Change of Good

In the postmodern era, concepts, notions, even ideologies that used to be concrete lost their precision. On the contrary to the clear point of view of modernism with linearity, postmodernism is circular and holistic. Thus, concepts like good and evil must not be seen as a total contrast. With the holistic approach of postmodernism, there can be evil in good and good in evil. In the popular fantasy texts that have been made especially in the last decade, this change easily can be seen in the characters. In this part, change of the good and the evil concepts in the fantasy genre will be examined in the context of postmodernism and developments in these concepts will be approached with the roles as hero, villain, anti-hero, anti-villain.

Sympathy for the Devil

John Milton, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, describes the expulsion of Adam and Eve from heaven, leading to the beginning of the oldest struggle. However, the representation of the devil in Milton's work, which is considered responsible for all evil in the world, is striking. The fact that Milton's devil's temptation has taken precedence over the story of expulsion of Adam and Eve is similar to Batman being overshadowed by the evil character Joker. Batman, who has many virtues and positive qualities as a superhero, has not impressed the audience as much as wicked Joker. But what makes the bad characters attractive to the reader/audience in Milton's Satan and the Joker? Is the Joker mentally ill? Is there a rebellion like the Satan's behind the Joker's malicious actions or is it possible to talk about a different motivation? The aim of this chapter is to explore the answers to these and similar questions by taking a journey through the psychology of evil. Thus, it will be possible to understand whether our admiration of bad characters is a reflection of the darkness within us.

Museum as Medium

This chapter first discusses how and why it is extremely difficult to define the concept of evil in theory and next analyzes why Goldberg's diachronic theory is useful in the study of evil. The authors explain how evil is fundamentally connected to the concepts of temporality and memory in the narrative universe of Museo. The intricacy of evil in the film is narrated through the metaphor of a museum. In this context, Museo's narrative gradually shows that each identity (or story) is limited by its scope of memory; and hence, each identity and their definitions of evil are different but somehow interrelated. As modern individuals, the protagonists have limited perception of history, loose connection with other cultures, and this leads them to commit an evil act. However, as in Goldberg's theory of diachronicity, when the museum brings several stories and temporalities together from different time spans, it becomes possible for the protagonist to question the motives of his evil act. Thus, Museo calls for a diachronic approach towards evil to challenge any form of ethnocentricity.

Cinematographic Ethics Within the Autonomy of Art

Pedophilia, which at the same time is considered as a sickness, was mostly handled in cinema history as an element of crime. Apart from the examples where the evil is punished, there also exists movies where the subject is handled but not named. And in recent past, movies that aim to empathize started to appear. These movies places pedophilia in the center, study the justifications behind actions and tries to establish sympathy. There are movies such as The Woodsman and Kind in which the main character is a pedophile, ones like Little Children where pedophilia is handled as a whole and ones like Nympnomaniac Vol 2 wherein pedophilia is elaborately scrutinized. Common trait of all these movies is the acceptance of pedophilia, which is coded as a state of absolute evil, as a reality and engaging in an effort to understand it. These four movies which, within the frame of autonomy of art and within the context of cinematographic ethics, empathize with a state that is opposite to moral norms are of importance regarding confrontation with parts of human nature that is considered evil.

Charming but Villain

In the history of cinema, bad girl/boy characters are less common than other villain characters. However, these characters have a lot of influence on the audience. The Bad Seed movies, which are important book adaptations, are remarkable for the evil done by a charming, pretty little girl. The audience watched the story of this eight-year-old-girl for the first time with the adaptation made in 1956. The book was adapted as a television movie in the US both in 1985 and 2018. However, it was made in Turkey, too. This adaptation was shot in 1963 by director Nevzat Pesen. This black-and-white film is considered one of the best thriller-horror films of Turkish Cinema. In this study, the relationship of the little girl with evil will be examined in terms of differences in US and Turkish adaptations. Thus, the difference between the two cultures regarding the relationship between child and villainy will be evaluated from the point of cinema.

Discussing Abstraction of Evil in Concreteness of Murder

Evil, one of the ancient problems humanity has faced, continues its existence within the intellectual occupations of modern people by discussing benefit-harm and means-ends as matters of debate and is addressed as an important theme with different perspectives in cultural areas. The film Elena (2011), directed by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, anesthetizes the evil in the context of material-moral interindividual relations within the structure of modern society, and opens it for discussion on the philosophical plane, allowing the evil to be the subject of abstract discussions in the context of concrete events. In this framework, the philosophical messages presented in Elena on good and evil are analyzed in the article, and the instrumentalization of evil to achieve the goal and the dynamics of doing evil for good are discussed in the context of subjective goodness thought.

From “Hero” to “Evil”

The security guard, who was the pioneer to prevent the suspicious package left in the entertainment area, was primarily declared as ‘hero' after the incident in Atlanta during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and then he was vilified as ‘evil' as a result of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and media representations about the incident. The incident was adapted into the movie Richard Jewell in 2019, directed by Clint Eastwood. The movie, in which Jewell's devastating life is narrated in the screenplay, is regarded as to be worth analyzing because the media reflects the witch hunt that Stanley Cohen defines as a moral panic. Consequently, the moral panic creation of the media is tried to be analyzed through the movie Richard Jewell in this study.

Banalising Evil?

2018 was the celebration year of the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, bringing power-sharing and much peace to Northern Ireland. Twenty years seem a fair distance to address the issue from a comical viewpoint. Lisa McGee's television show Derry Girls (2018) released in Channel 4, and recently in Netflix, seems to convey a nostalgic and caustic outlook at the 1990s during the last years of The Troubles and focuses on the lives of a gang of four Irish teenagers growing up in the setting of Catholic Derry. This chapter will interrogate the banalization of evil conveyed by McGee by tackling the representation of evil and violence in Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

On Witches and Chic Evil

The Love Witch is a 2016 American film directed by Anna Biller. It tells the story of Elaine, a witch whose lovers happen to die one after the other. The film presents itself as a feminist view on gender roles and the dichotomy of femininity/masculinity. In this chapter, the author discusses the idea of evil and how it is portrayed in the film. Sociological and psychological perspectives are presented. The analysis shows that the main character can be viewed as a societal deviant or as a person struggling with a traumatic past, thus explaining her behavior that can be attributed to evil. Nevertheless, the film presents a novel view on feminine evil, showing that it is different, and it should not be compared with the masculine one.

Gendered Spaces of the Devil

This chapter analyzes the representation of the subject-forming processes of female characters in the Lucifer TV series through the characters' relation with space and how ‘evil' is presented here as the distortion of the traditional forms of these relations. In doing this, Deleuze's Baroque House is used as an allegory. The chapter thus highlights that creative ways taken in the series which is about the story of the ‘devil' on earth, in order to represent subjectivity not as a solid identity but as a process that is constantly being constructed and deconstructed. Authors thus suggest an alternative interpretation of the series by focusing this construction's relation with the space and highlight the multi-folded and permissive nature of the relation between femininity and space, that is often though within quite solid categories.