#sergeant hatred

(content warnings: discussions of pedophilia, suicidal ideation, & alcoholism)

(all unsourced citations come from Go Team Venture!: The Art And Making Of The Venture Bros (2018))

for reference and an understanding of how i'm going to talk about sgt. hatred from here forward, i do not consider pre-s3 hatred as the same character as his character from s3 onwards.

this is something initially surmised by jackson's assertion that between the s2 finale's production and the production of s3, so much writing and riffing had been done from the character that when he took over the voice, he was (essentially) indistinguishable from his previous iteration:

Jackson: We'd been riffing on the voice, attitude, and language of Sgt. Hatred for years, although originally he was Dr. Strange! We started doing that voice back in season 1 when we were just goofing around: “I bet Orpheus actually knows Dr. Strange and has him over sometimes.” And Dr. Strange was, paradoxically, this everyday guy who was going through some problems or a divorce, going, “I just wanna crash on your couch if that’s okay.” Brendon Small did a couple of his lines in the wedding episode, but in between that episode and this season, we had done so much writing and riffing in character as him that I took over the voice. (p. 134)

this is additionally supported by the fact that no mentions or appearances of sgt. hatred prior to s3 (i.e the lines by dean and hank in "i know why the caged bird sings", his cameo appearance during the walking eye scene, his appearance at the wedding in the s2 finale) are ever (at least not in memory) referred to again in canon.

season 3

anyway, let's talk about what jackson and doc think about hatred as a character, conceptually, at his most basic and essential components:

Jackson: He was the “nice” villain, and | think Hurricane Katrina happened around then, so you'd always catch him in mid conversation saying things like, “I’m watching the news and those poor people are havin’ a hell of a time over there. Why don’t we load up the hover tank with some food and bring it on down there to help those people out?!” He’s that kind of guy. He'll do charity work and stuff like that. But he’s a villain by profession. It's a job and he’s the guy for the job. And he probably used to be a little too into it and he was drinking too much and hating a little too much. And that’s where the name came from. He's trying to change, but this is still his job. We see that he becomes a good guy. Unlike a lot of our good guys who become bad guys, he’s the one who was actually meant to be a good guy. He just grew up the wrong way or fell into the wrong circumstances or had that drinking problem. (p. 134)

i highlight this because i feel like a lot of people tend to fundamentally misunderstand that hatred was always meant to have an arc. this was not a situation where, mid-s4 production, they realized that he'd probably blow over better with people if he'd gotten one-- this was always the intent, and as we get to s4/5, that intent becomes more apparent with the kinds of episodes and interactions he receives.

in reference to hatred's war room/basement, doc says this:

Doc: God, I remember that there was so much going on [in the basement]. Hatred had taken all these Lego characters and action figures and stuff and created this whole world in his basement. He has kind of a Darger quality, where he creates these scenes. His war room is just a bunch of toys doing weird stuff.

what i find absolutely fascinating about this comparison is that henry darger, like hatred, is someone who has a lot of argument about his intent (though in this case, its usually in reference to his 15,000+ page novel, in the realms of the unreal). i also just think a darger comparison is so multilayered and implies a lot about hatred and his mind as a possible creative and as a victim to forces outside of his control, though i won't expand on that first thing too much, as the only scene where this kind of potential interest he has in things like paracosms and alternate historical scenario dioramas are only really shown in a deleted scene.

the latter concept, however... we'll get there in just a moment.

season 4

what the foreword for season 4's production gives a lot of insight about writing hatred against the expectations of their audience, in addition to why the choice to have him take up the role of bodyguard in lieu of brock was made:

Doc: Then we put Hatred in there as the new bodyguard. Anybody that gets that job gets emasculated. It made Brock into a nanny, and it did the same to Hatred. We tinkered with the idea of 21 taking the job, but it just didn't work because we were trying to build him up. You can't immediately emasculate him with the nanny job. It's a bad job. You would think that the Venture bodyguard would be the tough job, because it's what Brock did. It's just not. It's a lot of nannying.

i find this concept, of the venture bodyguard role being a role that breaks down a character via emasculation rather than building them up, really interesting, since it essentially describes exactly what happens to hatred between his initial depictions in the 3rd season as a somewhat imposing, competent, and decently-respected figure to something significantly more docile, often being used as the butt of jokes about his incompetency (especially in the last two seasons).

however, rather than perceiving this change as being something that serves as a net negative or a punishment for hatred, doc instead says this:

Doc: It's nice to write for Hatred past the audience's expectations. They have this idea that Hatred is this one-note ex-pedophile, and he's really not. We don't really use that aspect of his past. It's just this terrible, wretched sort of Damocles's sword that hangs over his head. It's just nice to use him as this loving, fun guy.

the invocation of the sword of damocles is something that is so diabolical to me (in a good way). in the usage of the sword of damocles popularized from his text Tusculanae Disputationes, roman orator cicero states (via dan-el padilla peralta's 2015 medium article From Damocles to Socrates):

Cicero: Doesn't Dionysius seem to have made it plenty clear that nothing is happy for him over whom terror always looms?

while this quote is often interpreted in a variety of ways, in this context i think the best read is something along the lines of "happiness is impossible for those who live in fear of potential harm", the harm here being in direct reference to hatred's explicit fear of hurting the people around him due to thoughts and feelings he can't control.

this is a common sentiment expressed by those who suffer from paraphilic disorders and intrusive thought-heavy cases of obsessive compulsive disorder, especially when said intrusive thoughts are egodystonic (something that is also confirmed in canon)

skipping past discussions of comparisons of hatred & brock in "handsome ransom" (which, while they are interesting, are not what this post is about) and hatred & billy in "the revenge society" (doesn't really do anything for my analysis other than confirm [though rather coyly] that hatred was worried about billy's health due to a possible concussion and wanted to monitor him [though due to how this is presented in addition to riffing that's been done at conventions, this is probably just a joke about billy looking vaguely childlike. hey, i never said i always liked doc and jackson's choices!]), we move on to one of the two episodes i consider the most important to understanding hatred as a character

episode 45: self medication

Jackson: I really still like this episode. I think if other people don't it's because Hatred has his full-on pedophile freak-out in this episode, with his little brown boys and going to the Hobbit movie and stuff, but I love all that stuff. Those are the jokes we wanted to make. He needed to have that happen to him once or there's no point. We were showing him struggling to be a good man with confusing images like androgyny, ageless elves, dwarves, and stuff like that-- those things are triggers.

despite my problems with some aspects of this episode, i really really do consider this one of the strongest episodes, emotionally speaking, within an already strong season. while jackson pretty openly refers to the movie scene as being jokes, because they are, i think that, similarly to episodes like metalocalypse's dethvanity, the jokes here can ring as extremely resonant with people who suffer from egodystonic intrusive thoughts.

at this point in the series, hatred is medicated. he's working a new job, thrust into a parental/authority role over two young men who don't really respect him, something that is confirmed within this episode to be something that takes an extreme toll on his psyche in fear that he may potentially harm them, and no one really seems to give a fuck. to be fair, they never have: if they had, he wouldn't be like this in the first place.

when you strip back all the off-color jokes and look at the situation as it is, it's kind of miserable, isn't it? after all, doesn't dionysius make it plenty clear that nothing is happy for the man over whom terror always looms?

episode 57: venture libre

this is it. this is the episode. to me. the Hatred Thesis episode.

Jackson: We also got a little bit of a flashback to Sgt. Hatred’s backstory. The message-board people accused us of trying to justify the previous season’s pedophile jokes by getting him off the hook. And then other people said we ruined his character, because before we “were making a strong statement about the demons that people wrestle with, and a guy trying to overcome an addiction or problem, or whatever, and now you've made that more superficial because it’s the product of… blah blah blah.” Fuck that. This is a sci-fi adventure parody show. Anything that happens to people happens because super science fucked them up at some point. That’s why villains are villains.

what i really like about this-- about hatred's backstory and its effect on how you perceive him from hereon out --is that jackson is right. anything that happens to people happens because super science fucked them up (or over). that's why villains are villains, and this statement shines in episodes like "the doctor is sin" and within the blue morpho arc, most famously the Morphic Trilogy in s7, but what i think it lacks is a secondary statement: that villains only stay villains when encouraged.

rusty venture could have easily become a villain: this is proven within canon. hell, billy quizboy could have easily become a villain, and episodes like "the silent partners" make it clear that he'd be a great ally to have. but the encouragement and enabling of villainy (or, alternatively, the lack of support on the side of anti-villainy) is what keeps them that way, and neither of them had it shake out that way.

hatred, however... experimented on by the OSI and cast aside when his actions due to their serum makes him uncontrollable, thrown away and picked up by the guild (possibly as an inside informant as some people theorize during "the invisible hand of fate") but only so long as his strength and innovation benefits their numbers, with little care to the long-term effects the serum does to his psyche as long as he's able to do what they need.

he digs himself out halfway entirely due to his own desire for self improvement, but you can only do so much when your career defines you, especially when your job is being a bad guy. when the OSI halfway takes him back via his temporary placement the ventures' bodyguard and he's finally afforded some medical reprieve, he still has to do a lot of the heavy lifting of assuring that a lot of his worst intrusive thoughts stay that way-- as thoughts.

despite it all, though despite rusty's and the wider OSI's apathy on whether he lives or dies, despite his own frequent and open suicidal ideation and willingness to throw a life he doesn't really seem to value to the wind when he feels like he's failed the people he's supposed to serve (something that is subtextually implied to be at least partly due to a christian upbringing), despite everything, he does it! on top of that, i feel like you can tell, especially by the later episodes in season 5 onwards, the venture family really does grow to value him, maybe more than he values himself.

hank comes around to him, seeing him as a partner in crime in some episodes and as someone he can come to for advice about girls in others, and dean, while mildly annoyed by his doting nature in season 5, seems to align more with his softer bleeding-heart nature as opposed to brock's more masculine tough love approach (this, to me, is most supported by the infamous jared/dean season 6 deleted scene where he visits hatred in the hospital, but outside of that i think their interactions in later s5 and the s7 finale are enough to carry that reading)

as for rusty... well you already know how i feel about that.

maybe one day, i'll write something discussing brock and hatred's relationship as a man who reflects the hypermasculine through and through and one who fails to keep that status as he ages and grows as a person.