Anti-hero vs. Villain: Where's the line?

[Fiery Diamond]

A conversation with a coworker got me thinking about how not everyone seems to have the same definition of anti-hero. For me, an anti-hero is a "dark hero," a "hero willing to cross the line." Someone who does bad things for good reasons. Need information this baddie has to save lives? Torture is on the table. That sort of thing.

I've come to realize, though, that some people have a much, much broader definition of anti-hero. The conversation that brought this up was about a character I had come up with that I described as a villain who only targets other villains. His catchphrase is "I have but one creed: do evil unto evil." He doesn't, say, torture bad people to get info to help people, he tortures bad people just because he hates them for being bad. Sure, he may try to twist some arms to get people to stop doing whatever evil things they're doing or to make restitution, but that's not WHY he targets them. And his scope for "acceptable targets" is pretty broad, from criminal mooks to crime bosses to CEOs to politicians. If he were in the real world, for example, he'd target the leadership of Monsanto.

My coworker said, after hearing the catchphrase: "So, an anti-hero then." But I disagree. The character isn't "evil for a good cause," he's "evil to people he sees as evil." He's not heroic, and he has no delusions that he's heroic. He even calls himself a supervillain (he has superpowers). I'd say he's firmly in villain territory, just a villain that isn't necessarily hateable if you agree with him about his targets.

What does the playground think? Agree with me, or my coworker? Where do you draw the line between anti-hero and villain?

[Aedilred]

I think that "true" anti-heroes are characters who are protagonists, acting in what would normally be a heroic role, but the way they accomplish their role is unheroic. Classically, a character sets out to save the world (or is roped into saving it), but breaks rules, commits crimes, kills without mercy, and so on, because the ends justify the means.

I think it's debatable whether a character who is in pretty much every respect a villain, but the protagonist of the story, is an antihero or not. I'm thinking of characters such as Harry Flashman, or Moriarty and Moran in the Kim Newman parodies. On TV Tropes, which is not the final arbiter of such matters but is probably as close as we're going to get, they would probably be called villain protagonists.

The definition is more of a problem when it comes to secondary characters, because they are not always obviously identifiable as protagonists. Where an anti-hero starts getting worse, too, and their intentions become less positive, it can be hard to judge if they are still antiheroes or whether they have crossed the line into outright villains.

I'm also intrigued by the idea of (again, TV Tropes) the opposite, the "antivillain", an antagonist whose goals are villainous but who do not behave in a villainous way. The classic example is Cardinal Richelieu from the Three Musketeers novels, who in most adaptations has been turned into a much more overtly villainous character because otherwise for a lot of audiences the story really feels at times like it's missing a bad guy.

In general I agree with you, but it's a vague term and seems to be getting vaguer with time.

[paddyfool]

The motives of an anti-hero can often be pretty neutral (e.g. "get rich", for the likes of deadpool etc).

Also, the same character can serve as both villain and antihero, depending on who's writing. Plenty of comic book villains have been given their own arcs as antiheros. Plenty more characters who've progressed from one to the other.

[Razade]

I think "Killing innocent people" is a pretty good line.

[Ninja_Prawn]

This one has 'your mileage may vary' written all over it. I think Aedilred has provided a solid analysis of the subject. The term is definitely getting used more and more loosely as time goes on - it may well end up being completely meaningless.

Part of that may be protagonist-centred morality, and the fact that almost no-one sees themselves as a villain within their own mind.

For me, too many characters get labelled as anti-heroes when villain-protagonist or token evil teammate would be a better description. It doesn't seem right to call a character who is clearly evil a 'hero'.

[veti]

I think a "villain" is, by definition, not a protagonist. If the protagonist of a story is a bad person, then that's an anti-hero. If the story is well told, you will sympathise and may even find yourself rooting for the anti-hero, but you would never admire their behaviour or hold them up as a role model.

My favourite example: Harry Flashman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Flashman). The character was originally a straightforward villain in a (19th-century) novel, then promoted to anti-hero of his own series in the 20th century.

[hamishspence]

The trope still gets described:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainProtagonist

When your protagonist is capital V Villainous (say, a Sith Lord), then "anti-hero" doesn't really fly.

Villain Protagonist isn't on the "Anti-Hero list" here:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiHero

[Rynjin]

Anti-heroes do bad (but not too bad) things for good reasons. When it comes to the line between good and evil, they might edge one standard deviation from that line in the evil direction on occasion, but always because it's the best (r only) way to accomplish what they need to in their eyes.

Anybody who does bad things for bad reasons (or way too bad things for good reasons) is a villain. "Because I enjoy inflicting pain on others and these are acceptable targets" is a bad reason, and inflicting gratuitous pain is a bad thing. Therefore, a villainous action. Dexter Morgan is not a hero, anti or otherwise. Him being a murderer for fun is not excused by him only going after other bad people, even discounting the fact that he's a manipulative, emotional abusive rapist (read the books...okay technically he was drugged when he did that but he didn't regret it).

[Frozen_Feet]

The definition of hero I've given in the past, if I remember it right, was "a character who does great things while embodying virtues of their culture".

An anti-hero is a character who meets one criteria while failing the other: either they do great things while failing to be virtuous, or they fail to do great things despite their virtues.

Typically when perusing a work of fiction, there are at least two perspectives on a character: that of the author's and that of the consumer's. They don't always match. This is especially true when the culture of the author and the consumer are different.

War heroes are the easiest case study. Most war heroes do the same sorts of things (they take great personal risks to murder scores of opponents), but who they do these things for decides whether the character is a hero or an anti-hero, as the war heroes are seen as fighting for the values and virtues of their side. "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" and all that jazz.

(Note: distinquishing between anti-heroes and villains is something of a modern conceit. Anti-hero literally means "opposite to/opposed to a hero". This distinction was caused by modern people using the word "hero" as synonym for "protagonist". So Anti-hero changed to mean "a protagonist who lacks traditional heroic virtues".)

[thamolas]

The definition of hero I've given in the past, if I remember it right, was "a character who does great things while embodying virtues of their culture".

An anti-hero is a character who meets one criteria while failing the other: either they do great things while failing to be virtuous, or they fail to do great things despite their virtues.

Typically when perusing a work of fiction, there are at least two perspectives on a character: that of the author's and that of the consumer's. They don't always match. This is especially true when the culture of the author and the consumer are different.

War heroes are the easiest case study. Most war heroes do the same sorts of things (they take great personal risks to murder scores of opponents), but who they do these things for decides whether the character is a hero or an anti-hero, as the war heroes are seen as fighting for the values and virtues of their side. "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" and all that jazz.

(Note: distinquishing between anti-heroes and villains is something of a modern conceit. Anti-hero literally means "opposite to/opposed to a hero". This distinction was caused by modern people using the word "hero" as synonym for "protagonist". So Anti-hero changed to mean "a protagonist who lacks traditional heroic virtues".)

Terrific answer. I don't think I could have answered this question as well as you did. :redface: