The Year Villainy Won | WIRED

Irrational self-belief is one of the reasons villains resonate so deeply in culture, says Kevin Wynter, a media studies professor at Pomona College. “In a repressive society like ours that advocates conformity to better cultivate consumers, characters who actively reject the trappings of capitalist fantasy or who operate with the codes of a self-taught morality in opposition to the dominant society will inevitably be attractive. so we don’t all want to admit it openly,” he says.

Today, traditional notions of evil have been replaced by complex, sometimes paradoxical, standards of what different groups find acceptable or threatening. Wynter believes this has led to a “post-villain world”. Tech moguls (Elon Musk), politicians (New York City Mayor Eric Adams), podcasters (Joe Rogan) – for many people, they are the primary offenders of our time (and heroes, to others). They are anti-establishment. They want to subvert “the system”.

“There are few, if any, villains who so skillfully combine clowning, wealth and power as Donald Trump,” adds Wynter. “Even his new parasitic attachment, Elon Musk – who, again, to some is a figure of perfect evil is to others a scary futuristic cowboy.”

It’s about the future, you never know exactly how it will unfold, or who will be favored. For some, artificial intelligence was the cardinal antagonist of 2024. In Hollywood and the gaming industry, AI has revealed itself as more of an existential threatas many workers hurried over the loss of jobs.

Others, feeling lost as social media undergoes a sudden transition, have just pointed the finger at digital gentrifiers. “I’m mad that everything that was fun and useful on the internet 10 years ago is broken now. This site, obviously,” Tracy Chou, an app developer, published on X. “Magazines are lies of the astroturf. research is ai hallucination. no place to share with friends and family without influencer / meme / polarized content that exceeds the feed.”

In times like unprecedented as oursall the angst and turmoil, a reorientation towards the real offender reads less shocking when you consider it part of a larger societal reframing. Evil has long permeated the cultural imagination—the American tradition, after all, was built on the sensibilities of mavericks, vigilantes, and underdogs—but in 2024 it has morphed into a main character.

For what? It could be that villainy, more than heroism, offers a different texture of purpose, one closer to reality, one that sees our world for what it is now – deeply screwed up – and responds accordingly.

What I can say for sure is that evil has no particular loyalty. Eventually it consumes them all. In December, it was announced that Warner Bros. Discovery had canned Sesame Streetthe long program for children. Understandably, the decision did not go well. On Bluesky, the social media app of the moment, @valhallabackgirl fired with a fury that many people have had this year as well. “I think this is my villain origin story,” she said he wrote.