Fifty Horror Clichés That Need to Die in a Fire

#49: The Punishment Does Not Depend on the Villian

Note: Some of the material here touches upon very controversial philosophical beliefs that not everyone is going to agree upon. If you have a problem with what is being said here, you are more than welcome to skip the part entirely. I don't want to offend anyone and make any of you feel as if I am shoving my own personal beliefs down your throats.

When it comes to touching upon the subject of killing bad people, humanity is split into two moral sectors about the ideology.

On one side of the coin, people believe that killing anyone, even someone who has ended the lives of others, is morally unjust. They believe that killing these individuals makes them just as bad as the killer, and that death is far from the best punishment available. To punish the unjust individual, imprisonment is the moral option, where the killer for the rest of their days will be forced to reflect upon the horrible deeds they have committed. The most well known character with these sets of beliefs is the DC comics character Batman, who does not kill anyone in his villain's gallery, especially The Joker, with the belief killing anyone would taint further his already shattered morality. Hence, Batman locks up these villains time and time again in Arkham Asylum in the small hope they will reform and not commit heinous crimes on the streets ever again. For those following this mold of ideology, they believe imprisonment is the best option over ending it all by killing the criminal.

On the other side of the coin are those who believe in the eye for an eye mentality. If a criminal takes the life of somebody, in return they deserve an equal punishment by being killed themselves. In that way, these evil people cannot commit their heinous crimes ever again, ending their reign of terror on the world. All imprisonment would do for these criminals is lock them up in a cage, with seemingly no other repercussions for their crimes. The most famous character to follow this mold of ideology is The Punisher from Marvel comics, who kills those he deems are harmful to society. He believes from personal experience in the past that the only way to get even with a killer is to take them out with the brutality they shared towards their victims. Although The Punisher's tactics are far from legal, he believes breaking the law is the morally right move of ending a criminal's cycle of cruelty. For those following this mold of ideology, they believe killing those who have taken the life of another is necessary to bring back order to society and bring about justice.

For me personally, I feel that both ideologies are strong arguments, but flawed in one major factor. Both ideologies fail to think about compromise when the punishment of a criminal falls into a morally gray area. What happens to the criminals who have some morality, but have committed the crime of killing someone? Do we lock them in jail to reflect on their actions or kill them outright? This is a question that various people, and those who wish for their favorite horror characters to be truly punished, have been asking for decades.

The answer is to punish the evildoer accordingly, based on the circumstances presented.  If you are dealing with a serial killer who will definitely strike again like Micheal Myers from The Halloween movie franchise, throwing the man in jail is just asking for him to escape in the future.  Killing him once and for all in this case would serve as the only solution to everyone who suffered from his wrath, ending the cycle of pain forever.  If however, the character is a character like Mister Freeze from The Batman comics who could be reformed if given the correct environment, killing him would be too harsh.  Putting the character in jail and then going through the process of therapy to help him get over his misgivings about the world would be a choice in this manner that could make them stop the cycle of pain through their own hands. 

  All villains do not work inside the same wavelength.  For those who cannot be reasoned with, killing unfortunately would be the best option.  For those who can be reasoned with, some jail time and therapy should be the best option as change is possible.  This is a philosophy that horror writers tend to ignore, treating one villain the same as all others by either just jailing everyone or killing everyone.  Depending on the severity of the villain in question, there should be more than one option available in order to create the best outcome for society and the characters inside the book.

  Variety in the punishments dished out to horror killers and monsters would make for a much needed improvement that would help better define the villain's gallery as diverse.  Not one character is truly the same as another.  By adding diversity to the options available to ending the reign of terror the villain has to offer, each horror story gains a level of distinctness.  No longer would one slasher killer story be the same as another if the options available were modified to work based on the level of severity.