Enemy depictions must balance dehumanization against valor so violence stays enjoyable
Evidence
The goal of the poet here is the same as that of the filmmaker portraying quintessential bad guys: to allow the reader (or viewer) to enjoy the violence, to revel in the blood and killing, without remorse. Only by dehumanizing the adversary, making him sufficiently “other,” is this possible. Yet he cannot be made too other, for it is not valorous to slaughter mere beasts. Hence the paradoxical, mixed nature of the Saracen host in Roland: alongside the monstrous creatures are virtuous knights who seem to be mirror images of their Christian adversaries, for whom the poet can proclaim (of Baligant): “God! What a knight, if only he were Christian!” (l. 3164). It is the religion of the Saracens that makes them irretrievably other, even if Baligant seems a mirror image of the valiant Charlemagne. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 691
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the rhetoric of dehumanization in propaganda generally; also to the taxonomy of the monstrous-other developed in studies of ‘othering’ across medieval epic and modern film alike.
- DEFINE: Explains the ‘paradoxical mixed nature’ principle: the adversary must be dehumanized but not too much, or killing them loses valor.