Feeling Empathy With "Bad Guys": How Choices in the Use of "Villain" Affects Characters

(Character and Relationship based Spoilers for Supernatural Season 11 and Lucifer Season 1)

From the start I will admit that I tend to take the emotions and experiences of characters very personally. Since watching the final of SPN I bristle every time someone calls Amara the Villain and this has led me to think more about who we consider "Villains" and "Bad Guys" in the first place.

For those who do not know Supernatural here is a brief summary of Amara's story:

Everything started with Chuck (God) and his sister Amara (The Darkness). (For the purposes of this post I am ignoring the theology of all this). Chuck then created creation (or creation demanded to be made), Amara felt abandoned, and upset that God's pride led him to create something beyond them. She then destroyed one or two versions of creation. God locked her up and threw away the key. Present Day Amara gets released and is grumpy with her brother and with creation. Amara vents and threatens creation. Chuck goes I have no idea how to handle this situation and stays away for most of the season. Amara finally talks with Chuck. Chuck does not really apologize like he should but there is a resolution. 

I feel Amara's  theme song while Chuck was creating the universe would have been something like Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats;
.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaSy8yy-mr8 

It took me a while to figure out why I felt such empathy for Amara. I think it is because I can see her as the product of systematic injustice. While destroying a creation or two is not the best way to handle anger (or any other emotion), being locked up, for what was planed to be forever, is not a proper response either. It is not how someone who is struggling with their emotions and the impact of those emotions on others should be treated. And it should not be surprising that after eons in jail she is angry. 

Or using a different context: Little Women. While I have not read or seen Little Women in forever I remember a part when one of the sisters threw another sisters journal into the fire but most people would say that it would have been very unreasonable if that sister had been imprisoned for the rest of her life for doing so.  

In doing a little research on who are considered Villains I came across a interesting blog post which broke down the spectrum into 5 segments: Hero, Dark Hero, Anti-Hero, Sympathetic Villain, Villain https://modernminutia.wordpress.com/2013/09/26/the-modern-anti-hero-what-the-is-an-anti-hero/ 

Here Sympathetic Villain's are defined as:

The Sympathetic Villain most often starts out as a good or at least neutral character who, when something bad happens, becomes villainous. Often, a personal traumatic event or a history of emotional trauma is present before the Sympathetic Villain slips over the edge into villainous territory. The character is still a villain, still commits villainous acts, and is still viewed as the ‘bad guy’, but often the audience feels bad for the character even as they wish for their defeat.

Why are "Sympathetic Villains" still considered Villains and not "Characters who have lost their way" or "Characters who need a Hug"? Why is it different if the hero is equally poor at expressing their emotions in a healthy way. For heroes this type of issue is considered a flaw, for villains it becomes sum total of their identity. 

I think my struggle with the treatment of many sympathetic villains is that these individuals are often vilified because of poor choices, poor ability to manage emotions, or because someone else says that they are the bad guys and it becomes a type of self fulfilling prophesy not because they are inherently bad.  

This season of "Lucifer" has looked at the impact of being Lucifer would have on an individual. Lucifer has been processing his relationships, his role as the devil, and how the wider world sees him. In this clip Lucifer articulates the complexities of being labeled a villain and impact of this for a person or character. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WedoqpVrd3A

Again putting Theology aside you can substitute the creators, the writers, the fans ..... in for the word God.

Linda: God cast you out because He needed you to do the most difficult of jobs. It was a gift.

Lucifer: Gift? He shunned me. He vilified me. He made me a torturer! Can you even begin to fathom what it was like? Eons spent providing a place for dead mortals to punish themselves? I mean, why do they blame me for all their little failings? As if I’d spent my days sitting on their shoulder, forcing them to commit acts they’d otherwise find repulsive. “Oh, the Devil made me do it!” I have never made any one of them do anything. Never.

Linda: What happened to you in unfair.

Lucifer: Unfair? This is unjust! For all eternity, my name will be invoked to represent all their depravity. That is the gift that my Father gave me!

Now I would say it is false to say that their are no villains. Some characters have no redeeming qualities. Some have no backstory which would explains their motivations. For some it is not the result of abandonment or perceived abandonment or simply acting out. But I think calling all characters with problematic action sympathetic villains is a disservice to these characters. These characters often need compassion and hugs instead.  Before vilifying a character think about the impact on that character of labeling them in such a way.