I don’t think “anti-hero” is quite it – perhaps a subset of the anti-hero. (Anti-heroes can also be plain old losers or cowards or many other things that aren’t heroic.) I’m talking about characters like Bender, Frenchy the Evil Clown, Pip the Troll . . . Falstaff is a borderline case; he’s a bundle of appetites and a debt-bilking scoundrel, but his wit and philosophical mindset might be argued to place him in a different category.
Lindsey Lohan?
Maybe “reprobate hero”?
A “loveable rogue”?
A chromium-plated bounder?
Ah, the Cad. Don’t forget Flashman. I’d agree it’s a subset of anti-hero, a creature from the Id.
Would “Rabelaisian” or (much less commonly) “Trimalchian” do?
Never send an asshole to do a Rabelaisian’s job.
Dylan Moran? He’s played essentially the same character in Notting Hill, Black Books and Run Fat Boy Run.
Read any review that mentions any of those characters and use what they said.
I came in here to suggest Bernard Black (of Black Books fame), but maggenpye beat me to it. :smack:
Dave Lister (from Red Dwarf) is a huge slob and proud of it, though, so he’d be another contender for the archetype, IMHO.
Edmund Blackadder and Arnold Rimmer (Blackadder and Red Dwarf respectively) are complete and utter bastards and revel in it, so they’d be a similar but subset of anti-hero as well, but for slightly different reasons…
Rabelasian would suggest to me a degenerate situation or play, not a degenerate character, and still less one who revels in it - that is purely incidental.
More examples include the Baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells (I’ll do anything to anything) from Blackadder, and, I suppose, Falstaff?
Falstaffian?
That one made me think of Julian Noble, Pierce Brosnan’s character in The Matador.
Some quotes:
Julian Noble: Margaritas always taste better in Mexico.
Danny Wright: They certainly do.
Julian Noble: Margaritas and cock.
Julian Noble: [after flirting with some Mexican schoolgirls] I hate these Catholic countries. It’s all blushy-blushy and no sucky-f&cky.
Mr. Randy: Did you study the assignment?
Julian Noble: No, I shredded it. Then I humped the bellboy on the room service cart.
Mr. Randy: Goddamn it, Julian, you leave the game, even for a while, I don’t know if they’ll gonna let you back in. And then what the hell are you gonna do? Waste your days picking up illiterate teenagers for suck-and-f&ck sessions behind the Old Navy store?
Julian Noble: Sounds delightful to me.
From current network sitcom-land, there’s Barney from How I Met Your Mother.
From film, there’s Geoffrey Rush’s Marquis de Sade from Quills.
From the stage, there’s Trekky-Monster from Avenue Q (“The Internet is for porn!”)
Edmund’s just a villainous protagonist, like Richard III but with a better knack for insults.
A buffoon, maybe? That’s how Papa Karamazov was described to me by the person who encouraged me to read the Dostoevski (sp?) book, and he definitely revels in his degeneracy…it’s hard to call the old reprobate a hero by any stretch of the imagination, true, but certainly does cut a comical figure in some sequences of the book, like when he’s taunting the brother who gets all religious, or spinning a series of outrrageous lies which he knows nobody believes, just to stir up shit.
I agree with E-Sabbath; I like cad.
“Lothario” perhaps?
I’m showing my age(or, better put, my youth) here, but I’m getting a huge amount of cognitive dissonance imagining James Bond saying those lines.
You should see The Tailor of Panama. Brosnan plays the Anti-Bond. The character is a British secret agent, and he drinks, and he smokes, and he chases women. But he comes across sleazy, rather than suave. As the movie progresses, you find yourself wishing he would lay off the booze, and praying that he uses condoms.
Would John Belushi (in Animal House and arguably, real life) count for your purposes? He’s huge of appetite, degraded, but not actively malicious outside of pranksterism.
I guess I’m having trouble defining what traits make up this character you’re trying to define…the suggested examples so far seem to vary more than I expected.
Sailboat