Specifically in regards to Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
I touched on something recently in a different meta that I wanna expand on, and that’s this:
[Heinz is] trying to be the best nemesis for Perry, too. Hence the carefully-planned schemes (that I’m convinced are designed to fail) and the traps and the monologues and the musical numbers…
Namely the part about “designed to fail”.
Everyone Knows that Heinz Doofenshmirtz is “incompetent”, always loses, etc. Even the finale song points it out:
“I’m six foot two and I fight a little platypus, you’d think I’d be victorious just every now and then”
Except I feel like there’s more to it than that.
To start with, the episode Oh, There You Are Perry. This is the one where Perry is reassigned to another evil scientist. Partway through, Heinz shows up, and “just happens” to “help” in such a way as to sabotage the other evil scientist. “Fixing” Perry’s cage to have a release button, “helpfully” installing a self-destruct button, leaving rocket shoes right in Perry’s path… it seems a bit too coincidental for incompetence to be all it is.
And if that was deliberate, who’s to say his other “failures” at evil aren’t the same way?
Who’s to say he’s not performing incompetence?
Heinz is a performer at heart. I mean, the musical numbers make it pretty obvious. He also canonically practices his monologues in advance.
Plus, in Road to Danville, he was genuinely more upset at the idea of missing the play he’d been cast in than anything to do with scheming. He begged Perry for assistance specifically for the play (right before his other flaws went ahead and sabotaged him).
And then there’s how performance interacts with Evil. To quote a (particularly memorable) scene from Megamind:
“Oh, you’re a villain alright. Just not a super one.”
“Yeah? What’s the difference?”
*dramatic entrance accompanied by a lightshow and Welcome To The Jungle* “PRESENTATION!”Evil, in a lot of media, is shown as overdramatic and all about looking Evil. (See: “Evil Is Hammy” on TV Tropes.) What better place for a natural performer?
And Evil, in most media, is always defeated. It’s part of the routine. And it’s definitely a routine. He spells it out in The Inator Method, even.
Basically: Scheme, build inator, trap Perry, monologue, backstory, Perry escapes, fight, get thwarted, “curse you, Perry the Platypus”.
He fails because it’s part of the script. The villain always loses, and he sees himself as a villain (for various reasons, most of which are heartbreaking), therefore he includes loopholes and self-destruct buttons in everything he does so that he can be thwarted like he’s Supposed To.
As for why he turned to Evil in the first place, the show explicitly points it out:
“No, Dad. You’re basically a nice guy who’s pretending to be evil. And, you know, it seems like it’s all out of obligation to your backstories, not something that truly comes from your heart.”
He’s playing a part. Pretending, like Vanessa said. It’s all performative, as a coping mechanism for his many backstories.
And the role he’s chosen isn’t “future leader of the
worldTri-State Area”; it’s “evil scientist”, it’s “nemesis”, it’s “villain of a story where the heroes win”.
Tag: Phineas and Ferb
So, incidentally, my experience with the movie Megamind is that I ended up watching it backwards in a hotel once when I was younger and nothing else was on. And by “backwards” I mean, the first day I only caught the latter half of it and then it was on again the day after and I saw the first half.
That said, that one dang scene, is kind of an immortal one in my mind, because it’s one that has a lot more depth than it seems to.
The part that people often miss is that right after that pithy one-liner of how the difference between a villain and a supervillain is presentation… that whole conversation gets context.
Because Titan makes an immediate lunge for Megamind.
And immediately gets crunched by the giant head, and stuck in that situation because Megamind just drops out of the bottom, to a waiting vehicle, and maneuvers around him to focus on the actual issue: rescuing the hostage while Titan’s occupied.
That whole setup isn’t just, “watch me out-drama you”, it’s showing off an actual tactical asset.
Because Megamind as a character is someone who was always, always motivated by getting attention. The reason why Roxanne is never afraid of being his hostage isn’t because of her unshakable faith in a rescuing hero as much as it is that she knows, ultimately, what Megamind is doing is overwhelmingly a show. His atrocities are symbolic in nature. When he actually needs to take somebody out he dehydrates them into a cube for a while. And it’s not just Roxanne that calls him on this, either- Metro Man’s entire retirement scheme hinged on the idea that Megamind really didn’t need someone keeping him at bay from innocent civilians, because, as we’ve seen, innocent civilians really don’t have much to fear from him. Ultimately he is still, actually, just a kind of needy person desperately looking for validation and approval, neither of which can be provided by dead people.
But that’s not to say he can’t actually fight. Like any actual proper magician, he knows how to hold attention and an element of danger is how that works. He’s actually brilliant, and plenty capable of raising genuine hell.
However- he’s been doing this stageshow thing for ages. He’s mastered this. Titan may have him outgunned practically in every respect- but the guy has no conceivable head for subtlety.
So the real kicker to that whole setup, is this isn’t just Megamind being Megamind for the sake of drama- this is Megamind knowing exactly how easy Titan is to bait, dangling the largest trap he could possibly conceive in front of the guy, and doing it in an unapologetically glorious manner as any true performer would.
“Presentation” is not a superpower to be overlooked.
Realising Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb is like this really makes me wonder if there’s a name for these kinds of villains who aren’t really villains.
Yeah, I thought of Heinz too. How could I not?
I feel like they’re both in the same boat. Raised to think they were “bad” and “wrong” and “evil” for things they had no control over (Megamind growing up in a prison and being treated like he belonged there, Heinz’s parents being uniformly terrible all around), then once they were adults they decided you know what, I’m gonna be evil!!! Taking the label they’d been given and embracing it.
To quote another post, “People by and large live up to or down to the labels we are given.”
Neither of them felt like they had any option but to become Evil, but hoo boy were they going to put their heart and their natural talent for showmanship into performing evil. Because it’s all about the presentation.
And it worked. People saw them as evil, gave them the attention they so desperately craved, and even though it was all negative at least they’d earned the hatred this time.
I’m not sure there’s a name for this as a character archetype, alas, but it’s something that’s pretty relatable to a lot of peeps (as seen in that first link), and the fact that both Megamind and Heinz were redeemed at the end is important, it’s a sign that you are more than the labels people assign to you, that you can be better than that.
And hey, no reason you can’t put on a good show along the way~ 😉
Cheloneuniverse 