The “Lovable Asshole” Trope and Sexism

I tend to fall in love most with a certain type of character, and those characters are usually assholes. Oh yes, sometimes there are exceptions like Scott McCall in Teen Wolf, who is practically a literal Disney prince, but most of the time I love the asshole characters. Usually this is because I find them hilarious and I love that they don’t seem to give a fuck about what anyone thinks of them.

And let’s be honest, there is a reason that we love characters like this. To some extent we all wish we could get away with saying exactly what we are thinking, no matter how awful it is, and not give a fuck about any of the consequences that comes from that. But we still want to be liked, and we certainly do not want to be evil (not necessarily anyway) and thus we get the Lovable Asshole trope. The character who doesn’t give a fuck and makes hilarious quips about people they don’t like, but everyone still loves them for the most part, even if they know they’re a bit of an asshole. Characters like Deadpool, Jayne Cobb, and Iron Man fulfill this trope to a tee. I usually think these characters are awesome and they certainly have an interesting amount of complexity to them. Sometimes, though, this awesome trope can be used for evil. And by evil I mean that writers can use these characters to make prejudice and bigotry seem cool and acceptable.