The Bad Guy Question

Sorry to have been away. It was end of semester and I lost track of my day to blog while reading student papers and getting my grades in. 

Douglas's Monday post caught my eye. I've thought a bit about The Sopranos and the bad guy question. As I may have mentioned here, I've been working on a book about the factual aspects of gangster films. The publisher asked me to do nine films and include The Sopranos as my tenth entry because of the TV series influence on popular culture.

I hadn't seen all of the episodes of The Sopranos  because I didn't have a subscription to HBO when it was on. I only caught an occasional episode when I was staying at a hotel during a conference. Even so, the show was popular enough that I was able to watch clips and read the commentary by critics and fans. With the book in progress, I decided to watch all six seasons. A daunting undertaking (86 episodes), but fascinating.

Tony Soprano and his crew presented me with a dilemma. It was the same moral dissonance that I experienced with the protagonists in the other gangster movies that I watched or re-watched. As Douglas noted about Tony and Christopher in The Sopranos, the display of humanity by characters who do really bad things can be disorienting. 

Michael Corleone in The Godfather does not intend to become a mobster. He has served in World War II and returned home planning to have a life outside the "family business". But when his father, Don Corleone, becomes the target of a rival crime family, Michael kills two men as they are dining in a restaurant. Sent off to Sicily, he marries and suffers the loss of his innocent young bride when one of his men plants a car bomb. Back home in America, his brother Sonny is ambushed and killed. Michael comes home, seeks out Kay, the woman who told he would never become a mobster, and persuades her to marry him. When Don Corleone dies of a heart attack while playing with his grandson in the garden, Michael steps into a role that his other brother is unable to assume. Michael becomes the head of his crime family.

Although many fans rate The Godfather, Part II as a even better movie than the first, I have to say that I find Michael Corleone unredeemable. He has settled too comfortably into his reign as don. He enjoys power too much. He is a dark character, ruthless, cruel. He is not a tragic hero, and I don't care about his fate. Oddly enough, Tony Soprano does worst things, literally has blood on his hands. But the life he leads give him panic attacks. He needs to see a psychiatrist to cope with his anxiety. I care about whether Tony will live or die, and still feel frustrated by the way the series ended. Was Tony dead or alive when the screen went to black?

Ray Liotta's portrayal of real-life mob soldier, Henry Hill, in Goodfellas is another riveting depiction of an incredibly violent man. But Liotta's voiceover narration is engaging. Liotta's Hill is unrepentant and jaunty. He normalizes the violence that he and the other mobsters engage in. He draws us into the subculture, makes us complicit as we root for him because he seems less vicious than other members of his crime family. 

Thinking about these two gangsters and the others in the films and the television series I've watched has been useful as I plotted my 1939 historical thriller. I have a character who is a bad guy. He cheats, he lies, he kills. But the deeper I go into his motivation, the more I understand his "why." The more I try to step into his shoes, the better I am able to understand why he is who he is. This makes my feelings about him more ambivalent. I want to be on the side of my protagonist, but I find my bad guy more complex. I need to restore balance between the two.

At any rate, Douglas's post has given me more to think about as I work on my bad guy's back story. I'll ponder the matter after I've enjoyed my Christmas dinner with friends. Speaking of food, that reminds me of the Liotta's detailed description of the meal he was preparing in between the errands he had to do to prepare his female drug courier for a flight she was scheduled to make. . . .

Happy Holidays, everyone!  I'll check in with you again in the new year. Wishing us all less stress and more joy.

How Much Violence?

We live in a violent world.  In books, movies, television shows, video games…the news.

Recently, there was a mass shooting at UNC Chapel Hill.  Two people were killed.

The mass shootings over the last few years have been horrific.  58 killed in Las Vegas in 2017.  49 killed in the Pulse nightclub in Florida.  32 killed at Virginia Tech in 2007.  That doesn't even count the terrible shootings in our high schools and and elementary schools.  I was ashamed that when I heard the body count at Chapel Hill, I almost felt a sense of relief that it wasn't higher.  That's just wrong.

The world is awash in violence, either man-made or from natural causes.  Wars, fires, famine, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes.

So, why do we enjoy reading mysteries?  They're inherently violent.  In almost all mysteries, someone dies. But the beautiful thing about a novel, generally speaking, justice is exacted by the conclusion.  The bad guys (or ladies) are uncovered and arrested or otherwise dispatched.

How much violence is too much?  It depends on the writer and it depends on the audience.

Late last year, I read Hank Phillippi Ryan’s mystery, Trust Me.  Death definitely has a seat on this bus, but her book is far from being violent.  It’s a excellent psychological thriller. It quietly pulls you along with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat.  The gore level is very low and the storytelling is topnotch.

At about the same time, I read Stephen Mack Jones’ first book, August Snow. Full disclosure, I liked it so much, I’m currently reading his second novel, Lives Laid Away.  The violence level is stepped up, but you’d expect as much when your protagonist is a retired Marine and an ex-cop. There are going to be fist fights and gun play and Jones makes it work without making it cringe-worthy. You genuinely like the characters and hope they live through their violent travails.

On the other end of the spectrum is Don Winslow’s new book, The Border.  At slightly more than 700 pages, it’s on a scale with Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. This book is raw, gritty, and very, very violent. But it’s about drug cartels, addicts, DEA agents, Mexican Federales, and dirty politicians. Is it for everyone?  Of course not.  Personally, I loved it.  Couldn't put it down.

My own Geneva Chase series has been described as dark and sinister.  But most of the violence in my novels takes place off the set.  You don’t actually see the violence, but you witness the aftermath and the ramifications.  And make no mistake, there will be at least one life or death struggle.

These are my personal rules on violence:

It can’t be gratuitous.  There must be a point to it.  That act of violence has to move the narrative forward or bring the story to its conclusion.

Limited gore. There should be enough to make it real, but don’t make it gore porn.

Don’t glorify violence.  Show it for what it is—ugly and scary.

Show the ramifications.  In Darkness Lane, Geneva Chase has discovered the body of a murdered man.  He’d been tortured and beaten to death.  The scene so rattled her that it keeps popping up in her head.  She keeps thinking, "His head was bashed in."  Over and over. Something akin to PTSD.

I’m fussy about the body count.  If I want to see a massive loss of life, I’ll watch Game of Thrones.

Speaking about violence, I’m glued to the television as the last episodes of Game of Thrones play out.  I love the series because of the character development and byzantine plot lines and no one is safe.

But it’s not for everyone, Cindy, my wife, won’t watch it because, in the very first episode, someone kills a dire wolf. Cindy saw that and she was out of the room.

Oh yes, one last Thomas Kies rule on violence.  It was the subject of an earlier blog.  Never hurt a dog.