“But why do people like my villain?”
Past World War II, Nazis have pretty frequently been played by Jews. So it was with Hogan's Heroes, which began airing in 1965. My specific focus today is Werner Klemperer, who played the chief of the POW camp wherein the plot takes place, and in particular his stringent condition: His character was never to be portrayed, in any way shape or form, as competent.
Isn't this… a bit weird, though? Why wouldn't he ask for his character to be portrayed as a monster, a villain, a bad guy? I'd like to posit that Werner Klemperer was wise, and knew what he was doing. In particular, he understood the main thesis of today's article:
The villain shall never want for followers. Not so the laughingstock.
Hero or villain?
It happens very frequently in history that one side's hero is another side's villain. The most extreme example is probably Genghis Khan, who is idolised within Mongolia but not without. But… why is that the case? Aren't heroes and villains polar opposites? How can one be mistaken for the other?
What I am here to tell you is that heroes and villains are much more alike than different. In particular, they both, at the end of the day, get things done. Both heroes and villains are measured by their feats and achievements, and (equally importantly) by their ability to prevail over their opponents. All too frequently, the only distinguishing feature between them is… whether they're on your side or not.
Important side-note: if the main display of your hero's capabilities is the triumph over the bad guy, then said capabilities will be judged by comparison to the bad guy's. It follows that, if you want your hero to be seen as really competent, you will need to make your villain really competent also.
Why villains are hard to hate
With all that said… is it any wonder why people end up liking villains? After all, you need to have some serious virtues to achieve the sort of things that villains do. At the absolute minimum, they will inspire both admiration and respect, two things that arise naturally as a result of acknowledgement of another person's capabilities. The crucial thing to note, however, is that both of those things are completely orthogonal to liking the person or not! I myself can tell you two immediate examples of people whom I deeply respect and admire while also hating on a deep, visceral level.
Except… both of those two people are real. In fiction it is much more difficult for your villains to inspire personal hatred in the audience. Therefore, it's no wonder that a very common reaction to fictional villains is to be rather fond of them. The quintessential example of this is the contrast between Lord Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge:
- Voldemort is the most villainous character in the series by far. He also went from nobody to villain on his own wit, charm, charisma, and amazing magical prowess. His evil is motivated by his desire to realise his (sick twisted and villainous, of course) ideals of racial purity—that is to say, it is a means to an end.
- Umbridge is a villain with a far smaller scale. She is also far and away the most universally hated character in the entire Harry Potter universe. She is fairly incompetent, and mainly has her position due to kissing up to her superiors and stealing others' work. She also appears to enjoy bullying the weak—that is to say, her villainy is frequently an end in itself.
Seen through this lens, it is no wonder why Umbridge is hated more than Voldemort. A Voldemort boss and an Umbridge boss are both good reasons to flee a company, but at least with a Voldemort boss one doesn't need to worry about the company collapsing under one's feet while one is leaving.
“But why do people love my villain‽”
Nestled deep within the human soul is a recognition of external danger. In prehistoric times, this could have been the beasts that surrounded the tribe, or even the neighbouring enemy tribe. In modern times, it could be anything from a competitive company to an enemy state. Immediately from this, springs forth an appreciation for people who could be counted on to defend the tribe, if the need arises.
This is another big reason why it's so hard to really hate capable villains: A competent but evil person inspires, at the absolute least, faith in his/her ability to defend against external threats; in contrast, an incompetent person does not. For this reason, it is extremely hard to make a character both scary and loathesome. If anything, if you add up enough small mistakes, you can end up with a villain who's easily the most beloved character in your entire roster!
For example, let's take a villain who is extremely successful, capable, bombastic, larger-than-life, and very hard to out-smart. Such a villain is likely to be by far the most memorable and enjoyable part of a story, even more than your protagonists! And that's even if said villain has the moral low ground… add a sprinkle of protagonist-centred morality, such that the villain is not necessarily evil in what s/he does, and the audience will not just love the villain but also hate the protagonists.
Personal anecdote: There's a story I've read, where two friends transmigrate to a fantasy world, one of them slated to be the hero and the other slated to be the villain.
- The “hero” is liked by everyone and gets everything handed to him on a silver platter.
- The “villain” is shunned by everyone and has to fight for every scrap he's given. He's also way more intelligent, perceptive, and physically strong than the “hero”.
The end result is that, not only did I find the “villain” more likeable than the “hero”, I started skipping the “hero's” chapters so I can read the “villain's” story instead. That's nothing short of an abject failure on the author's part, if you ask me.
For a way better-known example: I'm fairly certain that, if you asked the public at large to choose which is the singular most iconic character in the entire Star Wars saga, the winner is going to be Darth Vader by a land-slide.
What makes a character loathsome, then?
The petty nepotistic tyrant. The millstone. The jerk. The leech. The traitor. The snivelling coward. All those characters have one thing in common: Not only do they never really accomplish anything great, they end up as obstacles to people who want to do so.
It follows that a loathsome character also has to be weak, in one way or another. Yes, the most important ingredient is evil—or, if not malicious and sadistic evil, at the absolute least an indifference to others and a love of oneself. Just as important, however, is the weakness that makes such a character incapable of even making for a compelling villain. See, once again, the comparisons between Voldemort and Umbridge, or anything regarding Joffrey Baratheon. In short: The presence of vice is not enough to make a character hateable; there must also be an absence of virtue.
And finally… the laughingstock.
The last category that needs to be addressed is the character that is so incompetent, so useless in everything, that s/he fails to even present an appreciable challenge to the protagonist. Such a character arouses neither respect, like the villain; nor hatred, like the millstone. What this character arouses is contemptuous laughter.
At this point, we can note a sliding scale of whom a character serves. The hero serves the greater good; the villain serves his side; the millstone serves himself only; and the laughingstock is incapable of serving anyone at all, including himself. As a result, nobody will ever want to associate with him.
Having established that, we can finally circle back to the original question: Why did Werner Klemperer insist that his character be a laughingstock? And the answer is: It was to make him so undeserving of respect or admiration that nobody would even dream of idolising him. Hitler was a villain, but Mussolini was a laughingstock; I can guarantee you that the past decades have produced hundreds of times more admirers of Hitler's than of Mussolini's.
Final anecdote: In another story I read, there was a country that had an election. The protagonists' plan to win the elections basically amounted to “Sure, our candidate is a laughingstock, but the other candidate is a villain!”. After all we've mentioned so far, it ought to be obvious that this is not merely an ineffective strategy, but a directly self-defeating one. The most reasonable reaction to such a claim is not “well we better ensure the villain doesn't come into power, then!”, it is “well then we better not get on the villain's bad side”.