Colors

Black Hat

“Black hat” is an expression meaning the villain of a story, or a person acting against law and justice.  This is in contrast to the hero, who is described as a “white hat.”

How It's Used

"It’s [American Gangster] about good guys and bad, a classic story of white hats and black squaring off at the corral at 116th Street and Eighth Avenue. Mr. Crowe, his jaw thrust forward as aggressively as his pelvis, wears the white hat, while the silky, smooth-moving, smooth-talking Mr. Washington wears the black."

"The story's villain, meanwhile, seems to have arrived straight from Central Casting, Black Hat Division. Don Blankenship, Massey's CEO, comes off as the coal industry's answer to Attila the Hun, ruthlessly breaking unions, abusing employees and pursuing profitability with no regard for fair play or the safety of small children. Blankenship, according to Shnayerson, has a 'soft, doughy face with watery eyes, a meager mustache, and a weak chin.' Oh, and don't overlook his lizardlike tongue that darts in and out as he speaks, 'as if he were on a quite unconscious surveillance for tasty gnats.'"

"Now, I don't want to come over Pollyannaish, or subscribe to Tim Lovejoy's ridiculous notion that the laws on treason should be updated 'so people who criticise the players all the time should be sent to the gallows'. There is nothing wrong with booing, per se - it has a rich and noble tradition when applied to a member of the opposition who has behaved abominably, such as Argentina's Antonio Rattin in the 1966 World Cup quarter-final. He could not have been more of a pantomime villain had he been wearing a black hat and twirling the ends of his moustache."

"It is always tough wearing the black hat, but for Donald Fehr, the challenges that came with his job were far more daunting than simply playing a cartoon villain.

"The public was never going to embrace a union leader whose job it was to fight for the rights of a constituency made up of millionaires playing a kids' game, who often seemed blissfully unaware just how lucky they were."

"Curtis, the writer-director of 'Love Actually' and writer of 'Notting Hill' and 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' infuses 'Pirate Radio' with obvious, enormous affection for the time, the music and the real players who inspired the fictional ones.

"He's always seemed like the director version of a party host who doesn't want the fun to end, accounting for the length of 'Love Actually.' Curtis makes Dormandy a cookie-cutter villain whose version of a black hat is short, Brylcreemed hair and horrid mustache."

Links