According to Joseph Campbell, a hero gives his/her life, performs a physical
deed or imparts a spiritual message, and represents the journey from innocence
to experience journey we all must take during our life. Although heroes often
have much in common (unique birth, victorious over man or temptation or beast,
loses favor, etc.) Campbell suggests that heroes change as the culture changes.
Thus, early heroes kill beast-like monsters, and later heroes protect us from
different "monsters." Still, Freud would likely point out that the monster,
regardless of form, represents our own Id, our own uncontrolled desires.
Today, though we could label people such as King, Gandhi, and the astronauts
as heroes, the relative permissiveness of popular heroes portrayed by Schwarzeneger,
Eastwood, Stallone, and Bruce Willis seems to pose a paradox. It seems that
as the individual continues to lose whatever innate heroic spirit he or she
might have, the cult of the movie hero grows. What does this imply about our
society? Why are we so entranced with the individual who fights against impossible
odds? Perhaps most interesting is how the individual has lost his/her heroic
spirit. We did not lose it to the existentialist anti-hero; we did not lose
it to Marxist plea to subjugate the individual for the benefit of society. In
fact, according to Ian Taplin, "the current hero-worshipping cult is perhaps
nothing more than the cultural expression of capitalism's attempt to produce
a palliative for the limitations of a consumption-oriented narcissism."
I find Taplin's hypothesis quite interesting, and he does offer a few
supports that are intriguing. He suggests that the epic heroes of our movies
are "a welcome relief when we are afraid to confront our own inadequate
responses." We are a "co-opted by our possessions." As happy consumers,
we subscribe to an ideology of narcissism. We see ourselves as the Marlboro
Man, the Virginia Slim lady, the individual idealized in a thousand ads.
We thus become "heroic" through owning possessions. Although we become
"identical individuals," such a road is easier to travel than the road
a real hero must travel. In other words, we have ended up in "a society
where the task of making the world a better place is left only to the hero--we
abrogate our collective responsibility."
Where do we see this behavior? Well, it seems somewhat obvious that we have attempted to reduce international and societal complexities to comic-book conception of good or bad. In the movies, whether Jaws, Rambo, or Dirty Harry, the society shown fails to take action; it simply waits for the hero to accomplish his job. Perhaps even more interesting is how Schwarzeneger's recent political success seems to blur all the lines between political reality and movie fantasy, the lone hero and the waiting masses, and the individual pursuit of money versus self sacrifice for the common good.
