Please Stop Glorifying Antiheroes
From Fleabag to Bojack Horseman, antiheroes dominate our screens. We are currently in a Golden Age of Television; the rising popularity of antiheroes played its part in helping to create the advanced quality we see in shows today. To say that antiheroes make shows enjoyable is an understatement. Antiheroes are messy and sometimes vile, but most of all they are authentic. Without the complexity writers give to their leading characters, many of our favorite shows and films today, would not be quite as remarkable.
The trope of the antihero has evolved over the past two decades. The Take distinguishes the anti-hero evolution in terms of two versions: the antihero 1.0 from the 1990s to the 2000s, and the antihero 2.0 from the 2010s to now. Antiheroes nowadays tend to be more diverse compared to the antihero 1.0 (who mainly consisted of white men). The antihero 2.0 is also less likely to be glorified, both by audiences and within the show itself. Instead, their negative qualities and actions speak more of a cautionary tale, preventing the show from portraying them in a way that audiences might aspire to. But the antihero 1.0 still broke barriers in what television was capable of showing. Initially sex and violence could not be portrayed in a gritty and realistic way without the risk of losing ratings. As pay-per-view channels like HBO introduced uncensored shows like Oz, Sex and the City, and The Sopranos, the demand for similar shows soared, and that risk was minimized.
Two of the most notorious antiheroes from the past two decades are Tony Soprano of The Sopranos, and Don Draper of Mad Men. While these acclaimed antiheroes made their mark on modern television in terms of how writers can approach characters, they have also left an unfortunate legacy on audiences.
Audiences love these two men—rightfully—for their character development and the brilliant performances delivered by James Gandolfini and Jon Hamm, but some fans take their idolization to an uncomfortable level. On YouTube, there are countless videos explaining how to appear as confident and sophisticated as Don Draper. On sites like Pinterest and Instagram, inspirational quotes spoken by Tony Soprano, (well, the character’s lines), are easy to come across. The people behind these posts and videos are mainly men, targeting other men. The men who love these characters for their fatal flaws rather in spite of them, wish to embody these characters because to them, Tony and Don are epitomes of masculinity.
Contemporary society considers the optimal man to be a powerful figure; strong, tough, confident, and dominant. Tony and Don fit these traits perfectly. Both men seem to have it all on the surface; they command respect in any room they enter, with their serious demeanor and their ‘alpha-male’ charm, and both are leaders in their respective fields. As creative director, (and later firm partner), Don is a quiet genius who can come up with elaborate advertisement pitches. His former spouses also represent the ideal women of that time — Betty for the conservative 1950s, and Megan for the free-spirited ‘60s. Additionally, Don engages in numerous affairs throughout the series, getting into them quite easily.
As the boss of the DiMeo crime family, Tony rules with an iron fist, and with the loyalty of his crew. This comes with its rewards — financial prosperity, notoriety, and successful evasion of prison. Like Don, Tony has a nuclear family and plenty of affairs outside of this. Both men also appear to honorably adhere to a strict code of ethics, which they apply regularly against others, but not necessarily with themselves. Their vices, apart from sex, can even be considered as stereotypically masculine as well; Tony engages in several acts of violence, whilst Don drinks routinely.
In terms of how they personify ideal manhood, it may seem impossible to see these characters as anything other than perfect. But what some audiences do not realize, is that these are the very traits which end up destroying both characters by the end of the shows. Their hypermasculine traits were shaped by trauma rather than maturity, and continuing the façade of being the ideal male leads to disillusionment, and their loss of humanity.
Tony’s downfall is more expected than Don’s, due to his position as a mafia boss - a violent and illegal occupation. In the episode ‘All Due Respect’, Tony tells consigliere Silvio Dante that being “number one” inevitably means that they are, “completely alone with it all.” In the end, Tony ends up alone in all aspects of his life. His crime family is hit significantly after a war with a New York crime family. However, it is his personal life that suffers the most. This character continuously disregards his honor code; he boasts that he prioritizes family above all else, but neglects his responsibilities to his wife Carmela and his children, specifically A.J, who mirrors his mental health struggles as he ages. He kills some of the people he genuinely loves, and ceases to feel any remorse about it, as the show progresses. Tony even isolates his therapist, Dr. Melfi, after she realizes that Tony is essentially a sociopath who will never change. By the infamous finale, Tony’s toughness, an acclaimed masculine trait, perseveres at the expense of his empathy.
This does not come as a shock, considering the environment in which he grew up. While Tony does admire his father, he never gave Tony the emotional attention a child needs, (his father was also part of the mafia). Yet, the trauma of not having a close emotional relationship with his father does not compare to the trauma induced by Tony’s mother, Livia, who was outright abusive to her son throughout her entire life. Tony’s strength and closed off behavior is actually a response to his mother’s unrelenting callousness towards him.
Don’s fall from grace, foreshadowed through the opening credits of the show, stems from his past and his false identity. Don Draper is not Don Draper - both in the literal sense and in terms of his persona. He is haunted by his impulsive act to steal the original Donald Draper’s identity after the real Don’s death. Hoping to make something out of his newfound name, Don puts forth the image of being this cool, calm, and collected gentleman, but the weight of having to fake this persona in an attempt to mask his insecurities of being an imposter tears at him emotionally. This leads to Don becoming completely unstable, as he develops a drinking problem, and constantly abandons his life at difficult moments.
Additionally, Don’s relationships with the many women of his life mirrors his inability to define who he really is. He gets with various women, trying to believe that he can see himself in them, when he is really just trying to adopt whatever image they fit into. Paradoxically, he finds himself pursuing affairs with women who juxtapose his spouses; when he is married to Betty, he sleeps with independent, modern women, but when he is married to Megan, he sleeps with housewives.
Like Tony, Don’s past plays a significant role in his sanity (or lack thereof). As a teenager, he grew up at a brothel owned by his uncle, and he was raped by one of the prostitutes there. This traumatic event, tied with his dysfunctional childhood, causes Don’s unstable sense of identity, and rejection of his former self and name. Don is unable to articulate the shame he feels about his past, and when he does, the moment is wholly inappropriate.
Knowing how truly messed up these characters are, we might ask, why do some audiences still desire to be them? Simply put, it is because like the characters themselves, these (predominantly male) fans, see only what they want to see. Tony and Don refuse to reflect on their behavior and understand what shaped them to be this damaged. Similarly, the people who seek to imitate these characters, also fail to see the ugly truth behind their beloved antiheroes. This is especially true considering the endings of the shows; while it is debated whether or not Tony lives at the end of the finale, it doesn't really matter, as everything else in his life is redundant. Don’s ending is less tragic than Tony’s, as Don is able to come to terms with his former self. However, it is clear that Don’s former position of power, the original ‘mad man,’ is gone, as people outside the status-quo like Joan Holloway and Peggy Olson rise to the top. Don may be okay with this loss of power, but the men who watch the show admiring this aspect of him, are less inclined to be as accepting of this development.
Today’s antiheroes make it harder for audiences to set aside the looking-glass, their strengths are less romanticized, and their flaws are portrayed in a more frank way compared to the antihero 1.0. Despite this, audiences continue to love antiheroes, and in many ways, they should. But maybe it is more important to learn from the antihero’s journey, rather than simply admiring their initial damaging behaviors, and perhaps even apply their processes of change to ourselves.