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Suggest media in which the antagonist is an idea or an abstract concept rather than a person or intelligent entity
the two examples that I have are Final destination movies and junji ito's manga "Uzumaki".
it doesn't have to be a manga or movie of course, I just would like something similar but it can be any medium. books, movies, games etc
Pontypool (2008): Excellent indie horror film with some great character actors. It looks like a regular zombie movie at first glance, but it's not -- go in totally blind if you can.
Blindsight: (Free to read online!) My favorite science fiction novel. It's essentially a first contact story with a species of frighteningly intelligent aliens, but their raw intelligence is not what makes them so disturbing -- the ultimate threat is far more existential and fundamental, in a way that's impossible to describe without spoiling.
Some related recs: House of Leaves, Piranesi, and the upcoming Backrooms movie. All three have what you could deem antagonists/villains, but they primarily feature characters confronting mysterious, seemingly infinite environments steeped in abstract horror/awe and existential dread. They do it in very different ways -- HoL's documentary style and experimental formatting, Piranesi's dreamlike wonder, and Backroom's banal, liminal horror -- but all scratch the same itch for me. Piranesi in particular has a superb audiobook and an upcoming film adaptation by animation studio Laika that should be very good.
In a similar vein, there's "The Library of Babel" by Borges, which is an acknowledged influence on Piranesi, and I would be surprised if Borges weren't an influence on House of Leaves as well.
A Short Stay in Hell is a novella directly inspired by Borges’s Babel. It technically does have a set of characters who might be considered antagonists, but they’re really only a subplot, with the main “antagonist” (if you can call it that) being the library itself.
I have a question about House of Leaves if you don't mind giving a (non spoiler) answer - how horror is it? I've been really interested in the formatting and some of what I've heard about the surreal nature of the story, but I'm not much of a fan of horror. It's one of the big disappointments of the whole Backrooms microgenre, to me, that in the beginning it was just surreal and any horror came from the liminality and the breakdown of physics, but pretty quickly it turned into pretty typical (monster movie) horror stuff.
One of the reasons I love Piranesi is that the House isn't good or evil, it's just there and it has this sense of wonder and dread about it, but it's not any kind of horror movie trope it's just weird and impossible to understand.
I know some people really love House of Leaves, but I found it to be kind of a mess. Yes, there is a significant part of it that covers the weirdness of the house and an attempt to really understand its impossible dimensions...but there is a good chunk of framing story that is bizarre, rambling, and fairly nonsensical, and there's hundreds of pages of this. It can be quite a slog, which adds a layer of "creepy" but also becomes really tired and boring, at least it did for me.
The house-specific parts of the story start out as more surreal and impossible, but later, it definitely becomes much more horror-focused, when people attempt to study the house in more detail. I'm not a great person to ask, because I didn't really enjoy or appreciate the book aside from as a literary device, but based on what you've written, I think it falls into some of the tropes you dislike. You can always try it out and enjoy the story for what it is? It's definitely not like other things I've read.
Yeah I've rarely seen such divided opinions about a book so it kind of feels like I'm going to have to try and tackle it at some point.
It is definitely unique, and for that reason I think it's at least worth checking out from the library. Actually reading and enjoying the book is a different matter, and at times it feels like a form of performance art. Ok for the first half hour, but I found it very tedious after awhile, and the payoff wasn't worth it. I don't regret reading it! But I wouldn't do it again, and I gave my copy away.
...the metatextual form of house of leaves is fun to watch unfold but its characterisations i found really sophomoric, kind of the two-dimensional stereotypes you often see inexperienced authors lean upon...
Oh, I strongly feel this too!! I deeply enjoy the form and even the typography -- it's a very pretty book, and lots of it is clever and fun -- and it's a great answer to the OP's question, too!! -- but it didn't read to me like something that was written by a person who is interested in people. That is kind of a problem for this book because it's trying to strut its stuff as a depiction of abnormal psych.
Actually, to that end, The Shining (the film, at least) might be tempting to people who liked House of Leaves? That's (in my opinion) a great example of a metaphorical work that hits on all the notes of a thing it's a metaphor for -- and I appreciated it a lot after watching a bunch of true crime content and realizing I'd seen Jack Nicholson's energy before.
Can I recommend Nabokov's "Pale Fire"? It's not at all a horror story (it's kind of a psychological drama) -- it's in a similar style to House of Leaves, but I think it has a less contrived plotline and a much more interesting framing story. It also (in my opinion) passes the "something entertaining on every page" test.
It’s pretty much entirely atmospheric and existential dread. I’m not a huge horror fan (especially if there’s anything gory), but I loved this.
It's definitely horror, but in a more abstract way than the Backrooms. The latter has at least one explicit creature, plus a major subplot involving shadowy corporate research gone mad (and that's in the Kane Parsons version that handles it with more subtlety than most).
The House in HoL ranges from "quietly unsettling" to "actively malevolent", but there's no explicit monster (beyond thematic references to a Minotaur), and the research/madness angle is less prominent and has a much less "DHARMA Initiative from Lost" vibe.
The worst thing I can say about it is that the framing story -- Johnny Truant finding and compiling the manuscript for the book from the mysterious Zampanò -- is far less compelling to me than the core Navidson Record story. The horror creeps in at the edges, especially when Zampanò's work is involved, but it's mostly about sex, drugs, and nervous breakdown on the seedy side of LA. I find myself largely skipping his narrative whenever I reread, which is easier since the different perspectives are in different fonts.
Fully agreed, the horror in the framing narrative is in that it self references in a really unsettling way.
It's primarily done via anachronistic statements in the narrative, usually via Johnny Truant's editorializing and being an unreliable narrator. It really requires a bit of a reread to get to the unsettling part of the frame story.
Granted, you have to be able to get through the Johnny Truant parts, which are probably the least compelling and weakest part of the book.
This isn't traditional media, but there's a series of short stories up on SCP Wiki that I enjoyed a good bit all under the Antimemetics Division Hub. The ultimate enemy in those stories is a group of interconnected thought patterns, concepts, and even whole new integers. Sometimes those ideas make enemies out of individuals, but the villain behind it all is just the concepts themselves.
Relatedly the novel There Is No Antimemetics Division is based on that SCP concept. Originally it was written as a web novel (which is also the version I read, and it is very good) but also, the author recently got a fully overhauled rewrite of it published traditionally, which is supposedly also very good
Hey, I've read that book, I can recommend it. The Class Z Mnestic from the SCP version is now a Class Y in the novel; I like what they did with the new Class Z...
How much of an SCP head do you have to be to understand/enjoy the book? Would it be enjoyable/make sense to someone who's basically never interacted with SCP?
I think they did a very good job of adapting it! I found it easy to understand, but I might be biased. As for enjoying it, I think that'll come down to personal taste, so I can't say.
When I read it I knew basically nothing about SCP besides the rough premise of it, and I think I didn't miss out much
Going to suggest a book/movie combo I actually havent read/seen yet, but I think Annihilation fits the bill pretty well from what little bit I've seen.
The movie Contagion I think would also be a good one. Sure, there are antagonistic characters, but the pandemic itself is one giant force of destruction. Having watched it for the first time during quarantine, it is also absurd how much it got right about the actual pandemic and future technologies that would aid in the fight against it.
I guess technically any disease movie could fit OPs prompt but Contagion is definitely the best one I have watched. Another option would be Outbreak. Less good but still fits.
For All Mankind: An alternate history/sci fi show by Ronald D Moore, famously of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica pedigree. Imagines what happens if the space race of the 1960s never ended, and all that entails. In this world, the Soviet Union never collapses, different countries tip the balance of global power in interesting ways, and intense global investment in space exploration technology pushes the trajectory of tech in different ways.
There isn't really a clear antagonist at all, but one of the major themes of the show is overcoming bureaucracy, bigotry and human ignorance. Much like Star Trek as well, the show is aspirational at times; the world it takes place in hits a lot of social justice milestones a lot sooner than we did in the real world, and has overcome a lot of issues we still struggle with. It's a great series.
...possibly the most prominent example of a memetic antagonist is robert chambers' king in yellow and countless works inspired by it; on a lighter note there's monty python's funniest joke in the world, athough in that instance the idea is more of a memetic hazard than adversarial agency...
...two RPG examples which've recently endeared me are emmy allen's gardens of ynn + stygian library, both of which feature brilliant examples of conceptual foes which i'd rather not spoil in open text...
gardens + library spoilers
the idea of thorns has brought the gardens of ynn to ruin.
the stygian library is haunted by conceptual wells which erase ideas.
If you're looking for more of a slow burn—and are contect with the abstract idea/concept never reaching full explanation—I can recommend the works of cinema auteur Andrei Tarkovsky. More specifically, the 1979 film Stalker and the 1972 film Solaris.
I would say that a significant portion of literary fiction centres around abstract antagonistic forces.
I've been thinking about Patrick White's novel Riders in the Chariot recently, so I'll use it as an example. The antagonist there is social conformity, cruelty that disguises as normality, and the type of suburban mindset where difference from cultural norms is not tolerated. The novel's four main characters, the titular riders, each have access to a spiritual experience that connects them to William Blake's mysticism and the Judeo-Christian mythology on which it was based (and which he partly rebelled against), allowing the four to see the world differently from others. Because of their difference, they are ostracised, seen as outsiders and harmed in various ways.
If you are looking for more of a genre fiction example, Philip K. Dick is the first author to come to mind. His antagonists usually are things like epistemological uncertainty and ontological instability, where reality starts to break down, identity becomes fractured and you can no longer trust your own senses. For concrete pointers, I would recommend Ubik where the primary antagonist is a spray can that is also late-state capitalism and God. Or The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, where the antagonist ultimately is the kind of entertainment and addiction that offers an escape from suffering but in the process steals not only your soul but also your reality and selfhood.
I would strongly second the recommendation of Philip K. Dick. I might throw in "Cat's Cradle" by Vonnegut, but it has the unattractive feature that the ideology that is the antagonist is fashionable in real life.
Great question!
House of Sand and Fog -- the book or the movie (both are great)
A recovering addict trying to rebuild her life gets evicted from her house, and an immigrant family trying to establish themselves buys it. What follows is a dispute over the ownership of the house itself, with both parties having legitimate claims to it.
It's been a long while since I've read/watched this, so a lot of the finer details are lost on me, but I remember liking it specifically because you can identify with each of the characters, and they are all portrayed as complex, flawed individuals. The book isn't a heavy-handed morality play but a nuanced exploration of a difficult situation.
In case anyone is excited by the title, I'll note that it has absolutely nothing in common with the similarly named House of Leaves.
I haven't seen that in 20+ years but my memory still catalogs it as the most aggressively depressing film I've ever watched. It starts bleak, and just gets worse and worse and worse. TBH I don't actually remember anything about the story, but I do remember the hollow feeling it left in the pit of my stomach by the time the credits rolled.
I don't think I've ever not had a crush on Jennifer Connelly but that's not nearly enough to make want to rewatch this misery-fest.
My mind goes to Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains". Its focus is on the inevitability of nature vs. an automated house.
If you'll accept a 'Protagonist vs. Nature' as fitting here, a couple of Andy Weir's works qualify.
The Martian: The 'antagonist' is surviving on Mars / getting back to Earth.
Project Hail Mary: The 'antagonist' is the sun going out, and the science required to fix it.
Also under PvN:
To Build a Fire: by Jack London. A man fights his own inexperience and nature.
127 Hours: True story of a man stuck in between 2 boulders, and his experiences with a multitool.
Also, others have mentioned, but "House of Leaves" is absolutely in line with the antagonist being abstract. The book can be read several different ways.
Really, I think almost anything under Ergodic Literature would count, so I'll just throw out Dhalgren.
I assume Protagonist vs. Nature is exactly the sort of conflict OP was asking for, and the Andy Weir space survival stories are great examples of it. Another movie in that category is Apollo 13. I just watched it about an hour ago so it's fresh in my mind — for "some reason" I've been thinking a lot about crewed lunar missions this week, haha.
It's so good! Absolute masterpiece of a movie. I love the realism and the fact that it respects the intelligence of the audience. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it, or if it's been a while. The CG (which was cutting edge in 1995) looks a bit dated by today's standards, but everything else is extremely solid.
And The Martian. I just rewatched it with my girlfriend after seeing Project Hail Mary. Being stranded in a place more hostile than a deserted island is the antagonist.
"Fuck you, Mars!" - Mark Watney
It's like saying WW2 is the antagonist. More specifically, the astrophage is the antagonist. The sun going out is the result of the antagonist's activity.
I feel like that's just getting into Semantics. The conflict is still Protagonist vs. Nature, as opposed to a person or intelligent entity. The Astrophage is written as a force of nature, similar to locusts.
Regardless, I think that Project Hail Mary is in line with what the OP is suggesting.
All is Lost is a solid PvN movie. Old man Robert Redford vs the sea.
I think Blindness by José Saramago fits that definition. Like others have said, there are definitely bad guys, but they aren't really the antagonists. Everyone just starts going blind for no clear reason and hijinks ensue.
Came here to suggest this same book. Warning: it gets very very dark at times. But the writing is excellent and I still think about it a lot even though I haven't read it for years.
I don’t want to tell you much about it because it would ruin, not a surprise exactly, but something — but the video game “The Outer Wilds” feels like it is what you are talking about. It is not your classic “alien antagonist” plot. Maybe someone else can explain in a non-spoiler way what I’m trying to say.
The antagonist is an event, which you first become aware of 22 minutes into the game.
I tried to provide more detail than that but this game really is that hard to talk about.
Yeah honestly I think anything beyond that would be too much of a spoiler. It is one of my favorite games ever, though, and was a crazy meaningful experience, so I highly recommend it to anyone here who hasn't played it.
I remember in middle school English class, our teacher divided all narrative conflicts into Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, and Man vs Self. A story could obviously include more than one conflict, but each conflict could be categorized into one of these. This is probably a bit overly simplified since it's a tool for middle schoolers, but using this framework, I think Outer Wilds is one of the best executed examples I've seen of a purely Man vs Nature plot.
Annihilation might be a good pick? At least the movie version seems to go for something similar to what you describe (I haven't read the book so I can't weigh in on how different its take is).
Receiver 2: A videogame that simulates every internal part of firearms. It's main plot is about "The Threat" which is kind of the abstract concept of negative mental health and media influences. It's difficult to describe, but I think it fits. Also, I really like the game.
The Big Short
Can I point you at Borges' "The Zahir"? You would probably enjoy it, and it's a close match to what you (I think) are looking for, and it's not very long.
You were recommended Philip K. Dick, especially "Ubik," which I agree with.
You were already recommended Kafka. There's probably something on-the-nose for your recommendation in his oeuvre, I actually don't know what. I really like "The Trial," especially chapter 9 which you can skip to. "The Country Doctor" is very good and short!
EDIT: Oh, I just now saw that you also accept games? I really liked Pathologic: Classic HD, which fits your recommendation very, very closely! (It has several antagonists, I would say that its central subject is "quarantines that leak": most directly as "a disease that can't be contained because it affects the architecture of buildings it is confined to" but also very prominently as "processes of censorship that lead to the censor marking themselves for destruction") The game is very inaccessible and you may want to find a playthrough to watch -- if you play it yourself, please follow a walkthrough.
Bojack Horseman
Throughout every season, Bojack has to deal with his own flaws - or maybe "nature" would be more accurate. He wants to be a good person, but he struggles to learn that "wanting" and "doing" are two different things, and people get hurt because of him.
Some antagonists pop up in different arcs, but the constant - and point of the show - is always about a part of him that sabotages everything good in his life, even though he consciously doesn't want to
I assumed based on the examples that "man vs self" style stories like Bojack aren't what OP is looking for, even though they're also exactly what I thought of when I saw the title.
Ah yes, the show I wanted to not want to watch twice and therefore did anyway. If that makes sense.
It's a harrowing but beautiful story about inner demons. At times heartfelt, heartbreaking, and downright difficult to watch. Also masterfully written and incredibly funny.
I agree with @sparksbet that it may not entirely fit this specific thread, yet is a great suggestion regardless.
The themes explored in this show may be rough to face for some, so I can only recommend taking it slow and maybe take breaks if you start to spiral and feel it dragging you down.
People say Kafka is good. Never read him myself, though.
Das Kapital by Karl Marx.
(Feel free to tag this as joke now).
I think the Backrooms, or at least the concept of "liminal space" is like this if you just watch the first video and don't get into any lore details. It's just about a creepy place, at least initially. There are many such places in real life and they usually aren't associated with an antagonist.
The Backrooms (Found Footage) - YouTube
Ethical philosophy, and also political philosophy. Philosophers rail against ideas we think are destroying the world all the time.
I can't think of what it was off the top of my head, but I've read at least one book, and probably other forms of media, where "Entropy" is a malignant force rather than a fact of nature.
I would say "The Northern Caves" is another good example of this genre.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659997?view_full_work=true
Old Man and the Sea, E. Hemingway