Dr Margrethe Bruun Vaage, Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies in the School of Arts has provided expert comment on American TV dramas and the allure of the antihero.
Margrethe’s main area of research is cognitive film theory. She explores the spectator’s engagement with fictional films and television series, and more specifically the imagination, the emotions and the moral psychology of fiction. Margrethe is also the author of The Antihero in American Television (Routledge, 2015), which explores how television series such as Dexter are able to engage audiences in morally bad main characters, what this tells us about our moral psychological make-up, and more specifically, about the moral psychology of fiction.
In the piece, Margrethe identifies four classic antihero characters: Tony Soprano (The Sopranos); Patty Hewes (Damages); Omar Little (The Wire); and Skyler White (Breaking Bad).
On Tony Soprano, Margrethe says: ‘There is no way around Tony, mobster and the godfather of the television antihero. This series has proud roots in gangster film yet also inheriting the family complications of soap opera. Tony becomes so familiar to us, and so humanly recognisable, that you may find yourself embracing his criminal conspiracies’.
Margrethe’s piece can be read here:
www.kent.ac.uk/news/culture/25245/american-tv-antiheroes-expert-recommendations