close
close

Mondor Festival

News with a Local Lens

The Enduring Appeal of the Culturally Acceptable Hitman
minsta

The Enduring Appeal of the Culturally Acceptable Hitman

Pop culture assassins are a guaranteed hit, and never has our collective fascination with payback and revenge been more heightened than today.

Our screens are constantly splashed with morally dubious, but no less sympathetic (and Of coursewomen), monetizing their scruples to satisfy the fantasies of the highest bidder; Our feeds are filled with exploits of justice, carried out by avatars of espionage.

Of course, more recently we’ve seen the enduring anti-hero trope attack the fourth wall and spill onto the streets of New York. Where an act of perceived retaliation was delivered so brazenly, it seemed more like an imaginary mercenary scenario than the realm of reality in which it was occurring.

The act in question was, of course, the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, whose methodical killing was carried out in broad daylight by the alleged attacker, 26-year-old Ivy League graduate Luigi Mangione.

As surveillance footage of the killing made its way across the Internet, the sentiment quickly shifted to expressions of camaraderie rather than condemnation. Memes that ran the gamut from praising to outright thirsty began circulating in response to the vengeful vigilante character’s thrilling story, and a nation’s latent discontent with corporate greed found its nonfictional figurehead in the process.

“It felt like something literally came out of a movie,” producer Adrian Askarieh said in response to the events in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Askarieh, whose film repertoire includes the screen adaptation of the popular assassin video game Hitman: Agent 47 posited that the public’s almost desensitized response was likely due to a sense of justice served by proxy.

“One of the reasons why the idea of ​​an assassin is so fascinating, going back to films like The Samurai with Alain Delon, there is a catharsis that comes when the assassins do what we cannot see ourselves doing.” he said.

“I think it’s more of a vicarious experience. Many human beings feel helpless and want to live vicariously through these characters. »

So why are we so obsessed with the idea of ​​killers with a conscience?

Hello pop culture murderer?

Black Doves Keira Knightly Pop Culture Assassin
Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley in Netflix spy thriller Black Doves.

There’s certainly something to be said for the appeal of a ruthless pop culture assassin character performing a Robin Hood.esque style of retribution. Whose ability to implement a perceived level of justice – even imperfect and whatever the justification – could to be seen as inherently human, or perhaps even as an overt revenge fantasy.

Few people can say they’ve ever (knowingly) encountered a hitman, but they’re so ubiquitous in today’s action genre, that it’s almost as if the vocation of “professional assassin” ‘espionage’ or ‘gun for hire’ could find in itself an interesting little place on the guidance counselors’ list of the most viable postgraduate activities.

This enduring quality attributed to our favorite murderous on-screen mercenaries is largely due to our ability to separate the antihero from the true villain – or rather – to attribute a level of moral superiority to a sniper or spy without scruples, for example. – a much less sympathetic serial killer.

In the new Netflix trigger-happy action thriller series Black dovesprofessional spy Helen Webb (played by Keira Knightley) is plunged into a murky world of subterfuge and geopolitical games after the murder of her lover.

Sam (played by Ben Whishaw), a friend, former colleague and retired assassin, is enlisted to protect her in her quest for revenge. His own past comes back to haunt him and confronts his own sense of unshakable, but contradictory, principles. .

In one episode, a flashback scene between Helen and Sam, where Helen draws a line between her job (then-junior espionage with a touch of assassin) light) and her (full-time hitman), she says, “I could never kill people for a living. »

Sam responds emphatically: “It’s not what you think”, before Helen retorts: “Well, it’s killing people, isn’t it?” So that’s what I think.

After a brief interlude, Sam reveals that his character’s underscore is closely tied to a set of rules, or as he later calls it, a code: “I never pulled a trigger that didn’t didn’t make the world a better place. »

For his part, Sam doesn’t kill children (which turns out to be a slight hiccup in the plans), so any adult he kills apparently deserves his silencer’s wrath.

These “codes” that we will discover later are inherited, then transmitted to their fellow assassins Williams and Eleanor as a rallying point. reason for being to create an alliance.

Glen Powell hitman
(Credit: Netflix)

The same year, Richard Linklater’s romantic comedy became a successful con film, Hitman, with Glen Powellwas another addition to pop culture’s burgeoning assassin genre. Although Powell’s Hit Man is less than a real hitman, and even more so a love letter to the allure of the fictional triggerman, in all its multi-layered glory.

Playing into the most classic of hitman tropes, that of Eddie Redmayne The Day of the Jackal appeals to those who prefer their killers to be masters of skillful subterfuge and quick redemption – often exerting their power where most would feel powerless. Are we seeing a trend here?

Then there are the complexities explored in Kill Eve Perfectly Imperfect Villanelleor the positively adorable character of Colin Farrell in In BrugesAnd Kill Bill Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo, wielding a katana, is determined to get revenge.

And who could forget John Wicka protagonist with undeniably murderous tendencies who comes out of retirement to seek revenge for the murder of his beloved dog (there is slightly more, but that’s basically the gist) leading to a four-part franchise and hundreds of casualties.

In a world where standards of morality are constantly changing, one person’s tyrant or terrorist is another person’s rebel for a cause. Over the years, we have been conditioned by such on-screen depictions of spies, assassins, and hitmen to unquestioningly support their fictional counterparts.

So it’s no surprise that for so many people, this is indeed what a hero looks like.