Moral Disengagement in Modern Fiction: A Study on Female Sympathy Toward Henry Creel as an Antagonist Character
Keywords:
Moral Disengagement, , Henry Creel, Female Audience, Digital Empathy, Moral Dilemma.Abstract
Contemporary fiction shows a deconstruction of the traditional dichotomy between absolute virtue and pure evil. The psychological phenomenon where the audience relaxes ethical standards to justify an antagonist's destructive behavior is known as moral disengagement. This study aims to analyze moral disengagement among female audiences toward Henry Creel (One/Vecna) from Stranger Things. Using a descriptive-qualitative method, this research integrates the sociology of literature, Affective Disposition Theory (ADT), Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT), and cognitive linguistics. The findings indicate that female audiences tend to view Henry Creel beyond his monstrosity through mechanisms of attribution of blame and moral justification, triggered by his childhood trauma. Participatory digital spaces foster digital empathy, where the audience actively conceptualizes the villain through metaphorical source domains as a tragic figure. However, this narrative defense blurs the role boundaries between the actual hero, villain, and victim in the public sphere. Through Kohlberg's cognitive framework, Henry Creel's characterization acts as a stimulus for moral dilemma discussions that stimulate the audience's critical moral considerations in dissecting the complexity of modern fictional morality.Downloads
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