Recently,
despite my initial reluctance or rather after showing no marked enthusiasm for
the event, I went to watch the movie “The Avengers”. By the time I came out of
the theatre, I was completely changed. I began thinking exclusively about how
the world and everyone in it seem to relish on heroes, especially those who
display talents that markedly stand out in a crowd!
For me, though I enjoy watching or
reading about a good hero, it is the villains or the antagonists who intrigue
me the most and thus I like them the best of all in my fiction! It is very
exhilarating for me to watch or read about the bad guys. I pay attention to
every scene they appear in or are talked about and at the end of it all, I try
to decipher the motives of their actions. I find this extremely fun and often
for hours or even days later, I escape inwardly to ponder this. So anyone who
meets me at this phase, in the future, please don’t take offense, its nothing
personal! As it always happens I’m left with the baddies as my most favorite
characters to the chagrin of others. My movie buddies actually keep asking me
how I could bring myself to even like such characters let alone fall in love
with them!!
The same thing happened to me when I
was watching The Avengers too! Even before I could get to know Loki’s back-story
from watching Thor (which incidentally I watched after I had seen The
Avengers), I was already offering my warmest sympathies to him! At least this
time, I’m not alone in my devotion if the internet can be considered a reliable
source! (Oh and the actor who plays the character, Tom Hiddleston is way too
handsome too!) Once I did hear the rest of his story, the only way I could go
was to go to the very ends of the fall!
Thinking about Loki’s motives
actually surprised me because I found it to be universal in the very least- the
need for power to help one raise one’s self esteem and a sense of
belongingness. As any person who studies humans can tell us, these 2 are
extremely powerful social motivators when it comes to our species. When we
actually sit down and reflect on this, we can see how much of our behavior is
to be credited to them. Every thing we do as social beings is to carve a niche
for ourselves in our social world or stand out in it. We go to extreme lengths to
try and belong somewhere, to have our identities associated with something- our
nation, our state, our gender.
Coming to one’s need for power, it
can unwittingly thrust a person into doing things that he/she wouldn’t be doing
if it didn’t undermine one’s sense of control. For me, the need for power is
equivalent to one’s sense of control. We all love to be in control of ourselves
and not be pushed around. We want to be the shepherd rather the sheep following
behind, paying heed to every one of the former’s instructions. This need for
power can be found in even the smallest of social setups- from domestic
positions to the hierarchies seen in employment places to our politicians.
Even the need for revenge, which has
been accorded a prime position in violence, I think, is a by-product of loss of
control and from being ostracized from a social group. One also associates
their self-esteem by the amount of power they can wield. This is again decided
by social norms and standards which is again the reason as to why we strive so
hard to live up to these standards in the first place because the more we can
positively correlate with the norms, the more the possibility of wielding power
over others. Despite being a person who believes in scientific research, I don’t
think we need any studies to prove that one’s self esteem can actually increase
with each step taken upwards on the social scale.
This brings me back to Loki’s
motives again. Being a person who has been used to assuming a position of a
prince and a god moreover, discovering his true lineage brought out all his
insecurities in him. Failing to please his father, his self esteem takes a
further plummeting. That is how we see him in the beginning of this movie- The
Avengers. He feels that by assuming control of earth and its people, he can
finally feel good about himself and forge himself a new identity at the same
time- as the ruler of earth.
But to thwart him are a gang of
super humans! Though they initially cannot get along themselves due to the distribution
of…what else (?)- power (of course!!), they do come together after seeing the
bigger picture- the survival of earth and her inhabitants! And so poor Loki is destroyed
and forcefully exiled with his brother (Thor)… to be seen in the forthcoming
movie-Thor 2. Rest assured I’ll be one of the first few ones to be going to
watch this movie as soon as it releases here! But to sign off, I would like to
borrow a maxim made popular by another comic book series- With great power
comes great responsibility!!! Ciao!
