Was discussing with Z her dislike for House and other shows that feature an Asshole Genius. Z really hates these because they seem to validate the idea that it’s ok to be an asshole if you’re a genius, and have some kind of ronery destiny of the genius going on. She then went on to ask what I thought, but my thoughts on the matter are that I really have no desire to watch House so it is difficult for us to discuss the trope in the specific; the problem seems to be more pronounced when the Asshole Genius is the protagonist, really, and also s/he shows a tendency to be right and validated by the story. (For the purposes of the discussion, asshole=person who is a jerk to pretty much everyone, widely seen as an unpleasant character, generally treats people poorly.)
The weird thing is, although I should have read/seen a lot of series like this, but when I thought of my most recent series, there are a lot of smart characters, and a lot of characters who could be said to be “assholes” in the sense that objectively they are really morally dubious or outright evil people, but they can’t really be described as jerks in that sense. I suppose I also feel that if someone is really intelligent they will see that being at least inoffensive usually will help further their vast (possibly morally dubious) plan, because that’s just obvious.
Anyway I kind of feel that 1) it is kind of dumb to have only one really smart person in the universe (in other words what really makes sense to me is something more like Ravages of Time, where considering this is the top level of society, most of the people are above avg. intelligence, and there are enough people identified as prodigies/geniuses to field a soccer team), and 2) how annoying this kind of thing is depends on the attitude of the implied author and the (moral) universe of the work. If ‘god’ (well, actually society or fate) punishes the character for their hubris (well, that’s not really the correct word) or it is seen as THE hamartia, then that makes things not-annoying, or if it’s some Notes from the Underground-esque story, or if all the other characters are also jerks, then it’s also not-annoying.
