Movie Script Analyis Analyzing Themes of Evil in Phil 1666

Experiment #3 Evil Definitions

During the semester we read "Evil and The Demonic" by Paul Oppenheimer. In his analysis he defines evil as beginning “with criminality."

In this section of my analysis, I created a program that measures character's based on how many words of their dialogue are related to criminality. Each character's action words are rated on a score of 0 to 1, 0 being unrelated and 1 being the most related. The characters I chose to focus on for this section of analysis are: Reagan (The Exorcist), Rose (Get Out), The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz). These are all characters that we have featured in our in class discussions with a special focus on the extent of their "evilness." I have also included the characters Chris (The Exorcist), Chris (Get Out), Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz). These characters serve as a control so the criminality of the antagonist can be compared to the protagonist. Intrestingly, in my analysis of Star Wars, the protagonists and antagonists scored relatively high on the criminality scale.

Wizard of Oz





Wicked Witch of the West: .94
94% of the Wicked Witch of the West's action verbs in the script related to criminality.



Dorothy: .22
Dorothy scored a 22%. She has a few violent scenes interacting with the witch and the lion. She also kills the witch at the end of the movie. Compared to the Wicked Witch, she has a much smaller incidence of criminality, but she is not without faults.

The Exorcist



Reagan: .91
91% of Reagan's action words in the script related to criminality. It is somewhat suprising that this number is lower than the Wicked Witch of the West, because possed Reagan was incredibly violent. Reagan does have more lines than the witch so maybe some non-criminality was introduced in that way, whereas the witch as so few lines there was little oppurtunity for dilution of her criminal actions.



Chris: .01
Chris scored a 1%. This is probably because she was very wary of hurting her daughter when being attacked. Therefore she has less criminal actions that are taken in self-defense.

Star Wars



Darth Vader: .97
Unsuprising the evil dictator Darth Vader scored a 97%. Vader often strangles people using the force and acts violently.



Han Solo: .71
Han Solo scored a 71%. This is suprising because he is a protagonist. However, he does display some criminal behavior unsual for good characters. This may account for his criminality score.







Luke Skywalker: .67
Again a protagonist is scoring very high. This could be because of all of the violent behavior the rebels take part in during their war against the Storm Troopers.

Get Out





Rose: .77
77% of Rose's actions were judged to be criminal. Her character did lie and manipulate Chris. Her manipulations were probably not detected by the criminality algorithm, so in reality she is probably much more criminal.



Chris: .54
Chris had to act in self defense in many instances when being attacked. This is what likely accounts for his high criminality rating of 54%.