Scorpius

Q: WHO’D YOU PICK?

A: When I was first invited to this blog, I immediately thought of SCORPIUS, from Farscape, a TV Show that aired in the US on the SciFi (now SyFy) channel. Though only introduced at the end of the show’s 1^st season, he quickly came to dominate that show and tv movie that wrapped up the series.

Q: HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT SELECTING HIM?

A: I wanted to use my first selection to focus on a Villain who is obviously a Villain, a Melodramatic, or operatic Villain. And, I believe that Scorpius is a Post Modern take on just that type of villain. From the Suit, which is all black, to his monstrous visage, everything about Scorpius screams “I’m the bad guy.”

My hope is that this obvious quality will allow me to more easily extrapolate the general truths of villainy that Scorpius points to.

Q: WHO IS SCORPIUS AND HOW DOES HE FIT INTO THE FARSCAPE UNIVERSE?

A: Farscape is a show about an astronaut named John Crichton who, like Dorothy in Oz, is shot across the universe, via a wormhole in space.

The part of the universe John, the hero, finds himself in is ruled by a fascist state of humanoids, called ironically enough, “The Peacekeepers.” Scorpius, when we first meet him, runs a black ops / science program, so he’s in a position of great power. His mission is to create a new weapon for defeating the Scarrans, the chief rivals to the Peacekeepers in this part of the universe. The weapon he believes will tilt the balance of power between Peacekeeper and Scarren harnesses, of all things, wormholes. And though his first meeting with John is accidental, Scorpius’ sole focus after their encounter is to get John.

Scorpius is a half breed, with his mother being of the humanoid variety that inhabit this aspect of space (they call themselves Sabaceans.) His father is Scarren, a reptilian / humanoid blend, who rapes her. Being a half-breed means he’s rejected by both the Scarren and Peacekeeper ethos, as both sides value species purity. If that seems to contradict his being in a position of power, the show exploits this contradiction to show Scorpius’ talent for strategy, manipulation and ingenuity.

Q: WHAT KIND OF VILLAIN IS SCORPIUS?

A: The beauty of Scorpius as a villain is that he’s not just one type of villain; he doesn’t fit into just one category. Scorpius blends a few categories, and the writers put a few twists on these categories to create something quite new and unique (and as they say in the show, “Unique is always valuable.”)

Category 1: Monster - Just from looking at him, we can see this. From his skull-like face, to his deformed body, monstrous strength, resistance to pain and uncanny ability to know when someone is lying, Scorpius oozes monstrosity.

Category 2: Evil Genius – Though he has super strength, Scorpius doesn’t want to use it, and seems genuinely embarrassed when these monstrous aspects shine through.

Scorpius’ chief asset is his intelligence. Like Lex Luthor or Moriarty, he’s a villain who defeats his opponent with his mind. In Farscape's 2^nd season, Scorpius literally tries to use his mind to defeat John by implanting a neural chip containing a clone of himself into John’s head, all to get at the knowledge John has.

Category 3: Cool Suited Villain - It’s kind of a subset of both Monster and Evil Genius, but this puts him in the same category of characters like Dr. Doom, Darth Vader. Like these other villains, the suit signals a great weakness that is overcome by the technology.

Q: WHAT MAKES SCORPIUS A GOOD VILLAIN?

A: In terms of plot, a villain is the force the hero smashes up against and stands between the hero and his goal. And Scorpius definitely fits the bill. He’s John’s equal in every way and in many ways, John’s superior. Plots on the show would often resolve with John gaining some small victory, only for it to be revealed that this victory also forwards Scorpius’ agenda in some way. Yet, this alone wouldn’t make him a great villain. Though it might seem obvious to say, a great villain must do villainous things. And here, Scorpius doesn’t disappoint. On first encountering John, he tortures him to get information. As stated earlier, when the information is hard to get, Scorpius installs a microchip into John’s brain, which contains a copy of Scorpius’ personality. Though revealed in a flashback, the imagery used to depict this implies a kind of rape.

In a literal way, Scorpius is behind John, holding a phallic-like object that he jams into John. While that’s monstrous enough, the coup de grace is the ‘neural clone’ or personality of Scorpius that lives in John’s head. Scorpius isn’t just inside John’s body, he’s in his head, his thoughts, and it’s a monstrous invasion. When Scorpius finally retrieves the chip, which has the information he requires, Scorpius leaves John alive, tied to a hospital chair, unable to talk. Since Scorpius is motivated by a desire for revenge, he leaves John in what he thinks would be the ultimate torment, in an impotent life of unfulfilled revenge.

As Scorpius prepares to leave the hospital, he sucks the brain matter that has clung to the chip, off, eating it like a delicacy. The suggestion of cannibalism is clear and these actions solidify Scorpius’ bona fides as a monstrous villain.

Another quality that makes Scorpius a good villain is his intelligence. He remains one step ahead of the hero and constantly surprises both him and the audience with his clever plans. In season 4, Scorpius, seemingly out of power, is buried alive in front of John, by a Peacekeeper Commandant, as a means of showing to John that Scorpius is no longer a threat. When Scorpius appears in the following episode, unharmed, he’s asked, “How did you survive?” His answer, “Foresight. And preparation.”

We’re given no further explanation. Though a potential cop out, by this time in the series we’ve seen Scorpius get himself out of trap after trap, using his keen wit and insight, that we accept this explanation without hesitation. This line also shows another aspect of his intelligence that makes him a great villain: Scorpius is great at turning a phrase. Lines like this seduce the viewer into, if not liking Scorpius, respecting him.

In terms of character, great villains are mirrors of their heroic counterparts. In terms of plot, this means a good villain will have goal that they pursue and they may also have good and compelling reasons for their actions. This is definitely true in Scorpius’ case. Being a product of rape, and identifying with his Sabacean side, Scorpius’ goal is the destruction of those who created and tormented him and who threaten the rest of their universe. Though he’s a mirror, Scorpius is a dark reflection of John, so he’ll be willing to sacrifice anyone or anything, including his own dignity and safety, all to achieve his goal of taking revenge on the Scarrens. This dogged, Machiavellian dedication also compels the viewer and earns Scorpius admiration.

Like a hero, Scorpius isn’t a victim of his origins and circumstance, but instead actively tries to overcome them. His suit is a perfect example of this. Being half Sabacean means that he’s cold blooded, but being half Scarren means that he also craves the heat. His suit’s purpose, partially designed by Scorpius himself, is to regulate his internal temperature, which if left unchecked, could cause his death.

Scorpius reflects John in more literal ways too. Both are scientists, and both, in this side of the universe, are outsiders. Neither John nor Scorpius have a place in social order they find themselves in, but Scorpius lies, manipulates and ingratiates himself into that society while John tries to create his own, more egalitarian society. Where John is trying to use his knowledge for the benefit of all, Scorpius is trying to use that same knowledge to destroy.

Finally, Scorpius is like many great heroes of mythology, in that he’s a schism figure. These characters bridge two cultures and in their blending, create something greater than their parts. Moses, for example, is both Jew, by birth, and Egyptian, by upbringing. Superman is Man and Kryptonian. Hercules is Man and God. Scorpius is Sabacean and Scarren, but instead of these two cultures working together, in him they are at war. This conflict is externalized in Scorpius, with his Sabacean need for cold and his Scarren love of heat.

Finally, the last thing I’d like to touch upon in terms of what makes Scorpius such a great villain is what I’m calling execution. Unlike a purely literary character, whose execution is solely the product of a writer, Scorpius is created by a team: from costumer designers, make-up artisans, directors to the actor himself. Wayne Pygram, the man underneath the suit, did more than recite lines and was quite often an active contributor. An example of this can be seen in the 2^nd season episode, entitled, “Look at the Princess: The Maltese Crichton.” Near the end of the episode, John has Scorpius face down over a vat of acid, which just dissolved a Scarren. John tells Scorpius to stop his hunt and lets Scorpius live. After John has left, the camera lingers on Scorpius, alone. Though not in the script, Wayne decided to dip his gloved hand into the ‘acid’ and flick it off with the twist of his wrist. Of course, it does no damage to him at all, making the viewer revisit Scorpius’ previous encounter with John, and realize that Scorpius was never in any danger at all. The whole previous encounter was re-contextualized to be part of some greater plan by Scorpius, making him seem an even more clever and devious character than he was before.

According to Wayne, this addition inspired the writers to go even further in this direction with the character, giving him plans within plans. From the use of his voice, which would lower to a growl as the Scarren side would dominate or raise in pitch when his Sabacean side did, to his cold piercing blue eyes, which Wayne insisted be without contacts in order that nothing got in the way of seeing some humanity in Scorpius, Wayne infused Scorpius with an inner life and soul that makes him a great and compelling villain.

In conclusion, Scorpius is part Monster, part Mad Sceintist, part Hero, wrapped up in a bad ass suit. He’s smart, deceptive, witty and ruthless. He chases the hero, sometimes even protecting him in order to take revenge on his real enemy, those that created and tormented him, threatening to destroy all other life, the Scarrens. As created by those behind the show, Scorpius becomes a singular figure, an adjective, an idea that, like the neural clone, lives in the viewer’s head, whispering things we’d rather not hear. As it should be, with any great villain, he is smiling, damned.

The Joker

Batman's nemesis, The Joker, behaves in exactly the same way as the playing card that inspired him: he's a mysterious figure who spreads random havoc by his very appearance. The character has been reimagined many times (seventy years of multi-media continuity being what it is, it's difficult to call it an 'evolution'), but those basics have remained: the grinning lunatic of mysterious providence who causes mayhem for little more than its own sake.

The Joker was originally a pyschopath who would poison victims with a strange toxin that left them dead with a hideous smile on their faces. In the post-Wertham 50s and 60s, he became little more than an annoying a clown whose modus operandi was to set up some kind of ridiculous robbery caper, laugh, get beaten up by Batman and delivered to the police. Locked up in Arkham Asylum, he would then escape and then we're back to square one. Cesar Romero's ultra-camp performance as the Joker in the 1960s BATMAN TV show was difficult to take as any kind of serious threat.

In the hands of a succession of writers, the Joker slowly had his teeth restored, starting with Denny O'Neil and culminating most famously in the Alan Moore/Brian Bolland story THE KILLING JOKE, in which the Joker cripples Barbara Gordon, daughter of the Commissioner and alter-ego of Batgirl; effectively restoring his status as a serious threat in Batman continuity. But even with this auspicious team behind him, the Joker was little changed from his original days. Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker in the 1980s Tim Burton movie is much more in line with this restored vision of the Joker, although he's as much Crazy Old Jack as he is the comicbook icon.

A number of postulated origin stories have been postulated for the Joker; most of which see him disfigured by falling into a vat of chemicals with the unlikely result of dyeing his hair green and his skin white). Many of these origins also show him running around as proto-supervillain "the Red Hood" prior to this accident. None of these different origins have stuck: I think that do pin a definitive origin onto the character would destroy his appeal. The power of the Joker is that you don't know from whence it came... but once it appears, all bets are off.

I believe that the most definite change in the character since the 50s came in the recent screen: the late Heath Ledger's portrayal in Christopher Nolan's 2008 film, THE DARK KNIGHT. This (deeply flawed) film has quickly become one of the most popular of Hollywood's comicbook adaptations, and I believe that this is entirely due to their handling of the Joker.

The Ledger/Nolan Joker raises the stakes in several ways. Ont he surface, they've substituted the chemical-bleached skin and hair for makeup. Smudged, smeared makeup, which fails to conceal the mutilated face beneath. Even the Joker's lips are scarred, and his speech is effected by the way he keeps licking them. This Joker is not a scary clown, he's a disfigured freak, and there is nothing remotely funny about his appearance. His jokes are not funny, either--he admits it with some pride. His jokes are not funny at all. Gone is the prancing, flamboyant Joker we've long since grown accustomed to. Gone the false English accent, the ridiculous props, then novelty weapons. The Ledger/Nolan is frightening and capable. This Joker won't surprise you with an exploding cigar... he will stab you to death with a ballpoint pen.

Ledger's Joker has no desire for material gain, all he wants to do is to spread chaos and madness for no better reason than because he can. He comes with his own conflicting set of origin stories, each of them nastier and more real than any of those postulated in the funnybooks--because this Joker has invented them himself.

Fiend Without A Face

"Fantomas."

"What did you say?"

"I said: Fantomas."

"And what does that mean?"

"Nothing...Everything!"

"But what is it?"

"No one...And yet, it is someone!"

"And what does this someone do?"

"Spreads TERROR!"

-Fantomas, 1911

Fantomas, the Lord of Terror, the Genius of Evil. Whatever his name, he (or she) is the ultimate archetype of villainy. No crime is too small, no act too depraved for Fantomas to contemplate, to undertake, to accomplish. He made it his mission to destroy the fabric of society for no other reason than that he could.

Put simply, Fantomas is the first super-villain. Born at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, on the eve of the bloodiest conflict the world has ever seen, Fantomas sprang fully formed into a world teetering on the edge of madness. To say that he did his best to push it over said edge is an understatement.

"He is totally ruthless, gives no mercy, and is loyal to none, not even his own children. He is a master of disguise, always appearing under an assumed identity, often that of a person whom he has murdered. Fantômas makes use of bizarre and improbable techniques in his crimes, such as plague-infested rats, giant snakes, and rooms that fill with sand."

Criminals like Professor Moriarty or Fu Manchu dominated the previous century, spinning Byzantine schemes and matching wits opponents of equal determination, if not skill. Fantomas' opponents could only scramble to keep up. His schemes were chaotic things, not the precision instruments of his antecedents, but rather a form of madness only recognizable after the fact.

His crimes were outrageous, daring and avant-garde...plague-infested rats released on an ocean liner, sulphuric acid hidden in the perfume dispensers of a famous Parisian department store, or the stripping of the gilded gold from the roof of the Invalides Dome each evening; a man hung by his feet inside a cathedral bell like a human clapper, raining blood, brains and bone down on the masses below, and forcing a judge to witness his own execution by placing him face-up in a guillotine.

Fantomas was everyone and no-one, everywhere and nowhere. A man, a woman, a devil...a phantom. He wielded an army of street-apaches, spies and saboteurs in a calculated effort to spread fear and terror across Europe and the world. There was no purpose to this, save that it was Fantomas' will that it be done. He was a satanic hurricane, a typhoon of terror, a nightmare without end.

In his wake came a host of imitators and disciples...Satanik, Diabolik, Kriminal, Demoniak, Sadik among others, though none would ever rival the first and most mysterious master of menace...FANTOMAS.

Mad Dog

Mad Dog is the most bad-ass of bad-asses in John Woo's unlimited-ammo cops-and-robbers masterpiece HARD BOILED. Given that HARD BOILED has more bad-ass per foot of celluloid than just about any other film ever made, that's really saying something. Even more impressive when you consider that the character of Mad Dog wasn't even in the script.

During shooting of the film, Woo decided that the primary villain Johnny Wong was not a threatening enough presence. Meanwhile,veteran actor/stuntman Philip Kwok's action scenes were impressing the hell out of everyone... and so the grizzled henchman Mad Dog was born. This genesis is, I think, the reason the character has such resonance--because he's so underwritten Kwok doesn't get to speak a lot of lines; the character exists almost entirely in the actor's physical presence. The quiet man in the melodrama; the one actor in the opera who does not sing.

Woo's camera treats Mad Dog as a hero as often as a villain: striding down the gangway tossing his bike helmet; stalking implacably through a hospital with a shotgun in a flower box; Mad Dog is a consummate gun-for-hire. In a film that is people by uncannily skilled gunmen, Mad Dog has all the best moves--again, probably due to Kwok's stuntwork rather than to any planning by the director or his writing team.

Mad Dog is a born baddie, but he does have a code he follows--more one of professionalism than of honour, I think. When his boss Johnny steps over the line, Mad Dog turns on him. For Mad Dog this is not a shot at redemption; it's just the work of a true professional, trying to clean up the mess of a job gone wrong. It costs Mad Dog his life... but by then he's already made his mark.

The most hard boiled character in HARD BOILED is the one who wasn't even in the script.

The American Psycho

The most obvious quality that makes Patrick Bateman unusual amongst villains is that he's both the protagonist and the narrator of his own story-- AMERICAN PSYCHO by Bret Easton Ellis. (This article will concentrate on the novel, because Mary Harron's movie adaptation falls extremely close to the original text, but there is a lot of information missing.)

Bateman's story is a complete negation of Joseph Campbell's "Hero's Journey"--this 'hero' does not go anywhere, he does not overcome any obstacles, he does not learn anything. The book ascribes him a motto, found signposted on the places he frequents: THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. There's no way out for Bateman, and likewise, there is no way to escape him.

Bateman, from a distance, is a chiseled uber-yuppie who kills people for fun and pleasure. He's rich, educated, he has a job which affords him power and prestige without requiring him to do a speck of work. But as you zoom closer, a lot more... or, depending on how you think of it, at it, less... becomes apparent. Smash cut to appalling carnage or hideous banality.

Bateman is principally defined by a lack of identity: he is a shell of brand names, advertisinng slogans and business-management cliches built around a fleeting and unstable sense of self; a spoiled, blood-soaked avatar of American consumer culture. Although the book is written in the first person, it's six pages before we first hear an "I". The sudden revelation of the narrator's presence in the scene is startling and confusing. He has been standing there in broad daylight, whispering his version of events in our ear all along.

Bateman has no conscience, no capacity for reflection; just a void that he tries to fill with bloodshed, pornography and recycled opinions. He himself tells us that "There's nothing there"; on the few the only occasions on which he describes his internal state he feels "intangible", "like a ghost."

Bateman suffers from psychotic episodes and hallucinations. His ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality shaky at best: he discusses Ed Gein and Leatherface without even attempting to distinguish of them is real and which fictive. He admits that he is used to thinking of reality as if it was a movie, and his description of events often invokes the language of cinematic editing.

Bateman describes his own deeds in the same cool and graphic tone that he discusses movies, pornography or even pop music, and, in fact, accords them equal importance. On the one single occasion where Bateman finds himself in danger, that present-tense narration narration slips into third person as he loses his id altogether--geography and time seem to bend and loop as his faculties depart. But Patrick is nothing if not resilient: after every episode he manages to claw his way back to the nominal level of sanity required for him to participate in normal society. The revelation of just how little is required is perhaps the book's most disturbing facet.

Bateman's crimes are usually wrought upon victims below his social class, with the exception of Paul Allen-- a business rival he believes to be a threat to him (a laughable thought, given the amount of attention Bateman puts into his actual job). He does occasionally spare those who regard him with affection--out of confusion more than anything.

There is only one person in the book that Bateman likes and admires: Tim Price, who Patrick describes as "The only interesting person I know." Tim, initially, is little different than Bateman and the rest of his shallow, yuppie friends: if anything he is even more arrogant and obnoxious than they are, but basically he is quite interchangeable with any of them. Bateman himself has difficulty telling some of his friends and colleagues apart, and is frequently misidentified for 'Marcus Halberstam'. But there is something different about Price: he disappears from the book for a lengthy period, and he returns from his sojourn (rumoured to be rehab) a changed man, daubed with the ashes of penitence (although Bateman may be the only one who can see this).

Price has become more aware of what is going on in the world and he's disturbed by it: he demonstrates a new awareness that people are not always what they seem and a sense of outrage at the lies and evil perpetrated by his (explicitly American) society. Price has returned to the fold, but he has grown as a person and it seems unlikely that he will stay. Bateman admires this, although he does not properly comprehend it. In the end, Bateman remains unable to see the door beneath the sign:

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.