Irrational self-confidence is one reason villains resonate deeply throughout culture, says Kevin Wynter, a media studies professor at Pomona College. “In a repressive society like ours that advocates conformity to better cultivate consumers, characters who actively reject the trappings of capitalist fantasy or who operate according to the codes of a self-fashioned morality in opposition to the dominant society will inevitably be attractive in a way that perhaps not all of us want to openly admit,” he says.
Today, traditional notions of nastiness have been replaced by complex, sometimes paradoxical norms about what different groups find acceptable or threatening. Wynter believes this has led to a “post-villain world”. Tech moguls (Elon Musk), politicians (the mayor of New York) Eric Adams), podcasters (Joe Rogan) – to many people they are the chief transgressors of our time (and heroes to others). They are anti-establishment. They want to overthrow “the system”.
“There are few, if any, villains who so deftly combine clowning, wealth and power like Donald Trump,” adds Wynter. “Even his latest parasitic attachment, Elon Musk, who, again, is to some a figure of perfect villainy, is to others a swaggering, futuristic cowboy.”
This is the problem with the future: we never know exactly how it will unfold, nor who it will favor. For some, artificial intelligence was the cardinal antagonist of 2024. In Hollywood and the video game industry, AI has emerged as more than an existential threatwhile many workers were worried about loss of jobs.
Others, feeling lost as social media undergoes an abrupt transition, have rightly pointed the finger at digital gentrifiers. “I’m angry that everything that was fun and useful on the internet 10 years ago is now broken. this site, obviously”, Tracy Chou, application developer, job on X. “The reviews are astroturf lies. research is a hallucination. no place to share with friends and family without some influencer/meme/polarized content invading the feed.
At the time like unprecedented like oursall angst and turmoil, a reorientation towards the truly transgressive is less shocking if seen as part of a broader societal reframing. Villainy has long permeated the cultural imagination—American tradition, after all, was built on the sensibilities of mavericks, vigilantes, and underdogs—but in 2024, it has become a main character in its own right.
For what? It could be that villainy, more than heroism, offers a different, closer-to-reality texture of purpose, one that sees our world as it is right now – deeply fucked up – and reacts accordingly.
What I can say with certainty is that wickedness has no particular allegiance. Eventually, it consumes everyone. In December, it was announced that Warner Bros. Discovery had canned Sesame Streetthe long-running children’s program. Naturally, the decision was not well received. On Bluesky, the social media app of the moment, @valhallabackgirl responded with a fury that many people had also felt this year. “I guess that’s my villain origin story,” she says. wrote.
