Explain the whole "eternal sociopath who always gets away with it" deal

Cafe Society
21

On the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, the other characters joke that Barney is a sociopath, and I suppose maybe he is with his over the top lies, but Lily is the character who does horrible things and never really gets shit for it.

She intentionally causes her friend Ted to break up with several different girls via lies and deception because Lily doesn’t like them.

She abruptly leaves her boyfriend of 10 years months before their wedding in order to go find herself. When she immediately and completely crashes and burns she runs back to her boyfriend who pretty much forgives her immediately.

She racks up huge credit card debt buying designer clothes and hides this fact from her husband.

She steals things from people, including her friends, in order to teach them lessons.

Other characters might be mad at her for maybe half an episode then all is forgiven. Once again though, rule of funny. We’re supposed to find the antics of these wacky characters outrageous.

22

Life is not fair.

There is no inherent justice in the world. There is no cosmic karma ready to reward the worthy and smite the transgressor. Charlie Brown doesn’t hit a home run. Lucy always pulls back the football. A fifteen year old acquaintance of mine, one of the best students in her high school class as I understand it, came down with kidney failure. She’ll be on the dialysis machine for three times a week, four hours a time, indefinitely unless/until they can find a donor match. A bunch of bankers can help crash the world economy, and walk away with enough money that they’ll never have to work another day in their lives. As far as we know, every star might burn out and all life in the universe will eventually cease to exist. Life is not fair.

Different writers approach this sort of fundamental stuff in different ways. Some of them like to bring a bit of fairness into the picture in their stories, often with a pleasant myth. Others like to take things in a different direction, accept the inherent lack of order, take the dumb pointless randomness of kindness and cruelty, good luck and bad breaks, and distill it into its very essence for humorous effect. For someone like Charles Schultz, this meant having his hero never catch a break, no matter what. For a lot of other people, it means having the villain continue to operate with impunity no matter what he does. In a just world, that couldn’t happen, but so what? That’s not the world as we have to deal with it.

It’s not exactly realistic, but art doesn’t have to deal with real qualities of the world in realistic ways. Writers can take a genuine aspect of the world and place it inside a character in their story, in which case the character, though unrealistic, will be able to personify in their very behavior an underlying truth that we all have to deal with every day. The point isn’t perfect realism, but to examine unfairness by placing it in a person and blowing that person up to mythic proportions. The results can be profound. Often, the results can be really really damn funny, like the scene when Cartman is licking that poor person’s tears. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but that’s okay. Different people like different things.

It suits me right down the ground, but that’s just me.

23

Wow, I don’t think I could have thought of a more depressing way to say that. What’s wrong with “They take real evil, make it ridiculous, which allows you to laugh at it”? That’s what it is.

Except Shulz, who pretty much was just trying to find the humor in a horrible, horrible world. But his worldview is why we call him depressed. It’s not a universal thing.

24

I don’t mind the cartoon (or cartoonish) instances.

But like the Lilly example from How I Met Your Mother, I find that as time goes on the fact that anybody on the show still has anything to do with Sheldon sucks the energy out of Big Bang Theory.

25

It could also be that the bad guy or girl who gets away with it constantly is just a representative of their real life equivalents, the sociopaths who live among us and whom we deal with every day. With between three and five percent of people being socioopaths, it’s reasonable to expect that all of us have run across them. From what I have read sociopaths often have poor impulse control and don’t plan ahead well and indulge in risky behavior, I doubt they “get away” with it for the long haul. (The ones who manage to control their impulses and plan ahead are a different story). But probably they get away with a hell of a lot of stuff before they are imprisoned or otherwise socially sanctioned, so we get the impression that they all “get away with it” all of the time because we aren’t around to witness their downfalls. (Not that they are capable of suffering when they are caught, they don’t feel guilt or remorse.)

And of course, if you are born into the top ranks of society, you probably CAN get away with it, forever. Dick Cheney, anyone?

26

The show has pointed out (on more than one occasion) that even though he can be an asshole at times, they all (even Penny) genuinely like Sheldon.

27

Yes, they can say that.

But it makes no sense that they do and they rarely give any indication of it saying pretty cruel things about him if they do consider him a friend.

And liking him despite his faults does not therefore require putting up with ever hoop he puts them through.

Sure, it is funny. But if it were real life it would make no sense and Sheldon would, I think, fit the OP.

28

FYI, TVTropes, “due to massive amounts of Trope Decay,” has divided the former “Heroic Sociopath” page into Heroic Comedic Sociopath, “A sociopathic character, fighting for a good cause, whose evil deeds are Played for Laughs” (e.g., Belkar Bitterleaf); and Sociopathic Hero, “A sociopathic character, fighting for a good cause, whose evil deeds may be Played for Drama” (e.g., The Punisher).

Cartman, however, falls under the category of, simply, The Sociopath.

29

Yowza, didn’t expect this many responses so fast. Again, it was largely a reaction to xkcd (which I’ve been familiar with long before now). Stayed up late to finish it, too. Honestly dunno what exactly I was thinking.

Just a clarification that I’m talking about the characters who have no purpose other than to make life miserable for others and who never face consequences, not even for a moment.

Gonna get some quick responses in, and then I really gotta hit the shower:

Agent Foxtrot - The thing about comic book villains is that they do face consequences, even if you know it’s not gonna be permanent. Furthermore, they can be legitimately interesting, or even sympathetic, if done right. I’ve read lengthy stories about Dr. Doom, The Kingpin, and Magneto, and they were all excellent. And in at least one Batman continuuity (Batman Beyond), the Joker most definitely does stay dead. They’re legitimate characters. Mr. Yotsuya* is not.

Bryan Ekers/Ferret Herder - Granted, Hobbes was a lot smarter than Calvin (and granted, that’s was a pretty low bar), but let’s be honest…he was a cad. Just look at all the dozens of times he tackled him at high speed (and given what we now know about long-term injuries to football players, that’s more than a bit unsettling), the bullying, the pranking, and the taking, taking, taking. It was an incredibly abusive, one-sided relationship, plain and simple, and it couldn’t have been more obvious.

Colibri - Garfield is a mixed bag. (I’m going by the entire package, understand, which includes the early strips and Garfield And Friends.) He’s capable of incredible greed, selfishness, and abusiveness, but he’s capable of compassion and does the right thing much of the time, too. As often as not he’s not in control at all, and he just has to cope with the situation as best as he can. Best way I can put it, he’s good when he has to be and bad when he feels like it, and the rest of the time he’s just another lazy cat.

Hellestal - Wait…are you arguing that a world where Eric Cartman rules all and never faces any real repercussions, ever, is the fantasy that South Park fans like? I find that seriously weird, mainly because it’s only fun if you are the king, not watching someone else be king. Unless things have changed one holy hell of a lot.

C K Dexter Haven - Look, I know what a one-episode lifestyle change is. But if everyone from Kenny to Chef can be Killed Off For Real (TvTropes-isms are like Princess Bride-isms…they just crop up), there’s no reason the single most irritaing, annoying, repugnant, useless character can get the axe at some point, or at least Put On A Bus (see? :slight_smile: ) for a few seasons. Heck, you’d think Matt & Trey would do it out of sheer boredom.

Justin Bailey - Examples? I admit that I’ve only seen the movie and a few episodes in the past decade or so, usually after I’ve heard about them on TVTropes. (And before you say anything, the one where they’re locked in the school basement for days doesn’t count…they got free mountain bikes out of it and Skinner was humiliated.)

  • Oh, did I mention what is IMO the single most reprehensible manga character ever? The crap he pulls is off the charts, and not even his own landlord ever stands up to him.
30

And how far are you going to take this?

No one has said all stories should be dark and depressing. The point is that some stories – and that includes many comedic stories – are built around a core of accepting the world for what it is, rather than rewriting reality to ignore death and misery. Life is not fair. There are ways to explore the unfairness in our random twisted indifferent universe which can be encapsulated into an actual character.

You already accept this in other ways. Plenty of examples. Why should Hamlet die at the end? Wouldn’t the story be oh-so-much better and more “fun” if he had reconciled with his uncle, peacefully stopped the war Fortinbras is brewing, married Ophelia, and lived happily ever after? Hell, the story could be rewritten so that his father never died in the first place, a five act play about how cool it is to live with your royal family in Denmark. And wouldn’t Crime and Punishment have been a much better novel if there had been no crime, no murder? That would really “fun”, wouldn’t it? Murder is a real buzz-kill. The Lord of the Rings would be a lot more “fun”, too, if Sauron accepted that his thirst for power was unhealthy and helped Aragorn rebuild the splendor of the old Gondor. We could spend all our time with the Hobbits in the Shire smoking weed. Smoking weed is more fun than war. Hey, why does anybody ever die in a story at all? What’s the point of death? It’s fiction! Let’s write out all those scenes. People just get slightly injured, but then they recovery before the end and everyone is happy.

You can see where this breaks down. The whole point is that people aren’t always looking for “fantasy” in their stories, even when they’re reading a fantasy.

Now, Cartman’s not a realistic character. No one in reality would get away with feeding a bully their own parents’ flesh in public. But ever since that episode first aired, he’s embodied something a little bit deeper than common children’s cruelty. Cartman is a representation of absolutely everything that is wrong with humanity. South Park could theoretically continue without him, have him hit by a truck, write him out of the show, and make things a little nicer. It would be more fun for the characters if they didn’t have to deal with him anymore, just like it would be fun if Hamlet lived. What it would not be, however, is interesting.

And even though Cartman is not, in himself, realistic, the show would actually feel a lot less realistic (at least to people like me) if he were ever permanently punished. Real criminals would get caught, but stopping Cartman permanently, at this point, could seem to mean in effect denying that there is anyone else out there like him. He’s not just standing for himself, alone. He incorporates everything bad in people, and stopping one psychopath will not even remotely end the greater darkness that’s out there. He’s not to everyone’s taste, sure, but so what? Different people like different things. Theaters actually did rewrite Shakespeare’s plays to give them happy endings. No shit, that actually happened. If people actually like that, then more power to them, but I’m going to stick with Hamlet dying at the end, and I’m going to laugh my ass off when Cartman licks that kid’s tears and their “unfathomable sadness” and then comes back next week for more mayhem. He’s not just a person, he’s a force of nature, and how the others deal with that is part of what makes the story interesting, even if it’s not “fun”.

31

And that’s part of the deal with the “persistent sociopath” characters - in limited universes, it is more story-efficient to have one or a limited group of characters be an archetype or embodyment of “the bastards got away with it”, have one single antagonist or antihero keep coming back for more, than having to chase new and different sociopaths all over the place and every few episodes create another incident of Bad Shit Happens And Nobody’s Punished Proportionately. In real life, we get Bernie Madoff imprisoned and Bear Sterns going broke, but at the same time Goldman Sachs prospers and the OWS crowds dispersed; Mubarak is deposed and Qaddafi is lynched but their successor regimes don’t seem to be headed in the best of directions and meanwhile
Assad holds firm. In episodic fiction it’s simpler to have it always be the same guy.

32

You must have led a VERY sheltered childhood if this is your take on Hobbes. Hell, on Calvin even. Calvin may have done badly in school, but he was NOT dumb. Pretty far from it. And Hobbes being a bully? And what are you talking about, the “taking, taking, taking”? I think your take on Calvin & Hobbes is one of someone who plain doesn’t understand the strip.

33

I think you’re asking for a lot more reality than you’ll get from any long running entertainment series, TV or comic, especially the plotless ones.

What you’re talking about is the Jerkass
First, you need conflict, for which you will need and antogonist. You could have your jerkass have a Pet the Dog moment, but if he/she goes through a Heel Face Turn or even Menace Decay, then you need to roll up another bad guy, which requires a lot more investment in time and detail. Note that your examples from the Simpsons replaced replace Nelson Muntz as The Bully

Add in that Status Quo Is God, and a long running series that never had any particular plans to change eventually starts generating some headscratchers.

OTOH, this is sometimes Truth in Television - we’ve all known a waste of space who somehow managed to get married, have kids, and be successful, all the while abusing everyone around them. Thus you have drama triangles being played all around you, and in popular entertainment as well.

34

I just finished watching an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and it seems to me that charming narcissist George Wickham spent his life getting rewarded for fouling his own nest and using people.

35

Why doesn’t it count? And how much of a discussion can we have if you want to dismiss the best examples against your argument out of hand?

36

Here is GlaDOS’s take on the Garfield comic strip

37

Of course, Willow Rosenberg can also be tossed in here.

The reason Lily/Willow can get away with anything- they are both portrayed by the infinitely adorable Alyson Hannigan who, if hauled before the World Court for crimes against humanity, would get off with a slap on the wrist, and not even that if she showed her boobies.