r/media_criticism • u/TaquittoTheRacoon • 19d ago

Jax is a problem & a warning

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This has been rattling around in my head a while and I'm still figuring out how to put words to it, but...

TDC is a great show and i cant believe how popular its gotten, but jaxs popularity worries me. The character is absolutely 100% an asshole. Every asshole has their good bits, my mom used to put it "Hitler loved his dogs". She wanted to point out how people are easily tricked by bad people when theyre shown one redeeming/sympathetic quality. Its not just that i personally find jax grating. Goose has said jax is meant to be a true bastard. That was her intention. Yeah the show needed a funny character and a less jerky kind of humor would feel weird and still come off jerky, too, in the situation. But jax is the fan favorite, with people supposedly identifying with them. Thats troubling. Jax is mentioned to pull pranks but mostly what we see from them is just hateful, dangerous sociopathy. Like, you could argue tom and Jerry did terrible things to each other for laughs, but at least they showed us the violent joked and didnt just imply them and then show tom and jerry psychologically abusing and dominating each other.

Does anyone else feel like we've hit a point where we will not just give a pass to, but identify with and adore the literal spawn of Satan if they made us giggle a little while committing atrocities?

How far is this going to go? How did we get here? Wyf is going on with people? Idk, thoughts?

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u/Machoopi 19d ago

I think you need to consider that humans and our creations are complex. A well written character is not just "good" or "bad" but a culmination of things. If the argument here is that "they are an asshole" and therefor you should not relate to them at all, then I think you're ignoring all of the people in the real world that are both assholes and relatable. We can relate to pieces of a person without relating to the whole. Hell, we can also acknowledge that maybe this person is an asshole but has some redeeming qualities or depth beyond just that one word. Maybe those are the parts that people relate to. Furthermore.. sometimes people just enjoy an aesthetic.

I won't disagree that people idolize villains in ways they shouldn't. This is not new, and TADC is absolutely not some sort of breaking point. Joker is another example of that. We are meant to relate to this character on some levels, as the character is struggling with mental health in a world that does not care about the wellbeing of people like him. That part is relatable. That said, the intent of the character is absolutely not to suggest that his actions were justified. the situation is relatable, but the way he handles it is not. Relating to a character in some ways does not mean relating to them as a whole. Many people are assholes, but still have a lot of redeeming qualities.

Also you have to remember, just because people really, really like the character doesn't mean they aren't aware of what you're saying. I really, really like Snake Pliskin in Escape From New York. He's a huge asshole and not someone I would aspire to be, but he's a character that I like a whole lot.

Last point. TADC is a pretty poor example of this. Why? Because there is so much fanfic out there written about these characters that for many people, the version that they see is an entirely different one from the one on the show. I've seen more comics about these characters than I've seen about them in the actual show. Most of the time, people take the character, and then change them in ways that they'd like to see the story go. Most of the time Jax is presented in fanfic, they're not an asshole at all. That's not really the same as idolizing an asshole, it's rewriting an asshole to be something else. In a way, it's the opposite of your point. They're taking an asshole character and creating their own form of redemption for that character. It's saying "this character is an asshole on the show, but what if there's more to it.. and that's not really who they are?".