Johnathon Michael's The Rise Of An Anti-Hero

Why it that society seems to be shifting their interests away from the morally perfect protagonist to one of ongoing issues and a “flawed moral character” (Johnathon Michael, “The Rise of an Anti-hero). Johnathon Michael explores this phenomenon in his article “The Rise of an Anti-hero.” I think Michael perfectly exemplifies why people are far more interested in the anti-hero when he writes “The world included far more shades of gray, and the characters on the silver screen needed to reflect a broader view of morally acceptable behavior. Traditional heroes were just far too un-relatable,” (Michael, “The Rise of an Anti-hero). I believe that there are three key reasons to why the world seems to be more attracted and interesting in following

While the Superhero stories are comforting because you know that somehow he will always save the day, this is just not realistic. Take a book like The Watchmen, a suspenseful graphic novel written by Alan Moore. This book contains a compilation of many super heroes. These superheroes, however, are not your everyday squeaky clean cape morally correct superheroes. The one superhero who I feel truly embodies the idea of an anti-hero is Rorschach. Rorschach comes from a troubled childhood, his mom being a prostitute and being put in the foster care system very young. He is extremely troubled and emotionally messed up from his childhood, which causes him to hate his true identity, Walter Kovacs. Rorschach wears a mask over his face whenever he is in Rorschach mode, and he only feels powerful when he does so. This is a psychological way for him to hide who is truly is as a person, forgetting his past and his childhood. Rorschach is extremely violent, and when he catches a bad guy, it is not enough for him to just turn them into the cops like Superman would, but he would take it into his own hands to mutilate or torture the character. For example, when Rorschach caught his first criminal, the man who murdered the young girl and fed her to his dogs, he set the man on fire. This almost makes him stoop to the level of the murderous criminal, just it is justified because he is

Humans often love the idea of crime and adventure, but live to mundane of lives to actually experience these thrills. People almost get emotionally involved in the lives of these anti-hero character just for the buzz and pleasure of the dangerous endeavors the characters associate with. For example, Walter White from “Breaking Bad” breaks free from his boring and average life to become the most feared and threatening drug lord of all. People love to watch this show with no notion of wanting to become him, but with every intention of associating with the excitement of his new life. Middle class working men love the idea of becoming someone who is feared and dreaded, but they would never muster up the courage to actually become this person. A quote from the show that perfectly exemplifies the transformation of Walt is when he says to his wife “I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!” (Vince Gilligan). This is why vicariously living through anti-heroes has become so popular in this day and age because people are able to become this invisible character in the hour that they are watching the show. They can feel the dangerous and horrifying emotions of Walter White but then as soon as they turn the TV off they have the