Moral Ambiguity and Certainty

I was watching an interview with a comic on that channel that interviewed Wil Wheaton and Jonathan Frakes.   I forget the comic's name but he was talking about how he had a real disdain for movies that had to give the villains a backstory.   It's a not so surprising reaction from a comic.  He was talking about Horror movies and though partly, I would agree, it's not a real agreement in the sense that I think he means.  If he had specified that he was tired of the convention of the bad guy, evil guy, who had to have some kind of relatable back story, then yeah, that can seem contrived and somewhat obviously "tacked on".   But even if I felt tired of seeing this convention, from a theory standpoint, it could be useful to unpack what's going on in terms of the movie's messages and subtext.  

Where I don't agree is in the idea of maybe needing moral certainty.  The bad guy should just be the bad guy.  Where this comes into deeper focus for me is in the idea that certain actions are unquestionably justified, that they should be able to just charge forward against the monster.  It's a kind of ideology that allows a moblike behavior to express itself.  "The Monster Are Due on Maple Street" is the Twilight Zone that comes to mind.  That certainty is what allows certain awful public and political acts to occur.  A kind of rabid moral certainty can lead to zealotry and urgency that leads to Kangaroo courts and unfair punishments.  Part of the horror of the zealotry is that people can end up inventing monsters, accusing innocent people, forcing people to act in ways that they normally wouldn't.  It takes away the mirror from ourselves and casts what would seem to be a healthy self-reflection onto the victim of suspicion and object of scrutiny.  It is the emergency state of mind.  

The thing about supplying the monster or villain a backstory is that it doesn't necessarily make the monster more relatable in some respects.  You can have an understanding of the monster without necessarily feeling like you have to totally abandon the idea that the monster needs to be eliminated but it potentially makes everything more "messy" (the protagonist may end up doing things that are morally ambiguous or which bring up the question of whether the ends justifies the means)  or you can feel a sense of pathos and tragedy.    

(to be continued....)