Why does Evil mean Ugly?

Discussion in 'Debate Corner' started by SoraUchiha, Apr 2, 2010.

  1. White_Rook Looser than a wizard's sleeve.

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    Both are characterized by criteria that are highly up for debate. It's quite relative.
     
  2. Gobolo Traverse Town Homebody

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    One of the interesting things with the potrayal of a villian now, is that there is an essence of deception. Seduction has been covered pretty well in this thread. But if we take a look at the villian of the Watchmen story (only seen the movie), not only is the villian not bad looking, but he is able to convince everyone that he is on the right side.
    There are many characters like this - but im not going to list them all - in modern media.
     
  3. Radiowave ITSA PIIINCH

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    In some cases, when an evil character is ugly, it makes it easier for the audience to dislike him/her because they are visually unappealing and, even if it is shallow, we humans enjoy looking at pleasant things.
     
  4. Rexyggor_thenewmember Twilight Town Denizen

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    Ok.... well a lot of my main arguments will be Disney. (I don't have much more to go off of).

    Well... In my opinion, all the villains have to have some intellectual smarts, though it depends on how they approach the situations. I feel someone such as Jafar was very crafty in his ways, but Ursula was not. She was pretty straight forward. Yzma didn't seem to be all that crafty either.
    Granted that he's a lion and such, Scar looked a lot cooler than Simba. And then the other "evil" guy in the second movie wasn't so witty and looked a lot shaggier like he should have been.

    I mean I figure that the "beauty" would depend on the approach that those villains used.

    I mean yes this kind of does agree with the whole villain's beauty depends on how smart the character is. Though Gaston was pretty dumb and apparently handsome.
     
  5. Cherry Berry Chaser

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    Well, I guess firstly it all depends on how the writers portray the villains like... Some of them may have even had been good characters prior to turning evil. It doesn't all depend on the outside, but what's on the inside. Even the nicest of characters have a darker side to them, and they could prove to be the most surprising villain of them all. Take for example, The Usual Suspect. The guy who's telling the story makes it look like he's the victim (through the outside with his crutch and dumb act, and through the inside with his complex story), and the whole film is based on that story he's telling the detective. However at the end you realise that he had been lying the WHOLE TIME, and that the so called "Innocent" is actually the serial killer in disguise, and that he made a very clever escape just before everything was pieced together.

    With cartoons they are more likely to follow the stereotypes of evil, that the uglier/stranger character is on the outside and/or the inside, the more likely they would be able to pull off the sinful deed. You do not however, know full well for certain when you are watching thriller films.
     
  6. 9Kairi9hearts Twilight Town Denizen

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    I belive that it is a subcounsius motive inside of many people's heads, that they want to acosiate evil with other things they consider bad, and most people consider being ugly bad, so that is why that is, on the other hand, if you go with logic, then you end up with an average looking villan, or if you want to contradict everyone, you end up with a handsome villan, (ex. the average image of what a movie vampire looks like a big strong man, or beautiful woman, and I consider vampires evil, sorry twilight fans)
     
  7. Technic☆Kitty Hmm

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    I agree. Logic would dictate that in the human psyche the visual perspective of evil would have to be ugly for the reason you stated above. When I think of evil I don't think ugly . . . I think more like an anime vampire, evil yes, ugly no. The same goes for heroes or good guys, they are to be considered as good looking, handsome, beatiful. It would be hard to make a hero look ugly unless it was supposed to be funny. And again, the human psyche makes out the hero to be handsome/beatiful and if they see otherwise they immedieately think it can't be serious it is just a joke. There is no changing this because it is the default setting for good and evil. So, I guess to answer the question I would have to say . . . Evil means ugly because the human mind has been trained over many years to think this way. Animals or beasts that were considered evil were seen as ugly, and so on and so on throughout the ages.