Deprive: To take something away from. To keep from possessing or enjoying.
The interesting thing about characters who are shown to have rough starts in life, or are known to come from rough backgrounds, is that they are just as likely to turn out as ruthless villains as they are to rise as champions from their humble origins as underdogs. A deprived character can have nothing to lose and welcome the lifestyle of a criminal and turn over to the dark side as a villain. But they can just as easily take the high road, though the pursuit may be long and arduous, they have already been hardened by the conditions of their upbringing or the lived experiences of their past. Sometimes only time will tell in the story if the character is a good egg or a bad egg. Provided are some examples of downtrodden characters, both good and bad.
Indebted Characters: When it comes to being deprived, these Characters find themselves turning to last resort measures in order to survive, but they find themselves in over their heads when they become involved with loan sharks, criminals, cartels, gangs, or other mob-like organizations. When they cannot pay back whatever loans, debts, or IOU's they have racked up, and they find themselves being hunted down by heavyset men with baseball bats hell-bent on breaking their legs. Many audiences know how this story plays out, they have seen the mafia films, and they have seen the dumb character or the immature kid who makes a mistake or does a bad deal and he winds up getting his hand crushed with a hammer or loses a finger because he could not repay the thugs who are after him for what he owed. Part of being down on your luck or being completely down and out means to do things, and to partake in acts that one regrets, to be at such a disadvantage in life where they have nowhere else to turn but the criminal underbelly of society. Rarely do these kinds of relationships improve the lives of the characters, and if anything, they appear to make them much worse.
Malevolent Characters: And worse still from the previous example, and more aggressively evolved, is a character who harbors severe animosity and bitterness coupled with poverty. This can act as the perfect recipe for a low-ranking villain.
There is truth to the saying that when things start going badly, people start looking around for someone to blame.
It is interesting how blame has evolved to be a natural byproduct of deprivation. When feelings of blame start bubbling up to the surface, and when discontent starts to settle in the minds of others and become noticeable, someone must be to blame for the overall state of misery and suffering that everyone seems to be stuck in. If only they could pin the blame on someone. If only there was a villain or some kind of monster that they could find at fault for everything. It seems many characters have not evolved past these reactionary and predictable evolutionary responses. And they are shown to be the members of the disgruntled crowd or the angry mob for good reason. The perpetrator of their misfortune must be sought out and made known to others, they must be punished and made a demonstrable example out of! Animosity and blame frequently court one another.
This is often where the dejected characters start looking for someone to hoist up as a scapegoat. Enter the characters of the Witches, the Jews, the Gypsies, the Gay people, those living on the outskirts of society, those living counter-culture lifestyles, those apart of obscure subcultures and fringe minorities, etc.
It is not difficult to surmise how this could spring up, and how easy and likely it would be to chart the path to villainry for any character that has been degraded and is looking to seek revenge on any person who they perceive to be at fault. Once the tumble-weed starts rolling down the hill, it picks up other pieces of debris and waste, which are like the bad actions that collect and continue to accumulate as the tumble weed keeps rolling.
Greedy and Avarice-filled Characters: We often think about the helpless, and the blameless victims who are persecuted for no other reason than their own identity or their own individual circumstances. But when exactly is a character or villain in the wrong for their treatment of others where they deserve the ire, the hatred, and the attacks of others? The likelihood is that they are already in a position of prominence in the society they are apart of. They must already have enough power, sway, and influence over others in order to lay low their lives to begin with. Characters that appear to be inherently or easily corrupted and extremely greedy come to mind.
The Hobbit: In the film trilogy, many remember as part of the fantasy landscape in the second movie, the location known as Lake Town. The townsfolk of this area are shown to live in an overtaxed society, they inhabit shabby homes with lopsided roofs that have missing tiles, and their crooked houses appear to be slowly sinking into the water of the canals that they have been built upon. They lead very meager lives where they are just barely getting by and they have very little in the way of possessions. The scene where the dwarves hide in the home of the ferryman is testament to what little they have. The dwarves pay him in exchange for weapons, but it is clear that the average citizen cannot afford a club, an axe, a finely crafted sword, a mallet, and the like. Instead he provides them with workers and construction equipment, and fishing tools instead. Deprivation, and the state of being deprived often infer that characters are forced to make do with what they have, and this is an example of the kinds of undesirable substitutions they are made to put up with, and the dicey arrangements they are brought into when getting involved with other characters.
The Master of Lake Town is shown to be a glutton of a man who hoards all the wealth and squanders the resources of the townsfolk, and all while their coffers are shown to be shrinking, he continues to gorge himself. He lives in sumptuous quarters, he is surrounded by finery, and has lovely self-aggrandizing noble portraits of himself hanging in the background of his home. When the dwarves are exposed by the townsfolk and the little men ask for their support in the efforts of their quest to the lonely mountain, the Master of Lake Town is shown to cheer them on. The only reason why the Master encourages the townsfolk to side with them and to show their support is because he believes their quest to be a profitable venture for the town and himself. And like many greedy characters, when the town has been set on fire later on and becomes entirely destroyed, the Master of Lake Town is shown having emptied the treasure vaults and made off in a boat that is overflowing with all the remaining treasure.
Mad Max Fury Road: A more extreme example of this kind of greedy and ruthless character can be found in this film. In one of the more recent renditions of the story Mad Max, the dictator known as 'Immortal Joe' is shown to be a leader of a notorious biker gang and he is the ruler of the back highways that are located in a dystopian version of Australia. There is one particular scene that many people likely remember where he is shown to address a crowd of desperate people. This congregation of lowly bodies are made out to be even less than a group of grovelling peasants. They are sickly and diseased looking, many have bandaged or missing limbs, they have rotting teeth, blackened gums, and they have boils erupting all over their skin. Many of them look as though to be suffering from leprosy, or other open-sore diseases or cancers.
They stand beneath their dictator, who is stationed on his podium high above the cliffs, and he is gracious enough to give them their yearly ration of water. He is shown turning on the taps of the water supply that is stored in a reserve behind him in the cliffs, and after having given the begging crowd a spray and a mouthful of water from the pipes, he turns the tap off while they are still clamoring to get a drink. They are shown thrashing about and fighting with one another over the precious commodity, all this while they try to catch hold of the water with their rusted dishes and their dust-covered dog bowls. This film is known for its strong visuals, and this scene of the dictator who hoards all the resources, where he dribbles out morsels to the begging crowds of the general public, acts as a stark reminder of a situation that many societies could devolve into.
Imprisoned Characters: Characters that are held against their will and forcibly confined in some manner. Their purpose might be simply to exist as a prisoner, or they are held hostage for ransom or until some future bargaining exchange is made. They may be taunted and tortured while captive, and made an example out of, or they might be forced into some kind of excruciating labor. There are many examples of this in fiction and film.
Asylum: Many of us are familiar with the saying, 'the inmates are running the asylum,' in this film, that expression is quite literally true. But interestingly, the audience is not made to know or believe this until toward the end of the film, which is what makes it particularly interesting. Every lunatic character that poses as a sane hospice, doctor, or orderly is believable and no one is shown to suspect that anything is noticeably unusual or off about them. There is a definite sense that there is something very wrong going on inside the institution, but one might have been more apt to guess that the hospital workers were rapists, or sadistic torturers themselves. A recent escapee might attempt to flee and get as far away from their place of imprisonment and their captors. But these fine folks stay put inside the asylum and play dress-up and assume the roles of the hospital workers and uphold their stations and offices.
Another hallmark of insanity perhaps? Perfectly feigned normalcy and sanity. These lunatic characters don the cloaks and the identities of those that have apprehended them, their aggressors, and they choose to live a day in the life of their captors.
There is one particular scene in the film where a group of prisoners are discovered in the bowels of the institution, they are filthy dirty and they look as though they have been trapped inside a dungeon instead of a medical facility. There is one man who begs to be released, and he is in fact the actual head of the asylum, and he is shown pleading with an ignorant man through the bars of his cage to set him free, and he claims that he is the real, true doctor and the one in charge of the institution and not the fraud who is parading around the asylum pretending to be him, he argues that he needs to be let out, and of course the man on the other side does not believe him.
Breaking Bad: In the later seasons of Breaking Bad, the character of Jesse, Walter's younger crack-making business partner whom he sells drugs with is coerced and imprisoned by members of a known cartel/gang and they forcibly confine him in a man-made caged pit where he cannot escape. He is chained up so that he is unable to leave and they force him into slave labor where he is made to produce drugs for them, he is shown cooking crack day and night without rest or release. His captors degrade him through insults and taunts, and they mercilessly beat him. He is brought down to an almost animal-like state where he is not allowed to shower or shave, and he is shown with long tangled hair and a thick and disheveled beard, and he does not resemble the character that the audiences have come to know him by.
Deprivation is not always about a lack of finances and resources, it is sometimes about the very freedoms we take for granted.
Who are some other disadvantaged characters that come to mind?