The new male protagonist

     The heroic male protagonist is a storytelling staple. He exhibits a paragon’s virtue in the face of overwhelming adversity and strife. The heroic male then becomes a symbol for emulation. He transforms into a symbol for a cause or a nation. The figure has been in tales since humans could start writing. The male hero is a convention that will never go away in storytelling. It can change, however. Popular media shifts its storytelling conventions to fit in with the times. Virtuous paragons and overt “masculinity” are no longer the mainstream. Movies like Failure to Launch and Knocked Up use comedy to convey males as inadequate boobs that struggle to get their lives together well into adulthood. Action and adventure films like, Oz the Great and Powerful focus on vices for the male protagonist to overcome. Oz, the male hero is a coward and greedy. He is thrown into a greed fueled quest and given easily surmountable odds to overcome that barely challenge his character development. Other pop mediums highlight this culture shift to show men as immature and addled with vices. Videogames also show a different slant to what the heroic male protagonist is.

     The new male in popular games today are featured less and less as admirable, virtuous or worthy of emulation. They are wrapped up in stories that display them as anti-heroes or given nefarious occupations that masquerade as something altruistic. There are some exceptions to this new convention, like Nathan Drake of the Uncharted series, there always are in popular media. Other games that allow you to customize your character’s sex do not suffer from this new male showcase. The stories in games like Mass Effect and Fallout are fundamentally the same regardless of sex. Games without this innate choice that choose to make their protagonist male almost always make that male a tortured figure with more vice than virtue.

      Bioshock Infinite, a recent release, demonstrates this point perfectly. Booker Dewitt is a boozer, and a gambler. An entire society views him as an ersatz Anti-Christ. The main mission of the story is to kidnap a girl to wipe away an outstanding debt. The story’s twists culminate with Booker finding his true self, and it’s not something positive. It might just be the first-person shooter genre that forces the male protagonist into these roles. Another game comes to mind that depicts a male in the negative. It just happens to be another shooter.

     Farcry 3 forces the main male lead into a survival situation that degrades into revenge as the story progresses. Jason Brody witnesses his brother’s death at the hands of a pirate psychopath. He meets the political power players on the island setting that manipulate him for their own goals. He never really has a personality of his own that is not molded by the other characters. He regularly engages in drug use. Even worse, he is typecast as a typical American party boy and adrenaline junkie. He rarely exhibits any sort of redeeming qualities. He loses himself as the story ramps through escalating ultra-violence when he is eventually forced to make a choice that results in death. Other games put the male lead into an occupation that forces them to be monsters.

       The Hitman and Assassin’s Creed franchises each put the male lead into the role of a trained killer. That occupation is spun as a means towards an altruistic truth. The characters become death incarnate. Millions of people play these games and are exposed to strong male characters being death wielding anti heroes. Few main males use nothing more than their wits, intelligence, and expertises to solve problems or help people. Games and other popular media demonstrate to people that men are easily manipulated and morally weak or ambiguous. This is a new paradigm for the male lead. The male characters in these particular stories are bankrupt caricatures not worthy of praise. Their actions can be seen as morally reprehensible, but are primarily there to move action along. In that regard, these protagonists become mere Mcguffins. They no longer function as relatable characters. They are just a story device and offer no moral development.

     It could be argued that games and movies with this new breed of male lead are being made solely for the profit motive. The primary demographic is male so that motive is logical, although there are female gamers. Writing these characters should not focus on their sex, because anyone can be morally bankrupt.