[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-140998-en":3,"doc-seo-140998-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},140998,687197207919,"Theodora","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/a000253d6f5f7c60be?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1779446848396160552",2,"Literature","Ambiguous Heroism - Anti-Heroes and the Pharmakon of Justice","This paper examines key anti-heroes and how they interrogate ambiguous representations of heroism in contemporary popular culture. Using Doctor Who’s protagonist, DC Comics’ Batman, and 24’s anti-terrorist agent Jack Bauer as case studies, it analyzes how these figures articulate competing ideas of contemporary justice, morality, and ethics. By disrupting the ‘good’/‘evil’ binary, the study challenges audience assumptions about law and justice and deepens understanding of this form of heroism.","Ambiguous Heroism: Anti-Heroes and the Pharmakon of Justice  \nChristopher Comerford  \nUniversity of Technology, Sydney  \nAbstract  \nThis paper identifies several key anti-heroes and their capacity for questioning how complicated, ambiguous forms of heroism are represented and negotiated in contemporary popular culture. Specifically, the paper uses as case studies three characters at different positions on the anti-hero spectrum – Doctor Who’s eponymous protagonist, the DC Comics superhero Batman, and 24’s anti-terrorist agent Jack Bauer. The paper questions ways in which these texts and their protagonists articulate complex notions of contemporary justice, morality and ethics, achieved partly through their fictional enactments and interrogations of justice and how justice is constituted. The paper attests that these characters complicate audience notions of law and justice, and how the conceptual challenge of the‘good’/‘evil’ binary results in a more nuanced understanding of this particular form of heroism.  \nKeywords  \nBatman, 24, Doctor Who, justice, pharmakon, anti-heroes, heroism, ethics, morality  \nLink to Article in Interactive Media E-Journal  \n[http://imjournal.murdoch.edu.au/im-issue-11-2016/](http://imjournal.murdoch.edu.au/im-issue-11-2016/)  \nAmbiguous Heroism: Anti-Heroes and the Pharmakon of Justice  \nThat’s the point of Batman. He can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no-one else can make, the right choice   He’s not being a hero. He’s being something more.  \nAlfred Pennyworth, The Dark Knight  \nIn recent years, the character of the anti-hero has been proliferated as the protagonist of multiple popular culture texts, particularly in film, television, video games and comic books. These characters are cultivated from a variety of sources; some have been revived or culturally repurposed from decades-old properties (in the case of superheroes like Batman), whilst others have been generated as direct responses to contemporary political and social issues (such as Homeland’s anti-terrorism coordinator Carrie Matheson or True Detective’s societal nihilist Rustin Cohle) . The anti-hero is styled as a figure of ambiguous heroism, a character adept at delivering effective justice who is willing to bend or break the rules – usually by adopting villainous tactics – which prevent effective justice from safeguarding the contemporary world.  \nIn addition to providing entertainment, these figures trigger audiences’ questioning of the process and formation of justice and its relationship to law, situating both as elements related to heroism. Anti-heroes who disrupt the neat binaries of ‘good’ and ‘evil ,’ or ‘hero’ and ‘villain ,’are able to traverse liminal thresholds of law and legality in the pursuit of justice. When discussing the representation of law in modern popular culture texts, Bainbridge (2006, 171) asserts that these texts “[promote] debate about the relationship between law and justice and the balance involved in preserving human rights while protecting security interests.” In transgressing these binaries, anti-heroes pose difficult questions regarding how audiences are invited to negotiate ideals of law and justice in a world that increasingly eschews traditional, legal forms of heroism (Sharp 2012) .  \nThis paper begins the process of identifying several key anti-heroes and their capacity for questioning how complicated, ambiguous forms of heroism are represented and negotiated. Though there is a wealth of scholarship regarding our contemporary understanding of heroism, including Goethals and Allison’s (2012) extensive taxonomy of heroism, this paper seeks to further develop how anti-heroism is understood. In particular, the paper uses as case studies three characters at different positions on an anti-hero spectrum: Doctor Who’s eponymous protagonist, the DC Comics superhero Batman, and 24’s anti-terrorist agent Jack Bauer. While it is beyond the scope of the paper to categorically identify every method ","cbCaigLNkudC6uPL","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigLNkudC6uPL","pdf",324137,1,13,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Anti-heroes as Ambiguous Heroism\n## Justice and Law as Negotiated Concepts\n# Disrupting Binaries\n## Defining the Anti-Hero\n## Contextual Nature of Heroism","[{\"question\":\"What is the central focus of this paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper focuses on how anti-heroes question and complicate representations of heroism, particularly through how law and justice are portrayed and negotiated in popular culture.\"},{\"question\":\"Which characters are used as case studies?\",\"answer\":\"Doctor Who’s protagonist, DC Comics’ Batman, and 24’s anti-terrorist agent Jack Bauer are analyzed as key anti-heroes positioned along an anti-hero spectrum.\"},{\"question\":\"How do anti-heroes affect the audience’s understanding of justice?\",\"answer\":\"By bending or breaking rules and disrupting ‘good’/‘evil’ binaries, they prompt audiences to renegotiate the relationship between law and justice and develop a more nuanced view of heroism.\"}]","Ambiguous Heroism - 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