About the Author
----------------
Lorenzo von Matterhorn is the pseudonym of a Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and Senior
Research Associate at Peterhouse College, Cambridge University
(UK). He is the author of Between Perception and Action and
Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception (both forthcoming in 2013
from Oxford University Press), and editor of Perceiving the World
(Oxford University Press, 2010). Before taking up full-time
philosophy he was well known as a movie critic, and served on the
jury at several major international film festivals. He lives in
Antwerp, Belgium and Cambridge, England.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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Excerpt from chapter 1:
Empathy for the Devil: Why on Earth Do We Identify with Barney?
by Bence Nanay
Kids, Barney Stinson is the devil. At least, that’s what Ted says
in ‘Belly full of turkey’ (season 1, episode 9). And in ‘Brunch’
(season 2, episode 3), he is genuinely surprised that Barney is
allowed to enter a church. But even if he is not the devil, he is
a truly awful person. Truly. But then why do we all love him so
much? More precisely, why is it so tempting to identify or
empathize or emotionally engage with him?
Just how awful is Barney? Unspeakably awful. A couple of
biographical details:
• He sold a woman (The Bracket, season 3, episode 14)
• He poisoned the drinking water in Lisbon (The goat, season 3,
episode 17)
• He has shady dealings with the most oppressive regime on Earth
(Chain of screaming, season 3, episode 15)
But maybe it’s just his line of work. We know that Tony Soprano’s
job is not exactly charity-work, but we have not problem
identifying and emotionally engaging with him. Yet, he is in many
ways a choirboy compared to Barney Stinson. Barney can be as
awful with his best friends as in his dealings at Goliath
National Bank. Again, a few examples:
• When facing the dilemma of landing a much needed job for his
‘best friend’ (who had just been left at the altar) or having an
office in a dinosaur-shaped building, he chooses the latter. (Woo
girls, season 4, episode 8)
• He takes revenge on the girl who broke his heart many years
later by ing with her and then never calling her back (Game
night, season 1, episode 14)
• Gives a fake apology to Robin, whom he just broke up with,
merely in order to score another girl (Playbook, season 5,
episode 8)
• Spends years planning his revenge on Marshall for noticing that
he has a bit of marinara sauce on his tie (The exploding meatball
sub, season 6, episode 20)
• Sets his best friend’s coat on fire (The pineapple incident,
season 1, episode 10)
• Pulls a nasty and tactless prank on Robin when he pretends to
be Robin’s dad on the phone, whose call he knows she is eagerly
awaiting (Disaster averted, season 7, episode 9)
• Actively puts Robin down when she meets Ted’s parents for the
first time (Brunch, season 2, episode 3)
• Makes his best friend, Ted believe that Mary, the paralegal is
in fact a prostitute, so that he can enjoy how Ted is making a
fool of himself. (Mary, the paralegal, season 1, episode 19)
• Stages a one-man show that has one purpose only: to annoy Lily
(Stuff, Season 2, episode 16)
• Makes a fool of all his friends, who, unknowingly, help him
score with a girl (Playbook, season 5, episode 8)
And we have not even got into the various tricks he uses in order
to get girls to come home with him. His behavior is utterly
immoral according to the vast majority of existing accounts in
moral philosophy. Lily nicely sums it up: he is “the emotional
equivalent of a scavenging sewer rat” (Best couple ever, season
2, episode 5). But then why do we like him? Why do we identify
with him? Why is he one of the most popular sitcom characters of
all time?
Barney is not the first bad character in the history of the
genre. In Friends, Joey Tribbiani did some nasty stuff: he burned
the prosthetic leg of a girl in the middle of the forest and then
drove away. But he loved his friends and would never knowingly
screw them. All four characters in Seinfeld did awful things
throughout the series, as memorably evidenced by the finale. But
Barney takes this to a completely different level of awfulness.
We have a paradox then: how can we identify with and relate to a
fictional character, Barney, who is such a terrible person that
if we met him in real life, we would probably slap him or leave
the room. This paradox needs to be kept apart from the famous
‘paradox of fiction’, the most succinct exposition of which comes
not from Hume but from Chandler Bing:
Chandler: Bambi is a cartoon
Joey: You didn’t cry when Bambi’s mother died?
Chandler: Yes, it was very sad when the guy stopped drawing the
deer. (Friends, season 6, episode 14)
The paradox of fiction is this: why do we feel strong emotions
towards fictional events and characters we know do not exist? The
paradox I want to focus on here – we could call it the Barney
paradox – is different. It accepts that we feel strong emotions
towards fictional characters. But then the question arises which
fictional character we feel strong emotions towards? Who is our
identification or empathy or emotional engagement directed at?
And here comes the paradox: it seems that often we identify or
empathize with the least worthy of the fictional characters.
I will go through a couple of possible ways in which one could
address this paradox.
1. Barney is not so bad
Maybe I was just picking out the worst of Barney. And maybe he is
more like Joey, who in some respects is not the boyfriend you may
want to take home to meet your parents, but in some others has a
heart of gold.
There are some stories that point in this direction. In The
scorpion and the toad (season 2, episode 2), Barney is allegedly
helping Marshall getting over Lily and getting back in the game.
But each time Marshall actually has a chance of scoring with a
girl, Barney steps in and takes home the girl instead. The title
of the episode refers to the Aesop tale about the scorpion who
asks the toad to carry him across the river. The toad asks: why
would I do that – you’ll sting me and then we’ll both die. But,
the scorpion responds, if I sting you, we’ll both die – so why
would I sting you? So the toad agrees, but halfway through the
scorpion does sting the toad and they both die – that’s just the
scorpion’s nature. It should be clear who the scorpion is
supposed to stand for here.
So far, this is a pretty damning statement about Barney, but
that is not the full story. This happened at the beginning of
season 2. But towards the end of this season, we learn that
Barney visited Lily in San Francisco and told her to come back to
Marshall because he, Barney, can’t go on stealing girls from him
to keep the hopes of the two of them getting back together alive
(Bachelor party, season 2, episode 19). While this gives a nice
twist to the scorpion/toad story, it is not clear whether this
means that Barney stole all those girls from Marshall for
selfless reasons. At least at that point we are led to believe
that Barney is, at least sometimes, a compassionate and caring
friend. But then again, this comes right after an episode where
Barney steals Ted’s moving truck with all his belonging (Moving
day, season 2, episode 18).
The most plausible version of this way of trying to explain away
the paradox of identification with Barney is that Barney is not
really bad: he is just immature. He is a little like a naughty
child – we shouldn’t expect him to behave responsibly or in any
way that is not completely selfish. His general attitude towards
life is that of a preschooler towards his toys. The show clearly
plays with this idea intermittently – especially in the last
couple of seasons in a bid to make Barney proper fiancé material
for Robin. The decision to ditch Ted and his job prospects for
working in a dinosaur-shaped office building could be interpreted
as a manifestation of this child-like attitude (see also Little
boys, season 3, episode 4, which puts the Barney/little boy
analogy in context).
Again, without denying that this is part of the way Barney is
portrayed, it needs to be pointed out that it would be difficult
to frame selling a woman the ‘Scuba diver’ tricks, which
deliberately and with cold calculation plays with and exploits
Robin’s feelings, as immature and therefore forgivable and in
some way adorable childish gags.
2. We are not meant to identify with Barney at all
Here is an alternative interpretation. Maybe Barney was not
conceived of as a protagonist of the series whom the audience is
supposed to (or is encouraged to) identify with. Married male
viewers should identify with Marshall, single male viewers with
Ted. Barney is there to laugh at.
While this may have been the way Barney’s character started at
the very beginning, this angle misses out on some of the most
important aspects of Barney’s appeal and of his character in
general. At the very beginning of the series (in the first couple
of episodes only), Barney was portrayed as a loser – as the butt
of every joke. In fact, quite similar to the Stiffler character
of the American Pie franchise, which How I Met Your Mother has
very rich ties with. Even his haircut was a bit similar to
Stiffler’s. And he was really just someone to laugh at.
So at least at the beginning, while Barney was depicted as an
awful person, he was also depicted as a loser – not someone the
audience should identify with. But this all changed very early on
– maybe because the creator of the series realized the potential
of the character. Barney would not have become as popular as he
did if he had stayed this ‘dork’, as Lily addressed him in the
second episode.
3. Schadenfreude
A somewhat different way to go would be to say that while we are
encouraged to have some kind of emotional engagement with Barney,
this is by no means a positive emotional engagement. The emotion
we are supposed to feel towards Barney is that of Schadenfreude –
the feeling of happiness at other people’s misfortune. We are not
supposed to laugh with Barney – we are supposed to laugh at him.
Quick clarification: this would be compatible with Barney’s
popularity as Schadenfreude is not an unpleasant emotion to have.
In fact, there is a long history of fictional characters who we
love to hate: from Tartuffe through Osmin and Monostatos to Dr.
Evil. The proposal then would be that Barney fits this
illustrious list: the reason we like watching him is to see how
he will eventually get what he deserves.
Again, there are many bits from the show that point in this
direction. There are many, many scenes where Barney’s misfortunes
are supposed to provide the laughs. Again, a quick list:
• He is thrown out on the street naked (Naked man, season 4,
episode 9)
• He is forced to wear the ducky tie for a full year (Ducky tie,
season 7, episode 3)
• His attempt to take revenge on Marshall with the exploding
meatball sub fails miserably (The exploding meatball sub, season
6, episode 20)
• He is tied to the mechanical bull for two full hours (providing
a memorable scene with perfect comedic timing when getting off)
(Woo girls, season 4, episode 8)
• He gets repeatedly thrown out of the prom (Best prom ever,
season 1, episode 20)
• He gets stung by a swarm of bees (Burning beekeeper, season 7,
episode 15)
• He gets beaten up by proud Canadians at a Tim Horton’s (Duel
citizenship, season 5, episode 5)
• His legs stop working after running the marathon without any
training (Lucky penny, season 2, episode 15)
• He gets a nickname he hates (Swarley, season 2, episode 7)
• His long awaited 200th conquest is an odious muscular body
builder and not a supermodel as planned (Right place right time,
season 4, episode 22)
• As nobody is willing to give him a high five, he is forced to
hold up his right arm for hours (I heart NJ, season 4, episode 3)
• He is left in the doctor’s office for the weekend with his
‘sensory deprivator 5000’ on (Bad news, season 6, episode 13)