Antihero And Morality

According to Wilterdink, the contemporary antihero has become popular over the last two decades. Mittell (cited in Wilterdink,2015) acknowledges three primary techniques with an antihero archetype. Two of which are relative morality and charisma. Morality and charisma are effective in being antihero and attracting the audience in recent years. However, antiheroes are not always morally neutral, they can be devils sometimes. Devil refers to the characters that who can not distinguish between ‘’good’’ and ‘’bad’’, and scenes that are not morally appropriate. Morality plays a role in helping the audience to like but, without morality, even so, anti-heroes can also win sympathy and they can be loved. Some features that attract the character

For instance, according to Donnelly, Dexter is not the anti-hero that forces the moral ideals. Dexter's character strengthens conservative moral ideals, which offer a clear distinction between ‘’good’’ and ‘’bad’’ violence to a culture that is struggling to rationalize key political and social actions. Dexter has attracted the viewer as an antihero that cares about morality and differentiate between ‘’good’’ and ‘’bad’’. Therefore, this feature can be effective that Dexter is sympathetic to the audiences. According to Murray ( cited in Wilterdink,2015), allegiance is related to the moral evaluation of characters by spectators and it means viewers can either morally identify with an anti-hero, or not. Viewers try to align themselves with a character and their ally is significant to us as an audience to interact with them to find attractive. Spectators are associated with moral values on the show, so they can empathize and sympathize with the

According to Wilterdink, there are anti-heroes like Hannibal Lecter that are natural evil, not morally neutral. Hannibal Lecter is also a popular and sympathetic character because according to Mittell (cited in Wilterdink,2015), immoral scenes test the moral limit of the audiences and it makes the show more exciting. According to Wilterdink, for example, from the Game of Thrones series, the biggest goal of Jerome Flynn is to be rich and Cersei Lannister who is a female anti-hero often exposed to problems that are related to sexuality in the series. Even though there are many sexual scenes that are not morally appropriate, viewers like and sympathize with the characters in the Game of Thrones series. Therefore, we understand that and also Smith (cited in Wilterdink,2015) claims that since behavior is mediated through audiences’ own moral compassion, they can satisfy by looking at the characters who can make morally spiteful decisions. Interpreting the repressed emotions inside of the audiences, these characters can not only be loved but also they are sympathized with because they see the repressed emotions inside of the