Why We Root For Some Antagonist Portrayed in Film, Literature and Article

Why We Root For Some Antagonist Portrayed in Film, Literature and Television - Article Example Why we root for villains and antagonists is a manifestation of morbid curiosity. Most people want to know something they rarely knew about or just heard about in whispers such that the more you deny these villains and antagonists, the more people are attracted to them. It certainly defies logic why this is so but then again the human mind is really hard to fathom. The enduring attraction of Count Dracula attests to this unusual curiosity. Villains become the fodder of speculations and conjectures but more than that, there is the abiding yearning effort to know more just for the sake of knowing; it seems knowledge is its own reward. People go to great lengths to visit his old castle in Transylvania and spend plenty of dollars there. Psychologists and sociologists attribute this unhealthy and unwholesome fascination as sort of an unexpressed death wish. Yes, people can sometimes really have this unusual and inexplicable wish which they are not even aware of. This is why black films or film noire has made a comeback in Hollywood. This death wish is the exact opposite of the survival instinct but as to why people can have this trait, nobody knows exactly. Some posit the idea this is the form of sexual inversion, a pseudo-sexual attraction of an opposite (Ellis 288). There are many plausible reasons why we root for antagonists and villains despite how much we know about their bad or undesirable side. This can be due to their being authentic. Antagonists, whether in literature, film, television, and even in real life (such as Hitler) are the kinds of people who are true to themselves, no matter what the odds are against them. Society is against them and yet they still pursue their dreams, do what they want, or persist whatever it is that drives them even if public opinion is definitely against them. Perhaps there is a hidden sense of communal grief when people prefer the macabre over what is