How Our Hero Culture Is Failing Us
Ever consider how hero stories shape our view of the world and how we interact with it? Ever consider that these cliched hero stories make you more ‘mindless consumer’ than ‘active citizen and witness to your own life’? Me too… and I explore it below.
I’m addicted to the Hero. There, I said it. It feels good to get it off my chest.
I’m hooked on that monomythic, saviour story framework that Joseph Campbell penned all those years ago and my story-substance abuse has resulted in deeply set Jungian imprints on my psyche that I’m only just acknowledging and trying to shake.
Until recently it lay unexplored as I mindlessly binged on stories that were built around it. Star Wars, The Matrix, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings — some of the biggest blockbusters in mainstream Western culture (and not coincidentally all my favourite childhood films) all resembled the clearcut cyclical story arch that Campbell described in his seminal book The Hero With A Thousand Faces (click the link if you’re unfamiliar).
It was only when I started writing my own fantasy novel with a female protagonist, that I began to consciously recognise my consumption habits. And they proved acutely problematic.
With authorship came a weighty sense of responsibility. One that made me question the type of story I was primed to tell from all my initial planning and storyboarding vs the one that I inclined to tell from my lived experience and the realities of those around me. My instincts screamed that there was a tension here, but I was unable to articulate it at the time. All I knew was that it involved an increasing discomfort with the individualistic nature of all mainstream heroes. With the sinister exclusion or discarding of the community and resources that helped them ultimately transform to achieve their potential as they returned to their old world with their newly acquired achievements or knowledge.
I spent three years sitting with these instincts burning a whole through my desk before I began discovering thought-leaders, creators and provocateurs in the space. In fact it started with watching Brit Marling’s Netflix Series, The OA — of which the last episode of Season One left me physically altered. No TV show had ever elicited such a visceral response. I felt my eyes consciously open to new possibilities for characters and stories to interact with their heroes for the first time.
Perhaps it was because I was watching as a writer and not only as an audience member, but it was so refreshing to watch on as the heroes (of all genders) exhibited values that are traditionally considered feminine (like nurturing, negotiation and healing) over the ever present and mainstream masculine values normally depicted (such as dominance, assertive strength or violence and control). It celebrated nuanced internal character journeys rather than the cliched external quests for control.
I felt overwhelmed as I began to find answers to questions I never knew I needed to ask.
For example, how are we all supposed to behave heroically, courageously and justly (on an individual or societal level)…
… if we don’t see ourselves represented as the hero (for example women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ vs predominantly male stereotypes) and therefore aren’t offered the chance to imagine ourselves feasibly becoming one?
… if all the ultimate accomplishments and positive change revels only in the individual’s success, and omits the collective of companions, aides and efforts that got them there?
… if we rely on external heroes to return from these quests and adventures with positive change (which may or may not benefit all equally), rather than relying on our own agency and interactions with the systems/world we exist within?
Rebecca Solnit comments on this better than I ever could,
“We like heroes and stars and their opposites, though I’m not sure who I mean by we, except maybe the people in charge of too many of our stories, who are themselves often elites who believe devoutly in elites, which is what heroes and stars are often presumed to be.”
Stories can unlock the potential for positive change within all of us. They can allow us to imagine a world without the present constraints of politics, economics or society — it’s why I love fantasy and sci-fi so much. However if we look at all three today, they are all in crisis.
Who would have thought that overnight, a pandemic could force trillions of dollars to be injected into one of the world’s largest economies and that the world could be put into lock-down for three months? Or that a global movement could be started from an action that had all but been ignored by a governing body for hundreds of years (in reference to repeated police brutality in the US)? Certainly not me — honestly I didn’t think we had the power to incite such change.
I was conditioned to believe (and not question) that no one had a voice loud enough to tip the point.
And here’s the problem. No one hero does. However collectively our voices are louder together and we are finding ourselves in a moment in history when a chorus of millions of people are remembering that.
That they have a voice.
That they have power.
That the systems we’ve been told are immovable and that need to be protected for society to function are, in fact, often fundamentally biased to benefit those in power and merely constructs that we all unwittingly signed up to at birth.
We seem to be remembering that change is always possible if those with said power choose to change… and that their claims otherwise simply highlight their priorities, not their ability to act.
So many have acted and spoken up. So many have chosen to protect their families by isolating themselves in lockdown and taking to the streets to protest for Black Lives Matter. However to maintain the momentum of action, and to drive real change, we’re going to need stories. Not for media clicks and ad revenue and certainly not centred around the lone hero that conquers all.
No, we need stories about the glorious effort of the collective that got them there so we can learn from it and continue driving forward.
“Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action. Among the virtues that matter are those traditionally considered feminine rather than masculine, more nerd than jock: listening, respect, patience, negotiation, strategic planning, storytelling. But we like our lone and exceptional heroes, and the drama of violence and virtue of muscle, or at least that’s what we get, over and over, and in the course of getting them we don’t get much of a picture of how change happens and what our role in it might be, or how ordinary people matter. “Unhappy the land that needs heroes” is a line of Bertold Brecht’s I’ve gone to dozens of times, but now I’m more inclined to think, pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn’t know it has lots and what they look like.” Another gem from Rebecca Solnit.
Another wonderful quote along these lines is from Frank Herbert re his sci-fi series Dune. He writes,
“I am showing you the superhero syndrome and your own participation in it.” He also writes, “Dune was aimed at this whole idea of the infallible leader because my view of history says that mistakes made by a leader (or made in a leader’s name) are amplified by the numbers who follow without question.”
So I invite you to begin asking better questions with me. Let’s not consume and not blindly follow. Instead, let’s be conscious citizens and creators and create the change we want to see.
I’ve leave you with a wonderful quote from Reni Eddo-Lodge on the topic of feminism.
“We have to hope for and envision something before agitating for it, rather than blithely giving up, citing reality, and accepting the way things are. After all utopian ideals are as ideological as the political foundations of the world we’re currently living in.”
There are many people looking into this space and I’ve listed a few below. So, even if you don’t agree with the words they write, educating yourself to the alternatives will at least push you to question the world around you and how you want to engage with it.
And if you know of other resources that challenge our hero-obsessed culture, please do let me know I’d love to read/watch/share them.
