Good vs. Evil: Picking up from a cliffhanger…
When last we met, oh no! Good vs. Evil mythology had crept into the very moral makeup of our society! It suggests we can reduce complex issues into simple heroes and villains. And we started to look at how these stories surround us even from childhood, with the example much on my mind as a father: Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants and Dog Man. The essays of “A History of Evil in Popular Culture“, edited by Packer and Pennington, give examples of works that expose the complexity beneath the surface when it comes to good and evil.
The essays in this book focus primarily on adult-intended works. Their foray into child-focused works addresses Disney films (of the era of Walt himself). As should come as no surprise, Disney films have not generally had much problem portraying villains from step-mothers to dog-killers as caricaturishly evil. Some recent Disney has brought more complexity, however. Traditional heroes can be the source of harm through narcissistic bravado (Maui in Moana) or self-righteous ignorance (Gaston in Beauty and the Beast). Traditional villains can be loving and foster healing (Abuela in Encanto). The Little House on the Prairie series, while perhaps facing many criticisms from a modern reading, recognized at least some of the hypocrisy of colonist mentality. It did not attempt to whitewash or hide it. Graphic novel series like The Witches of Brooklyn also provide positive explorations of our good and bad effects on each other.
Good vs. Evil: The cognitive dissonance of seeing grays
For those of us who grew up idolizing Atticus Finch, we were challenged, with the publication of Go Set a Watchman, to dig beneath good and evil. Much of the anger about the sequel was put to questions of literary merit. I think this is a cop-out. The anger is primarily about the cognitive dissonance of having one of our mythical heroes given more complexity. People don’t generally get that angry about shoddy writing. We do get angry when our own goodness is challenged. Many people (including me) identify at least part of their own morality with Atticus. To see Atticus fight powerfully for rights, but then find out that his fight has problematic limits, brings a painful discovery.
Don’t get me wrong: I still love To Kill a Mockingbird. But Scout’s age perspective for each of the novels is telling. In Mockingbird, Scout is a little girl, caught up in the cultural mythology of good vs. evil. In Watchman, she is old enough to question the simplicity of these myths.
Are we providing good models for our children?
If, in our common societal conversations, we actually grapple with the humanity and suffering of all peoples, then I’m happy to laugh off a stock villain like Professor Poopypants, and hope that George and Harold learn humility as they get older. And to enjoy the potty jokes, situational irony, and silly literary puns that Pilkey uses throughout (these can be lots of fun!). There will always be a diversity of narratives across a culture. But for all the positives available, I’m not sure that humility is present in the dominant narratives of our American culture.
When I look at how we talk, publicly, about tensions between Republicans and Democrats, or extremists in Israel and Palestine, with both communities, particularly the Palestinians, caught between, I hear the good versus evil narrative loud and clear. [**Note: I am not implying moral equivalence for all of these various groups. I am implying these are all humans who suffer and deserve compassion.]
Good versus evil children’s stories find resonance in our national politics, in our national spiritualism. In our national message of America as the ultimate source of good in the world. Where our harms are repeatedly excused as acceptable collateral damage. Mortal Kombat never made me go hit someone. However, has it made me more ready to excuse our culture’s violence as just part of how things are?
Some positive examples of addressing this false dichotomy
[SPOILER ALERT: please skip to the summary section to avoid spoilers for The Good Place, Ted Lasso, and a few Marvel movies.]
Good vs. Evil: Ted Lasso
Two of my favorite TV shows of recent years, The Good Place and Ted Lasso, actively play with this theme. They aim specifically to subvert it. In Ted Lasso, Jaime Tartt started off in hot water morally, and became an enemy at the end of season 1, only to become an ally during season 2. While the show already humanized him in season 1, making this an easy shift to accept, I think the arc for Tartt laid excellent groundwork for the stickier arc of Nathan Shelley. We were involved in all the work put into supporting Nate. Also, he made the choice to defect (as opposed to Jaime being sent off by Rebecca). Consequently, we are being led down the path of seeing his departure as evil.
Personally, I was not worried. I knew what the show was doing and was ready for his rehabilitation across season 3. Through Nate, we get to see how hard it is to overcome those hurts. We see how easy it is to judge people who hurt others out of a need for security. You have to grapple even with the fact that Ted himself, in his desperate effort to be everything for everyone, hurt others in the process, such as Nate and his ex-wife, Michelle.
Good vs. Evil: The Good Place
In The Good Place, for all the trickery involved in season 1, the show never used any trickery when it comes to good and evil. (That is, once you recognize the duplicity of the actions of Michael and the other demons in season 1). Whether you look at Eleanor’s selfishness, the active harms being done by the demons, even Brent in season 4, everyone’s harmful actions are given context. (Trevor may be an exception, though I’m willing to be shown to be wrong.) One of the major themes of season 1 is to use the main characters (not just the quartet, but Michael, Janet, Sean, and others as well) to blast apart the notion of good and evil. Absolutely no one, for better and for worse, ends up where they started, morally-speaking.
Good vs. Evil: The MCU
Marvel movies have, at times, done well with subverting good versus evil tropes. In Black Panther, Kilmonger takes many destructive actions. But judging him becomes more complex when you recognize his very humane goal of alleviating systemic worldwide suffering. Even Thanos is humanized. Consistently, MCU does not shove off “collateral damage” as acceptable because the Avengers are “good.” They repeatedly face the real harms that are being done. We are shown the hate it creates, and future problems that come out of it. (Why the MCU ultimately failed when it came to the Scarlet Witch is a question for a different time.)
Can children understand grays?
Children’s literature has good examples, too. However, there’s a common misconception that children are not ready for or need to be protected from complex, moral issues. These contexts often get whitewashed or erased, and this is seen as necessary for what children can handle. This comes out of psychological theories, such as that of Piaget. It has long been assumed that children start with a concrete understanding and build an abstract understanding. However, more recent evidence suggests that Piaget had this (to some extent) backwards (e.g., Gopnik, 2012). Children start out abstract, open to all sorts of possible connections when creating stories to understand the world. They are then taught to define boundaries and lines in various ways, and become more concrete.
Children have been shown to demonstrate a highly complex interest in and understanding of morality from a very young age (see the documentary McIntyre & Thalenberg, 2012). How we shape these rudiments to build empathy and compassion is crucial.
Perhaps we adults should take a lesson from our abstract children, and recognize that morality is much more complex than good vs. evil. We can then see each other as partners in tackling difficult issues, rather than enemies.