Inspiration has the strangest sources.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 1:47PM Yesterday, as I was making dinner against the backdrop of "The Penguins of Madagascar" on television, it occurred to me that that show lacks a conventional "hero." It has various protagonists (usually the penguins) and antagonists (King Julien, et al), but it's not the way we learned in school.
(Although, I don't suppose the creators of the conflict diagram ever considered "Penguin vs. Lemur" as an option.)
And so I started thinking about the whole "hero vs. villain" construct and realized that we don't see much of that anymore. Not in its purest form, anyway. We tend to see more "anti-heroes" than actual heroes.
For example, the remake of The Italian Job. It could be argued that Charlize Theron's character is the hero, but she's still a thief, right? In fact, all the guys we want to win in the end are criminals. Lovable, incorrigible, clever criminals.
What does this mean? Is it a simple function of growing up that we lose our heroes? Or has the entire narrative world become so cynical that we can no longer create them? And if it's maturity, when does it happen? I suspect at a much younger age than it used to.
I'm trying to think of the last, pure hero I had. The Greeks sorted this out with the concepts of hubris and hammartia. But I think our culture ignored those angles for a very long time. Like, from 1946 to 2000. Or so.
Strange as it may seem, I'm not taking a real stand here. I'm curious. I could argue either side, but it would be much more fun for someone to enage in the discussion with me.
Can anyone think of an honest-to-goodness, modern-day hero? Someone completely incorruptible? From this planet?
Reader Comments (7)
Mother Teresa, soldiers, Captain Sully
Excellent examples.
Although, I meant fictional heroes. I know I said "real," but by real, I meant "pure." Shame on me!
Do we create real heroes anymore, or is our cultural narrative so jaded that we just can't?
I think that the fact that I'm struggling in trying to come up with an example is telling. I think if I were writing a novel or a movie that I'd take a "pure" hero and say he needed to be more believable, which would entail a few good doses of character flaw... I'm going to have to think more about this.
That's what I'm thinking, too. We don't believe that anyone could be incorruptible; not in our fiction, anyway. But we want so badly to believe that in real life. It's quite the philosophical conundrum.
P.S. Katie (and wow is THIS ever going to get me in trouble), but I'm not sure we can say that soldiers as a collective are incorruptible. Brave? Yes. Much, much braver than I. But perfect? Oh, dear, probably not.
And perhaps this is why we have this fascination when the great fall? I thought it was because it made us feel better about ourselves. They are human, too, so I'm not so bad after all...
...except that sometimes (I think) we set up "the great" just to see them fall. But I think we're all in agreement that I come at things from a peculiar angle.