Hero Or Villain?"
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IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY In fictional works, in this case, interactive fictional works like video games, there are characters in the narrative, and the characters consist of protagonists and antagonists. A protagonist is described as the center of the story, the one that is close to the audience and the one who makes a decision and experience the consequences, however not necessarily the same as the hero. (Duncan, 2006). A hero is defined as the person that the audience will root and support. (Vogler, 2007). In many medias especially video games, a hero is often associated with having a strong sense of justice and always doing for the sake of greater good (GamesRadar, 2018). The opposite of a hero is a villain, in which Vogler (2007) describes it as the enemies and the one who stands against the hero, and the audience will root for their loss. Antagonist, on the other hand, is defined as someone who stands in opposition to the protagonist, who will also become the force for the protagonist to develop and move in the story, usually takes the form of villain but not necessarily has to be one (Blaisdell, 2018). From the definitions, it is certain that the protagonist, hero, antagonist, and villain, have different definitions. These definitions mean that everyone who is the center of the story is a protagonist, but not all protagonist is a hero. The same as an antagonist, who is someone that stands in opposition side of the protagonist, but not all villains are 1 SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA an antagonist. Because the protagonist is the one who is most often with the readers of the story and who the readers can relate themselves to (Harper, 2019), the readers would assume that the protagonist is a hero, while in fact, they are different even back in Ancient Greece times (Storey & Arlene, 2008). The protagonist can be a villain, and the antagonist can be a hero, and vice versa, it depends on what kind of perspective the story takes. In interactive fictional works like video games, the protagonist that the players are controlling also has certain moralities that the player can agree or disagree with. According to Harris (2006), morality is an ability to recognize whether our actions are beneficial or harmful to other people, to cause happiness or suffering to other people. Actions committed by humans can be considered either as of right or wrong because every action has consequences, and whether the consequences are beneficial or harmful for other people, and humans’ ability to recognize actions that are good and bad is called morality (Haidt & Kesebir, 2010). In video games, there are many instances where players are encouraged, or even forced, to do things that are morally questionable (Gotterbarn, 2010). Grand Theft Auto, for example, is a game that rewards players for doing an act of violence, racism, and discrimination, or even requires players to do such things to progress and finish the game (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Last of Us is also a game where morally questionable actions are the only way to progress, such as when the protagonist has to kill fellow survivors of the outbreak and even eats the human meat to survive (Green, 2015). However, there are also games that players can enjoy without having to do questionable actions, such as The Sims where 2 SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA players manage a household and help their individuals to survive, without the need to do something bad. In Indonesia, with most of its citizens are Muslims, they interpret morality through the Islamic point of view, while also keeping the democratic principle in the country (Brenner, 2011). Because Indonesia is a democratic country with most of its citizens are Muslims, the law that is established in this country is a mix between democracy and law, which sometimes conflicts between one another. In consequence, Indonesian’s understanding of morality is a combination of their own culture, religion, and democracy, in which all three of them may clash. And when that clash happens, people are in confusion and in separate opinions between which one out of the three to follow, some follow their cultural background and understanding, some others follow their religion’s that they strongly believe in, and the others are following the government’s law. To sum it up, Indonesia has different opinions about morality, depending on which of the three aspects that they follow, understand, and believe the most. Not only people’s own beliefs, but gender differences also affect people’s opinions about certain problems, and certain people, especially regarding morality. According to Gilligan & Attanucci (1988) and their theory of moral orientations, men and women have different ways in case of life orientation, in this case, the concept of self and morality. Gilligan and Attanucci believe that men typically have justice orientation (also known as rights orientation) because of their individualism, defining identity with an occupation, as well as their preference in fair rules, and regard morality conflicts as an interesting issue of 3 SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA conflicting rights (Walker, 2006). On the other hand, Gilligan and Attanucci believe that women have care orientation (also known as response orientation) because they perceive identity as connected with other people and concern with self as well as others, along with the tendency to keep good relationships in any situation, regarding morality conflicts as an interesting issue of conflicting responsibilities (Walker, 2006). Gilligan (1988) also adds that while moral orientations are gender-related, but they are not gender-specific. This means that gender is also an important factor in influencing someone’s perspective in viewing morality issues, because men and women view problems differently, interpret them in their different way according to their characteristics. In most videogames, usually, there is a clear difference between the right and wrong actions when the choice happens, so players can avoid wrong options at ease and lean more to the correct choice to do, especially when some games are biased to one certain answer as it hints players to choose one particular, correct option (Heron & Belford, 2014). Protagonists are controlled by players and are encouraged to do heroic actions to defeat against villains, thus becoming a hero. Though recently there are games where the lines that differentiate between heroes and villains are blurring, leaving only protagonist and antagonist, such as a game by Lucas Pope in 2013 titled Papers, Please mentioned in Heron & Belford’s research (2014) where the players are given choices that are morally right and wrong—such as whether or not to let an immigrant with no valid documentations to run away from the country that is trying to kill her into the country of the player—but the circumstances happening in the game makes it hard to choose the 4 SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA morally “right” thing. The player will be punished for citation and do not get a salary to keep their families alive if they let the immigrant in, but the immigrant will be killed if the player does not let her in. There are also rebel movements happening in the game, in which players can join if they desire to do so and betray the country, or to stay loyal to the communist country they work in, or to escape to another country where things might be better. The heroes and villains' role is in blur here, and leaning more to protagonists and antagonists and it is unclear which one is right and wrong since every person has their reasons. Videogames nowadays are trying to promote moral ambiguity to make the experience realistic to the players, and to make the game more enjoyable to the players, where the “right” and “wrong”, as well as who is the “hero” and “villain” depends on from which perspective the players take, and which side that the players choose. However, in some instances, there are times when a character does not have to be categorized in either “hero” or “villain” category. While normally in fiction, people can clearly distinguish between hero and villain characters, there are times when the audience thinks that a certain character belongs to neither. Such characters are called “ambiguous characters”, by literary scholars such as Ealy (2004) and Strimel (2005), to refer morally complex characters. Krakowiak and Oliver (2012) later use the term “MAC” that stands for “Morally Ambiguous Character” to describe them, also categorizing characters that are capable of doing both good and bad things at the same time as one. Other lecturers argue that even anti-heroes are considered in this category (Kleemans et al., 2016) even though according to TVTropes (2020) anti-heroes are different since they are still 5 SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA considered as a hero even though their actions sometimes are not heroic. Heron and Belford’s research (2014) about Papers, Please game as mentioned above has a human working as border patrol in a fictional communist country called Arstotzka as the protagonist, and depending on the players’ choice, he can fall into this category. Players can choose either to save refugees who are pursued by murderers, bring justice by detaining murderers, obediently follow all orders from his country even though some are questionable, or join mysterious rebel forces by letting terrorist attacks happening at the country’s border, or run away to the other country.