An anti-hero of one's own - Tim Adams

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/an-anti-her...

How can an anti-hero teach us about the heroic--and sometimes,the unheroic--characteristics that shape a story's protagonist? From jealousy to self-doubt, Tim Adams challenges us to consider how anti-heroes reflect the very mortal weaknesses that can be found within all of us.

Lesson by Tim Adams, animation by Wood Goblin Studios.

• Category

  Education

[SpecterTH]

This video's definition of antiheroes is narrow and flawed. An antihero is simply a protagonist who lacks certain heroic qualities or virtues -- they can still do the hero's job, but they're no saint or savior or superman. Being an antihero doesn't make a character weak, throw them into conflict against an oppressive society, or doom them to failure or retreat; it just means they're not your regular average 'vanilla' monomyth hero, that's all. PLEASE correct your "educational" movie.

[Shiv Patel]

He didn't say Harry Potter or hiccup were antiheros. He said below them ARE antiheroes

[Deonte Henderson]

Thanks, but you're giving me undeserved credit for the debate. I don't even know exactly what figurative means lol. When I see comments that disagree with a successful video, I comment, sometimes even without watching the video. I don't know why I do it, I just do. But yeah, nice debate I guess lol. Sorry for making you think I was actually an intellectual so to speak lol.

[SpecterTH]

Didn't think it was a joke, no. I did think it was (for the most part) a reasonable intellectual discussion by equals over a point of disagreement. I don't tend to pass those up when they come my way.

Nice debate, btw.

[SpecterTH]

And if your awareness of the issue expands any by achieving an understanding of context I'm sure you'll be sure to thank me.

... Okay, who am I kidding? This is the Internet, after all. Gratitude is a foreign concept.

[Deonte Henderson]

And my last was a joke, just to let you know, I don't want you replying only to be to be 2/2 from the field of inaccuracy... this was a joke also. If you didn't like my comment all you had to say to me was go to hell you didn't have to chastise me with words... this was my last joke. Sorry if it wasn't funny... that's my time, my name is Deonte Henderson. Goodnight.

[Deonte Henderson]

If my IQ decreases by two points I blame you.

[SpecterTH]

-- identifies the identifying characteristics that most well-known fictional anti-heroes possess. Just compare to Wikipedia's list of anti-heroes or, better yet, test drive the TV Tropes page on the same subject and get back to me (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph­p/Main/AntiHero). 'Literal and figurative' has nothing to do with it -- the definition in the video is flat-out WRONG, and there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with an INACCURATE "lesson".

[SpecterTH]

Oh, I understood the video just fine, and I stand by my comment that they defined 'anti-hero' far, FAR too narrowly. Perhaps you should look up other definitions than this video and see how well the standard you're holding to actually measures up, or read some fiction with ACTUAL anti-hero characters in it. The video described ONE ITERATION of what an anti-hero COULD be -- it in no way provided a definition that includes ALL aspects and iterations of the anti-hero archetype NOR accurately --

[Deonte Henderson]

One thing I hate is a person who doesn't understand the video second by second. Your comment is inaccurate. Two words that you might want to use to understand this video is literal and figurative, and if you really want to understand the point the video use the formula of "impossible + fiction/humanism*society". What I'm trying to say is, you don't understand the lesson and it reflects in your comment. PLEASE correct your immature by definition comment.

[NotSoCosmoBoy]

All thought that all I thought of was Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender

[MUDMAGGOT4U]

I like the Joker, Total chaos is fun :)