Why don’t bad guys have noses? Explanation of one of the most famous questions in cinema

From recent stories like the fourth season of “Stranger Things” with the left Vecna, to older productions like one of the monsters of “Pan’s Labyrinth” by Guillermo del Toro, the villains of cinema and television many times they are characterized by not having their noses in their faces, as this is a very useful resource when you need to turn a character into a villain.

The villains of movies and series always have similar characteristics, which makes them bad people and they have radical ideals that make them the antagonists of the story, in the same way that the heroes have a very similar path where the main goal is to save. the day. But have you seen that bad guys rarely have noses?

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Characters like the Red Skull in ‘Captain America’, Davy Jones in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, Voldemort in the ‘Harry Potter’ saga or even the Darth Vader mask in ‘Star Wars’, all these iconic villains have the distinction that their face is missing a nosea very important detail when it comes to the aesthetics of the image in cinema and television.

The villains have no nose because this detail helps the audience to empathize less with this character, and at the same time it helps viewers not to reflect on the ideals or the life of the antagonist, and therefore it can be easier to perceive them as villains. This is called one: anti prosopopeia, and it is a literary resource applied to film and television.

To tell a story in which certain objects or animals interact with people, a prosopopoeia can be used to give something that are not human characteristics, and thus achieve a connection with both the protagonists and the audience, but when a ‘ antiprosopean, the idea is to remove these humanoid traits from a character, transform him into something different and cause a detachment from him.

The villains of the iconic films who have noses and are evil

Of course, the application of an anti-prosopoeia is not necessary to transform a character into someone evil, for example, going back to the ‘Harry Potter’ saga, one of the secondary villains is the teacher Dolores Umbridge, who has not only human characteristics but also brings a soft colorimetry and quite far from the classic characteristics of a villain, and even so he is a sinister character.

Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Freddy Krueger, Jack Torrance from “The Shining”, Homelander from “The Boys”, Chuky, Golum, Michael Myers, Thanos, The Wicked Witch of the West and even the clown are some of the villains who still With the their noses manage to captivate the screen with their evil plans and are recognized as the antagonists, although of course there are many resources beyond the anti-prosopopoeia to explain that someone is the villain in the story.