Death as Set Dressing (Part I)

 

*note: There are spoilers in this rant for Avengers: Infinity War; Avatar: The Last Airbender; and The Adventure Zone: Balance up to the ‘Suffering Game’ arc...basically, if it’s media and it’s formatted “‘word that begins with A’ colon: subtitle,” it will be spoiled. 

Also: this was written back in 2018, right after Infinity War came out, so it could stand to be updated, but…I stand by everything I said.

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PART 1: DEFINITIONS 

 This is a thing that has been pissing me off more and more recently. It happens everywhere, movies, books, TV, everywhere. But I had a hard time pinpointing what exactly was annoying me until I talked with a friend of mine about Avengers: Infinity War. 

So, what am I talking about? I am talking about the omnipresent phenomenon in fiction of having a huge spectacle of death and destruction at the hands of (or implicitly condoned by) the supposed heroes, framed in such a way the audience cheers for it, BUT the heroes have the audacity to moralize about the wrongness of killing only when it applies specifically to them and the people they personally know and care about. 

In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos (the big bad) is on a mission to wipe out half of all life in the universe. He believes that this is a necessary evil in order to save the universe from overpopulation. In order to do so, he needs all six infinity stones. One of these stones is embedded in hero Vision. And Vision comes to the very logical conclusion that this stone must be destroyed in order to stop Thanos. This will also kill Vision himself. But, as he himself says: 

“Thanos threatens half the Universe. One life cannot stand in the way of defeating him.” 

Steve Rogers responds to this by saying: 

“We don't trade lives, Vision.” 

Which, okay, fine. There is a moral debate to be had here. Is it right to actively kill one person in order to save the lives of however many others? I personally fall on the side of: the entire universe is at stake here, kill Vision; but, I understand that this can be a dilemma. It also nicely sets our heroes up in contrast to Thanos, whose entire mission is to erase half the universe from existence for the supposed “greater good.” 

Here’s what gets me: they eventually decide to try and separate Vision from the stone before destroying it. And, because Thanos is coming for them, they need to do this quickly. They go to Wakanda, and prepare for a final battle against Thanos. All for the sake of buying time to separate the stone from Vision. In this battle, hundreds upon thousands of lives are lost. Mainly unnamed extras. Is that right? By Steve Rogers’ argument, we are trading lives here. We are trading the lives of an uncountable number of people for the off-chance that one person (Vision) may survive. And these lives are never even mentioned. 

Why is Vision’s life so much more important than those of the others on that battlefield? Every single one of them is willing to lay down their lives for him, to stop Thanos from winning, and they do. They die by the dozens, by the hundreds. Why is this ok? Why is it brushed off? Why is it not even CONSIDERED in the text of the movie? Especially when the entire ethical dilemma at the crux of the movie is whether or not it’s okay to trade lives for the greater good! It’s explicitly the moral dilemma for both the good guys (whether or not it’s right to kill Vision) AND the bad guys (whether or not it’s right to kill half the universe). WHY is this not even explored? It’s the entire point of the fucking movie!!! 

While this hypocrisy is particularly visible in Infinity War, similar themes show up across all sorts of media. It’s especially prevalent in the action genre, as it’s fun to watch our heroes (or the villains) take down a bunch of mooks, but then we also want the emotional impact of death when it applies to the main characters. Another good example of this trope is Superman’s behavior in Man of Steel, where he purposefully blows up a gas station that appears to be full of people, goes around destroying Metropolis with no regard or thought for the loss of life that must involved in doing so, and then angsts over killing General Zod, a genocidal supervillain. I’m not saying that the hero can’t be dark or conflicted, but these things need to be examined in the text of the work if you’re going to make them a major theme. 

Even one of my favorite pieces of media of all time, Avatar: the Last Airbender falls victim to this trope. The Gaang (comprised of the avatar, Aang, and his friends) are on a mission to defeat Firelord Ozai before he completely conquers the world, wiping out a good portion of it in the process. Over the course of the series, we see them fight a lot of fire nation soldiers, and we see a lot of general warfare and violence. Even though it is never explicitly clear that these mooks are killed by the heroes (it is a kids’ show after all), there are lots of instances where it is obvious what has happened. For example, in the Season 1 finale, Aang (in the Avatar state, and fused with the ocean spirit) drowns a huge number of fire nation soldiers. 

Then, in season 3, Aang is suddenly very reluctant to kill the firelord himself. He runs away on the eve of a critical battle because he can’t face the possibility of killing a human being. Eventually, he finds another option, and is able to defeat the firelord and take away his bending without killing him. Although this is not necessarily out of character for Aang, it does feel like one of the biggest cop-outs in the show. It also raises the question: why does Firelord Ozai’s life matter so much, when those nameless fire nation soldier extras back in season 1 did not? 

I am inclined to allow Avatar more leeway here, for a few reasons: 1) it’s a kids show; 2) this whole topic is heavily explored in a multi-episode arc; 3) almost everyone else in the entire story explicitly disagrees with Aang’s aversion to killing the firelord; 4) the show goes out of its way in later episodes to illustrate that individual fire nation soldiers have their own lives going on, and are not necessarily evil; 5) the tragedy of the many deaths as a result of this war is often highlighted in the show; and 6) the rest of the writing is just so good. But, through this storyline of Aang’s refusal to kill Ozai, the show still creates an uncomfortable dissonance between the value of some random fire nation foot soldier’s life and that of the objectively more evil firelord himself. 

What really galls me about this trope is not the on- or off-screen deaths of faceless minions or nameless extras. It can be fun, in fantasy, to sit back and watch the ass-kicking and not delve too deep into the real-world consequences. It’s one of my favorite things about escapist fiction. Like, it’s just cool to watch River mow down bar patrons in Serenity, or the Bride slaughtering her enemies wholesale in Kill Bill, or Thor kicking ass in Infinity War. 

No, the violence in and of itself doesn’t piss me off. What pisses me off is that, after all this violence against nameless extras, the heroes’ lives, or those of their loved ones, are valued so much more. Or it could be the main villain, who has had enough screen time for the audience to care about them, and so can’t be unceremoniously dispatched like all of their lackeys. And suddenly, death is a huge looming specter over the work, murder is wrong, and there is a lot of speechifying about the value of life. The Avengers can’t kill Vision because they “don’t trade lives”; the Aang can’t kill Firelord Ozai because he “can't just go around wiping out people [he doesn’t] like”; Superman lets loose his big “NOOOO!” over Zod’s death. 

These aren’t bad messages in and of themselves, but where was all that when the heroes were mowing down mooks by the dozen? Why is their personal pain worth so much more than that of those ‘below’ them? 

I get it. Books and movies can only get you to care about so many characters. So of course it matters more to the story when a main character goes through death or grieving than when faceless mook #217 gets her head chopped off by the heroes’ sweet murder axe. One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic, yadda yadda yadda. 

But the dissonance between these treatments of death still bothers me. I think one reason is that it is easy to connect (though perhaps not intentionally) these faceless masses being mown down by the dozen on screen with so much real-life tragedy. When I first saw footage of the fallout of the bombing in Aleppo, my first thought honestly was, “Oh man, that’s just like Iron Man.” And although the deaths in Iron Man are condemned, they are not given huge weight. It is a sanitized version of violence we see in this movie- explosions and shelled-out buildings- but none of the grief, the suffering, or even the gore associated with actual warfare. There is something intensely troubling when we see real world violence and destruction and associate it with empty and often cheered-for fictional violence. 

Movies and books in our culture also have an unfortunate and ingrained tendency of coding the bad guys (who, let’s face it, make up most of the unmourned deaths) as stand-ins for people of color, queer people, and other marginalized groups. I won’t go in depth on the topic of coding now, but there are more sources/discussion of this below, and I will probably write about this at some point in the future. These groups include villains such as the Easterlings and Haradrim in Lord of the Rings (coded as East Asian and Middle Eastern, respectively); the clone troopers in the Star Wars prequels (though they are faceless and helmeted most of the time, they are all clones of Jango Fett, portrayed by Mauri actor Temuera Morrison); Scar’s hyenas in The Lion King (coded as black); The Crazy 88 in Kill Bill (who are just...actually Asian); or whatever action movie you so desire with Middle Eastern Terrorist Villains #1232934. And, again, there is something troubling about the implication that the pain and the deaths of these people, these “others,” are somehow “lesser than” the pain and deaths of the (usually cis, straight, white, and abled) heroes. 

The use of this device, death as a set piece, is also inexorably linked to the practice of “fridging,” or when a (usually female) character is killed off specifically to cause the main hero anguish. Historically, this trope has been used to enact violence upon female characters to further a man’s storyline: her pain and death only matter in how they affect him. In “death as set dressing” we see a similar (though somewhat less gendered) concept: death in the story only matters for how it affects the hero. It does not matter for the dead people themselves. Their lives do not have intrinsic value in the text of the story. The only value they have is their connection to the main character. They are not truly people; they are objects that only matter inasmuch as they affect the hero. 

While this is sometimes unavoidable due to the story’s framing and the need to focus in on only a few characters in order to create a cohesive narrative, it also creates a shallower world where all morality is warped around the viewpoint characters. Killing is okay when it’s convenient for the main characters, but it’s wrong when it hurts them. This does a huge disservice to the world and to the characters themselves (including the viewpoint ones!). 

So, is it possible to avoid this trope? Read on in Part 2! 

Bibliography (For Parts 1 & 2)

The Adventure Zone, creat. Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, and Travis McElroy. Maximum Fun Network (2014-2017). Podcast. 

Avatar: The Last Airbender, creat. Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Nickelodeon (2005-2008). 

Avengers: Infinity War, dir. Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, perf. Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (2018). 

Iron Man, dir. Jon Favreau, perf. Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges. Paramount Pictures (2008). 

Kill Bill Vol. 1, dir. Quentin Tarantino, perf. Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, David Carradine. Miramax (2003). 

The Lion King, dir. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, Perf. Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones, Whoopi Goldberg. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (1994). 

Lomax, E. J., Beanstalk: The Adventures of a Jack of All Tales. Publisher: Author (2013). 

Man of Steel, dir. Zack Snyder, perf. Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane. Warner Bros. Pictures (2013). 

The New York Times Staff, Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected "Portraits of Grief" from The New York Times. Times Books (2002). 

  • Available on the NYT Website here

Serenity, dir. Joss Whedon, perf. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alan Tudyk. Universal Pictures (2005). 

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, dir. George Lucas, perf. Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid. 20th Century Fox (2002). 

Tolkein, J.R.R., The Fellowship of the Ring. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (1994). 

Tolkein, J.R.R., The Two Towers. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (1994). 

Tolkein, J.R.R., The Return of the King. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company (1994). 

Further Discussion:

Chang, Justin and Peter Dubruge, ‘Does ‘Man of Steel’ Exploit Disasters Like 9/11?,’ VARIETY (June 17, 2013) https://variety.com/2013/film/columns/does-man-of-steel-exploit-disasters-like-911-1200497860 

Dargis, Manohla, ‘Bang, Boom: Terrorism as a Game,’ THE NEW YORK TIMES (May 2, 2013)
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/movies/iron-man-3-with-robert-downey-jr.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

Fattal, Isabel, ‘Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?,’ THE ATLANTIC (Jan. 4, 2018) https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/why-do-cartoon-villains-speak-in-foreign-accents/549527/ 

Ibata, David, ‘'Lord' of racism? Critics view trilogy as discriminatory,’ CHICAGO TRIBUNE (Jan. 12, 2003) https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/chi-030112epringsrace-story.html 

 
Media CritiqueMaya Ghosetropes, fandomComment