It’s a well-established trope of cinema, television, novels and even video games – the angsty, brooding tough guy who “likes to work alone”. The lone wolf, usually a gruff, no-nonsense (and male) detective or an embittered, scarred (and again, male) military veteran living in a rancid apartment block in an overcrowded city. Smoking, alcoholism, impassioned outbursts triggered by the mention of a past tragedy – one could write a detailed profile of any lone wolf in our culture quite easily. But it wouldn’t be a cosy experience for the writer by my estimates, and I find myself wondering why on earth every solitary figure in media has to be so aggressively anti-social? If I desire to work alone, to be a sole soul, do I have to achieve this by scaring off potential partners in such a prickly manner?
Initially, if you had answered yes, I’d have laughed you off immediately. I’m writing this alone, social media closed, mobile phone turned off, curtains closed; this solitude was achieved without a single sharp objection or dismissive grunt characteristic of our “loose cannons”. My situation is likely also infinitely more familiar to you the reader. However, reflecting on how I got here, I realise that (quite reasonably) I was never overtly presented the option of working with another person to equally overtly shoot down. Indeed, by never seeking out a collaborator, I in a sense became more anti-social than the angsty detective by removing myself from the social sphere entirely. Is their prickliness merely a representation of this voluntary withdrawal from discussions, then? After all, films and games would be mind-numbingly agonising if none of the characters even spoke to one another (I dread to imagine that adaptation of 12 Angry Men). In order to entertain the consumer, directors and writers have to work in some ‘action’ to establish the brooding nature of the character. In fact, I’d like to look at this term ‘action’, as I think it raises a vital issue.
This vital issue that divides real people from fictional characters, I find, is the manner (or ‘act’) in which we cut ourselves off, as opposed to just the fact of “alone or not alone”. I, for instance, merely approached my desk, sat down and began drawing up this piece, and whilst writing a post is hardly comparable to, say, hunting down a criminal mastermind or venturing to save your family, my isolation was much more delicately imposed than Mad Max’s or Dirty Harry’s. Shoving people away never came into play for my experience, and upon completing this piece I’ll probably rejoin the social domain without a second thought. Even by submitting this piece, I’ll be cooperating with a ‘partner’ of sorts, shattering the illusion that I’ve somehow become more introverted than the lone wolf living as an outcast.
This raises an intriguing point. People are complex, and categories of “personality types” can never truly incorporate everyone because nobody is one “personality type” all the time. The reason lone wolves can only exist in fiction is because they’re as unrealistic as fictional characters can be – were they to exist in the real world, they’d lose whatever respect their stories allow them. Consequently, we can conclude that working alone is not inherently anti-social, yet one cannot deny the appeal of such brooding heroes (a good literary term for these personalities is Byronic, as they tend to they channel the style of the Romantic poet Lord Byron). Where does it come from? The obvious answer is their appearance – one study in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology shows that a little bit of scruff on the face is deemed best for a fling, and it’s not uncommon for these characters to be physically in shape. Yet their mysterious exterior is of wide appeal also – a Canadian study has found that men who are less talk, more action are usually perceived as more attractive. Putting aside the obvious faux pas of objectifying men (as lone wolves usually are, although there have been some exceptional female examples recently, such as Marvel’s Jessica Jones), attractiveness does generally correlate with appeal. As long as they keep making these characters, then, we’ll keep becoming invested in them, as illogical and unrealistic as they are.