at a proverbial crossroads between becoming more democratically socialist or pivoting into greater authoritarian control through an embrace of Western Free market Capitalism. Nowhere was this existential intersection epitomized more than the 1980 Presidential election; in which President Jimmy Carter was challenged by Ronald Reagan. Carter, the democratic incumbent, was beset by an energy crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and falling poll numbers. Yet, in a series of speeches, he implored the American public to think beyond themselves. To think of the environment, about consumption and the morality of the nation.  This culminated in Carter’s famous/infamous speech about:

“The Crisis of Confidence”

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

These changes did not happen overnight. They've come upon us gradually over the last generation, years that were filled with shocks and tragedy.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honor until the shock of Watergate.

 

Much like C. Wright Mills (1959), that saw that the personal is also political, pushing ourselves beyond our everyday understanding into something broader: a collective, interconnected symbiosis; so too does Carter beg his constituents to see beyond their Millsian “private orbits” of work, family, and their neighborhood. To look into the good of all people. Yet, this allowed his challenger Reagan to position himself to the exact opposite massage. Hence, Reagan promoted more spending, smaller government and an appeal to the “greatness” of the American people.

 Reagan’s message was attractive to the American voters; with the perfect blend of nationalist/egoistic pride and inaction. President Carter was painting a picture of America in the beginnings of a long uphill battle to get us back to where we were as a nation. Meanwhile, his challenger was saying “We can Make America Great Again” if we continue with the status quo without any reflection. These were two fundamentally and diametrically opposed views of our society. In the end, we took the easier, low road, believing that the American Experiment was thriving. Reagan, for his part, paved the way to our current (but not inevitable) ruin that culminated with Donald Trump and his bacchanal of bastards. After four decades of pro capitalist economic policies and anti-socialist deregulation Carter’s calls of “crisis” now seem prophetic in hindsight.

The Role of Hollywood and Klute’s Production

  This transition period of the 1970’s was fueled by a noticeable shift in culpability, causing a perspective shift from the personal to the institutional. After the Watergate Scandal and the Nixon pardon, people were wary about trusting their government and were more likely to believe in conspiracies. This distrust was capitalized on by Hollywood and furthered this mis/distrust through the decade. While the popularity of Pakula’s Trilogy was the anchor of this shaping of the public perception towards paranoia, it was furthered along by other films at the time: Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation, Network, The China Syndrome. Like Pakula’s 70’s work, these films continued to sew doubt and erode trust in government institutions. Cover-ups, conspiracies, propagandic brain washing, and mass surveillance all became popular storytelling devices that fed on the growing uncertainty of the time due to such rapid and drastic social changes. 

With Klute, Pakula not only created one of the seminal New York films of the 1970’s (representing perfectly the city as it was in the decade) but provided a glimpse into the interior life of women that no thriller up to that point had done before (Harris 2019). This was not the original intention of the film. Based on the conventions of the genre, Pakula originally wanted to explore the titular character more deeply. But as they were pairing down the film to shooting length, the story was found in the tidal pull between Bree’s internal struggles with her desires and the way the rest of society frames her.

The film challenged the popular perception of the depravity of sex work. There is a grace by which Pakula presents and depicts sex work that both is realist in the kinds of individuals surround such a profession, but at the same time, succeeds in not demonizing the practice or participants. It was one of first times that this humanization was seen on camera. While it does not come right out and state that “sex work is work” and should be legitimated, the centering of Bree in the narrative and her richly complex admissions and discussions with her therapist infer as much (Harris 2019).

Harris (2019): Continues:

“In ‘Klute’, therapy is used not to break Bree down, but to give her an opportunity to plumb her own mind, and as we watch her musing, reconsidering, overriding herself, always thinking, the movie dips into verité in ways in which there was very little precedent in a genre film.”    

Pakula and Fonda independently discussed the difficulty of shooting the therapy scenes. There was always a discussion of what Bree would share with her therapist and how much the therapist would both know and be willing to push back against her in those sessions. In one take, Fonda as Bree, met the hostility of the Therapist with cool, emotionless control. Because, according to Fonda, “Overt hostility is the easiest thing in the world for Bree Daniels to deal with. She deals with it every day of her life. It makes her relax, because she knows where she is at.” (Milne 1972:23). Because Pakula always encouraged actors to share their ideas, he recognized Fonda’s complete embodiment and went a different direction to make Bree more vulnerable in that moment. Instead of meeting Bree with hostility, Pakula had the character of the Therapist catch her off guard with a question “Do you feel I failed you?” she asks. Instinctually, Fonda responded with “No, I feel I’ve failed you.” Giving us the first glimpse of the internalization of female gender norms, that women define themselves by their value to other people in their lives (more on this in Social Analysis).

               The film’s cinematography, photographed by legend and frequent Pakula collaborator, Gordon Willis. Willis focused on creating a sense of imbalance and claustrophobia. To achieve this, he refused to shoot many establishing shots and almost no wide shots; often cutting into the middle of scenes from other scenes to add to the ratcheting tension, purposefully not letting the audience breathe, to fully put them in Bree experience. While general wide shots exist in the film, one singular use of them stands out at the beginning of the film. When we are first introduced to Bree it is in a wide shot. She is sitting in a waiting area at a model agency to possibly be selected for a commercial. Wills decided to photograph this scene widely with a long lens; making Bree almost faceless among the other exclusively white female models. Even though the scene is interspersed with close-ups of the models, we never see the face of the director or producers that are critiquing them; furthering that sense of alienation. We watch the models sense of hope rise and fall as they are passed over with increasing apathy through disaffected comments like “Too Pretty” and “Seen her Before”. When we get to Bree, they dismiss her with “Funny Hands.” Once they get to the end of the row, Willis goes back to a wide shot. The producer thanks them and they all stand up, shuffle out to the right of the screen (their left) and behind them comes in a difference crop of now Black female models. The illustration of powerlessness in this scene sets the tone for the film and solidifies it as one of the major themes of the picture.  

 

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

            As Klute positioned itself as a mirror and cultural reproduction of the 1970’s, it also embodied a lot of social themes that were impossible to disentangle from the decade itself. Chiefly, the “Second Wave” Feminist movement, that saw independence in terms of access to abortion, birth control, contraceptives and job opportunities leading to a higher rate of divorce as more women achieved independent economic stability. White women specifically believing that there was something beyond the gender roles in which they had been conscripted. Meanwhile,  Black women carved out space for themselves that wasn’t provided to them by the movement. The language of the movement was only inclusive to white women, and affirmative action policies disproportionally benefit white women in practice (Kendall 2020).

            Gender Socialization and the legitimacy of sex work.

While Bree is portrayed by a white woman in Klute, her penchant for sex work taints her whiteness through the Madonna/Whore complex. The Madonna /Whore Complex is a feminist analysis of gender socialization directed at girls and women regarding sexual identity and expression. In this binary, women are required to be the (biblical) Madonna- chaste, pure. Thereby, under this archaic notion, women’s morality is tied to her virginity; and if the woman does have sex, even in committed relationships, there is a likelihood that she will be labeled a “whore” which defined as a fallen, defiled, and impure woman. This clear Christian supremacy is the lens through which women and their bodies are being controlled. Yet, whereas white women have the opportunity of the assumption of outright purity until it is “lost” through what is perceived and projected to be immoral acts, women of color have never given the same “benefit”. They have always been associated negatively through this religious lens as temptations and the work of “The devil”. The thematic through line being the overall fear of female sexual agency.

  The paradox of female gender socialization lies in its overall hypocrisy. Women are given the message since they were girls that their value is in their bodies; both as a sexual object to be possessed by men, or as a vessel for the next generation. Their bodies become currency. However, if women trade on that currency for their own financial or social gain, they are oppressed and ostracized either as a part of the Madonna/Whore binary or something equally reprehensible. This illustrates that the issue is not about the value of women’s bodies per se, but women’s agency to control those bodies. Independence of women scares the patriarchy because of the way it threatens the fundamental functions of its operation. They have conditioned men to be dependent on women that society has socially supplied them through these socialization processes. If women are allowed to be removed from that economic and social equation, Patriarchy’s power begins to crumble.

Klute was one of the first films to not villainize the sex worker as a hedonistically hell-bound harlot. Pakula’s direction and Fonda’s performance provide Bree with humanity beyond her profession. This was a giant leap forward and speaks to the feminist revolutionary spirit in the culture with which the film was made. Similarly, the film uses Bree to make a commentary about power. Bree is threatening to the Patriarchy because she knows how to commodify and weaponize her body (as society has taught her) for her own social and financial gain. In one of the first therapy sessions, the audience hears Bree confess the rush of power she feels when she is on a “trick”. That she has agency and control over her body, her time, and the situation. The film makes clear that this is a feeling of power through autonomy making that more difficult to give up than just the act of sex alone.

However, the film does couch the fullness of this identity by showing that Bree is also the victim of abuse (both as a child and an adult); implying that it was this damage that contributed to the decision to engage in prostitution (another tired trope). Thereby implying, but close to directly stating, that if she were well adjusted, she would not have chosen to sell her body. This is also fueled by the presence of John Klute (Donald Sutherland) that represents a way out of this life; stability and normalcy that Bree should desire. The dialogue toward the end of the film, and its ambiguous ending, suggest that Bree will self-sabotage her relationship with Klute, and thus be perceived as a failure.     

As women have achieved more agency, since the 1970’s, the patriarchal system has had to get creative. The taboo and critique of women through the Madonna/Whore binary is still in place. But in the 2020’s, women are expected to be both simultaneously. Pressured to have desired aspects of both categories while still performing these aspects in the service of men and the general patriarchy. While it is more widely accepted that sex work is work, today, there is still the commodification of women’s bodies for profit in which women are both being exploited and being active participants in that exploitation’s reproduction. Thus, more agency women have achieved over their bodies, the more the patriarchal system monetizes it for its own consumeristic benefit. Through that objectification, women are stripped of the value of that agency.

The Catharisis and Containment of Female Rage

An undercurrent in the film that is only indirectly addressed. Is Bree’s justifiable rage for being swept up in Klute’s investigation. Both the “hero” and “villain” of the story surveillance her, become emotionally compromised by her, and obsess over her. They also make Bree feel powerless in similarly distinct ways, albeit with the opposite intent. Cable achieves this through direct threats, intimidation, and fear; Klute through emotional intimacy. Regardless of the ladder’s positive context, it is a form surrendering; a relinquishing of power that makes Bree uncomfortable, and ultimately full of rage.

According to Rebecca Traister (2018), female rage is a revolutionary act. But recognizes that anger is socialized to be an asset for men and an albatross for women. If women’s anger is legitimized, which it is often not, it must be deployed sparingly and with precision, lest they summarily dismissed at best or dehumanized, violenced and violated at worst. Unfortunately, the validation of women’s anger usually comes at the cost of their silencing through victimization. And even then, it often plays out that male advocates speak on women’s behalf; embodying the role of anger translator for the masses while effectively stealing their voices rather than giving them space to speak for themselves. Yet, more women are willing to speak determined to not be distracted or deflected from their duty. Their rage can be a catalyst; even if they must shape their anger into a form that is more plateable than the direct form of rage that men benefit from.

As Traister (2018) Concludes:

            “Being mad is correct. Being mad is American; being mad can be joyful and productive and connective [Women] don’t ever let them talk you out of being mad again.       

 

 Unfortunately, Klute does not frame this rage as a healthy expression of Bree’s loss of power. Instead, it has Bree move from the powerlessness of victimhood (with Cable) to the powerlessness of gender bound heterosexual monogamy (with Klute). The film posits that she is too broken to be able to sustain a “normal” relationship with Klute which is reinforced by its ambiguous ending. We are left unsure where Bree will end up, but it is implied that if she does return to that doctor’s office, we are supposed to feel like it is a failure. That Bree, retaining agency and anger, while not being swept up and rescued from her life, like a damsel, is wrong. A cautionary tale. For all the ways that the film inches toward progressive themes, there is still this lingering thread of when a woman chooses anger and empowerment, it is perceived as a character flaw. This is another example of the way that women’s anger is dismissed, discouraged and discounted (Traister 2018).    

  Seeding a Critique of Surveillance

 Surveillance is the process by which individuals are consistently tracked and observed through various physical or non-physical means by individuals, organizations, companies, and institutions, often for the creation and maintenance of social control. The assumption of permanent visibility is important for the automatic functioning of power. Therefore, the knowledge of being watched leads to self-regulation. We see this any time we see police parked near a freeway, or black domes in convenience stores. We don’t know if anyone is in there or if they are watching but the possibility causes us to self-regulate. However, this is just the feeling, or perception of being watched rather than always being watched. In this example, the threat of force is always more effective than the actual force (Foucault 1977).

According to Foucault (1977)

 “Penopticism [as] a disciplinary mechanism…must improve the mechanism of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtle coercion for the society to come… [Therefore] the spread of disciplinary institutions…testifies to this.” (p 209)

What Foucault means here, is that the way that our social structure is organized, allows for a subtle form of social control through the assumption of constant surveillance we assume we are being watched therefore we follow the rules…However, due to technology, that threat is even more plausible.

The Data mining process has increased exponentially. Programs like Upstream, Prism and XKeyscore and the growing dependence on algorithmic software (AI) allow companies to data-mine from fiber cables and infrastructure (as the data flows past) (Upstream) and by collecting directly from the servers of US internet providers and social media companies (Prism) Keyscore is international.  This is what is called Dragnet Surveillance looking at all of the data to find suspected criminals/terrorists without a warrant

Corporations and Governments begin colluding to compile and Profit from “Metadata” beginning Surveillance Capitalism – where the Users, and info about them, are the product. (Zuboff 2019)

Also, due to the way that we use and consume social media, much of this data mining is very easy to do. Our tweets, Facebook posts, Snapchat swipes, Instagram pins, can all be subject to search by the government, and since the program they use is connected to private sector companies (Palantir), that information is then sold to other companies. Along with this, private companies work in conjunction with law enforcement agencies to violate sovereign privacy laws (especially those of women).

 The crux of Pakula’s Paranoid Trilogy is the danger and abuse of surveillance. In Klute, it is at its most intimately focused; looking at one person’s experience with the stalking obsession of others. This surveillance is a constant in Bree’s life for just being a woman in public. Like the millions of women before and after her, the general street harassment of women is commonplace; perceived as part of the female tax for their existence. The price that women pay to live in a society. However, Bree’s experience is more defined than the general misogyny inherent in the ideal of a public’s ownership of women’s bodies. As mentioned above, Bree gets surveilanced without her consent by both the protagonist hero (Klute) and by the antagonist (Cable). Yet, in a very patriarchal framing, Klute’s surveillance is justified through tired gender scripts that are structured to absolve him. His is a benevolent surveillance under the auspices of paternalistic protectionism.  Pointedly, Cable’s surveillance is not criminalized because of a lack of Bree’s agency, it is only in the overall violence and unease that he creates while engaging in it. The act of surveillance itself is framed as benign- which becomes a tacit endorsement of the practice.

 

CONCLUSION

            The first film in the “Paranoid Trilogy” is a film that embodies the torrential spirit of the 1970’s social change. Making Bree the center of a political thriller without her being relegated to a secondary character who is damseled was unique at the time. Pakula’s interest in Psychology also allowed for Bree to have an interiority that gave the audience a window into the mind and experiences of women. Bree’s treatise on the reclamation of power through sex work: that it acts as a buffer from the sense of powerlessness brough on by cultural womanhood, is an important sex positive feminist message that was just starting to crystalize in the culture; even if the film makes Bree feel powerless through parts of it for the purpose of (unearned) punishment[3].  Pakula also falls into some gender and class tropes reinforcing the objectification of women and an obfuscation of women’s anger. This provides an overall mixed message as to the value of women and their ability to have agency and autonomy over their own lives.  

 

REFERENCES

Durheim, Emile 2014. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press   

El Akkad, Omar 2025. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Toronto. Knopf

Foucault, Michel 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison New York: Vintage Books

Harris, Mark 2019. “Klute: Trying to See Her.” In Current. Retrieved on 9/3/26 Retrieved at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6492-klute-trying-to-see-her?srsltid=AfmBOop10WWTISoYIudCsH868T8q8_wam2vAjZ0PtgOVBx2Z8QSQs-81

Kaplan, Laura 2019. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service New York: Vintage Books  

Kendall, Mikki 2020.  Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women a Movement Forgot New York: Viking

Milne, Tom 1972. “She’s Nowhere: A Conversation with Alan J. Pakula” in Sight and Sound  Retrieved on: 9/3/26 Retrieved at: http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Mi-Pe/Pakula-Alan-J.html

Traister, Rebecca 2018. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger New York: Simon and Schuster

Zeilinger, Julie 2012. A Little F’DUP: Why Feminism is not a Dirty Word New York: Seal Press

Zuboff, Shoshana 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Human Future at the New Frontier of Power New York: Public Affairs

 

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[1] After the Dobbs decision removing federal protections for the body rights of women. The Documentary “The Janes”  and the feature  film “ Call Jane” opened to critical acclaim no doubt due to cultural relevance and likely resurgence of the need of safe underground abortions again.

[2] “ To judge a man not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” MLK

[3] A pop culture Tax for being a prostitute.

Alan J. Pakula's "Paranoid Trilogy": An Introduction

 

            Alan J. Pakula was a versatile writer, producer and director of cinema of the 1970’s through the 1990’s. Unfortunately, like his fellow overshadowed contemporary, John Sayles, Pakula was eclipsed by the light of the New Hollywood golden children of Lucas, Scorsese, Coppola, and Spielberg in the public consciousness. Adept at many genres, Pakula made a name for himself with the suspenseful political thriller. While his work may not have coined the term, it certainly redefined it. Three of Pakula’s films emphasize this genre mastery: Klute, The Parallax View, and All the President’s Men. These three films loosely encompass what has been deemed Pakula’s “Paranoid Trilogy” and it is the next focus of the blog’s continuous director deep-dives.

 

BRIEF BACKGROUND

            Born in 1928 in the Bronx, Pakula, a life-long New Yorker, eventually studied drama at Yale (graduating in 1948) before moving to Hollywood, using his father’s contacts at the Warner Bros. cartoon department to get into the industry. He got his first break as an assistant to Don Hartman at Paramount, while simultaneously producing plays for the New York Stage. This eventually led to forming a Production company with director Robert Mulligan aptly named Pakula-Mulligan Productions.

            The first big hit of this partnership was the stage version and eventual film adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic American Novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. This producing and directing partnership, from this collaboration alone, garnered multiple academy award nominations and three wins: one for each of the pair. This lucrative partnership would last through the 1960’s, with Pakula first stepping behind the camera to direct Liza Minelli in The Sterile Cuckoo.

            Pakula made a name for himself among actors, earning their respect and the coveted title of “an actor’s director.” Throughout his career he directed 8 Academy Award Nominated performances, three of them winning Oscar Gold, with two of those wins coming from “The Paranoid Trilogy” itself (Jane Fonda for Klute, and Jason Robards in All the President’s Men). Pakula was one of the directors that believed that casting was one of the most important jobs, indicating that if you cast the film correctly, you do not have to worry about the actor’s performance. This might be one of the reasons that even outside of the acclaimed ‘trilogy’, actors flocked to his films for the trust and faith he had in them, especially for the way he was able to direct female actors.

 Even though he only directed 16 films across three decades, because of affinity for the craft and professionalism of acting, he was able to secure several A-list actors. This had a differing effect depending on where the actor was in their career. This “Pakula bump” made up-and-coming actors a household name (Fonda in Klute), made established actors’ leaders in the field (Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocent and Denzel Washington in The Pelican Brief) or reminded the public of older actor’s greatness (Robards in All the President’s Men).

            On November 19^th, 1998, while driving on the Long Island Expressway, a car in front of Pakula clipped a metal pole in the road sending it through the windshield of his car. The pipe struck Pakula in the head causing him to swerve into a fence. He was later pronounced dead at North Shore University Hospital.  Several tragic ironies surround Pakula’s death. The first and most obvious being the loss of Pakula as an artist. A year prior, in 1997, he proved that he still had the clout and cinematic gravitas to construct his signature political thriller with The Devils Own, starring Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt.  According to his estate, at the time of his death he was working on drafting the film adaptation of “No Ordinary Time”, a book on Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was out scouting locations at the time of the accident. Secondly, the irrational accident that caused his death, paralleled a lot of the “accidental” cover-up deaths depicted in his films. Thus, the cinematic quality of Pakula’s death resulted in unfounded speculation as to the intent around its cause. It became a journalistic cliché to playfully suggest that studio heads or the US government orchestrated the accident to silence Pakula for what he was secretly exposing. Regardless of this conspiracy’s repetition in the news sources reporting on the death, there is no evidence to suggest such a wild hypothesis. Still, the continued repetition of this myth put it in the cultural zeitgeist and brought more attention to his films posthumously.

        

FILMS OF ‘THE PARANOID TRILOGY’

            The films culturally dubbed “The Paranoid Trilogy” include three films early in Pakula’s career from the 1970’s.  While each film was constructed independently, without the intention of linking the films through the narrative or similar characters; film historians, critics and cinema scholars have connected these films together because of their similarity of tone and themes which include the representation of the 1970’s and the general distrust of the government. This similarity could also be explained by Pakula himself and the ways that he approaches the political thriller subgenre. The Films of this “loose trilogy” of political thrillers are Klute, The Parallax View, and All the President’s Men.

Klute (1971)   

The first film in this unofficial trilogy involves a call girl to the wealthy (Jane Fonda) helping a detective (Donald Sutherland) with a missing person case of one of her Johns who may have been stalking her. Klute captures the ambiance and the cultural mood of the 1970’s. Its eerie foreboding is accentuated by Gordon Willis’s cinematography with grainy shot composition and wide-angle shots. For as much space is shown in every frame, Pakula and Willis have the remarkable ability to make each shot feel claustrophobic through editing and tight cutting. Fonda, originally hesitant to take the role, eventually went on to win the Academy Award for her portrayal of Bree. Less political than the other films in this triptych, Klute, like a brilliantly crafted three-course meal, appetizes.

 

The Parallax View (1974)

According to the description on the Criterion Blu-ray:

            “Three Years after the murder of a leading senator atop Seattle’s Space needle, reporter Joseph Fardy (Warren Beatty) begins to dig into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the killing-and stumbles into a labyrinthine conspiracy far more sinister than he could have imagined.”

Based on the dime store novel of the same name by Loren Singer, Pakula’s cinematic center of the trilogy reinforces the political mistrust of the government and the public’s monopolistic control by shadowy corporations. Their existence, let alone their operation, filling people with dread.  

While this film was critically reviewed more favorably by established film journalists than the public at large, the upcoming analysis hopes to recontextualize the film as we look at it from the vantage point of the last 50 years and under the current Socio-political context. Perhaps the film has gained more relevance over the last ½ century.  

 

All the President’s Men (1976)

            The final film in the series is also the most famous. It garnered the most praise, and collected the greatest number of nominations, awards, and other accolades. Based on the book of the same name by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who in 1972, broke the political scandal that would come to be known as “Watergate”; culminating in the resignation of then President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.

            This film was elevated over the other films in the trilogy because of its depiction of real-life events, at a time when the public was still trying to grapple with the reality of it. Before the book came out, Robert Redford (who would go on to play Bob Woodward in the adaptation) purchased the film rights to the book and was in active pre-production when the book was released. Filmed in 75’ and released in 76’ All the President’s Men traded on the public’s curiosity and insatiable hunger for information on this historical moment. Because of the timing of the event, being a part of the public consciousness of the time, and constructing a riveting drama around those events, the third film in this loose trilogy is often thought to be a complete standalone film.       

 

THEMES

            The title given to Pakula’s trilogy is evocative and thematically self-explanatory. The “paranoia” in question is historically specific to the time-period post the civil rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s in the US. By the 1970’s we started to see the fruits of that labor (particularly with the creation of Title IX, the Roe v. Wade decision, and The Rehabilitation Act of 1973). Yet, because the US had fought and struggled for these gains for nearly three decades, this was a time to make sure that these policies were not only enacted but enforced. There was an increase in the resistance from the Government to implementing these changes and a concerted effort by social institutions to minimize Civil Rights legislation’s effectiveness. This is what led to the measured skepticism and distrust of the government apparatus during this time; an emotional collective consciousness that Pakula’s films tap into.

            All three films in the trilogy illustrate the dangers of various mechanisms of government control, feeding conspiracies in the wake of irrational events and a lack of institutional credibility. Whether through depictions of surveillance, indoctrination, bribery, or murder, there was a concerted effort in Pakula’s films for the audience to maintain a justifiable suspicion of Government agents. To clarify, this was not a concerted effort on the part of Pakula to shape public opinion, but rather to capture the feeling of uncertainty and unease that followed these unprecedented historical events. All three films came out during, or in the immediate wake of the Watergate investigation and directly after the era of rampant political assassinations which clearly informed these three thrillers. Conversely, the fundamental success of these films shaped the way that the 1970’s was perceived both by those who lived through it, and those that came after. Pakula’s ‘Paranoid Trilogy’ joins films like Coppola’s The Conversation, and Scorsese’s Mean Streets in shaping the cinematic perception of the 1970’s in the populace; despite dramatic license and the heightened reality depicted.

            These three films ask foundational sociological questions about institutions and organizational systems. Through this trilogy, Pakula is interested in the fundamental tension between Agency (free non-coerced choice) and Structure (the institutional mechanism, usually in the form of a bureaucracy, with a goal of establishing and maintaining order) that is at the core of Sociology as a discipline. While some have called this Pakula’s interest in “The Architecture of Power”, within Sociology, these power dynamics can be understood through the work of classical theorists like C. Wright Mills and Max Weber.

            Weber, and Mills’ work on institutional structures and the relationships within them are unparalleled. The following essays on each film will be drawing from Mills’ work on “The Power Elite” and Weber’s understanding of bureaucracy found in Economy and Society. These essays will also draw on more contemporary scholars in various areas; namely, Niklas Luhmann’s work on “Social Systems” and Shoshana Zuboff’s explanation of “Surveillance Capitalism”. The forthcoming analysis plans to also make allusive parallels to the contemporary political moment in the US; where we are seeing a similar level of mistrust and even greater hostile resistance from the government toward its people.   

 

CONCLUSION

      Alan J. Pakula’s “Paranoid Trilogy” embodies the cultural and cinematic flavor of the 1970’s. These films became the quintessential vision of what it was like to work in films, as well as crystalize the public opinion of the government at the time. As the trilogy gained in popularity throughout the decades, they have inadvertently fueled the conspiratorially addle-brained into an irrational spiral that has culminated in the Quanon sect of the dark web; thereby tangentially contributing to the rise of our current fascistic-forward and equally hostile government. Thus, through the analysis of these films, not only will we see current socio-political parallels, but perhaps we can find the same inspirational spark of resistance displayed in Pakula’s Protagonists; regardless of the outcome.  

"If Villain Bad, Then Why Hot?" How Consuming Modern Villain Narratives and Redemption arcs Obfuscates and Sanitizes Real-World Villainy

 

Cinema has always been a lens by which to explore the human condition. Often, movies are cited as a mirror with which to reflect human choice and fallibility. Rarer is the acknowledgment that film can be a framing device for the understanding of the world. Cinematic socialization, often generalized by “the socialization of the media”, allows for social learning from within the proscenium of the silver screen. Yet, what happens when we internalize the “wrong” / unintended messages either through ignorance or intention? This brief paper is interested in the intersection of media illiteracy and the emulation of villainy. The continued humanizing and complicating of cinematic villains for the purpose of dramatic storytelling desensitizes us to the identification of real-life monsters, while assisting in their creation by giving these would-be fiends cinematic blueprints for atrocities that they follow; often to the frame. Resulting in  dystopian fiction becoming current events. This propagandistic conditioning toward villainy has made us vulnerable to the most reprehensively repugnant and contemptuously foul facsimile of human beings that vie for power, allowing them to bring cinematic hell on earth to our reality.

 

FOUNDATIONS

            This paper is a continuation, a spiritual sequel, to my recent essay on the relationship between Trump era policies and dystopian fiction.   In that paper, I laid out the basic sociological understanding of the media as an agent of socialization. I first illustrated how nostalgia is used as a conditioning tool before claiming how MAGA rhetoric uses that conditioning and dystopian fiction as a blueprint to bring about the horrifically oppressive policies the Trump administration has enacted (under the guidance of Project 2025). Using that as a base, this paper aims to look at the way that the media launders hateful ideas and desensitizes us; particularly through the pop culture archetype of the villain, and our various attempts to humanize them.

            “[Public and Private life] take on the qualities of spectacle, theater, all forms of art, on reality to obliterate the very distinction between art and life.” (Lasch 1979:86)

            Sociological basics

            The fundamental Sociological concepts to the understanding of how the media can define evil and support the development of real-world villainy are found in social constructionism.  Social Constructionism is the idea that what we call reality is not concrete and fixed (thereby only experienced in passivity), but rather actively created, interpreted and integrated by those who live within it (Burger and Luckmann 1966).  This is a constant social process by which we shape, identify, and define reality through language, meanings, rituals, beliefs, and behaviors. Thus, to say that ‘reality is a social construction’ is to say that what we accept as reality depends on the context in which the elements of that reality are important in a particular time and place. Societies can construct common realities by the acceptance of certain laws and rituals within a given collective group.  However, a person’s reality within a society can be drastically different depending upon variations of social class, gender, race, sexuality, disability, religion, political ideology, parental norms and values among others.

After the construction of reality is established, an internalization of that social construction through the process of the socialization of the self occurs. Socialization of the self is the process by which individuals learn the development and maintenance of an independent self-identity. This is how we learn who we are, as a product of everything around us in the social world. We are both a reflection of society (Cooley’s Looking Glass Self) and simultaneously attempt to control how other people see us through an elaborate performance (Goffman’s Presentation of Self).

According to Cooley (1983), the “Looking glass self” identifies how the interactions and reactions that we have with others help to shape our understanding of ourselves. We are more likely to have a positive self-concept if we have an overabundance of positive interactions and reactions from other people. That is regardless and often despite behaviors or attitude to the contrary. Once we realize that our interactions and reactions to others hold that same power, we attempt to control how other people see us through establishing and the development of an elaborate performance that attempts to maintain a particular impression that we “give off”. Thus, through the words that we use, the clothes that we wear, our hobbies, interests, and demeanor, we engage in a series of behaviors that attempt to give off a desired impression. That impression can be varied and has the ability and likelihood to change throughout a person’s life; both as they age and within a variety of contexts. Yet, that impression is not internalized into the self until that performance gains some outside validation from others.

For example, if a person wants people to think they’re smart, they may wear certain clothes, major in a presumably difficult subject and only speak using multi-syllabic words, all in the service of “giving off” the impression of intelligence.  Yet, the person “giving off” that impression is not convinced they’re smart until someone who sees this presentation, validates it with a response such as: “Hey, you’re pretty smart.” It is only then when the individual is convinced of their own performance and thereby finishing the cycle of self-development through this validation do they believe their intelligence. It is a cycle of ritualistic self-delusion.

While there is a synergistic quality to the ideas set forth by Goffman (1959) and Cooley (1983), there is a tendency to overlook the fluidity of these concepts as they both feed into and solidify each other. For Goffman (1959) the “presentation of self” is not sui generis. It needs a foundation to draw inspiration from. That inspiration is found through the interactions and reactions that people have with the media, particularly films. Regularly, film stars, particularly through roles they have taken, become a reference group to model a variety of behavior.  While the roles and screen images that represent certain desired qualities like “coolness” “heroism” “suavity”, “ruggedness,” “self-reliance” “resourcefulness”, “attractiveness” etc.; shift depending on historical context (generational differences) and the types of images people consume. There is a consistency of emulation depending on the values an individual wants to portray and (hopefully) eventually have validated through their social interactions. As film portrayals get increasingly more complicated and nuanced, so too is our understanding of and desirability for a more layered self-presentation also complicated.

 

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

              In line with Cooley’s and to an extent Goffman’s analysis, cinema is one of the “looking glasses” of culture. Film represents and reflects both the period in which it was created, and the desired representation of a better world by those in power. This literal black and white moralism on film was exemplified by the development and implementation of The Hays Code. The Hays Code were guidelines of self-censorship developed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1934-1968. Named after the President of the MPAA from 1922-1944, Will H. Hays. The code sought to restrict human expression in film by setting moralistic guidelines that align with conservative White Judeo-Christian beliefs, popularized by middle class to rich white Americans at the time.

           

The Hays code included:

·         Language restriction: There were restrictions on blasphemy and the use of what was considered lewd and profane words. Including such mild slights as “damn”

·         The prohibition against any suggestively licentious nudity, which included actual or suggested forms (varied by gender expression) or any lecherous behavior. All of which was defined with a large breadth, that even bare female calves were included.

·         The vague ambiguity of “any inference of sexual perversion” which was a euphemistic dog whistle to mean any non-heterosexual behavior.

·         The use and trafficking of drugs

·         White Slavery aka “The sexual slavery of white women”[1]

·         Miscegenation[2]

·         Ridicule of the clergy

It also regulated

·         The use of the flag

·         Religious (Christian) ceremonies

·         Violence, Gruesomeness and Torture

·         Sedition

·         Sympathy toward criminals

·         Prostitution

·         Consummation of Marriage and the institution of Marriage itself

 

For nearly 35 years, there was a rigid moralizing of the images allowed on film that fit with the principles of religious conservatism at the time. The breakaway from this into more flexibility brought with it a Hollywood revolution that saw the rise of the 1970’s renegades: Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, John Milius and George Lucas. These young filmmakers, many out of the University of Southern California, eventually ran their own studios so that they could write, produce, and direct the movies that they wanted to create. This helped usher in the Auteur Era of Hollywood, and normalizing naturalism in acting.

 

As I state in a previous essay (2021)

The naturalist acting method that was cultivated by the Meisner and Stanislavski methods. These methods then became popularized by the “New Hollywood” of the 1970’s, becoming the default acting approach for most film and television today. The belief being that this naturalism allows for greater intimacy and relatability between the actors and the audience; that through this technique, the strength of the cinematic illusion can be solidified. Currently, naturalism has such a strangle hold on the industry, that people do not remember that there even were other styles of acting in other eras. The over-exaggerations of the 1930’s films, itself a consequence of the silent film era, are often ignored. In fact, the acceptance of the naturalism method also informs criticism; with awards going to those performances that best exude the realistic form, while at the same time condemning other acting styles of other eras as being “hammy”, or lacking in subtlety.

 

The normalization of naturalism allowed the complexity of characters to thrive. This process allowed characters to be complicated, flawed and “unlikable” (a label that is still only positively associated with male characters, as complicated female character’s personalities are still a representation of their complete and utter moral failing (Bogutskaya 2023)). The popularity of these byzantine behaviors reshaped storytelling and our relationship with problematic protagonists.  

 

            From Black and White to Morally Grey: the changing of the cinematic Villain.

           

The presentation of moral complexity in cinema has brought with it variously valued verisimilitude. The nuance of the human condition creates compelling drama. As this took shape in our culture, so too did it show up in our popular media. After the elimination of the Hays Code and the rise of the New Hollywood darlings of the 70’s and their fragile, feckless fanatical frauds that populated the movieplexes, we were ready to root for the bad guy. While this trend started in the 1970’s, the reshading of the protagonist to be morally ambiguous or apathetic, solidified in the 2000-2010’s with Prestige TV. What started with Travis Bickle and Michael Corleone led to Tony Soprano and Walter White. These characters were tortured, angry, dower, and delectably dysfunctional. We were addicted to the drama.

 There have already been a handful of psychological and sociological explanations for our unyielding affinity for villains. First, is simple exposure. The more naturalism pushed storytelling into the grit and gritty dark places, the faster it proliferated in every medium. This often got mistaken for “realism”, slicing the veil between fiction and reality so thin it could go into Paulie’s Prison Sauce from Goodfellas. As Hollywood began the reproduction of popular products, in their pursuit of perpetual profits, we became awash with morally grey anti-heroes, heart of gold haters, and bad ass bad guys. The more we are served these depictions, the more they are normalized. Therefore, we are more likely to have empathy and even learn to like those that we are supposed to loathe (Gale Kee, Mccoy and Powell-Dunaway 2012).

 Secondly, there is “The Halo Effect.” This is the social psychological idea that if you find a person physically attractive, it is easier to project positive qualities and attributes to them. Hollywood and a variety of other media (exclusively anime) portray, or in the case of anime, create their characters as exceeding and redefining the societal conventions of attraction. Film and TV are the trend setters of the “sexy stock market”, setting the value of erotic capital every season. Erotic Capital is the value of an individual based on their ability to subscribe and achieve Socio-historic and cultural beauty/body norms in the eyes of others (Hakim 2010). The mechanism of Hollywood movie making runs on the erotic capital of its camera facing talent; regardless of what roles they play. The consistency of attractiveness being both presented and attributed to dubious characters is time honored with “the bad boy” aesthetic; in which the physical attractiveness of the character is reinforced with the desired quality of resistance or outright defiance to authority. Since the 1970’s, the anti-establishment misanthrope, in some form, has always been a sexual awakening trigger for many people. Almost 60 years later, this trope has been laconically refined into the crystalized “memeable” phrase: “If Villain bad, why Hot?”. This tethering of attractiveness with antagonistic behavior even seeps its way into our current lexicon. Attractive, but often aggressive women, with acerbic attitudes, are commonly referred to as “Baddies”. Yet, the investment in a morally grey anti-hero that convinces us ‘to root for the bad guy’ is conditioned into us through the storytelling structural convention of “the protagonist paradox.”

 The protagonist paradox is the narrative phenomena where the audience’s proximity to a character, especially if a story is told from their perspective, with a focus on interiority and motivation, elicits empathy.  Simply put: if there is a main character, we are likely going to justify their behavior. Ironically, one could surmise that as a character’s actions become increasingly reprehensible, the less likely we will rationalize their actions. However, the protagonist humanization is often so complete that even the most egregious behavior is defended by the audience, especially those within an exclusive fan community that may have built a parasocial relationship with the character and emulate them, even when they shouldn’t (i.e. Frank Castle). This happens even though the character is intended to be a cautionary tale. Whether it be by media illiteracy or willful ignorance, the protagonist paradox has caused us to blur the line between fictitious and genuine villainy, allowing the ladder to be undetectable or sanitized.

            The expression of villainy can serve a variety of purposes in a narrative. Typically, it is used as an antagonistic counterbalance for the protagonist which allows the main character to be reframed as a hero. This antagonist as villain trope was common during the Hayes Code which set clear moral boundaries. But once the code was lifted and we started to shift to a greying of the protagonists and the rise of the anti-hero, so too did we start to humanize the villain. As heroes got darker, villains became lighter. The motivations for their actions shifted from a self-centered core of dastardly diabolical debauchery to something outside of themselves. Often being the accountability for, and symptom of, larger social problems. This allowed the plight of villains to be both relatable and understandable. Because of this, villains of the post-Haze code became incrementally humanized.

This humanization of cinematic villains and a shift in their motivations correlates to the fight for, rise of, and implementation of civil rights and social justice movements in the US. Like Cooley’s “Looking glass”, Pop Culture is a mirror reflecting and at time refracting the image of society, forcing us to look.  As the collective understanding of injustice’s source shifted from the interpersonal to systemic through the civil rights movement, so too shifted the source of heroism and villainy. Our protagonists and heroes became more inclusive and had an awareness of structural and culturally normalized discrimination and oppression. In this context, as this acceptance of diversity and systemic social critique continued, many of the “bigger bads” of our current popular culture are a representation of the systemic evil trinity of Capitalism, Misogyny and White Supremacy. Many of the humanized villains are victims of, or linked to, these three interlocking oppressions. These post-Hays Code villains experience tragic loss, abuse, and/or rail against a variety of injustices from the holocaust, the environment, racism, and sexism to  bureaucracy itself. These moralistic villains have achieved such public support and adulation that it has popularized the phrase “This is my villain origin story.” The public understands and accepts that these systems, as we either experience or participate in them, can be the thing that makes any of us “break bad.”

Simultaneously, the unsympathetic villains that have little to no redeeming qualities often embody one or more aspect of the treacherous trinity. These are your corporate billionaires, toxic masculine dude-bros, and overt racists. Unfortunately, this unsympathetic villainy can be used to justify capitalist, misogynistic and racist behavior that is considered less by comparison. Individuals may excuse their own horrendous behavior because they aren’t Lex Luthor, or they “didn’t own slaves” (Bonilla-Silva 2022). The blurring of the lines between these systemic evils and our participation in them, allows us to eliminate cognitive dissonance, while maintaining a sense of moral superiority through the common declaration: “Well, at least I’m not that bad.” However, media illiteracy and a drive to access and obtain various forms of power (social, political, economic), results in people not only rooting for the bad guy but purposefully embodying them.  

        Cinematic vs Real world villainy

Film and popular culture have long been used as propaganda. Music, tv, theater and film have been indoctrinating tools that breed support for one or all of the interlocking systemic evils of Capitalism, Misogyny and White Supremacy. The quality and “entertainment” of the propaganda obfuscates these intentions. A catchy hook, “sick beat, or cool action scene can distract us from the promotion of a variety of social ills. Thereby becoming a recruitment tool for mechanisms of hate (Simi and Futrell 2024). Yet, the shifting of the cinematic villain also causes the villain, and their deeds, to potentially be a blueprint to create those problems in reality  

            As indicated above, we have seen “the villain” go from maniacal mustache twirling to a relatable, albeit misguided, character with three dimensions. Six decades of this moralizing of villainy has conditioned audiences to rationalize bad behavior and desensitizes us to the reality of truly cruel and evil people. Cinema and popular culture have given us a template for the sympathetic villain, but in those same stories, outlined their redemption arcs. Thus, not only do we get the “Thanos was right.” And “The Joker has a point.” crowd; howling in their tiny fiefdom of the internet, but we get villains who are so sympathized that they are reworked into heroes. Some of these arcs are intentionally designed by creators of the property (Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender and Nolan from Invincible[3]) others are forced into heroism through sheer fan appeal due to their immense erotic capital and charisma (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Loki in the MCU). The quality of this turn depends on the writing, as some horrendous acts are harder to come back from than others. Darth Vader is a Space Nazi who murdered children after all. But no matter how smooth or clunky the redemption arc, audiences will salivate and devour it. Media illiteracy helps with this transition.   

            Rationalizing villainy, outside of exposure or their sex appeal, usually comes from an internal place. We are conditioned to put ourselves in the shoes of the villain, and if we experience anything like what they have experienced, it triggers our empathy. This happens regardless of the intent of the creators. Many people who are “symping” for villains, fail to see the purpose their presence has in the prose. Whether this is being fueled by blind faith, erotic capital, or a vapidly hollow reading of the text, they are unable or unwilling to see the villain as a cautionary tale. Thus, their admiration is misplaced, and if they bully the creators into granting a redemption arc, they could fracture the storytelling in the process. The audience seems to be glad to sacrifice theme and narrative satisfaction if it means they can lust after attractive people on screen.

Another form of media illiteracy that is more nefarious is when these villains and their behaviors are rationalized, not for their aesthetic, but for the qualities that make them villains. Here, the evangelizing of these villains is rooted in the desire to emulate them.  Those most likely to engage with villainy as a blueprint, are those adjacent to nerd culture that are in positions of power.  

I state in a previous essay (2025)

 These men and the other people hanging on in their orbit, consume and express a deep affinity for nerd culture beyond just using pop culture as an extemporaneous example to get their point across.  These men often use “geek speak”… as representation of their In Group status with one another. This is done for solidarity and as an exclusionary subcultural shorthand. Yet, for many of them, they seem far more interested in aesthetics rather than the context.

Names and inspirations are trading on an understanding of the text that, when applied to real life, shows a value system that reinforces aspects of government control, militarism, racism, Western globalization and misogyny. Thus, it is the (mis)reading of [Popular Culture] in this way that veils these ideas as dangerous. Allowing these wealth tech “Broligarchs” to launder their crypto-fascism through the prism of pop culture. Making those ideas both more palatable to a broader audience and provide plausible deniability in the face of conflict, criticism or consequences.  

 

Succinctly, we are living in a world where the people in power consume popular culture and delusionally not only root for the bad guy but use the villain archetype and corresponding allegorical cautionary tales as blueprints for legitimate public policies. This is why the current Trump administration’s policies reflect a variety of dystopian fiction (Brutlag 2025).

            The historical consumption of the humanized anti-villain archetype, since the elimination of the Hayes code, has left us vulnerable. We get weak in the knees for attractive characters regardless of their politics, principles, or past behaviors. No matter how egregious or reprehensibly vile their actions: be they genocide, rape, the obliteration of planets, or threatening the cosmos; someone will be like “Hear me out..”   This conditioning of a questionable collective consciousness towards villains, when projected into reality, makes it difficult to spot those who will do us true harm. These persons seeking power need only to smile, make promises and use their honeyed words to assure us that their “past is the past” (Bonilla Silva 2022). It is not a coincidence that the language of the villain redemption arc, when applied to reality, is like what perpetrators of Intimate partner violence claim during their cycles of abuse with their targets (Misogyny). The consumption of media that humanizes the villain; normalizes, sanitizes and makes excuses for the real villains in our own lives. It makes them invisible, and regardless of their behavior, conditions us to the promise of redemption. A cycle that more than enough people will fall back into; resulting in those real villains perpetually holding power over us. Allowing them to take advantage of us, and harm us repeatedly, because we think they will change; because movies and tv tells us that they can.    

Since the rise of so-called “cancel culture” celebrity redemption arcs have been constructed down to a science. Whenever a celebrity says, or more prominently, does something racist, misogynistic, ableist, or generally abhorrent, they go through the process of a redemption arc.

This Process includes:

·         A very public apology. The expression of regret, remorse, and the promise to get help and to make amens

·         Disappearing. There is a distancing of the artist from the public. This will be a removal from all social media and calls to give the person time and space to heal. This could last as little as a few months to years

·         Reemergence- After some designated downtime, the individual will test the water by doing something small in the public eye to judge public reception. Sometimes they will acknowledge their absence, often they won’t. This reinforces that they have learned from their “troubled and turbulent past” something that ingratiates themselves to their fans more; as the action humanizes.

 

This is a process is a form of celebrity capital furthered by symbolic capital. Celebrity capital is accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations (Driessens 2013). Symbolic capital is the value of an individual or groups demographics is a particular social situation (Bourdieu, 1987). Through this process, a celebrity trades on their celebrity capital (improved by their symbolic capital through their cis/het white “dudeness”) to avoid accountability. If cancel culture is the manifestation of accountability, the celebrity redemption arc is its circumvention. Which means that any mea culpa from a celebrity is usually performative. Unfortunately, because of our conditioning to the anti-villain archetype, and our considerably short attention spans, and even shorter memories, they are forgiven, or at the very least no longer reviled.  We have seen this across mediums and genres: In movies and Tv: Robert Downey Jr, Aziz Ansari, Louie C.K. In music: Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Sean Combs, Kanye West, in Politics: Donald Trump, Bill Clinton.  It is important to note that there seems to be a direct correlation between the popularity of the figure (measured by the value of the pop cultural products they produce) with the public’s willingness to forgive and/or forget their transgressions. Succinctly, if the public likes their films, music or tv specials, they’re more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt; in part to absolve themselves of the guilt of enjoy the pop culture they produce.        

                    

       

SOCIAL ANALYSIS

            This vulnerability to the anti-villain archetype presented in the media that we consume furthers both the banality of evil and its humanization through comedy. Contrary to the typical portrayal of movie villains, the notion of evil is not some grand Machiavellian horror that is melodramatically grandiose, regardless of what either classical or contemporary portrayals portend. Instead, it is belief in the inhumanity of others so completely that actions toward them are not given any modicum of care and attention. It is listless boredom with which they engage in behaviors and atrocities, rather than the assumed rageful hate that’s fueling this cruelty.  However, what some films like Schindler’s List, Come and See (and more recently), The Zone of Interest have shown is that evil is not angry; it’s apathetic. This is foundational dehumanization in a fascistic state (Stanley 2020). The villain archetype is a distraction from the real evils people in positions of power have employed. Which often remains undetected because they either don’t fit the archetype or they are framed as legitimate and therefore normalized.

        The Sanitation of evil through Media

            The media as a mechanism furthers the invisibility of evil’s plainness through comedy in two specific ways: to humanize the subject considered evil, and the use of comedy to deconstruct and criticize.  The idea of evil is scary regardless of the form it takes. Albeit a biblical manifestation or one of mundane mediocrity, the concept of evil is a mechanism of social control by the social order. That fear is what maintains a set of desired behaviors whether that be action (by those not in power) or acquiescence (to those in power).

Comedy is used to sanitize evil through humanization. Just as the (Anti) Villain archetype is humanized by tragic backstory, and experiences of injustice, so too do real life villains promote stories about their own humanizing tragedies. Classic examples often include poverty and abuse. Indicating, similar to the villain archetype in pop culture, that they are misunderstood and a product of their horrific upbringing. This is then sanitized through comedy. If a real-life villain can laugh at themselves and make light out of their performative and propagandized tragedy, that goes a long way in engendering sympathy in the audience (especially if that audience is the key to ascending political power).  Thus, being conditioned to the humanized anti-villain archetype primes us to have empathy for real life villains who lay their tragedies bare.

JD Vance does this when he talks about Poverty and growing up in Appalachia. Regardless of the truth of it, the story itself is enough for many to look for a redemption arc. Additionally, JD Vance has often been able to deflect public ire by laughing off serious comments he made “as just jokes”, or through self-deprecation. Here he’s using comedy as a shield; a common tactic whenever someone is attempting to hold people in power accountable for discriminatory rhetoric.

The other way that comedy is used to sanitize real life evil is its use to humiliate those in power. “Punching up”, as they say, has always been comedy’s weapon against injustice. The idea being that by laughing at the expense of people in power it robs them of their seriousness, it makes them less scary. However, this also comes at the expense of humanizing them; without any of the structural benefits of depleting their power or making any policy changes.    

As I wrote in a Previous essay (2025)

While it is easy to write off these individuals as pitifully sad, insecure, arrested developed man-babies; that is a coping mechanism for those of us without the same level of access to power and influence to be able to exist in such an unequal world. However, the infantilizing and emasculating of these men does not make their decisions and control over our institutions any less complete. It just makes living within their tech-bro oligarchy more bearable for the rest of us. Unfortunately, this normalization still benefits them. No matter how many jokes we make at their expense, their wealth, status and control allow for a shaping of the world in their desired image of the pop culture they consume. Therefore, because of the power that they wield, that representation, no matter how inaccurate, threatens to become reality.

Comedy does nothing here but desensitize us to their Rule and normalize their villainous fanaticism. They are sanitized, and we feel morally superior to them, allowing us to better exist under their thumb. Therefore, even the mechanisms we use to cope with this growing fascistic society are weaponized against us; allowing the elites to amass even more power and shield themselves from whatever criticism we might be able to cobble together.

 

CONCLUSION

Since the elimination of the Haze Code, a reprehensibly restrictive constraint on creativity, we have been culturally conditioned to embrace and even desire villainy. Through our popular culture, we’ve internalized the value of the anti-villain archetype, making us vulnerable to the threat of real-world villains that vie for political, social and economic power. Comedy is often used to further the acquisition of power and used as a shield to deflect legitimate criticism. In the face of such dire circumstances, one of the few things that we can hold onto is threads of anecdotal evidence that suggest that holding on to hate prematurely ages individuals and impacts the erotic capital they hold. If it didn’t, imagine a reality where our current leaders had the erotic capital that is often held by our villains of fiction. How much easier would we be willing to march to our annihilation with the same exuberance with which we lust after those in our stories.

 

REFERENCES

Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge New York: Anchor Books  

Bogutskaya, Anna 2023. Unlikable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants you to Hate. Naperville: Sourcebooks

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 2022. Racism without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial inequality in America New York: Rowman and Littlefield

Brutlag, Brian 2021. “The Sociology of Nicolas Cage: Simulacrum and Hyper Reality of a 'Massive Talent' in The Sociologist’s Dojo retrieved at https://thesociologistsdojo.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-sociology-of-nicolas-cage.html Retrieved on 5/11/26

___________ 2025. “When Reality is Stranger than (Dystopian) Fiction: The Narrowing Gap between Narrative Dystopias and Trump-Era Policies.” in The Sociologist’s Dojo retrieved at  https://thesociologistsdojo.blogspot.com/2025/08/when-reality-is-stranger-than-dystopian.html Retrieved on: 5/15/2026

___________ 2026. "I Will Not See The White City Fall:" Billionaire's Obsession with 'The Lord of the Rings' and the Cultural Laundering of White Supremacy through Tolkien's Trilogy” in The Sociologist’s Dojo retrieved at: https://thesociologistsdojo.blogspot.com/2026/03/i-will-not-see-white-city-fall.html Retrieved on 5/16/2026

Bourdieu, Pierre 1987. Distinction: A Social Critique on the Judgement of Taste Boston: Harvard University Press

Cooley C.H. 1983. Human Nature and the Social Order New York: Routledge

Driessens, Oliver 2013. “Celebrity capital: Redefining celebrity using field theory” in Theory and Society 42(5) pp 543-560 retrieved at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258377783_Celebrity_capital_Redefining_celebrity_using_field_theory Retrieved on 5/19/26

Gale Keen, Richard, Monica McCoy and Elizabeth Powell-Dunaway 2012. “Rooting for the Bad Guy: Psychological Perspectives” in Studies in Popular Culture 34(2) 129-148 Retrieved at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260142449_Rooting_for_the_Bad_Guy_Psychological_Perspectives Retrieved on 5/14/2026

Goffman, Erving 1959.  The Presentation in Everyday Life New York: Anchor Books

Hakim, Cathrine 2010. “Erotic Capital” in European Sociological Review 26 (5) pp 499-518 DOI:10.1093/esr/jcq014

Lasch, Christopher 1979. The Culture of Narcissism: An American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectation New York: W.W. Norton Company

Simi, Pete and Robert Futrell 2024. American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement’s Hidden Spaces of Hate. New York: Rowman and Littlefield

Stanley, Jason 2020. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. New York: Random House

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[1] Though one could argue that the code itself fits that description with all of its restrictions on sex.

[2] Christian white supremacists have to keep the races pure after all

[3]  Mini Rant, and some spoilers for Invincible both the comic and the animated series: One villain redemption arc that I have been happy with has been Nolan Grayson Omni-man. Whereas the comics truncated this arc and made his overall redemption happen quickly, the show is taking its time and letting Nolan feel the weight of his actions. In season 4, when Nolan confronts Debbie (the first time after his murderous rampage at the end of season one that resulted in thousands of lives lost and her son, Mark beaten near death) unlike in the comics that sees their reconciliation happen over a quick three panel spread; the show is more cutting. In some of the most brilliant writing I have seen in the show, depicts Debbie rightfully laying into Nolan forcing him to realize that forgiveness and accountability can mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, after this scene they started to lay the foundation for Nolan and Debbie’s reconciliation. I aggressively don’t want that. I understand that redemption arcs can be done, and horrible characters can learn from their mistakes. But that doesn’t mean that all relationships can be mended. I believe that Nolan has cause Debbie such irreparable damage that their relationship is permanently obliterated. If they get back together, like they did in the comics, no matter how long it takes, it will seem disingenuous End of rant.