Time to end typecasting villains, comics with 'visible marks'

Movies exert significant influence on people’s knowledge and attitudes toward communities, events, social institutions, individual problems, and social issues. Hence it is important to analyze the ways in which such a mass media depicts the marginalised groups of the society, and whether these depictions further reinforce the stereotypes dominant groups in the society hold about them. This is precisely the reason for a new campaign #IAmNotYourVillain to have garnered such attention in the mass media recently.

One of the ways in which movies try to make villains “look evil” is through facial differences like scars or burns. This new campaign, “I am not your villain”, is an attempt to stop those in the film industry from using scars, marks, burns, etc to depict villainy.

The campaign was started by Changing Faces, a U.K. nonprofit which provides support to people living with “visible differences” on their faces or bodies. 

The move is in an attempt to eliminate stigma associated with facial differences. Using physical differences to imply evilness or creepiness is a connection that can be internalised by people, especially children, leading to discrimination in daily life as well. When we influence children’s attitudes towards disfigurement in such a profoundly negative way, it certainly has chances of leading to bullying, or at the very least socially excluding, children with disfigurement in their schools or communities. In a world where inclusion is increasingly being promoted, this representation certainly does become problematic.

Many films use facial differences for villains as a way of making the characters seem “scarier” or more intimidating. Examples include Scar from 'The Lion King', the Joker in 'The Dark Knight,' and Freddy Kreuger in 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'.

Disability and facial or body differences are sometimes used as an arc for a character. A character becomes a villain because they become disabled or have a visible difference. One such character is Two-Face from multiple 'Batman' movies. Harvey Dent, Two-Face’s name before half his face was burned with acid, was a successful lawyer. After the injury to his face, Two-Face begins committing crimes and has a “fractured mental state.” 

In support of the nonprofit’s campaign, the British Film Institute (BFI) will no longer fund films that use characters with facial differences as villains, according to The Telegraph.

The campaign does not seem to have permeated in any way into Indian cinema. Neither has the campaign garnered attention from the Indian news media. However, such a campaign is certainly important for Indian cinema as well. Along with stopping the representation of people with physical differences as villains, it is also important for the Indian film industry to stop using people with physical disabilities for the purpose of providing comic relief in movies (such as 'Golmaal', 'Housefull 3', 'Tom, Dick and Harry', etc).

In a world that is now constantly fighting to end exclusion of groups that have been othered and marginalised, this campaign has an important message to spread. After all, ending stereotypes is the first step to inclusion.