Construction of Good and Evil (The Untold Story)

“I’m a good guy,” I said.

Stepping closer to me, he tilted his head, “You don’t look like one.”
-Worm, Chapter 1.6

Over the last week, a vitriolic conversation has been brewing in the game design scene regarding the construction of beast-,men fantasy races (Orcs, Goblins, etc) as racist, with the primary idea being that these creatures use ethnic coding (Asian/Black physical features, bone adornments, tribal societies, description as "savages") to create an "evil" aesthetic that the game rewards you for destroying. One of the pillars of this stance is the idea that media, while not very good at eliciting specific actions from people, is a powerful tool for defining audience perceptions of good and evil, right and wrong. If a group or ideology is framed as the antagonist of a story, the mechanisms of the film work to portray their actions as wrong by displaying them as harmful to the protagonist. Inversely, an effective story utilizes its toolbox to make you root for the film's protagonist, doing whatever is necessary to make their actions seem justified. By creating these clear distinctions of good and evil, hero and enemy, a work plants itself in a powerful position as a moral arbitrator. The mentalities of good and evil extend well beyond the story itself, which is why stories are so effective at teaching morality and spreading propaganda. Hence, when a game or film labels something like ethnic features as "evil" or the mass murder of such ethnic entities as "good", people are likely to carry such sentiments with them after leaving the theater. For historical examples, think back to how Ronald Reagan frequently referenced movies in his addresses or how Birth of a Nation fueled the return of the KKK.

If there's one thing that I think "The Untold Story" succeeded at, it was creating a despicable villain and a powerful depiction of evil. Wong is a greedy, spiteful, ruthless, and utterly unhinged person, killing without remorse or hesitation and disposing of the corpses in ways that indicate a total lack of compunction or value for humanity. We as the audience are absolutely appalled by this guy and are hoping for the whole movie that he gets what is coming to him. This construction of evil is something that I have little concern with, as Wong's list of crimes are undoubtedly reprehensible (to the point where many of his actions strike me as gratuitous). That said, the greatest failure of the film is in the construction of good: the presentation of the Macau cops who take Wong down.

The team of Macao cops (Officer Lee, Bo, Robert, Bull, and King Kong, hereafter referred to as "the squad") are not likable people, being messy and incompetent in the best of times and grossly detestable at the worst of times. Their jokes fall flat, their personalities are obnoxious, and when we see them in action we as the audience follow them begrudgingly even when they are set up to be likable and relatable. It's in the second half of the film that I think the squad becomes a genuine problem, however,  as their methods take a dark turn. The extensive use of torture and prison violence are framed as good things, as they help get a confession out of Wong (the question of police brutality is given momentary lip service and is depicted as an obstruction justice stemming from "nosy media"). As the audience is so adamantly against Wong, we become obligated to stand with the squad as they commit inhuman acts of their own.

I view this as a problem because when such methods are rewarded in movies, audiences are more inclined to support them in real life. When the successful torture in The Untold Story becomes a reference point, a person would likely look upon real-life examples of police and military torture as a necessity or even as a righteous act. In reality, we have ample resources demonstrating how and why torture is a terrible method of eliciting information from people (https://www.newsweek.com/science-shows-torture-doesnt-work-456854) and results in little more than the brutalization of another human being. The concept of "deserved brutality" is similarly a construct of fiction which has little bearing on the real-world patterns of human behavior.

It is for this reason that I view the mainstream discussion of violence in films as being rather flawed. So intensely has the conversation been focused on the potential eliciting of violence that the construction of morality in our films has been thrown to the wayside. The acts depicted onscreen don't matter as much as their narrative rewards and framing, because context is ultimately what makes the audience wonder if an act is worth doing or if an authority is worth trusting. Films are powerful tools for guiding value judgments due to their long-honed mastery of emotional realism, and such is the reason why I weigh depictions of virtue and vice so heavily in media.