Name: I Wear the Black Hat
Rating: 3.7 (15 reviews)
Author: Chuck Klosterman

What’s in it for me? Get a grip on villainy.

Have you ever wondered how the name “Hitler” became synonymous with “evil,” even though Mao killed at least four times as many people? And why do we consider Batman a hero whereas real-life vigilantes are often labeled as dangerous outlaws?

These blinks will explore the role of villainy in modern society and culture.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

why George Bush probably won’t be remembered as a villain;
how criminality and villainy relate to one another; and
why fiction changes our perception of villainy.

“Goodness” and “badness” are just figments of our imagination.

How do you decide whether someone is “good” or “bad”? It might seem easy to decide if we believe that a person is born either good or evil. And yet, there are actually more philosophical reasons behind the way we perceive villains.

After all, our own definitions of “good” and “bad” are generally biased as they are constructed on cultural concepts, concepts generated through our shared understanding of history, the stories we were told as we grew up, and the heroes and villains in them.

For example, history and stories have taught many Americans to believe that Russians were somehow “bad” by nature. And yet, many Russians held the opposite belief due to their own society’s definitions of “good” and “bad.”

Philosopher John Rawls came up with a thought experiment to explain why we are incapable of having an unbiased definition of “good” and “bad”: the so-called veil of ignorance.

Imagine that you’re given the opportunity to play God and create a brand new society from scratch. You could make whatever laws or social conventions you want. But the catch is: once the new society is created, you’ll enter into it as a brand new person with no way of knowing what position you’ll be in. You might be homeless, a refugee or a terminally ill person with completely different morals from the person who designed the society you now live in.

With this veil of ignorance, you would probably try to create a society that is as fair and as “good” as possible for everyone. But this begs the question: is it really even possible to define a society which every person would see as “good”?

For instance, a traumatized refugee is likely to have a completely different concept of “good” and “bad” than someone born into a rich family who has only known privilege and wealth.

The term “Machiavellian” is closely related to villainy – for seemingly good reasons.

When you think of the term “Machiavellian,” you might think of a villain who is deceitful and scheming in order to obtain power.

But when author Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his influential book, The Prince, he was not setting out to create an instruction manual on how to be “bad.” Modern scholars have suggested that The Prince may have been a criticism of the political practices of his time.

Even drug dealers and plane hijackers can be considered heroes.

When it comes to criminals, our first instinct may be to cast them off as “bad” people since they are willfully breaking the law. Yet, throughout history and in popular culture, we’ve often labeled criminals as heroes, not villains.

That’s because criminal behavior isn’t synonymous with villainy.

If Batman were real, we’d probably consider him a villain.

Another great example of the disconnect between hero and villain is the character of Batman. If you imagine a world where the Batman comics had never been released, what would you think about reports of a man in a weird suit beating people up?

In fact, we usually consider real-life vigilantes as being just as “bad” or worse than the criminals they‘re fighting against.

Challenging the status quo can make people consider you a villain.

What do Perez Hilton and Kim Dotcom have in common? Both have been very successful in beating the competition to be at the forefront of modern information distribution. But while their success has brought them fame, it has also brought them infamy.

Perez Hilton isn’t only considered a villain for being an online gossip blogger – after all, it was his job to report on the sordid details of the Hollywood elite. In fact, he helped validate the online blog format as a profitable medium. However, he eventually became infamous for posting nude photos of teen celebrities with improper captions and outing gay celebrities without consent.

Key ideas in I Wear the Black Hat