Why are movie villains so hot?

Ava Park

Most of us have probably watched the new “Hunger Games” movie and met our new favorite morally confused platinum blonde…young Coriolanus Snow (bye bye Draco Malfoy). Although the inevitable fate of Coriolanus Snow becoming President Snow lingers in the back of our minds, we, at least I, choose to ignore it because, let's be honest, Tom Blythe is easy on the eyes. It also doesn't help that the “snow lands on top” TikTok thirst edits are all over the ‘for you’ page. The hashtag #youngsnow has 41.7M views, #snowlandsontop has 34M views, and #coriolannussnow has a whopping 1.5B views. Comment sections are flooded with “I can change him”s, and “I would have talked it out”s. Unknowingly, I got sucked into this world of Snow TikTok thirst edits. Without a care in the world, I liked every video that came my way, until I got reminded that this is the same person that killed three people (and later more). This made me wonder, why do TikTok edits influence our perception of  considerably “bad people.'' It seems that one fire edit of a person who is responsible for the death of three characters to the song “Agora Hills” excuses all their wrongdoings. 

This may seem like a silly thing to write about, and you may be thinking, “Who cares! They’re fictional characters!” And that's true. They are just fictional characters, but the reactions to them are real. It has me wondering how we, as a society, might act when these TikTok edits start to glorify the actions of real-life bad people, who have inflicted real pain onto others. 

TikTok has contributed to the bigger issue of mob mentality, where, if enough people can agree on something, it's bound to be accepted by a larger community of people. One well-made TikTok edit is enough to have viewers question their moral perception of someone. The combination of catchy music and iconic dialogue is so powerful, you forget all about the character, their story and their wrongdoings. 

But maybe I’m reading too far into it, and it just so happened that Lionsgate recruited a good looking fella to play Snow. Obviously, the concept of bad being bad and good being good doesn’t acknowledge the nuances of human behavior, and everyone mostly exists in the gray area of morality. However, at least in these fictional worlds, I wish movie villains weren’t so hot.