No, Fandom. I Don’t Sympathize with Your Favorite Villain — Here’s Why
In the summer of 2015, a then 20 year old Dylann Roof opened fire inside a Charleston, South Carolina church, killing a total of nine Black Americans. This atrocious act left many in the country shaken up, especially Black Americans. However, it did not take long for media outlets to detail his ‘troubled’ life at home and at school. Several stories suggested a struggle with mental illness. With so many left to process what had happened inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, it seemed strange that attention to these details would be spotlighted rather than the victims and their families.
In that same year, Disney would release the first of three Star Wars sequels, The Force Awakens. This installment of the franchise introduced Finn (John Boyega), a Black stormtrooper who escaped slavery under The First Order and joined The Resistance. Finn’s entire setup is significant to many Black audiences, as it reflects our history and our struggles. Ironically, however, fandom as a whole was drawn to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), the villain who murdered his father, exterminated an entire planet, and kidnapped and tortured Rey (Daisy Ridley), the female protagonist who they would soon be shipping him with. It did not matter that Finn was the one working through trauma to do the right thing in the end. Fandom seemed fixated on the mere suggestion that Kylo might have felt neglected by his mother and father.
There are some who believe it is silly to relate real life tragedies to what happens in fiction. Others believe that making comparisons between how fandom interacts with media and how people treat real life tragedies cheapens the trauma of the victims. But the reality is this — The behavior we see in fandom spaces quite often does reflect the behavior we see outside of them.
Fandom discussions are known to get pretty heated, but if you are of one or more marginalized groups, they can be especially uncomfortable. On a regular basis, a marginalized fan will run into conversations about how there’s just “something about” the characters who closely resemble them that fandom doesn’t like. Sometimes, we see these same fans bully the actors who portray them. Actress Candice Patton, known for her portrayal of Iris West on CW’s The Flash (2014-Present), has been the target of racial harassment since the show’s premiere. Similarly, Kelly Marie Tran, known for her portrayal of Rose Tico in Stars Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of the Skywalker (2019), stepped away from social media when she too became a victim of racialized bullying. Both Patton’s and Tran’s experiences are a cold reminder to marginalized fans, especially fans of color: No matter what improvements are made in the entertainment industry in regards to diversity, fandom still demands we justify our presence in these stories.
Sometimes, it gets a little uglier than bullying the actors. Fans can always come up with reasons they act aggressively towards them that have nothing to do with race, but there was no hiding what fandom really thought about Black lives when it came to the 2012 film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The character Rue was played by Amandla Stenberg. This did not sit well with the fandom who immediately took to Twitter to express that the character’s Blackness made them like her less or not at all anymore. Some went so far as to say her death wasn’t as sad with her being a Black girl. With such negativity surrounding characters of color, it should be no wonder why many of us are hesitant to engage with fandom.
With this in mind, no one should be surprised when fans of color among other marginalized fans resent conversations meant to encourage us to sympathize with villains who are known to hurt the characters who mostly resemble us. Perhaps we could sympathize a little with Kylo when it is revealed that his own uncle considered killing him, but that becomes difficult when we consider the fact that Finn escaped his enslavement and Rey lived alone on a desert planet and pretty much raised herself. Both characters worked through their own traumas to help The Resistance. Neither of them chose the path of murdering people. It can also be irritating when we remember that fandom never applied a similar energy towards discouraging people from bullying Tran or Boyega.
There is not a day that goes by that marginalized fans are not reminded that they are, in fact, marginalized. Many of us cannot get through most of our days without having to face some sort of microaggression, and when it hits the news that people who share our marginalization are targeted and killed, it’s a brutal reminder that many people not only dislike us, but actively hate us and want us dead. We should be able to enjoy media in peace as a break from that reality. We should be able to identify with the characters who resemble us without fandom trying to guilt us into sympathizing with their favorite villains. But it seems to happen with each new story where a character of one or more marginalizations is introduced. Fandom attempts to vilify said character while downplaying the (usually white) villain’s actions. How could we not see the similarities between how real life villains and fictional villains are treated?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t enjoy villains or problematic characters. I have my own share of favorites. But to expect everyone else to enjoy these characters the same way is a special kind of entitlement. It is exhausting to simply exist as a member of one or more minority groups, so it should not be too much to ask of fandom to allow us to enjoy our favorite stories the way we want. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for writers to consider that they don’t have to always give their villains room for sympathy, especially when they are known to attack the characters who most resemble us. And with the way this behavior in fandom mirrors the behavior towards men like Dylann Roof, Nikolas Cruz, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold, no one should be surprised when we get fed up and start calling people out on it.
