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"The more we grow up, the more we understand the antagonists." Using this pretentious philosophical sentence for years, some perhaps think they have become Socrates. Spoiler Alert: they haven't.
Not so long ago, Game of Thrones (GOT) arrived on TV, and people hated Cersei no matter how many 'gray shades' were there for her in the plot. Still, the same people behaved a lot differently while seeing Breaking Bad (BB), where everyone kind of rooted for a meth dealer, the one and only Heisenberg.
That's still not the worst part because Walter White had much more character arc than most TV show protagonists. The worst part is the increasing fascination over Gus Fring's (a literal murderer, should I remind you) 'coolness.'
The terrifying fact is that it is growing. After Breaking Bad, there was Peaky Blinders, and everyone was supposed to root for the Shelby Family, no matter how sinister they were. It's not that they didn't have good characteristics, but sometimes some characters had bad traits all over themselves, and people still loved them.
Some might argue that these obsessions are solely for entertainment, but that's not entirely true if you look at society. An example could be Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000).
At first, the character became a fan favourite out of nowhere, but the problem arose when some people started to follow the misogynistic traits of Patrick Bateman. This, however, has an irony in itself because Patrick Bateman was a queer-coded character (seeing himself in the mirror turned him on), but the fan-followers are extremely homophobic by nature; so how do they idolize someone like Patrick Bateman?
This increasing fascination resulted in Sandeep Reddy Vanga's recent Bollywood film Animal. Even though this film received a lot of criticism from the general masses, a particular portion of people loved it. The problem with this craze is that the younger generation is becoming more misogynistic.
While Bollywood's Animal is still criticized, Netflix's aesthetic series 'YOU' is being welcomed by everyone.
Granted, the show is marvellous with its outstanding script, acting, colour grading, and everything else; however, society's fascination with the central character, Joe Goldberg, could be more entertaining.
The cold-blooded psychopath kills every obstacle he finds in his way, and sometimes those become his supposed 'love interests.' Still, a fair share of aesthetic people are fond of the character, with women having a crush on this psychopath. In reality, however, these types of stalkers are threats to society.
In societies, humankind always faces a kind of insecurity from the very beginning of their lives, either from 'not being able to choose the profession they love' or from 'heartbreaks or something else.' Either way, they try to find confidence in themselves, and typically, protagonists are too good to have that much confidence (which is overconfidence and even arrogance, according to some). That's why people love 'Joker' more than they love 'Batman' in The Dark Knight. Joker has all those traits of confidence, overconfidence, and arrogance and does all his work seamlessly.
If we become a little bit more specific, in the Indian subcontinent, toxic masculinity is often the main reason why men are fond of those antagonists.
They somehow find their darkest desires on screen, with the misogynist negative leads. It is generalized but generally from Arjun Reddy, Kabir Singh, or Animal; subcontinent's men are fond of these characters and affectionately call them 'antiheroes' while they are nothing more than typical misogynists.
Psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that the unconscious mind stores all the thoughts, memories, and feelings that are disturbing or traumatic. This is how the hype of antagonists may create severe psychological trauma; thus, the crimes may increase in real life as well.