It is a truth too little acknowledged that movie villains laugh too much.
In reality, Stalin and the gang were not engaged in hi-jinks in the Kremlin. Hitler in the bunker was rarely merry and I am told that in North Korea the Dear Leader was rarely jolly.
Yet in movies villains cannot stop laughing.
This is unrealistic, not in a good lasers make noise in space way, but in a “wait how come Hermione’s bag suddenly has all that stuff” way. It is just wrong.
Why do we put up with it? We stopped “John Carter” dead, so why can’t we end the myth of the happy super-villian?
It isn’t complicated: it is based on an evil wish.
Most of us do bad things, because we imagine they will make us happy. We do them, the consequences are rotten, and feel sorrow. Generally we have been trained to turn our sorrow against the consequences . . . if society just liked our vice, then it would be virtue! Mostly, we blame our failure to enjoy our bad deeds on our lack of power.
We got busted, so we suffer.
Imagine, we think, having so much power that nobody could bust us again. We could sin with impunity and since sin is Fun, we would laugh a great deal. Short of some hobbit throwing a ring in Mount Doom, we could go on . . .
But that very analogy must give us pause, because the wise myth maker Tolkien knew something true: absolute evil gets reduced to desire and nothing more. Sauron has become an eye, looking but never holding. The Great Eye wants a ring, but it would have no finger on which to place it if it got it.
It wants what it cannot use. It is a eunuch longing for the pleasures of the brothel.
Evil, by its very nature, consumes itself. It enjoys less and less as the good is drained from the pleasure. Any sin is pleasant for a time, because anything that exists has good in it, but evil soon consumes the good and demands “more.”
Evil wants more pleasure, not pleasure. As evil gets what it wishes, it is already wishing for more. The consumer eager for the next iPad the minute he opens the new one is the image of this man. He never laughs, because he is never done getting.
Hell is grim. Heaven full of jollification. God can become man, but Satan would never stoop
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