I wouldn’t normally cite anything from Entertainment Weekly as an especially interesting analysis of things literary, but the most recent issue (3 April 2009) has a piece by Jeff Jensen exploring modern America’s fascination with villains and significantly flawed heroes (“Heroes and Villains”). This passage struck me:
The current state of heroism can be summed up in a word: Lost. Lke the castaways of ABC’s mystery drama, today’s would-be heroes are so flawed or messed up, they need to be saved from themselves before they save anyone else. Some succeed, like Iron Man’s ethically murky Tony Stark. But many others — Anakin Skywalker; the meth-cooking cancer dad on Breaking Bad [an AMC drama]; almost anyone on HBO, Showtime, or FX — find it more empowering to embrace the dark side. These characters reflect a culture that feels powerless and pissed: We desparately want good to triumph over evil, but we can’t staunch our doubts that good is up to the task.
…
The decade’s plague of monolithic fantasy villains are just as tortured. Voldemort and Magneto are timeless and timely embodiments of evil: intolerant, fanatic, corrupted. Yet like so many morally iffy heroes, these scarred rogues have world-saving ambitions, albeit warped by hateful worldviews. The Joker and Saw’s Jigsaw Killer are psychotic vigilantes persecuting society for failing to live up to their potential or ideals. We need more from pop culture than just seeing good guys and bad guys in action — we need to see how they’re made. Case in point: Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling’s seven-book saga took us deep inside the boy wizard’s trial-and-error transformation from a world-wounded young boy to a young man who saves the world without compromising himself of his values. We believed it, because Rowling — and Harry — did the hard work of proving it.
I sure don’t agree with it all. For one thing, Harry seems about as far removed from their description of jaded, cynical heroes as a character could possibly be. And the last couple of sentences paint a radically different picture than the ideas encapsulated in the first few sentences. Harry has his flaws, for sure — but, unlike the examples mentioned by Jensen, I for one never bought into the idea that Harry could ever become Voldemort, a la Anakin Skywalker. And I definitely don’t see anything especially world-saving in Voldemort’s motives (or Joker’s, for that matter). To be sure, they operate with a kind philosophy or ideology, but their motives are purely about dissolving anything we would recognize as civilization.
A good example that I think counters Jensen’s point is Watchmen. Huge, big-budget movie, sold to the public as a superhero action flick. All the promotional materials showed a film full of action superheroes kicking butt. Most of the trailers for the film showed technical gadgetry and lots of fight scenes; most prominent were those scenes set in a jail, when the “good guys” were kicking the crap out of prisoners. But, anyone familiar with the story knows that such an impression has nothing at all to do with the actual story.
And how have people reacted? Rather poorly, for the most part. Even my jaded students found it all too much to stomach, and not because they found it too hard to follow. Their favorite criticism is that the good guys aren’t “bad ass,” or willing to kick butt and take names when the chips are down and the bad guys just need killin’. Watchmen is very much anything but such a story. Per BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film’s opening weekend American box office gross was just over $55 million. It’s second weekend? $17.8 million. The next? Just over $6million. Last weekend it grossed $2.7 million. By contrast, The Dark Knight grossed fully one third more in its first weekend than Watchmen has grossed in four weeks. And that was in the middle of the summer blockbuster melee. (FYI, OotP made $77 million in its opening weekend.)
I know the comparison isn’t perfect — different time of year, different marketing campaigns, Heath Ledger, etc. Still, Watchmen got the big-budget treatment and the proper marketing campaign, to boot. And the reception of the film has been largely negative because people don’t know what to make of it. The heroes aren’t heroic. And I think the box office gross demonstrates this.
I’ve mentioned the American monomythic superhero, before. Think John Wayne, or perhaps John McClaine, from Die Hard. I think that idea is still at work. We like more complicated heroes, but I think we still like heroes — at least in the end.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Dave, I’ve got a thought and I want to get it down before I lose it.
You say that you don’t buy into the idea that Harry could ever have become a Voldemort, a la Anakin Skywalker.
That is a very interesting observation. Because I think that Harry did become Voldemort, a la Anakin Skywalker. We just didn’t quite realize it because his name was Tom.
Here’s an idea we’ve tossed around here before. JKR gives us two boys: Harry Potter and Tom Riddle. They are both orphaned early in life, and grow up in the care of strangers. They grow up unloved and alienated. They are introduced to their heritage at age 11, and embrace their wizard identity – and the place where they discover it, Hogwarts – with joy. But one of them takes the abandonment and alienation and forges from it an enormously strong sense of loyalty to his new found friends. He will literally walk to his death for them, like his mother. The other one takes the abandonment and alienation and forges from it contempt for the weak and helpless, and takes an oath, a la Scarlett O’Hara, to never be weak again, like his mother.
I think what JKR does is split the good and bad found in all of us, and explore it through her two main protagonists. You can see her doing the same thing, to a lesser degree, with many other characters: Hagrid, who is twice abandoned, first by his giant mother and then by wizardom because of trumped up charges. There’s also Snape, who is alienated because of his mortal father and his poverty. One of them develops a love for other strange critters, and becomes a loyal friend and soldier. The other almost embraces evil before he too becomes a soldier in the war against evil.
I know it’s one of Travis’ themes: Voldemort as Harry’s Shadow. This is another way of looking at the same idea: Harry and Tom as opposite sides of the same coin. I think that JKR is telling us that Harry could have ended up as Tom, or vice versa, and that it was the choices they made – as explained so eloquently by Gandalf – that made them what they were.
Good thoughts, Red Rocker.
I also think part of our problem in not believing in heroes comes from postmodernism. We can’t believe in heroes, not because there aren’t any heroes & not because heroes are sometimes flawed people, but simply because we can’t believe in heroes. We’ve gotten so used to tearing things down that we can’t stomach the idea of anyone overcoming their flaws. But I’ll have to think more on this when I’m less tired.
revgeorge I agree completely
I also really think that one of the reasons it’s s hard for us t accept heroes these days is because we (as a society) are so against defining moral absolutes. For a hero to be a true hero he needs to decide what is right, what is wrong, and then act on it. In a society where moral relativism is so prevalent the idea of holding on to a moral absolute and actually acting on it is looked down on, even ridiculed as simple minded and intolerant (One of the things which irks me more than anything else really)
“Yet like so many morally iffy heroes, these scarred rogues have world-saving ambitions, albeit warped by hateful worldviews.”
This sentence didn’t remind me of Voldemort, but it does make me think of Dumbledore and Grindewald. I know we’ve discussed Dumbledore as puppeteer/mastermind, but have we analyzed his journey as being typical of a hero’s journey?
Red, but the article keeps discussing how those things are wrapped up in the same character, and in an aesthetic sense I agree that such characters are more interesting. To put it a bit too simply, the reader should have a legitimate sense that Harry could become Voldemort, or that Voldemort could have become Harry. Yet, I can easily see why some readers think both operate almost automatically throughout all seven books, as if they’re on a rail. I never believe for a minute that either character could ever seriously be the other one.
I agree with miles’ point. It’s why I have argued over and over that Snape and Dumbledore (who is Travis’s bailiwick) are the more interesting and compelling characters. At times in their lives, both of them could have become something very different than what they became. In Snape’s case, he did become something horrifying, and then began a long, slow trek back that he never fully completed. It’s taken me a long time to really absorb Harry’s assertion that Snape was the “bravest man” he’d “ever known.”
The courage to continuously battle against your darker self really strikes me as a person. In all their flaws, Snape and Dumbledore are terrifically bare, honest assertions of those flaws and the desperate need to control them.
But, I guess we should keep in mind that Rowling is probably writing for multiple audiences. I may find many of Harry’s internal conflicts a bit childish, but then again I’m not who she aimed his character at.
“For a hero to be a true hero he needs to decide what is right, what is wrong, and then act on it.”
Nicely put, Graham.