It is common to grow up with the idea that ugliness is equivalent to evil, just as beauty presupposes goodness. These equivalences have been transmitted and sedimented, with few exceptions, in cultural products intended for children and youth for centuries. Let us think, if not, of the visual and literary representations of ogres, witches, demons, beasts, monsters and, more recently, zombies, orcs and characters like Sauron, Voldemort or Darth Vader.
But is this still the case today? What physical traits do we associate with evil in contemporary stories?
Analyzing the children’s and young adult novels awarded in Spain from the years 2015-2023, we discovered surprising trends.
The hour of handsome men
The first thing that is striking is that the vast majority of the antagonists and villains in these novels are male: only two of the 23 novels awarded the main prizes between 2018-2020 have a female antagonist. The underrepresentation of female antagonists in narratives for children and young people is, incidentally, a phenomenon that transcends borders.
On the other hand, the distribution of sexes for the protagonists of these same novels is more equitable. What then are our assumptions about masculinity that are revealed in this anomalous proportion of male antagonists? Is it inevitable that the stereotype of the aggressor antagonist has more physical strength and is of great size or height, characteristics invariably associated with the male body?
Strength and violence seem to go together in a part of the cultural stereotype that is reflected in children’s and youth narratives. The male body is thus posed as a potential threat and, in several cases that we have been able to analyze, to represent the social reality of gender violence. Today, it seems that it is narratively easier (or less thorny?) to give negative and evil characteristics to men than to women.
Secondly, we have found that, along with that prototypical ugly, monstrous and evil antagonist, it is common for antagonists with a pleasant physical appearance to appear today. These characters are described as handsome, strong, and are associated with thinness and height. Furthermore, in novels for young people they are also attractive and even seductive. From this it follows that the new cultural model transmitted by novels about the male body not only resides its power in physical strength, as we said, but also in the attraction (sometimes sexual) that it arouses.
Likewise, from a storytelling point of view, this attractive antagonist gives more play to the plot. The reader normally starts from the traditional expectation of an “unpleasant antagonist”, so widespread in all types of cultural products (the villain of superheroes, the ogres of popular tales), assuming that psychological characteristics are incorporated into bodies. Thus, the “attractive antagonist” is unexpected, he does not see it coming, and this makes it possible to prolong the intrigue.
It’s all in his eyes (and his smile)
How then do you know that a character is evil? Is there any clue in the literature itself? Yes. We have discovered that there are general subtle traits that characterize antagonists in many of the descriptions made of them.
First of all, we find an ambiguous smile. Normally it is a gesture that is framed as a positive trait, but the way in which authors characterize the smiles of some of these characters already gives indications of their antagonistic role. This is how you see descriptions like “his best weapon: the smile”, “shark smile”, “a smile that gave him an interesting bad boy appearance”, “insulting triumphant smile”, “crooked smile”, “his smile exasperates me », «haughty smile», «mocking smile», «Eugenio’s new smile […] of cynicism and inconsideration”, etc.
Secondly, they have as a common characteristic an intense, penetrating gaze, which also makes one suspect the evil side of the character. «One of his intense looks», «eager pupils», «he had something in his gaze, something disturbing», «sharp gaze», «fierce eyes», «that way of looking at me as if he wanted to open me up to inspect me from the inside», « a look that stabbed you like a knife”, “little black eyes that questioned everything”, “that mysterious look” are some of the descriptions that we can extract.
Alert notice
Children’s and youth literature implicitly shows readers how it is socially acceptable to think, believe, feel or act.
In this way, we believe that the answer to the question of how literature embodies antagonists or malevolent forces in flesh and blood (although fictional) characters says a lot about the social and cultural interpretation that we give to the body.
Ultimately, the fact that these new bad guys have an athletic and attractive body could be telling young readers that anyone can be a threat – it doesn’t matter if they don’t have a hideous physical appearance – so they should be careful and alert. Especially with men.
This article has been published in «The Conversation«.
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