He is the Cyclops. He is the Cave Troll. He is the Ogre.
He is male. He is, in fact, an exaggeration of masculinity.
The Brute is stupid. He is also evil. He is evil because he is stupid.
He embodies the Id. He destroys everything that he touches and revels in the destruction.
He is and agent of entropy.
There are only three things that he enjoys: eating, fucking and killing. If these can be combined, all the better.
He likes to fuck. He never asks permission to fuck. He does not perceive that this is rape, however, because there is no psychology to the act. He simply assumes that all women (and men) scream when they are being fucked.
The Brute is soulless. He did not sell his soul; he never had one to start.
He does not understand empathy or love. He doesn’t understand anything at all, really, except the aforementioned eating, fucking and killing.
Children are to be seen as appetizers.
The Brute is a monster but not a villain. He does not desire power or wealth. He is what he is.
The Brute may be employed by a villain. If this is so, the Brute neither understands nor cares to understand their relation. He will obey the villain only because the villain can hurt him.
The Brute can only be killed by a Hero or a heroic Sidekick. Anyone else who opposes the Brute will be killed, eaten and, perhaps, fucked.
He is too stupid to know that he is stupid. The Hero will usually exploit this.
The Brute is godless. The idea of God is beyond him.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Unstructured Archetypes: The Brute
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5 comments:
He can also be an "it": the Black Hole in the eponymous movie, or the thing everyone battles against in The Fifth Element...
I'm not sure what I would classify the Black Hole as (it's more of a force of nature but the movie also depicts it as being the gateway to Hell) but I certainly disagree that the entity in t5E is a Brute.
I would call it an example of the Ancient Evil archetype and put it in the same category as, say, the Balrog from LotR.
Fair enough. I focused on the fact that the entity in The Fifth Element is supposed to want nothing but the destruction of all life; the Ancient Evil archetype (the Balrog, Darkseid) usually has something else in mind.
That's an interesting point. I'd still lean towards Ancient Evil.
That said, perhaps my memory of the movie is deficient but wasn't the Entity intelligent?
I think that it's implied that it's the entity that Gary Oldman's character is talking to on the phone.
Yes, you're right. Insofar as there is intelligence guiding the actions of the Fifth Element Evil Entity, it cannot fit the mold of The Brute. Sheer destruction for the pleasure of destruction is insufficient to qualify as a Brute; and if the Ancient Evil is ancient enough (pre-dating or contemporary with the Creation), then its goal can be simple destruction. I concede fully.
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