The supplier of evil: five villains who don’t do harm, they sell it
Monsieur D’Arque agrees to lock Maurice in an asylum for a bag of coins. He doesn’t hate him: he sells a signature. How guilty is the one who only sells?
In Beauty and the Beast (1991), Gaston wants to marry Belle and has a plan to get her: have her father locked up in an asylum unless she agrees. For that he needs someone. That someone is Monsieur D’Arque, the asylum’s director, who takes the job for a bag of coins without examining anyone. D’Arque does not hate Maurice and does not care about Belle. He sells a signature.
The figure appears in very different stories, and it is almost always the most revealing. It is not the one who wants the harm, but the one who makes it possible for a price: the supplier. This article brings together five, each with a case file, and a theory that explains why they do not need to hate anyone to do harm.
// The theoryWhat one expects to gain
In 1978 Daniel Glaser proposed differential anticipation: a person offends when they expect to get more satisfaction from crime than from conformity. That expectation is shaped by bonds, by what has been learned and by opportunities, but what governs is the calculation of what will be gained. The theory has a virtue that makes it ideal for the supplier: it does not require the offender to share anyone’s goals. A reasonable expectation of getting paid and not being caught is enough.
Criminology has studied this figure under other names. In 1949 Edwin Sutherland showed that much white-collar crime is committed by respectable professionals in the course of their work. And anti-money-laundering bodies today speak of «professional enablers»: lawyers, accountants or advisers who are not full-time criminals, but without whom other people’s crimes would not work.
Harm without resentment
What sets the supplier apart is not cruelty but distance. He does not know the victim, has nothing against her and often does not even see the result of what he sells. That distance is precisely what allows him to do it: the harm is far away, in someone else’s hands, and what he sees is a job and a price. That is why he is so hard to judge and so easy to forget, even for the audience.
Doug Ramses
Read Doug Ramses’s full case file · Differential anticipation →
// The fiveA diagnosis, a cell, a sermon, a potion and a serum
Monsieur D’Arque sells diagnoses. His case file reads him through Howard Becker’s labeling theory: deviance lies not in the act but in whoever has the authority to attach the label, and D’Arque’s authority is for sale.
Park Cheol-woong, in Oldboy (2003), sells years of confinement: he runs a private prison with no judge and no sentence where Oh Dae-su spends fifteen years because someone paid for it. His case file reads him through the political economy of punishment, which asks who pays for a punishment and what they get.
Arthur Jensen, in Network (1976), sells a view of the world: in a darkened boardroom he explains to the anchorman Howard Beale that there are no nations, only one system of money, and Beale leaves to preach it. His case file reads him through Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie.
The Fairy Godmother of Shrek 2 (2004) sells happy endings in a potion factory, and sells them only to those who fit the script. Her case file reads her through queer criminology. And Doug Ramses, in Zootopia (2016), makes in an abandoned subway car the serum that turns predators savage. He has nothing against them. It is the job. His case file is the one that explains all the others, because it is the one read through Glaser’s differential anticipation.
// The crackNo supplier, no villain
What these five stories teach, each in its own way, is that the main villain can almost never act alone. Gaston needs D’Arque; Lee Woo-jin needs Park’s prison; the Zootopia conspiracy needs Doug. The harm is spread along a chain, and whoever is in the middle can tell himself he has done nothing: he only sold something. Criminology insists that this excuse does not work, and real prevention confirms it: often the most effective way to stop a crime is not to pursue the one who wants it, but to take away his supplier. Without the signature, the cell or the serum, the villain’s plan never leaves his head.
Three key ideas
- Differential anticipation (Glaser, 1978) holds that people offend when they expect to gain more from crime than from conformity, and it does not require the offender to share anyone’s goals: an expectation of getting paid is enough.
- Monsieur D’Arque, Park Cheol-woong, Arthur Jensen, the Fairy Godmother and Doug Ramses sell a diagnosis, a cell, a sermon, a potion and a serum, and none of them has anything personal against their victims.
- The supplier is the piece that makes someone else’s harm possible, which is why it is also the best place to stop it: without him, the villain’s plan never leaves his head.
Sources · further reading
- Glaser, D. (1978). Crime in Our Changing Society. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
- Sutherland, E. H. (1949). White Collar Crime. Dryden Press.
- Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press.
- FATF (2018). Professional Money Laundering. FATF.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Doug Ramses?
Frequently asked questions
What is a facilitator in criminology?
Someone who is not the main offender in a crime but provides something without which the crime would not be possible: a service, a document, a place or technical knowledge. Anti-money-laundering bodies speak of «professional enablers», such as lawyers or accountants who put their trade at the service of someone else’s crime.
Who is Monsieur D’Arque in Beauty and the Beast?
The director of the asylum whom Gaston pays to lock up Maurice, Belle’s father, unless she agrees to marry him. He takes the job without examining Maurice: he sells a signature, not a diagnosis.
What is differential anticipation?
A theory by Daniel Glaser (1978) according to which a person offends when they expect to get more satisfaction from crime than from conformity. That expectation depends on bonds, on what has been learned and on the opportunities the person perceives.