Anantihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero)[1]oranti-heroine is a main character in a narrative (in literature, film, TV, etc.) who may lack some conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality.[1] Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers morally correct, their reasons for doing so may not align with the audience's morality.[2]
Antihero is a literary term that can be understood as standing in opposition to the traditional hero, i.e., one with high social status, well liked by the general populace. Past the surface, scholars have additional requirements for the antihero. Some scholars[who?] refer to the "Racinian" antihero, who is defined by several factors. The first is that the antihero is doomed to fail before their adventure begins. The second constitutes the blame of that failure on everyone but themselves. Thirdly, they offer a critique of social morals and reality.[3] To other scholars, an antihero is inherently a hero from a specific point of view, and a villain from another.[4] This idea is further backed by the addition of character alignments, which are commonly displayed by role-playing games.[5]
Typically, an antihero is the focal point of conflict in a story, whether as the protagonist or as the antagonistic force.[6] This is due to the antihero's engagement in the conflict, typically of their own will, rather than a specific calling to serve the greater good. As such, the antihero focuses on their personal motives first and foremost, with everything else secondary.[7]
editU.S. writer Jack Kerouac and other figures of the "Beat Generation" created reflective, critical protagonists who influenced the antiheroes of many later works.
Literary Romanticism in the 19th century helped popularize new forms of the antihero,[14][15] such as the Gothic double.[16] The antihero eventually became an established form of social criticism, a phenomenon often associated with the unnamed protagonist in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.[8] The antihero emerged as a foil to the traditional hero archetype, a process that Northrop Frye called the fictional "center of gravity".[17] This movement indicated a literary change in heroic ethos from feudal aristocrat to urban democrat, as was the shift from epic to ironic narratives.[17]
The antihero entered American literature in the 1950s and up to the mid-1960s as an alienated figure, unable to communicate.[26] The American antihero of the 1950s and 1960s was typically more proactive than his French counterpart.[27] The British version of the antihero emerged in the works of the "angry young men" of the 1950s.[9][28] The collective protests of Sixties counterculture saw the solitary antihero gradually eclipsed from fictional prominence,[27] though not without subsequent revivals in literary and cinematic form.[26]
^Laham, Nicholas (2009). Currents of Comedy on the American Screen: How Film and Television Deliver Different Laughs for Changing Times. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co. p. 51. ISBN9780786442645.
^Brereton, Geoffrey (1968). A Short History of French Literature. Penguin Books. pp. 254–255.
^ abHardt, Michael; Weeks, Kathi (2000). The Jameson Reader (Reprint ed.). Oxford, UK ; Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. pp. 294–295. ISBN9780631202707.
^ abEdelstein, Alan (1996). Everybody is Sitting on the Curb: How and why America's Heroes Disappeared. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. pp. 1, 18. ISBN9780275953645.
^Reese, Hope (11 July 2013). "Why Is the Golden Age of TV So Dark?". The Atlantic. Retrieved 31 October 2021. A new book explains the link between the rise of antihero protaganists and the unprecedented abundance of great TV (and what Dick Cheney has to do with it).
