A worthy read from the current edition of the National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312924/where-have-heroes-gone-frank-miniter
Discuss amongst yourselves …
AC
Thanks for posting this, however I don’t agree with almost any of it.
It’s similar to saying that listening to Marilyn Manson will make you gun down your fellow schoolmates, or watching Trainspotting will make you wanna do heroin.
Movies have come to the point where we finally have actually interesting characters, characters that we can identify with, who are as human as we are. Just… more so.
I don’t blame anything on movies, or video games, or music. Blame it on the people.
Excellent read.
Whatever happened to Randolph Scott?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7ymC7ipQWk
The assumption here is that Heros are defined by Hollywoods depiction of what heros should be like. This is a good read and it does highlight this persons view of how Hollywood has had a hand in the evolution of what a hero may be on screen. In real life I will have to disagree with his definition of what a Hero is. Day in and Day out we see examples of real heros. A good example was on Foxnews.com where there was an article about the LEO who was injured in the Sihk Temple shooting. They hailed him as a hero.
Movies are entertainment, pure, plain and simple. The problem is when people lose touch with reality and place themselves in that world. Almost everyday it seems I am listening to my kids talk about this movie or that movie and what happened and I have to say, “you know that is just a movie and not real life right?” Of course the answer is always “yes Dad sheesh” I do wish there were more traditional hero movies like what I grew up with though.
Yes, but what we esteem and idealize in entertainment doesn’t always have to be so dark and ambivalent. Yes, it is not wholly realistic to have the white shining knight character or even just the always-good one like Andy griffith in the Andy Griffith show, but it is an ideal. ideals by definition are something you value and hold up as an example to strive for. They are not supposed to be representative of what the actual reality is or what is fully realizable. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” If we are going to wallow in our failings as human-beings and as MEN all the time, how can we ever look up to something better and pull ourselves from the muck of mediocrity?
“All our heroes are dead”
- Magnum Force
Very well said.
So do you think that heros based on Hollywoods depiction mirror the Left’s view that there should be no difference between any of us? They seem to be bringing down the classic idealic view of what a hero should be. Basically tarnishing the image so to speak
When I look for heroes I tend to look no further than this site. I know that sounds pretty Corney but frankly there are a number of people I would consider silent Heroes on here.
In the Aurora shootings, there were three men who deliberately and instinctively placed themselves in front of their girlfriends/wives/partner, and died doing so. All three men shielded their loved one with their own flesh, and paid with their lives.
But bad news sells, and blood sells. A truism in the news industry is “If if bleeds, it leads.” So you very rarely hear these things.
Yet, there are still heroes. A member of the Tuskegee Airmen lives right here in my home town. It is a very great pleasure to speak to him when he talks at the local public library. Both my son and daughter have met him, shaken his hand, and had an opportunity to thank him. I would argue that he was a twice a hero: in Europe, and back here at home.
One of the young men at work received a Bronze Star with Valor device for his actions under fire in Iraq. No one knew, he did not tell anyone. He was mobilzed, went there, came back and went to work. I found out from an accidental conversation in the parking lot with his sister.
Like so many heroes, he was self-effacing and reticient to tell of his actions. “A lotta guys were braver than me” was his only explanation for that night.
There are still plenty of heroes. We just need to do a better job as a society of thanking them.
From the article:
Meanwhile, sociopaths such as Holmes see a culture that elevates the bad guys to the same moral plane that the good guys occupy. And the bad guys get more attention. The good guys? Not so long ago, armed Americans who shot murderers — see the NRA’s blog The Armed Citizen for examples — were revered as heroes. Today, they are soon forgotten. Worse, on the left, they’re derided.
I think that pretty much covers it right there. Heroes haven’t gone away, our culture just doesn’t care anymore. Our media (both “news” and popular) prefers to promote the negative, because drama sells.
Drama seems to fall into one of two categories. There are terrible actions that people are thankful they weren’t part of, and then want to know everything about. The other is watching the train wreck of other people’s lives, allowing the onlooker to feel better about themselves.
Either way, our culture is now more about feeling good about yourself because you’re better off than that person you saw on TV than it is about bettering yourself to be like the person you saw on TV.
The article never said that there are no longer heroes as actual persons. Just that society no longer looks at them as heroes. Society acknowledges the heroic action, but does not elevate the “doer” of the heroic action as a hero (even though he is).
Some people do acknowledge the person as a hero, such as here on M4C. But society as a whole has lost the ability to name and revere someone as a hero.
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Kinda where I’m at. But at the same time I agree with the sentiment in the article, be nice to have some John Wayne quality good guys again.
With traditional heroes not necessarily in fashion when I was growing up, I had to go looking for them somewhat. Bruce Lee was a big one of mine, sometimes an underdog but always a good guy. After that it was mostly TV good guys like Greg Boyington from “Black Sheep Squadron” and the like.
Yeah, I also think that is a big part of it. There are also still plenty of “armed citizen” incidents, but they never make the news.
Oh, they make the news- it’s just either super lo-profile on the internet, or national if they totally botch it, or make some comment/action that can cast them in the light of the usual gun-toting wacko. :rolleyes:
As far as the topic goes, strictly from the hollywood POV, imo, it’s just not so clear cut anymore. Plain and simple. You can’t have the good old-fashioned heroes of yesteryears movies, because they are no longer relevant. By that I don’t mean their actions/characters are any less heroic, but that it’s so black and white (no, not the color on the tv…:p) it’s almost comical- try and tell me you haven’t run across some older films and can’t help but chuckle at the way things are portrayed?
In this age of intrigue, conspiracy, and scandal, there simply is no baseline for what constitutes a hero or villain anymore, because people have come to realize that everyone is, at some point in time, a little of both, and it seems increasingly the so-called heroes end up being the worst villains.
Or in the words of Bond (James Bond), “history is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”
Why would one expect todays movies portray things any differently?
But then today has been one of those “glass half empty” sort of days so, salt to taste.
This society is terminally ill. Case in point:
Ask your average 18-30 year old to give you two facts about Nicola Tesla.
Then ask them to give you two facts about snooki.
THEN, call the suicide prevention help line stat.
I’m not wholly persuaded that the media/entertainment industry shapes public sentiment – at least, among adults of average or better intelligence – so much as it offers a startlingly-accurate reflection of where we’re at as a culture. The industry produces what they know they can sell, and although I would like to think that they would hold themselves to a higher standard (just as the media once did), there isn’t anything particularly surprising about the lowest common denonimator approach. Quite frankly, it’s very, very good for business.
With the younger, (presumably) more impressionable members of society, I’m not quite as sure about this. I do think that the entertainment industry happens to play a significant role in shaping what is “cool,” and by extension, in guiding young minds – or at least re-norming/desensitizing them – to some degree; especially given the ways in which the typical family experience has changed over the past generation or two. Part of this is our own fault for allowing kids to view some of the things that we do (again, why were there little children in an R-rated midnight showing of the latest dark and violent Batman film?). Without going down the “when I was a boy” path, I do recall my parents putting clear restrictions on what I could and could not watch and/or listen to. When I invariably tried to sneak around them, at least I knew that what I was seeing or hearing was not sanctioned in any sense of the word. It was exciting because it was out-of bounds, but the context of that realization was, I think, important.
As for the rest, I don’t really know what effect the Marilyn Mansons and Trainspottings of the world have upon the young (or anyone else, for that matter), but I’m quietly left to wonder what there is to celebrate about their message. While there is something to the old adage “live and let live,” I suspect that “garbage in, garbage out” might serve as a semi-valid counterpoint. While we all have different tastes and tolerance levels, it seems that that surest way to gain an audience these days is to shock, offend and debase. Revel in the things that would startle your parents, and flat-out kill your grandparents, right? Again, while a lot of this strikes me as unfortunate, it still manages to sell awfully well.
So, perhaps it isn’t as simple as a cause-effect relationship, but more a case of one feeding off of, and reinforcing, the other. Whatever the case, most of us can still see the forest for the trees, and we do not descend into sociopathic drone states wherein we no longer count the cost of our actions. Some, however, do … and I’m left to wonder if/how the cues and concepts in popular culture might serve to enable and incubate that. Still a personal responsibility? Absolutely. But should we cast off any concerns about shaping influences and contributing factors? Perhaps not. Trouble is, it’s pretty difficult to reclaim the lost ground, and if we were to be totally honest about this, it may not be that our culture has changed, so much as the core values that underwrite it.
AC
I think the preception of what a “hero” is has changed…To me (I’m 58) so my preception of what a “hero” is, is different than what alot of much younger folks idea of one is…To me Heros are guys who were awarded the CMOH… A good example Eddie Rickenbacker, Google him, That man led a life that even hollywood could’nt make up, At one time called FDR’s “New Deal” polices, "Socialism"and NBC would’nt put him on the air in rebuttal of FDR’s policys after that…These were people who stood for something, ment what they said, and said what they ment. Another example is a friend of mine’s late father…During WWII, He and 3 others were trapped behind enemy lines at the start of the battle of the buldge…They holed up in a barn, in the hay loft, and for 3 days the German army marched past this barn, and yet no one stopped to search it…Unbelieveably, they made it back to their own lines…There are probably countless others like him. They stood for something…Sadly, most of them are gone… It sickens me to hear the media call some NASCAR driver a “hero” why? because he ran around a banked, high speed oval making left turns for 500 miles… Compare any one of them to a man like Rickenbacker, and tell me he’s a hero…He would’nt make a pimple on Ol’ Eddie’s ass.
Two thumbs up to this.
I know this ain’t gonna sit too well with some, but there’s a fundamental disconnect between a society which aspires to represent and nurture the highest ideals of human achievement and a culture which is predicated on an economic model which demands exponential growth to sustain itself while worshipping unbridled greed.
Before anyone becomes apoplectic over that previous remark, insinuating I am condemning free-market capitalism, let me clarify. I support a market economy, as it appears to be the best system yet devised. But capitalism without a conscience is a disaster. Such a system promotes the Gordon Gecko mentality of “greed is good” and encourages people to do whatever is necessary to further their individual financial well-being.
While I’m sure there are some (perhaps many) that draw a moral or ethical distinction between a hedge-fund trader manipulating the markets or creating some arcane investment vehicle to capture another $100 million in profits while screwing their investors and slipping through the regulatory/legal cracks and the guy cheating the welfare or food stamp system, I don’t see a lot of daylight. They’re both gaming the system to put money in their pockets and rationalizing it by saying “Hey, I gotta get mine and it ain’t illegal if I don’t get caught.”
I’m all for the fella doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. And the fellas that bust their ass or dream up a better mousetrap deserve the extra benefits that come their way. But the essential elements here are honesty and integrity. And those are two core values which seem to be in short supply these days.
But if a recall correctly (econ 101 was quite some time ago), that shortage of personal honesty and individual integrity may simply be attributable to a lack of demand. Perhaps we need to demand a little more from our leaders, both in the public and the private sector, as well as from one another.
Thanks for posting AC…a good read.
Maybe we should celebrate heroes that exemplify what we aspire to “be” as opposed to what we “are”.
One of the most culturally interesting things I’ve seen is the Japanese willingness to celebrate great men who failed in their attempts to do noble things. They are almost completely unique with this mindset.