Part 2 of 2 (see? We did it!) Tony remembers other stuff to talk about from last week. And then most of the episode goes by. Seriously, not sure how that happened. Then we get heroic. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
What are the pros and cons of the concept of heroism? –Jas
LINKS:
We watched three
in between episodes.
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I have listened to every episode that has posted (the legendary episode 12, and whatever you’re calling the recent one that didn’t actually record excluded). There have been times where I’ve become several months behind, but when I get back into listening, I go back to where I left off.
PLUS… you were one of our guests in episode 100 (posted Feb. 7, 2013).
Your Hard Hat credentials ought not to have been questioned! Mea culpa!
🙂
Whoa! You were gone for a while! I didn’t realize you actually caught up during that time! Impressive!
Why are you surprised we listen regularly? I’ve listened to every episode and at this point probably the only podcasts I’ve listened to more are Happy Jacks and Fear the Boot. When I think about it it is actually a little weird how much I know about your lives because of the podcast, very few shows end up being so consistent personal in the way this one has become.
Personally, I just don’t *expect* that kind of commitment. But it’s definitely nice to hear that some people listen to them all. 🙂
I thought the examples about heroism actually led you to a somewhat different definition for heroism than the one you started with. I think where it led was that heroism has to do with a balancing of the feedback loop between self and other. One end of the spectrum would be the person who sees their life as being more valuable than any other person’s (extreme individualism) and the other end would be the person who values the life of all others ahead of their own (the martyr). The reason I like defining heroism as the midpoint between these poles (rather than the person who does the morally laudable) is that the morally laudable definition (which is more of the standard definition, I think) tends to push heroism toward extreme individualism–the Lone hero. The problem with the Lone hero, in my opinion, is not a death wish. In fact, in the standard Western, the Lone hero will never die just because he is good. (I realize the hero could still have a “death wish” and not die–but I’m thinking of the hero as a character here. He may be written to appear as if he has a death wish, but that characterization is only there to enhance his invulnerability.) He is the very definition of goodness and everything else in the the world is tainted with corruption. So he can never settle down, never marry, nevery become part of civilization, because any of that contact would corrupt him. Almost all the heroic narratives that I know of, going back to all the Epics, has some degree of this in making the hero good, and therefore justified in acts of violence. The hero protects the group or another individual against an imminent threat, but very rarely is that imminent threat an act of nature like a burning building, or an “act of God” like a subway train. Most of the time it’s some other living thing which the hero kills. The fact that this living thing is represented as monstrous doesn’t mean that the hero is good and his opponent evil; it means that the story is being seen through the point of view of the hero’s side. In The Aeneid, for instance, all the heroes of The Illiad have become the bad guys.
Yes, imperialist cultures like their hero narratives, too. But, as you point out, they pretty-much all isolate and hyper-elevate the hero, as befits the narrative purposes of imperialists. Imperialist hero narratives desire for the audience to feel its need of a hero, not for the audience to feel heroic.
Ooh! I like this. I think this speaks to a modern trope of, “I can’t have people I care about, because they always end up hurt,” and the like, which I am absolutely sick of! Mostly because it ends up fridging a lot of characters. But also because it makes the hero seem whiny and awful.
Agreed.