Week of 1/23/12

Arvin Padua

This week we started to talk a little more about Beowulf and it's origins. Back then, people needed that kind of hero to look to. To have that icon of right doings. But it also made me think about Villains. Unlike the villains back then, comic book villains usually have a back story and a reason why they're evil.

For example, Mr. Freeze who was a villain from the famous Batman series. Fries grew up in a family of molecular biologists. When he was a kid, he was fascinated with the idea of freezing animals so they could exist in the future. A little insane, but I've heard worse. He was sent to boarding school where he was detached from society and was miserable.

He met the love of his life Nora and was madly in love. Soon his wife acquired a disease and Fries attempts to pt her in cryo-stasis. In other words, freeze her until a cure is found. He attempts to create a freeze gun which goes terribly wrong and his experiment malfunctions, causing an ice explosion. Some how he survived, but now he can only survive at sub-zero temperatures. So he created a suit to keep his temperature at sub-zero, and uses a freeze ray to rob banks and other evil doings so she can get enough money to create his machine and save his wife.

So basically, this guy is evil because he loves his wife. Why was Grendal evil? Because he just is. He was a descendant of Cain, who which he killed his own brother in the bible, therefore making him also evil. Do you see the difference? Most villains today have a motive for their evil doings. Examples could be to get revenge on the people who did them wrong, to get the greatest treasures, or to change society. But the villains in Beowulf like Grendal's mother is evil because she just is.

I guess I can understand that's how it was back then. Either you were a righteous lamb or God, or an evil spawn of Satan. Though now that I think about it, we do have the Joker. He doesn't really have much of an explained backstory, but in the The Dark Knight movie he was just evil because he loved to see carnage and chaos.

But also, I really do enjoy the class. I like how we all discuss about the stories we read and how we can relate to them. Compared to my other english classes in the past, we just read then come to class and the professor lectures for about an hour, tells us what to read next, then go. I like how we can all give input in the class, and the fact that relating it to superheros makes it more understandable.

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