The Contemporary Anti-Hero Analysis

The contemporary anti-hero is a character who people closely integrate their feelings with, but whose beliefs exhibit some "conflicted or negative moral allegiance" (Mittell, cited in Wilterdink, 2015, 6). Even though anti-heroes often perform immoral acts (Krakowiak and Tsay-Vogel, 2013, 180), Wilterdink suggests that their fame has been excessively increasing over the last twenty years (2015, 6). Donnelly (2012) suggests a reason for the increase in the anti-hero's popularity in the American society, after the crises, such as 9/11, which created their need for a vigilante hero. As Wilterdink states, the audience finds satisfaction in looking at characters who can make morally spiteful decisions (Wilterdink, 2015, 10). According to Wilterdink, …show more content…
The American society's experiences during the 1980s, such as 9/11 and the threats of the Second World War, made them seek for a hero "monster to conquer" where anti-heroes, played the role of the monsters (Donnelly, 2012, 19). In addition, according to Wilterdink, the audience is likely to find the satisfaction in the character who can make vengeful decisions and actions (Wilterdink, 2015, 10). This is because people are likely to admire watching the anti-heroes doing actions and taking decisions that people cannot take or do not have the courage to take (2012, 10). Moreover, the serial killer's presence shifted the American society's attention from the external threats, Russians and global threats, to focus on the internal ones, the serial killer (Donnelly, 2012, 20). This provoked the American's need for an anti-hero to take them away from the feeling of insecurity and fear. Dexter is a good example here, who harms the ones that deserve to be harmed and leaves the ones that do not. This is likely to be a logical reason for the increase in the antihero's popularity, as argued …show more content…
According to Murray Smith, showrunners are likely to build up a connection between the villains' character and the audience by using allegiance and alignment (Wilterdink, 2015, 7). Smith also claims that alignment is first initiated when we are attached to the character by the time when identifying his personality, as he calls it "The Subjective access" (Smith, 83 cited in Wilterdink 2015). Dexter Morgan is a demonstration of how we ally with the anti-heroes. The way the showrunners created the story and the character of Dexter Morgan, made the audience sympathize with him (Donnelly, 2015, 23). For example, Dexter commits a crime in every episode, he justifies his crime by acknowledging the audience that he was abused as a child and was forced to witness his mother’s death. These justifications could make the audience more comfortable to align themselves with the anti-hero and may make the audience sympathize and empathize with him. Furthermore, allegiance, according to Murray, is the audience's moral evaluation of the anti-hero's character, and the magnitude of the moral identification of the audience with the anti-hero (Murray cited in Wilterdink, 2013, 7). Thus, to make the audience sympathize and empathize with the anti-hero, showrunners and writers of the anti-hero's character try to delicately construct the feeling of

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