new thread
I was watching Secret Circle last night and I noticed that the only guy with long hair that ever appears on the show(which is not in every episode)is the villain.
also, the other night on the show Ringer(starring Sarah Michelle Gellar) the only long haired Man to appear on the show tried to kill Siobhan, but he thought it was Bridget, Siobhans twin, but she managed to escape and then Bridget shows up who everyone thinks is Siobhan and she shoots him.
o.k. if you watch the show you know already, but that is not what this post is really about.
the point I am trying to make is why is it that every time it seems a long haired male actor appears in a series he is always the criminal?
most long haired guys I meet are cool and some are quite cute! ;-)
I am just wondering why the shows do not have more good guys with long hair, not that bad guys don't have short hair, but it would be cool to see a long haired guy as the good guy for a change!
You should try watching HBO's Game of Thrones. There are mostly men with long hair in that show portrayed in many different ways.
-rowie
My theory about this is that it has to do with the portrayal of deviance. The directors of the TV programmes want it to be clear to the audience that the villains are deviants who deserve social rejection due to their evil actions, and the generally stigmatised trait of long hair serves to emphasise their deviance. There are also films in which the male villains wear makeup for this same reason. The logic is that the more socially unacceptable the villain's appearance, the easier it is for the audience to feel enmity towards him.
... agreed in full ... cheers CEM. :O)
Actually there are good guys with long hair. TNT has a show called "The Closer." One of the detectives a few seasons back had great looking long hair. (almost waist length)
There was also Sebastian Bach who played in Lane's band on Gilmore Girls. He also was not a bad guy.
I would argue that in this case the character is a good guy
since I hate Ringer and would love to see it canceled and
all the characters killed off.
I've tried watching it a few times and hated the show. No likable
characters, etc. By the end of the third episode I saw it was
extremely annoying.
Too bad because I loved SMG in Buffy.
BTW, not all the long haired guys are bad guys on TV. There was one show I saw last week where a guy had a pony tail halfway down
his back and was a good guy. (CSI?)
A few years ago on the early seasons of the Closer there was a
detective (a good guy) who had long hair (in a pony tail more than
halfway down his back.) This show was on (and still is ) TNT although the long haired actor is gone. I think he was on for
two seasons.
Hercules was good !!! cheers CEM. :O)
There are tendencies in the movies and TV to equate people who don't follow all the accepted social rolls of what appears to the a majority of people as on par with villians who also are not following the rules. It's an easy (though inaccurate) way to make easily digestible characters for general audiences. Some examples of these besides long hair on men are:
-gay people being psychotic killers (usually men while women are unfriendly with bad attitudes)
-darker skin/fur colors being devious and generally evil (see the Lion King for a good example)
-atheists just don't get it and need to be shown the error of their ways
-single people are doomed to unhappiness until they find perfect love in a standard monogamous relationship that has to lead to marriage...optimally at an early age.
-etc. etc.
These are tendencies and do not always get applied across the board (thankfully the industry is too large for that) but enough to be quite noticeable and rather annoying. It sells.