What are examples of the use of foreignness as a sign of villainy?

[charlie48]

I was thinking about Dr Fu-Manchu and how he influenced Bond villains such as Dr. No, Blofeld and Grant.
Any other examples that come to your mind?

[Pompey Bum]

Dracula, who is an Eastern European who has immigrated to London in search of yummy ladies.

[charlie48]

That was my second guess :) By the by, would you agree that Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm also included the theme of 'evil foreigners'?

[Whifflingpin]

"Evil foreigners" is a tautology, at least in literature from, maybe, 1850 to 1950. All foreigners are tainted with evil, unless specifically stated to be otherwise. So, in "Phroso" for example, all the Greeks are ignorant and or villainous, except the one who marries the hero; the most villainous is "an Armenian dog" (a dog by virtue of being Armenian.) The non-villainous foreigner is "a Turkish gentleman;" anyone described as a gentleman is, of course, not a villain; had he been described as "a Turkish nobleman" then the reader would have assumed that he was full of cruelty and deceit. The Englishmen are all brave and honest, loyal and true. Of course, in foreign literature, if you stoop to read such stuff, you will find heroic Greeks, honourable Frenchmen, compassionate Germans and so on.

The best example of the villainous foreigner however is not a fictional character but the real Sir Basil Zacharoff, known in his day as "ZZ." He came from obscure middle Eastern origins (therefore a villain by definition.) He became an arms trader (therefore a villain by profession) working for Vickers (a most honourable English company, of course, not responsible for the villainy of ZZ.) He instigated all the wars between about 1890 and 1945 (except the Great War, that was some other amateur.) He bought the principality of Monaco, including Monte Carlo, purely for money laundering purposes. ZZ was the arch-conspirator, compared to whom the CIA are mere children. His name was spoken with awe and fear in the chancelleries of four continents.

[Pompey Bum]

That was my second guess :) By the by, would you agree that Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm also included the theme of 'evil foreigners'?

I've never read it, so I can't say.

I suppose Heathcliff has something of Johnny Evil Foreigner about him, since his "Gypsy looks" are often commented on. Also Blandois, the Frenchman from hell in little Dorrit. And, of course, Fagin the Jew--like Heathcliff, an "enemy within." A lot of nasty foreigners turn up in the Sherlock Holmes stories, although the worst of the worst (Moriarty and Moran) are Englishmen with Irish names. Interesting coming from a fellow named Doyle!

[maxphisher]

Pretty much any Jew in Victorian literature will serve your purposes, especially as a depiction of economic villainy or corruption. Victorian Brits. loved to demonize the Jewish moneylender.

[UlyssesE]

The villain in every Die Hard movie? ;)

As others have mentioned, there are plenty of historical examples. We fear the unknown, and foreigners are often seen as other. One of my favorites types of this trope is the evil alien, which is of course a special type of foreigner, being a stranger not just to ethnicity and country, but the planet itself.

[wreade1872]

I was thinking about Dr Fu-Manchu and how he influenced Bond villains such as Dr. No, Blofeld and Grant.
Any other examples that come to your mind?

Are we saying every example of a villain who is foreign is therefore specifically exploiting our fears of foreigners? Or are we supposed to have some sort of proof to back up the claim that foreignness is being used as a sign of villainy.
In which case what proof is there that Fu-Manchu being asian is a sign of his villainy.

By the way Fu-Manchu is a knockoff of the earlier Dr. Yen How from the Yellow Danger by M.P.Sheil. A zombie-apocalypse book but with the zombies replaced by chinese people, and even THAT book i'd hesitate to put on this list.


That was my second guess :) By the by, would you agree that Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm also included the theme of 'evil foreigners'?

People always say that but the love interest is from thailand or somewhere like that which undercuts the argument, plus the main villains are extremely white.


The only stories i know of that i'd comfortably put in this category would be Dracula and much of Lovecraft's work.

[biblophile]

Hortonce the resentful ladies maid to Lady Deadlock in Bleak house was French

[Jackson Richardson]

Rigaud/Blandois, the villainous Frenchman in Little Dorrit is a baddy and a foreigner. On the other hand he is first met in prison with the Italian John Baptist Cavalletto who is eminently a goodie and an innocent.

[Red Terror]

Wells' War of the Worlds --- the Martians are depicted as evil as the British in their genocide of the Australian Tasmanians. Also, Wells' First Men in the Moon --- the earthlings are seen as war-mongers by the Moon's inhabitants, the Selenites. By the way, they go inside the moon, hence the title. On a lighter side, try Invasion of the Body Snatchers which is not great literature but thought I'd just mention it.

[Red Terror]

Also Othello & Antony and Cleopatra. Someone mentioned Jews and I thought about Fagin in Oliver Twist.

[desiresjab]

The slant-eyed, suspicious interlopers who settled in the Shire while the Hobbits were away on their great adventure. The Scouring of the Shire was a chapter near the end, if I remember right.

[Jackson Richardson]

Also Othello & Antony and Cleopatra. Someone mentioned Jews and I thought about Fagin in Oliver Twist.

Brabantio thinks Othello is a villain. Octavius thinks Cleopatra is a villain. But in the context of the play they are tragic and have our sympathy.

And baddie though Fagin is, he is not violently nasty like Bill Sikes and is probably the character in the book most readers nowadays actually like.

[Ecurb]

Becky Sharp is half French, in a novel set during the Napoleonic wars.

[Red Terror]

Brabantio thinks Othello is a villain. Octavius thinks Cleopatra is a villain. But in the context of the play they are tragic and have our sympathy.

And baddie though Fagin is, he is not violently nasty like Bill Sikes and is probably the character in the book most readers nowadays actually like.

Well, in Oliver Twist something sinister is happening with Fagin and the boys. Charley Bates is referred to by the narrator as "Master Charles Bates" and later, on several occasions, as "Master Bates". There was an essay in (you guessed it Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations series on Dickens) entitled "Manual Conduct in Great Expectations" [sic] by William Cohen treating this issue.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2873313?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

I'm also thinking about Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with his demand of a "pound of flesh".

[Red Terror]

We should consider Satan (being from Hell, a sort of foreign place) in his various incarnations: Paradise Lost, Dr. Faustus, Faust, Part I and II, etc. Humbert Humbert from Lolita is from France. The eponymous heroine in Medea is not Greek but is considered an "other". Pluto, Dis, Hades --- God of the Underworld should also be considered. Marlowe's The Jew of Malta with "Barabas" who is described as a Machiavel-type figure so prevalent in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

Byron's interesting poem The Destruction of Sennacherib from the Old Testament story:



The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,


And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;


And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,


When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.





Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,


That host with their banners at sunset were seen:


Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,


That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.





For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,


And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;


And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,


And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!





And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,


But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;


And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,


And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.





And there lay the rider distorted and pale,


With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:


And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,


The lances un-lifted, the trumpet unblown.





And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,


And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;


And the might of the Gentile, un-smote by the sword,


Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

[ennison]

Villainy. The E...... Bs who just voted for Brexit hate all foreigners and they've never read Byron.