What is the point of a Machiavellian villain? It gives us something to hate. And we all love something to hate. We try and make sure that something is legitimately hateable. We don’t want to catch ourselves hating someone because they’re not like us, hating something because it makes us feel uncomfortable, or changes our opinions of the world or of ourselves – though that is always a temptation, as I hope you agree. We want to hate something that is truly abhorrent. A murderer. A movement which aims to destroy the planet. An institution which oppresses the innocent. But you must agree, the feeling of wholeheartedly being against something or someone is cathartic. It’s a relief after always having to look at all the different points of view and be reasonable and understanding all hours of the day, every day.

And that is why we love a Machiavellian villain.

We know he is bad – he has told us so. He does not hide his corrupt and evil motives from us, the audience. The other characters in the play may be fooled by him, but we are not. We know his aim is to bring about ruin and chaos, destroying and shattering all that is good around him. I say ‘him’ because so many of the villains are men – from Shakespeare’s Iago and Don John, to Moriarty, Lex Luther and Voldemort. But of course we have Cruella de Vil, Maleficent, Nurse Ratched, Bellatrix Lestrange and Cersei Lannister, to name a few. And what a relief it is to hate them. Like a pantomime villain, we boo and hiss when they come on stage. We know that what they do is bad, just because they do it. And the bad they do, they do it just because they can. We don’t have to try and understand their abusive childhood (though many of these characters have them); we don’t have to say, ‘but on the other hand, think of it from their point of view…’. We can feel free to wish for the main character to hurt them, to kill them. No matter how flawed our enemies are in real life, we don’t wish them actual harm. We may say we despise that politician who lied to the country, or say we hate the businessman who defrauded his workers and got away with it, but we don’t really want them to be blasted with a ray gun, to disintegrate at the end of a magic spell or be executed for their crimes. We are reasonable adults who see both sides of the argument, and understand that the world is crumbling and battered, and try to make allowances.

That is why the Machiavellian villain is so delicious, and why we should try and avoid him. It is fine in in fables and fairy tales, in legends. These genres need the black and white of the good and evil. There is a place for that in our society. But in these divided times, I feel we need to fight against the desire to see things in black and white. What we do in our spare time, in our reading and our TV watching, in the films we enjoy, will help form the way our mind works. It is time we thought about the nuances in life and looked at the literature which can help us appreciate that. Not all of the time, but for at least a part. Sometimes that is about the choice of literature we watch or read, and other times it is about our interpretation of it.

I think Shakespeare’s Iago allows us to simply think of him as a bad man. He sets out, unequivocally, to harm Othello. As he cooks up a plot to snare Othello before our very eyes, in Act I Scene iii, he ends his speech saying,

I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

He calls on ‘Hell’ and ‘night’ and likens the plan to a ‘monstrous birth’. What more do we need to know?  But I think Shakespeare also gives us the option to see his reasons for his behaviour and makes it possible to play him as a rounded character – nasty, selfish, vindictive – but human. He hates that he has been passed over for Cassio, that he has to work for Othello, a black man and an outsider. He has heard malicious rumours about Othello ‘doing his office’ ‘betwixt his sheets’, in other words having an affair with his wife, and he is willing to bring him down on the off chance that the rumour is true.

This may seem like a crazy, unnatural way to behave. When would a normal person ever do that? Think of the times that a person in the office has been gossiped over, motives ascribed to them, actions too, with barely a shred of evidence. Has that stopped the gossips pouring over them, destroying them with cruel words and even unpleasant actions? Think of a successful person, perhaps a footballer, a person of colour in a job where that more unusual than it should be, or a person who is famous and in the public eye. Then think of all the nasty comments, and cruel manipulative behaviour of the press and the people who read the slander and the lies. Iago’s seemingly baseless, unexplainable evil is not very much further down the road than this.

So, while the desire to hate the enemy, be partisan, to boo and hiss at those we see as villains, is strong and comforting in a world of insecurities and uncertainties, it leads to nothing good. It is, in essence, a type of immaturity – a comfort blanket we need to feel safe. It is better to have fun with our comic book villains, knowing them to be just that, but in our reading and watching also try and exercise our empathetic muscles to understand the undercurrents of evil in the people around us, and in ourselves. So, fewer Machiavellian villains, please, and more mixed, real, flawed and endlessly fascinating human beings.