Because of the nature of forgiveness, any disdainful attitude on the part of the forgiver cannot exist. Resolution always implies a positive, face-to-face interaction ending in an improved relationship between two parties. This outlook is unfortunately not the common understanding of forgiveness. Instead, it is often seen as something to be earned; an acknowledgment of inferiority on the part of the forgiven and an affirmation of superiority for the forgiver.
The cause of this error is easily observed in contemporary entertainment, and especially in mainstream film. There is a character from Greek mythology who serves as a good illustration of this destructive pattern. Without retelling the story in its entirety, I will describe the attributes of Medusa which are most important to the following discussion about Hollywood’s unfortunate rejection of the virtue of reconciliation.
Medusa was formerly beautiful and pure of heart, with golden hair and a devotion to Athena, the god of wisdom, reason and purity. This loyalty meant remaining celibate. However, her romantic affection for Poseidon, the god of the sea, and her subsequent infidelity to the vow she took to Athena, led to a curse. Athena made every lock of Medusa’s golden hair a venomous snake, her enchanting eyes became bloodshot, and her immaculate white skin turned a repulsive green. Rejected by the world, her character began to match her appearance, and she became a villain whose gaze turned her victims to stone. She is the personification of evil.
In the end, she is beheaded by Perseus, descendant of Zeus, humble and honourable, strong and brave, a vanquisher of evil.
This is Hollywood’s tactic, and the reason it works so well on most consumers is unfortunately due to our own dark and self-righteousness understanding of forgiveness. The Western film industry loves to create villains because it knows that we love to see them defeated. Every tyrant seen on screen is appealing precisely because they are so much worse than the majority of viewers. It is uplifting, in a disordered way, to know that we could never be as bad as Scar from ‘The Lion King’, which is why it is not only our sense of justice that is satisfied when he is defeated, but our ego as well.
The result of writing these kinds of antagonists is that one is never encouraged to see them as redeemable characters, but only as misfits to be eradicated or at least shunned. This is especially obvious in the cases of bad guys whose pasts we know. If, at some point during the story, we learn that the reason this particular antagonist is acting wrongly is because of something in his/her past, and if, at the end of the story, they are mercilessly killed or rejected, the message is clear: there is no hope for hurt people.
The effect of such an attitude is obvious. Every wrong action is pasted over the one who commits it as if they themselves are the embodiment of that action. Someone who is dishonest is nothing more than a liar; someone who takes advantage is nothing more than a user; someone who molests is nothing more than a pervert. Now, it is true that those who have these habits are liars, users and perverts, but it is untrue to say that they are “nothing more”. No one is as flat a character as that, and though this in no way justifies the actions, no one who has committed wrongdoing (read: everyone) would find it fair to be seen in this light. Unsurprisingly, applying this logic in favour of the villains in our own lives is difficult, to say the least.
After all, Medusa was not slain by another evil, but by one of the most noble characters in Greek mythology, Perseus. He is our authority, and our enablement to condemn. The protagonist, who is often unrealistically good, makes a statement when he kills the evil beast, that those who are good do likewise. Therefore the prevailing philosophy is not one of understanding, but one of dismissal. Stories that feature such basic foes are a large contributor to the perpetuation of this damaging way of thinking.
It is not just Hollywood that is guilty of this, of course, but it is certainly a prominent example of an industry taking the easy way out by creating unsophisticated antagonists and using moral relativism to appeal to a shallow ethic. Thus, we are more conditioned to act according to whether or not we believe our enemy to be deserving of pardon, and less inclined to practice forgiveness for its own sake as a biblical command.
Creating rounder adversaries in a story encourages a rounder view of them in the real world. My mind jumps quickly to foreign film for examples of this. In many Japanese animated films, for instance, the antagonist is often ambiguous because of the reasonableness of their motives, as with San and Lady Eboshi in ‘Princess Mononoke’; or they are only temporary antagonists who experience a change of heart, as is the case with No-Face in ‘Spirited Away’. The moral journey seen in these dynamic characters makes an important statement, which is that a) people who act wrongly usually have many contributing factors influencing their moral condition and b) they are extremely redeemable and forgivable. This stands in stark contrast to what is often seen in Western film.
If we look at the life of Jesus (as we should make a habit of doing), we see a man who actively loved every person who the world saw as a villain: tax collectors, prostitutes, thieves, traitors and murderers. Furthermore, we have biblical verification that each one of those who He chose to love were not beyond redemption. One tax collector became His disciple, and the other repaid those he had cheated fourfold. Mary Magdalene witnessed His resurrection. One of the thieves that was crucified next to Him was with Him in paradise that same day. Peter was forgiven for denying his Lord, and on him Christ built His church. Saul the persecutor became Paul the apostle. All of these character changes were initiated by the love of a God who refuses to see us as villains, a love which is present wherever one chooses to act it out.
The dominant philosophy is that love is reserved, and this is an idea that leads to opinion-based discernment as to who is deserving of it. It is in this way that we enable ourselves to withhold love from those who need it most, including Medusa.
Every piece of art has an artist behind it, and every artist has a worldview which influences their work, and, by extension, those who enjoy it. With this in mind, then, careful evaluation of all art is critical to resisting the instillation of damaging philosophies in the mind of the consumer. Furthermore, the consumption of media determines the substance of the media produced in future. Therefore, the only way to break the pattern is to modify the content commonly desired. But desire is in the heart, and for needs of the heart, we can look only to God.