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idohistorysometimes · 1 year

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The “Alopecian bad guy” trope: how Alopecia is shown in film

Intro

The other day my friend was watching Bladerunner 2049 and shot me a message saying: “Hey (insert my name here), there is a guy like you in my movie”.

Since my friends have learned of my diagnosis of Alopecia they will send me messages every so often informing me of characters in movies, shows, or other pieces of media they are watching that also have some form of it as well. And in true friend form, they followed up this message to me with a screenshot along with requesting I watch the movie with them.

Sure enough, its a guy like me (not the same type of Alopecia but still a fellow Alopecian)

For those unaware, this man’s name is Tómas Lemarquis and he plays the file clerk at the Wallace facility housing all of the replicant records. I have seen him in a few other films and I gotta say, he has great acting chops and I look forward to seeing what else he plans on doing. It is very important to note here that, despite working for the ‘big bad’ of the film, the clerk (played by Tómas) does not do anything that would indicate him being a ‘bad guy’. He greets the main character, takes his DNA sample, does some computer stuff, takes him to a massive file room, and gives him the file he is looking for. The clerk and K (the main character) have some idle chit-chat while the clerk is attempting to locate the files, but none of it is of a malicious nature. In fact, he seems scared of Luv (the replicant working directly under the CEO of the Wallace company) and tries to keep as much distance between himself and her as possible. He is just here to do his job and then leave. We never see him again after this point in the film.

It is pretty unclear if the clerk is a replicant or not since most replicants are visually the same as normal humans, and often tend to work service-type jobs (which is what the clerk is doing). The clerk does talk to K about memories though which is important since replicants have false implanted memories. He describes his childhood being alive during “The Blackout” and how his parents (specifically his mother) were upset about his baby pictures being deleted. This is important lore-wise because replicants are never children, they come out as fully-formed adults, and as a result, they never have parents. But at the same time he is working at the Wallace company HQ and the only other people we see there are Mr Wallace himself and Luv (who is a replicant). Given replicants are genetically made to be obedient and submissive to their masters so rebellion would not be an issue; it would make sense if a large chuck of Mr Wallace’s workforce are replicants. While there still would be human employees doing a lot of the functional work creating replicants (like Ana Stelline or Mr Wallace himself) it makes sense for such a large company to use replicants for everything else. And since they are the people making the replicants, it does not seem like it would be that hard to make replicants for use by Wallace for their company.

I thought the clerk was human but there was a bit of disagreement between me and my friend as we were watching the film. Given I had not ever watched this movie before I typed something along the lines of “is the clerk in blade runner a replicant” and then clicked the search bar on Google and BOOM, somebody had the same question as me on Reddit. I clicked on the post and scrolled down into the replies to see what people were saying. And while there were many comments that were pretty good about explaining why the clerk was or was not a replicant, I ran into some comments less than kind.

Here are the 2 comments that stuck out to me in that thread. As you might be able to notice there have been some things edited out here. I edited out the usernames in these commenters and I also edited out bits of the first comment since those parts were more specific to the lore in the movie that did not involve this character. But I would like to bring focus to how Tómas is being described here. He is described as ugly, creepy, and having visible defects you would not see in a ‘perfect’ replicant. He is likened to a Ghoul not once, but twice, and in the second comment is compared to Nosferatu (a well-known media villain). Let me remind you, the clerk has not done anything to warrant him being compared to a Ghoul or a well-known fictional monster. These statements are all being made based on Tómas’ physical appearance and nothing else. And while these comments do not appear in EVERYTHING relating to the clerk, they appear enough to show that a non-zero amount of people view the clerk’s character as either being undesirable or at the most extreme inhuman based on his visual appearance alone which therefore meant he either was or was not a replicant.

And that is where it hit me, I’ve seen this before.

“Bad Bald Guy Syndrome”

BBGS or “Bad Bald Guy Syndrome” is a term coined by myself used to describe the common media trope of the villains or untrustworthy characters in media being bald or balding. It does not seem to matter if this baldness is elective or not, as long as the character in question is shown as or is described as having visual hair loss the trope applies. And usually, the greater the hair loss the more often the trope is applicable however this is not always universal. But their evil seems to come from the fact they are bald or is added onto because they are bald.

But the trope in question does not stop there.

Another aspect of this trope I have noticed is that characters that fall under the “Bad Bald Guy Syndrome” trope also tend to lack morality, ‘saneness’, or othe traits people might find ‘good’. Baldness is often conflated with having a weak moral constitution or often have flimsy morals/consciences when external pressures are involved. For example: lots of bald characters often get involved with betrayal plots. They either switch teams halfway through, they can’t seem to consistently stick to their own moral compasses, or their allegiances and morality often are tied to money or self-gain so they were never morally reliable in the first place. They are not trustworthy characters. And in many cases their baldness also makes them creepy or unhinged.

To show you what I am talking about let’s look at some examples. And since we have already talked about Tómas Lemarquis once, let’s look at some of his filmography.

Tómas Lemarquis’ Filmography

I will be honest and say that given a lot of Tómas’ earlier work is in a language that is not English, I did not get a chance to really explore those films and see just how his characters were treated on screen. I tried to only look at films that had complete English dubs or subs that were available online that I could find given those were the only ones I could understand and thus give a complete opinion on. The films I watched were “Errors of the Human Body”, “Snowpiercer” (which is actually a show), “Touch me not”, “Dreamland”, and “Waiting for Anya”. I also later watched Xmen Apocalypse.

“Touch me not” is the film that gives Tómas the most humanity and portrays him in the most human way. In this film, Tómas (playing himself) struggles with intimacy much like many of the other characters we see. He struggles with being emotionally and in some cases physically close with people. And part of the film just deals with his struggles with being able to address that idea of closeness and openness and overcoming his personal mental blocks. And even though the film does give Tómas a few offputting moments, it is not because the film is trying to make him the bad guy. These scenes are to show us just how disconnected Tómas is from himself and how he wants to feel. He wants intimacy but he is held back by his own mental wall. He only watches and sees other people doing what he wants to do. And as an Alopecian myself (of a lesser degree of course) I relate to this a lot. Being close to others when you have a condition that makes others look at you funny is hard. And I struggle with similar feelings as I am sure many other people both Alopecian and not do.

And by the end of the film, with the guidance of his therapy group and his therapy partner Christian specifically, he kind of becomes more comfortable with himself and where he is at. He has less hangups than before. And we actually see him have relations with Laura, the protagonist, around the end of the movie (something I dont think he would have or could have done before). The reason I say kind of is because it is still going to take Tómas a very long time to deprogram himself from thinking in his very self-limiting way. He is still going to have to uphold the lessons he has learned throughout the film. But you can tell throughout the duration of the film Tómas is growing as a person and is, most importantly, humanized.

In these other films, however, Tómas’ characters are not treated like this.

In “Errors of the human body”, “Snowpiercer“, “Dreamland” and “Waiting for Anya”, Tómas is very much supposed to be a, if for THE, bad guy in the film.

In “Errors of the human body” Tómas plays a doctor by the name of Jarek Novak who is from the start primed to be the antagonist. He postures himself to be as offputting as possible. He never states what his intentions are initially and he is kind of pushy with Geoff (the main character). When he does be more blatant with Geoff about what he wants he uses Geoff’s dead son as an example. He views the death of Geoff’s son by way of genetic disease as more “a means to an end” rather than as Geoff’s motivation for his work. He also steals research from the character Rebekka and plans to pass it off as his own discovery, and breaks into Geoff’s house to steal back the mouse Geoff took from his lab. He is also the reason why Geoff ends up getting sick during the middle half of the film. While it is confirmed that Jarek and Rebekka had a fling in the past, there is not really an explicit reason why he acts the way he does beyond “that’s just how he is”. Unlike Geoff or Rebekka he does not seem to have any reason for any of what he does beyond wanting fame or influence.

The man brings up Stalin’s thoughts about ideological indoctrination in his opening pitch to Geoff as being a positive example. I do not think we are supposed to like him.

In Snowpiercer Tómas plays a henchman named “Egghead” who serves Deputy-Minister Mason. He shoots people and gives out eggs. That is about it. He has a very minor role.

He is also the evil vampire Count character who is marrying a child bride in “DREAMLAND”. For those wishing to watch this film please be warned: there are 2 movies named “DREAMLAND” released within about a year from each other. This makes it somewhat hard to track down online since, more often than not, you will find the other movie produced with a much larger budget and a more star-studded cast. Anyway, he is never actually given a name, he is normally either referred to as “the countesses brother, the vampire” or something of that nature. He overall does not have an overly large role in the film. While he is A bad guy character I would not clock him as THE bad guy character since all he seems to do is loom, do over-the-top vampire things, or look creepily at the ‘bride’. And to add to this, we only see him a few times. He is not on screen as much as a few of the other characters. But when he is on screen he is actually really fun to watch here due to just how animated he is. But he is no Jarek Novak, that is for sure. He is not the main thing we should be worrying about. But he is there, doing over-the-top vampire things… and honestly thats how it should be for this film.

And in “Waiting for Anya” he is a nazi. He is a nazi officer who shoots a child at the end of the movie. He very much is the villain or at least on the side of the people we do not want to win. He plays a nazi. The film itself is about escaping the nazis.

Tómas’ role as Caliban in Xmen is not a villain per say, but Caliban is not the same character he is in Logan (both because they are not the same actor and because the personality shift is pretty profound even though the series writers try to claim otherwise). Caliban is shown to be pretty easily swayed with the promise of money. He is willing to betray any person if the price is right. He has pretty flimsy morals (which also further plays into this trope) and does not seem to be too overly concerned with things as long as he gets what he wants. He is not ‘bad’ but he is not ‘good’ either. He is whatever will pay him the most. He occupies a very ‘neutral’ space.

I think it would be unfair to blame Tómas for any of these castings since I will admit, being the bad guy can be fun. There is an allure in getting to be the villain of the story, and I say that having played a few of those types of roles myself. There is nothing inherently wrong with playing the bad guy or morally questionable character in a story. Tómas is also an actor (wow, shocking I know) and sometimes being picky with your roles while being an actor with less of an industry presence can result in more harm to your career than good. This is not me trying to shame Tómas for taking these roles or enjoying them. However, the types of roles he is being cast in shows a little bit of a trend.

Tómas is not the only actor this happens to though.

Anthony Carrigan’s Filmography

Anthony Carrigan is another actor who is pretty well known for having Alopecia. His most well-known role right now is in Barry as the character NoHo Hank (a gay Chechen Mobster who is in a relationship with a rival gang member). He also appears in Gotham as the character Victor Zsasz, The Mist in the show “The Flash”, and a lot of other shows as 1-off characters. However, much like with Tómas, he tends to be typecast.

Here is Anthony’s filmography. Given he is an American actor who primarily does films that are in English and produced by companies that distribute their work to the US, his work is a lot easier for me to find (and some of it I happen to be fans of, like Barry for instance. Noho is the best character).

Something I would like to say about the look at Anthony’s filmography is that I am ‘conveniently’ ignoring a lot of his older work along with some of his voice-acting work. This is because for the voice acting work Anthony is not physically on screen, and for a lot of his work pre-2014 he is not playing roles as a bald character. He still had Alopecia at this time but it was not something he was showing openly at the time. Because of this, I will only be looking at films/shows where this trope does actually apply. Those shows/films are: “Satanic”, “Hard Sun”, “Gotham”, “Barry”, “The Flash”, and “Fatherhood”. Sadly I was not able to get a hold of his Blacklist episode for whatever reason.

In Gotham, Anthony plays Victor Zsasz, one of Gotham’s most formidable hitmen. He tortures, kills, and he has no loyalties to speak of (minus the one he has with Falcone) and will switch sides as soon as more money is added to the pool (case in point, what he does to Oswald Cobblepot). They also don’t show this too much but like in the comics, Victor Zsasz also cuts tally marks into his skin every time he kills a person. From the 1 time we do see him do this it is shown that these tallies already cover the majority for his forearm and probably many more parts of his skin we cannot see. Mans is scary and earns that fear well. He does help the ‘good guys’ on occasion but I would not call what he does an act of goodness or altruism. He does it to save himself or because he has some sort of greater incentive to. He does not hate Jim, I would say he is more on the side of liking Jim Gordon than not, but him throwing them bones also brings down the people he does not like or gives him problems.

In the film Satanic, Anthony plays the owner of a satanic goods shop in LA. Anthony (who also has the name Anthony in the film) is shown as also being a person who is willing to do actual satanic rituals and is seen nearly killing a woman for a ritual in the first half of the movie. Is he ultimately the bad guy? That is unclear since there is a lot going on with the movie that makes its plot a little difficult to follow (which is also why the movie kinda flubbed at the box office). But regardless Anthony is a character meant to be feared and or distrusted here and a lot of that comes from his appearance. He is visually set aside from the other characters.

In The Flash Anthony is “Kyle Nimbus” who also goes by the name “The Mist” The Mist is a hitman who is a minor antagonist in the first season of the show.

And as Mr. Vice (or Weiss as according to Wikipedia) in Hard Sun Anthony takes on the role of a serial lobotomizer. Upon watching those scenes I actually felt like I was watching Victor Zsasz back in Gotham. Anthony is really good at channeling that kind of energy. If you edited out the bit with the officers at the end of this scene and replaced them with Jim Gordon and Harvey I would think it came from Gotham. Mr Vice and Zsasz have very similar energies.

Anthony’s roles of Oscar in “Fatherhood” and as the best character Noho Hank in “Barry” kind of diverge from this. Oscar is not shown to be an antagonist, but rather a friend helping a single-father friend raise his daughter. He is just a normal guy and his appearance is not used as a method of making the audience unsettled. And in “Barry”, although Hank is a mobster who does kill people, sells drugs, and does all of the other ‘Chechen mobster things’, he is probably one of the best morally good characters in the show. He does not give up on the people he loves (Cristobal, Barry, his men) even though sometimes he probably should to save himself. At many points, it would have probably been easier to just dump them and save himself but he does not. He goes out of his way to help others even if he has to put his own life on the line to do it. And yes, he feels extremely bad when he finds out Cristobal had children and was still married to his wife. He wants to be happy, not a homewrecker. And Cristobal’s dishonesty was something that majorly bothered Hank although it was not enough to keep him from saving him. He was not going to let Cristobal suffer as an act of petty revenge even though it probably would have been the easiest thing to do. Hank, despite being a criminal, is human and a good person deep down. And the audience roots for him because not only is he human, but he is genuine. He is more genuine than Fuches, Gene at times, and even Sally. He does bad things but is not a bad guy. If he was, he would have taken advantage of a lot of events in the show. He could have thrown Barry, Fuches, Goran, and Cristobal under the bus but did not. He could have gotten revenge on a lot of people or used his position for his own gain. He does not.

Once again this is not a stab at Anthony for taking these roles or having fun with them. He is actually really fun to watch on screen and you can tell he enjoys what he is doing and those are the best types of actors to watch. Being the asshole character can be fun. However, in 4/6 of the roles, we have talked about Anthony is explicitly an antagonist which is not inherently a problem by itself. And in all 4/6 of these roles, Anthony’s appearance is used to make the viewer uneasy and to drive home the fact Anthony’s character is the person you should not be wanting to win. To be fair this has not stopped the Tumblr fangirlies from all but making shrines of Victor Zsasz and or Noho Hank in their sock drawers. But the behavior of Tumblr fan culture does not change the fact that Anthony is being used to add to the ‘creepy factor’ to some of the scenes he is in.

This is a screenshot from the Hard Sun episode Anthony is in. Yes I am aware this is terrible quality. While the setup and context of this scene inherently makes whoever is the bad guy unsettling (because forced lobotomy is not something friendly or soothing), you cannot tell me that they are not using Anthony’s appearance to add to the unsettling factor of the scene. This problem is not with Anthony’s performance or even with his casting in general, its with how Alopecians are framed in media consistently. Alopecians can be the bad guy, and they often are, but when are they the good guy? They do exist but they are not an extremely common sight.

They more often than not, are always the bad guy in popular media.

And once again it does not stop here.

Joseph Gatt’s filmography

I thought I would stop at just Anthony and Tómas’ filmography I discovered yet ANOTHER actor that this can apply to.

Joseph Gatt is an English actor with Alopecia Universalis. His filmography is probably more than Anthony’s and Tómas’ put together and then some. It is pretty long. He has had no shortage of work, that is for sure.

And just like I did with both Anthony and Tómas, I went on another epic film adventure to see how this trope shows up in Joseph’s filmography. In the interest of time and space, I will not be getting as intensive as I did with the filmographies of the other 2 actors mostly because there are a lot more things to look over. But for the roles where Joseph is some form of antagonist, I am going to mark them with a red dot. And as with Tómas, there were some films and shows I was not able to find and watch for whatever reason. They are either not on US streaming servers, or are not saved anywhere you can watch them in general. I did resort to pirating for some of these films/shows I could not find legally. While that did bring up SOME results, some of them were still not locatable.

Lets take a look at his filmography with those dots.

These are the films Joseph has been in, just the films. Out of the 27 films he is in, 20 of which I was able to locate in some form online, he is a ‘bad guy’ in 13 of them. Using math to calculate, out of the films I was able to actually watch he was a ‘bad guy’ around 65% of the time. And even then this is probably an inaccurate number because, as I said before, I was not able to find some of these things he was in. There is a very real chance this number might be higher.

But to be fair, lets say Joseph is a ‘bad guy’ at least 50% of the time.

But wait, there is more.

Joseph has done more than just film work, he has done work for TV as well.

That’s a lot of red dots.

I was not able to find a lot of his older stuff (mostly things pre-2008) but post-Wonder Woman MOST of his shows were online.

Lets do some math again.

Joseph Gatt is in 28 shows, 22 of which I was able to find. He plays the villain or some type of antagonistic character in 17 of these shows. So 17/22 is ABOUT 77% OF THE TIME. And again these numbers might not be completely accurate since I was not able to watch 6 of these shows.

So to give some final stats: out of all 42 shows/movies Joseph is in where he is physically on screen, he is an antagonist in 30 of them. This means 71% of the time Joseph is some form of bad-guy. And in the larger, more ‘well-known’ productions he is in (Dumbo, Star Trek, Black Adam) he is the villain 2/3rds of the time. While I doubt many of you have seen the theatrical masterpiece that is Titanic 666, I am fairly sure you might at least be familiar with the Dumbo movie or Black Adam (or for my nerds out there Star Trek). And if you have conveniently ignored those movies, I think you might have seen NCIS, Game of Thrones, or Teen Wolf.

While this might not be as prolific of an issue in Tómas Lemarquis’ filmography (given I was not able to really give it a very in-depth look and only focused on his English releases so the scale might be off) or only starts to really show up in Anthony’s after his transition from Alopecia Areata to Alopecia Universalis, Joseph has had Alopecia Universalis since he was 14, before he started taking roles. He went into acting with Alopecia. And while he does get cast quite a bit so it is clear the Alopecia has not really gotten in the way of him getting jobs. It does however appear to be affecting what types of jobs he is getting. And because it is doing this, it sets a pretty clear theme.

Most of the time he is this tall imposing figure who you are meant to subconsciously fear. He is presented as scary. You do not see Victor Zelko or Neils Skellig and think “wow this is a friendly guy who I would like to be around”. You think “wow, this guy is scary and could kill me”. He does play good or neutral characters but he is never really an explicit protagonist. He is not really ever the person we are rooting for when he is on screen. And when he is in those few instances where that is the case, it only seems to be in small inde films that tend to get critically panned.

But this does not only happen to actors with Alopecia, as shown here, it happens to characters who are bald as well.

Dune (2021)

The film Dune is a Science Fiction movie based on the book of the same name. As you might imagine, the plot of this movie (by virtue of being science fiction) is extremely complex and is packed with Lore so rich it would make Jeffrey Bezos look like a struggling college student. I am not going to explain the extent of the Lore of Dune here since, that would take a while, but what is relevant here are the Houses all vying for control for the planet Arrakis (the planet that produces all of the Spice) and political power. In the books there are a LOT of these houses all fighting for control and dominance over each other. However, in the movie, we only really see House Atreides (the House protagonist Paul is apart of), House Harkonnen (the evil guys we are not supposed to like), and House Corrino (the house the emperor is a part of).

House Harkonnen will be what we are focusing on.

In the movie House Harkonnen is described as “ A brutal, militarist empire in the dystopian wasteland of Giedi Prime, ruled by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen”. The Baron himself is also described as being cruel, sadistic, and addicted to various vices such as food and sex (it is also implied he is a rapist and that many of his sex slaves/affairs are not adults). He is not a good person and serves as the primary antagonist in the movie. But lets take a look at what the Baron looks like.

Like all members of House Harkonnen shown to us in the movie, the Baron looks like this:

He has no hair, at all. No eyebrows, no hair on the scalp, no facial hair, nothing. He is completely hairless. And this is not something unique to the Baron either.

The Baron’s Nephew Rabban also looks like this and so do all of the soldiers Rabban is around who are all presumably born on the Harkonnen homeworld.

This is Piter de Vries, the Mentat (human computer smart guy person), for House Harkonnen. He also, again, looks the same. It also does not help that he is depicted as a sadistic psychopath who enjoys the suffering of others.

Here are the female servants seen serving the Baron. Same thing. They have no hair at all either (although I do want to point out that both of these actresses also have Alopecia and, unlike with a few of the other Harkonnen characters, they did not need makeup to achieve this look).

I have also seen this image floating around. I THINK it is from one of the deleted scenes, specifically featuring Rabban interrogating some technicians (these guys) trying to bring back the Baron from the gas incident using a decontamination pod thing. This is the only image I can find of this deleted scene, but if this IS truly a screenshot from that scene: this just further proves my point. Everybody on ‘ Team Harkonnen’ looks like this. We have not seen a Harkonnen person who has not looked like this.

While we know both the Baron and Rabban are related, I do not think the soldiers we see around both Rabban and the Baron, the servants, these technicians, and Piter are also related to the Baron. That, and in previous versions of Dune (including in the books) House Harkonnen is not described to look like this. They all mostly have red hair and a widow’s peak. The Baron is still extremely obese (as that is literally his whole character) but the complete hairlessness was an invention unique to the Dune 2021 movie. I see a lot of people say this universal Alopecia among ALL House Harkonnens was a result of them living on their hellhole home planet. I have seen others claim it was to show them being powerful and dominant. But if that were the case why are the slaves (the subjugated people) also shown like this? And the only person shown to have negative health conditions is the Baron himself, and most of that just seems to be because he is constantly stuffing his face with food. If Giedi Prime was truly giving people illnesses and making their hair fall out Piter, Rabban, and their entire army would probably have health issues as well.

I suppose you might be able to argue that the lack of sun might also be a factor here. But I am more willing to bet the fact the people of House Harkonnen or the people around it look like this because the movie is trying to visually differentiate them from the rest of the people in the movie. Harkonnen, the bald guys, are the bad guys while House Atreides, the people with hair, are the good guys.

Bald bad, hair good.

The School for Good and Evil

The Netflix movie “The School for Good and Evil” (based on the book of the same name) is a movie about 2 friends who wish to go to this fairytale school. One friend is stereotypically preppy-like and wants to make dresses and be at the good school, while the other friend who is more tomboy anti-establishment does not really seem to care much about the school in general but would prefer to be on the evil side. But when they are magically chosen to go to the school, they get switched. Blond-hair-blue-eyes gets thrown into the evil side while “It’s not a phase mom” gets thrown into the good side.

During the scene where the 2 headmistresses kind of explain to the first year students (and to us, the audience) what is going on, we get this shot where it pans to each side of the room showing us the students.

Here is the “Good” side of the room. Its pretty much what you would expect. There is a lot of pink, poofy gowns, big hair, etc.

Here is the “evil” side of the room. I would like to point out here we see 2 bald characters. I THINK there are others in the background at other points of the film. But I want to point out that they are on the ‘evil’ side. There are no bald characters on the other side of the room. They are here. I would like to pay special attention to the one bald girl sitting next to Sophie in the front row.

On the far right you can see that one character again.

She pops up the most out of the 2 bald characters in that previous scene and you can frequently see her in the background of shots. She is always kinda there. But the thing you instantly notice is that she is only on screen when the evil side of the school is being shown. And while Sophie does this weird thing near the end of the movie where she flips the sides so good is now evil and evil is now good (I think I don’t know, I still am confused) that one character is still just consistently there and sometimes does evil stuff to remind you that she is apart of the evil school. And at the end of the movie, she, like the rest of the evil school, decides to chill with the good school because… friendship I guess. The movie itself is not the easiest to understand when it comes to plot. I hear the books were much better.

Regardless, she serves as a visual reminder of this trope. She starts out on the evil side and that is where she stays for most of the movie. While the movie does make fun of many of these “good vs evil” tropes, Sophie herself calls the ‘good’ school hypocrites which, within the context of the movie, is not wrong. But I do not think this actress and her inclusion in the film are meant to make fun of this trope. At best it fails to say anything new and at worst it just reinforces it.

It also does not help that the actress who plays this character (her name is Joelle) has only been in 2 mainstream films, both of which involve her being on the evil team (she is one of the Harkonnen servants in Dune and obviously the student seen above in The School of Good and Evil).

Nosferatu

In the 1922 film Nosferatu ALL of the bad guy characters are shown as bald.

This old guy standing next to our anime protagonist Thomas Hutter (seen on the right) is named Knock and he is the secondary antagonist of the film is Thomas’ boss. He is also the reason the vampire Count Orlok was able to come to the town and spread the plague. When we first meet this character he is sending/receiving encoded letters from the count. They are conspiring. And as the film itself progresses Knock’s negative traits increase. He slowly becomes insane. He acts more erratically as the count draws closer and begins doing things like eating spiders and attacking people. He is very not well and soon becomes a raving madman.

Count Orlok (the vampire) himself also has extremely visible hair loss much like Knock does. And to accompany this hair loss, Count Orlok also has bone-thin features, large teeth, and odd proportions. Count Orlok looks like this for a reason. He is meant to look sickly, ill, dead (which makes sense given how the Count is a literal vampire). When you see him you know right away “this guy is not normal”. Count Orlok also gets used as the basis for a lot of the other bald vampire archetypes we see in other movies, including the movie DREAMLAND I mentioned earlier. There are many visual callbacks to Count Orlok which persist in media today. He is the quintessential vampire.

The balding of both Knock and Count Orlok was a very intentional design choice for reasons I have explained above. The filmmakers do not want you to view these characters as normal or healthy. They also look the way they do because of some not-so-subtle biases common in Germany in the 1920s, but that is another post for another time.

Other examples

And because this is such a COMMON trope, it does not stop with the examples I have listed above. It goes far beyond the properties I have listed above in detail or will even be able to list.

Lets look at some additional examples

This is Gollum (Lord of the Rings) before and after the ring. The ring turned him evil and part of the visual representation of this is the fact most of his hair falls out.

Voldemort in Harry Potter is VERY bald. Meanwhile, Dumbledore (a character much older than Voldemort) has a full hair of hair and a long beard. These 2 characters are polar opposites from each other. We have a very solid “GOOD VS EVIL” visual comparison like we do with House Atreides and House Harkonnen.

Dr Evil from Austin Powers (and Mini Me) are bald, but the character is literally a satire of this trope. He exists to make fun of supervillains and the very subject of this article. However, he is included here because… just look at him. He IS the trope.

ALL of the Cenobites in the Hellraiser Franchise are bald and becoming bald seems to be part of the process of becoming a Cenobite

This Nazi guy played by Otto Preminger in Margin for Error is bald. There is now a trend of bald Nazis I am starting to notice. I think this is another subject also worth exploring on its own but it still feeds into the “amorality” of baldness thing I mentioned earlier.

And many MANY more I could not fit into this article who fall under this media trope too including characters like Bane, Walter White, Dorkus from that Planet Sein show that failed on nickelodeon, Lex Luthor, Frank from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia (he might be a protagonist of the how but he is not a good person) Mr Freeze in the batman universe (80% of the time), and many many others. There are too many to really count and I do not wish to watch any more films. I have already burnt a hole through my CPU watching Dune in 4K.

Why does this trope exist?

Since I am an Alopecian myself, I have some theories.

Hair loss has historically been something that has been undesirable for both men and women. The loss of hair can affect a person in multiple ways. Hair is a method of self-expression, an extension of yourself and your personality. Hair can be an extension of one’s cultural or religious identity. It can be an extension of one’s gender identity. Hair means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And since hair is such an important aspect of ourselves and culture, it is pretty understandable why people would be afraid of losing it. It’s like losing a part of yourself or a way to connect with where you came from.

With that said I feel like, with this trope specifically, these feelings directed at hair loss itself often get translated into other negative feelings which leads the way for bald characters to get shown this way. They are manifestations of how we as people fear baldness and the unpredictability of losing our hair and start assigning other negative traits to baldness even if those traits have nothing to do with losing hair. For example, let’s look at the Dune movie again.

House Atreides (the house that consistently has full heads of hair and or beards) are portrayed as being the desirable house to root for. They are honorable, they are well respected among the other houses (minus 2 but this is out of jealousy), and they rule their people well (historically having fewer issues compared to the other houses due to their kindness and honorability). Even their homeworld of Caladan is depicted is as lush and prosperous. Conversely, House Harkonnen (the completely hairless house) is depicted as being dishonorable, cruel, and plagued with problems both specific to individual house members (like the Baron and his food problem) and applicable to the house as a whole (like the greed and power-hunger). And even the home planet of House Harkonnen, Giedi Prime, is described as being an industrialized hellhole. Atreides is, in a very simple dumbed-down sense, all the traits you want to have. Meanwhile, Harkonnen is all of the traits you don’t want. They are complete opposites of each other visually and tonally.

We also see this similar concept take place in cases where some form of transformation (either physically or mentally) is involved.

Voldemort, Gollum, The Cenobites, Lex Luther, Walter White, and Knock did not start out bald. Knock has Androgenic Alopecia (a slower process than AA) which probably happened over the course of his life as he was becoming enthralled by Count Orlok, Lex Luther loses his hair in prison, Walter White chooses to go bald himself after finding out he has cancer and just before starting his meth lab, and Voldemort, Gollum, and the Cenobites all lose their hair as a result of their evil transformations into what they are now. Losing your hair seems to be an important narrative benchmark for creating evil characters. Once that hair is lost there is a noticeable change in the character’s personality and sometimes goals. It’s a point of no return. You are reminded that the character is now evil because they lack the hair they had before. They are no longer ‘good’. This then circles us back to feelings and concepts being projected onto hair loss even though these 2 concepts have nothing to do with each other.

The effect of this trope on Alopecian actors

Being bald does not make you commit crimes, rape people, become a scam artist, cook meth, go insane, or “eat hot chip and lie” as some of these films seem to suggest. This can put Alopecians in an interesting spot when it comes to acting and their ability to be seen in media. On the one hand, Anthony, Tomas, Joelle, Joseph, and other people with Alopecia are getting roles in Hollywood. Their condition is not a detriment to their career and its very awesome that this wall is slowly being broken down. They are visible. We see them. And with other celebrities coming out about their Alopecia, like Jada Pickett Smith for example, it has broken that barrier down further because that word is being normalized. Its there. We see it. We know what it is.

I would love to see more people like me in film and I am sure other Alopecians think similarly. Representation is important. And while Alopecia might not be the most detrimental medical condition to have, it still has a heavy stigma attached to it independent of this trope. And it extends far beyond stupid invasive questions and mean comments. That stigma can make it lethal given there have been multiple suicides linked to people with this condition being bullied and harassed. Kids often suffer this negative side of the stigma the most. Allowing both kids and adults with Alopecia to see people like them on screen not only allows for those people to have characters to relate to, it allows the general public to SEE Alopecia without it being in a medical context.

But at the same time I cannot help but feel that, because of this trope, baldness and by extension the illnesses that can cause it to happen often get put in this spot where it becomes a plot device, and not a good one. It becomes “oh, this character is bad” or “oh, this character is dishonest” or “oh, this character is evil, mean, not to be trusted, probably eats spiders”. What message does this send? You do not have to outright say “people with Alopecia are inherently creepy/bad” to send that message. How much are these castings are really the actor/actress choosing to play these roles and how much of it is these people getting pigeonholed so this trope can continue? And even as we move outside of the realm of actors with Alopecia Universalis, why is losing hair in general something we have to demonize so much in media? Regardless of the extent of the loss, why does hair loss have to mean doing creepy/villain roles or losing your job as an actor?

While I understand many of these actors have enjoyed their roles and have said as much in interviews, I would like to see them not be limited by this trope. And while it might be a good start to start addressing the biases we have around baldness in our private lives, we should also start addressing them on the media level as well. Hair loss does not have to be relegated to evilness or bad characters. Bald people can be the villain, a neutral character, or the hero! Its just a matter of letting bald actors and actresses be seen in those diverse lights. Beyond their baldness, beyond the villain roles. They deserve the right to be able to be more diverse with their filmographies and show the sides of themselves we often do not see because of this pigeonholing in media.

#alopeca #Alopecia Acceptance #alopecia awareness #movie tropes #tropes #essay #film #film tropes

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