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This always perplexed me. With Mad Men and Breaking Bad too, people idolized the main characters, which is interesting not only because they are bad people but

This always perplexed me. With Mad Men and Breaking Bad too, people idolized the main characters, which is interesting not only because they are bad people but because they are deeply unhappy, too. There's something extremely surface-level about people's takeaways from film characters. They want a certain level of panache that the characters can muster, but they ignore that even the characters themselves are miserable.

watwut 8y ago
That might have also to do with how movies are made usually. If you really think about it, most detectives in detective stories abuse power and do things that cops really really should not. But, we are supposed to suspend reality and root for them. Same with action movies - main character does a lot of damage to everyone around, steal cars, hurt innocent people and we are supposed to ignore that. Happy end involves massive fight in the middle of city that would displace thousands of families. And so on and so forth. People take the usual expected reading of movies and apply them to these too. It is possible to make movies differently. I have seen movies that made me feel bad about violence and events and that made it clear that "this is not a cool thing". But the movies mentioned here are not like that - they sort of criticise it but are still made so that we feel happy about them. They show events from the point of view of perpetrator, but not much from point of view of their victims.
- gowld 8y ago
  It's not just movies. Real life attitudes toward war are similar. Hawks advocate for fighting, especially fighting on foreign shores, with little regard for collateral damage. And that attitude is far older than movies, so movies didn't create that attitude, though they may reinforce it.
- LandR 8y ago
  To your point its possible to make movies differently, there is a game called spec ops that is very subversive of the military shooter genre. Where other games want you to feel cool shooting and killing people spec ops constantly wants you to feel bad about your actions, at one point asking "do you feel like a hero yet? " Very good game.
  - 794CD01 8y ago
    People like the idea of it when they read about it online, but it sold poorly and the few people who played it didn't enjoy it.
    - LandR 8y ago
      I one of these few people who played it, I really enjoyed it. Thought on hardest difficulty it was a really good challenge.
    - gowld 8y ago
      The subversive games that teach a moral lesson to a player can be great, but they work best as short one-time plays, which isn't great for commerce. There's not a lot of replayability in subverting your own expectations.
    - __david__ 8y ago
      I liked the game as a shooter but I thought all the moralizing was ham fisted nonsense. It was incredibly obvious what it was doing and it didn't affect me the way it seemed to affect a lot of other people.
  - watwut 8y ago
    I heard that "this war of mine" is similar in that regard. You don't kill people tho, you manage survivors.
gowld 8y ago
Were Draper and White unhappy because of their actions in the shows, or where they already unhappy and their actions in the show were them making the best of it? They both had a tragic backstory (child abuse, cancer) before the show started. Maybe other hurting people identify: Better to be a drug kingpin than just waste away into nothingness.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  That's a very good point. They may or may not be making the best of their circumstances, but they're certainly trying to break out of "something" pre-existing.
- the_af 8y ago
  At least in the case of Breaking Bad, you can sort of believe Walter White at the start of the show is "making the best of a bad situation" but then he indeed "breaks bad" and turns into a genuinely bad and selfish character. He is terrible to Jesse, he lets innocent people die. Something similar happens with Vic Mackey in The Shield: he starts as a morally grey antihero (if you forget he's a cop killer, of course) but gradually turns into something else. He's selfish, murderous and in the end doesn't really put his friends first, contrary to what he claims. He's a fascinating character, but not someone we should root for! (But we still do!)
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > Maybe other hurting people identify: Better to be a drug kingpin than just waste away into nothingness. It seems like this is an obvious read, right up until I see people mystified by these shows. "Better to be hated than pitied" is a simple enough sentiment, and if it comes alongside direction and certainty than all the better - even the certainty of having no way out. Most people don't actually do that, thank god, because they have consciences. But it's simple enough to understand "I want to just commit to something, anything, and stop feeling empty" as a principle. Hell, Jim Profit literally slept in a cardboard box every night and people wanted to be him.
  - gowld 8y ago
mundo 8y ago
There's a fascinating TLP article on this very topic[0]. Here's the most relevant bit: * The reason TV sociopaths are admired is that they are on TV. They have a story. Do you really admire Tony Soprano? Which part? His loveless marriage to a crazy person? A mistress who is even crazier? His gigantic belly and panic attacks? The fact that no one actually likes him? That his daughter was dating a black guy? ("I wouldn't have a problem with that." Yes you would if you were Tony.) What part do you admire? The answer you tell yourself is you admire his power, that he can do whatever he wants. No he can't. The whole show was nothing but repeated examples of how limited his options were. The things you think you admire-- having hot sex with the other crazy woman at his psychiatrist's office, eating microwaved Sysco at Italian restaurants, avoiding his wife-- can be done by anyone, you don't need to be Tony to do it. But when you do it.... it just doesn't feel the same. I know. What people admire about Tony isn't his freedom; that thing you think is freedom is actually the lack of freedom. His story. His identity-- that he has one, an obvious one, a clear one. Tony Soprano is not free, his behavior is completely tethered to what makes sense for his character. He acts exactly like Tony Soprano would act. That's what people want: the limitations of that identity: if I know who I am, I know what I am capable of, I know my strengths and my limits, I know how I'd react to unknown dangers. And I want other people to know this. If other people know who I am, I wouldn't have to keep proving myself. Strike that: I wouldn't have to prove myself in the first place. * Translating to the present topic, what makes Jordan Belfort attractive is not his role as "rich stock trader crook" or the cars and yachts that go with it, it's that he has a role and is confident that that is his role, as opposed to, let's say, oscillating between "Maybe I should start day trading" and "Maybe I should write the great American novel" and "Maybe I should write an indie game" but never doing any of them because that would remove the option of doing the other ones. 0: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/why_we_love_sociopaths.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/why_we_love_sociopat...
- ForRealsies 8y ago
  Not surprising, hell the reason why real life sociopaths/serial killers have admirers is because they were plastered on the news.
- majos 8y ago
danso 8y ago
Haven't watched "Mad Men", but I think part of the appeal of Walter White was that his character, being the show's main character, was also the most well-written and nuanced which almost necessarily leads to him being the most sympathetic. The reality that he was unhappy is more than outweighed by the fact that he was living out carpé diem rather than surrendering to terminal illness.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  I think your on to it. But can we just say that people and characters aren't just "good" or "bad". I want to be Don Draper because he is handsome, well dressed, and extremely intelligent. That doesn't mean I want to do everything negative he did. Although I wouldn't mind being able to drink at work. When kids play Batman, one of them has to be The Joker. It could be that they like clowns or the color purple. It doesn't have to mean that the child is murdering cats in the backyard.
- Lionsion 8y ago
  > Haven't watched "Mad Men", but I think part of the appeal of Walter White was that his character, being the show's main character, was also the most well-written and nuanced which almost necessarily leads to him being the most sympathetic. The reality that he was unhappy is more than outweighed by the fact that he was living out carpé diem rather than surrendering to terminal illness. One other thing is that he had great talent and competence as a chemist, which was often on full display. Many of the other characters in the show had no clear talents, or if they did, they it was more background or reputation than something clearly shown. I think any character that shows extreme talent will attract fans, regardless how evil or unhappy they are, because people will divorce the talent from the other attributes and admire it on its own.
  - danso 8y ago
    Not only great talent, but unrecognized and unused talent -- he was working as a schoolteacher and at a car wash. And there were allusions that he had been cheated of his fair share of a prosperous company.
stevenwoo 8y ago
I disliked Don Draper from close to the start of the series ( I hate watched it...) and disliked Walter White after he killed SPOILER's girlfriend by neglect until maybe the last episode of Breaking Bad (the unfolding trainwreck was compelling), and was pulling for Tony Soprano and Nuckie Thompson to die after the first seasons (those pesky survivors to the end at least).
harimau777 8y ago
I think that some of it is that many people who identify with these characters are themselves deeply unhappy and don't believe that there is no hope for them to ever be happy. From that perspective, it is logical to conclude that if you are going to be unhappy either way then you might as well be cool/tough/glamorous/rich.

watwut 8y ago

That might have also to do with how movies are made usually. If you really think about it, most detectives in detective stories abuse power and do things that cops really really should not. But, we are supposed to suspend reality and root for them. Same with action movies - main character does a lot of damage to everyone around, steal cars, hurt innocent people and we are supposed to ignore that. Happy end involves massive fight in the middle of city that would displace thousands of families. And so on and so forth. People take the usual expected reading of movies and apply them to these too. It is possible to make movies differently. I have seen movies that made me feel bad about violence and events and that made it clear that "this is not a cool thing". But the movies mentioned here are not like that - they sort of criticise it but are still made so that we feel happy about them. They show events from the point of view of perpetrator, but not much from point of view of their victims.

gowld 8y ago
It's not just movies. Real life attitudes toward war are similar. Hawks advocate for fighting, especially fighting on foreign shores, with little regard for collateral damage. And that attitude is far older than movies, so movies didn't create that attitude, though they may reinforce it.
LandR 8y ago
To your point its possible to make movies differently, there is a game called spec ops that is very subversive of the military shooter genre. Where other games want you to feel cool shooting and killing people spec ops constantly wants you to feel bad about your actions, at one point asking "do you feel like a hero yet? " Very good game.
- 794CD01 8y ago
  People like the idea of it when they read about it online, but it sold poorly and the few people who played it didn't enjoy it.
  - LandR 8y ago
    I one of these few people who played it, I really enjoyed it. Thought on hardest difficulty it was a really good challenge.
  - gowld 8y ago
    The subversive games that teach a moral lesson to a player can be great, but they work best as short one-time plays, which isn't great for commerce. There's not a lot of replayability in subverting your own expectations.
  - __david__ 8y ago
    I liked the game as a shooter but I thought all the moralizing was ham fisted nonsense. It was incredibly obvious what it was doing and it didn't affect me the way it seemed to affect a lot of other people.
- watwut 8y ago
  I heard that "this war of mine" is similar in that regard. You don't kill people tho, you manage survivors.

gowld 8y ago

Were Draper and White unhappy because of their actions in the shows, or where they already unhappy and their actions in the show were them making the best of it? They both had a tragic backstory (child abuse, cancer) before the show started. Maybe other hurting people identify: Better to be a drug kingpin than just waste away into nothingness.

simonsarris 8y ago
That's a very good point. They may or may not be making the best of their circumstances, but they're certainly trying to break out of "something" pre-existing.
the_af 8y ago
At least in the case of Breaking Bad, you can sort of believe Walter White at the start of the show is "making the best of a bad situation" but then he indeed "breaks bad" and turns into a genuinely bad and selfish character. He is terrible to Jesse, he lets innocent people die. Something similar happens with Vic Mackey in The Shield: he starts as a morally grey antihero (if you forget he's a cop killer, of course) but gradually turns into something else. He's selfish, murderous and in the end doesn't really put his friends first, contrary to what he claims. He's a fascinating character, but not someone we should root for! (But we still do!)
Bartweiss 8y ago
> Maybe other hurting people identify: Better to be a drug kingpin than just waste away into nothingness. It seems like this is an obvious read, right up until I see people mystified by these shows. "Better to be hated than pitied" is a simple enough sentiment, and if it comes alongside direction and certainty than all the better - even the certainty of having no way out. Most people don't actually do that, thank god, because they have consciences. But it's simple enough to understand "I want to just commit to something, anything, and stop feeling empty" as a principle. Hell, Jim Profit literally slept in a cardboard box every night and people wanted to be him.
- gowld 8y ago

mundo 8y ago

There's a fascinating TLP article on this very topic[0]. Here's the most relevant bit: * The reason TV sociopaths are admired is that they are on TV. They have a story. Do you really admire Tony Soprano? Which part? His loveless marriage to a crazy person? A mistress who is even crazier? His gigantic belly and panic attacks? The fact that no one actually likes him? That his daughter was dating a black guy? ("I wouldn't have a problem with that." Yes you would if you were Tony.) What part do you admire? The answer you tell yourself is you admire his power, that he can do whatever he wants. No he can't. The whole show was nothing but repeated examples of how limited his options were. The things you think you admire-- having hot sex with the other crazy woman at his psychiatrist's office, eating microwaved Sysco at Italian restaurants, avoiding his wife-- can be done by anyone, you don't need to be Tony to do it. But when you do it.... it just doesn't feel the same. I know. What people admire about Tony isn't his freedom; that thing you think is freedom is actually the lack of freedom. His story. His identity-- that he has one, an obvious one, a clear one. Tony Soprano is not free, his behavior is completely tethered to what makes sense for his character. He acts exactly like Tony Soprano would act. That's what people want: the limitations of that identity: if I know who I am, I know what I am capable of, I know my strengths and my limits, I know how I'd react to unknown dangers. And I want other people to know this. If other people know who I am, I wouldn't have to keep proving myself. Strike that: I wouldn't have to prove myself in the first place. * Translating to the present topic, what makes Jordan Belfort attractive is not his role as "rich stock trader crook" or the cars and yachts that go with it, it's that he has a role and is confident that that is his role, as opposed to, let's say, oscillating between "Maybe I should start day trading" and "Maybe I should write the great American novel" and "Maybe I should write an indie game" but never doing any of them because that would remove the option of doing the other ones. 0: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/why_we_love_sociopaths.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/04/why_we_love_sociopat...

ForRealsies 8y ago
Not surprising, hell the reason why real life sociopaths/serial killers have admirers is because they were plastered on the news.
majos 8y ago

danso 8y ago

Haven't watched "Mad Men", but I think part of the appeal of Walter White was that his character, being the show's main character, was also the most well-written and nuanced which almost necessarily leads to him being the most sympathetic. The reality that he was unhappy is more than outweighed by the fact that he was living out carpé diem rather than surrendering to terminal illness.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
I think your on to it. But can we just say that people and characters aren't just "good" or "bad". I want to be Don Draper because he is handsome, well dressed, and extremely intelligent. That doesn't mean I want to do everything negative he did. Although I wouldn't mind being able to drink at work. When kids play Batman, one of them has to be The Joker. It could be that they like clowns or the color purple. It doesn't have to mean that the child is murdering cats in the backyard.
Lionsion 8y ago
> Haven't watched "Mad Men", but I think part of the appeal of Walter White was that his character, being the show's main character, was also the most well-written and nuanced which almost necessarily leads to him being the most sympathetic. The reality that he was unhappy is more than outweighed by the fact that he was living out carpé diem rather than surrendering to terminal illness. One other thing is that he had great talent and competence as a chemist, which was often on full display. Many of the other characters in the show had no clear talents, or if they did, they it was more background or reputation than something clearly shown. I think any character that shows extreme talent will attract fans, regardless how evil or unhappy they are, because people will divorce the talent from the other attributes and admire it on its own.
- danso 8y ago
  Not only great talent, but unrecognized and unused talent -- he was working as a schoolteacher and at a car wash. And there were allusions that he had been cheated of his fair share of a prosperous company.

stevenwoo 8y ago

I disliked Don Draper from close to the start of the series ( I hate watched it...) and disliked Walter White after he killed SPOILER's girlfriend by neglect until maybe the last episode of Breaking Bad (the unfolding trainwreck was compelling), and was pulling for Tony Soprano and Nuckie Thompson to die after the first seasons (those pesky survivors to the end at least).

harimau777 8y ago

I think that some of it is that many people who identify with these characters are themselves deeply unhappy and don't believe that there is no hope for them to ever be happy. From that perspective, it is logical to conclude that if you are going to be unhappy either way then you might as well be cool/tough/glamorous/rich.