“After all, what would the world be like without Captain Hook?” – Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman)
I have a nemesis. I have chosen her carefully. Allow me to explain:
Today ended up being a very quiet day. We started with a late breakfast and ended up – as I hope other people occasionally do – watching ridiculous Sunday television. The Three Musketeers was on: the one with Charlie Sheen sporting a mullet and Keifer Sutherland before he was Jack Bauer. Best of all was Tim Curry’s performance as Cardinal Richelieu. Mark and I often judge a movie’s appeal on the quotableness of its lines – and Tim Curry, with his, “All for one and more for me,” provides ridiculous entertainment.
It did get us talking about the best movie villains. Alan Rickman in the atrocious Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Glenn Close as Cruella in 101 Dalmations, or even Thomas F. Wilson as Biff Tannen in the Back to the Future movies. Fabulous villains in the proper sense of the word, not just bad or evil or scary but properly fun, very quotable and always dastardly and compelling. In Ocean’s Eleven, Basher says, “It will be nice working with proper villains again,” and we secretly agree.
Does every story need a good villain? Does every hero or heroine need a nemesis? Is Sarah Ban Breathnach right when she says that it is “simply not an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons?” Are the hard and scary parts of our lives as vital to our story as the sunny ones?
I myself have a nemesis. It may seem crazy to think of her in this way, but when I do our interactions cease to stress me out. Instead of letting her get to me as she used to, I now look at her with amusement and a certain level of comic detachment. In my head I am looking at her with narrowed eyes, tossing my hair back and getting ready to do battle. I imagine her with her red cape flapping behind her as we circle each other with purpose. She is as silly to me as the best of the fabulous villains. By letting the energy out of our interactions I get to live that moment when Sarah says, “You have no power over me,” to an inappropriately crotch-stuffed David Bowie in Labyrinth. Doing this sounds silly, but it means that I get to decide who the heroes and the villains are in my life.
So just for a moment, try seeing the world around you as characters in your own movie. Try seeing the people who drive you crazy as ridiculous partners to your hero or heroine self. Who is the Vader to your Luke or the Hook to your Pan? Then delight in knowing that they have no power over you.
And know that the heroine of this particular story is going to win.
xo
P.S. My voice is (mostly) healed! There’ll be a new story this week. I’m just recording it now! xo
