Villains make for good TV and movie watching.
I'm not talking about movie monsters such as It or the predators in A Quiet Place, I mean those very unpleasant people who seem to populate many of the most popular television and movie dramas that seem to revel in the chaos they cause for everyone around them. Remember Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey) in the HBO political drama series, House of Cards? How about Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas), in the hit movie, House of Cards? And, for those of you of an older generation, there was J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame (played by Larry Hagman) and Alexis Carrington of Dynasty (played by Joan Collins). Whether or not these characters ever received the comeuppance we felt they deserved, they were inevitably the reason most people kept watching.
Certainly, given the appeal these characters seem to have for viewers, it's hardly surprising that Nthey crop up in so many television shows and movies. After all, watching movies and television shows are a major part of American culture. Not only does the average American over the age of fifteen spend three or more hours watching television, but over eighty percent of American homes subscribe to video-on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. While the kind of media content we enjoy changes from one generation to the next, characters that we love to hate continue to exert a strange fascination.
To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.
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