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The hero is both an
expression and a tool of the hegemony of "a lived system of meanings
and
values--constitutive and constituting--which as they are experienced as
practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a
sense of
reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because
experienced
reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the
society to
move, in most areas of their lives. It is, that is to say, in the
strongest
sense a 'culture', but a culture which has also to be seen as the lived
dominance and subordination of particular classes." (Williams
110)
In the context of describing individualism as a form of
control, Paolo Valesio says, "It [scene from a play] shows an
individual
who is frantically trying to individualize himself--that is, to become
a
hero--deriving courage for the enterprise by contemplating another
individual, a
famous one whose individuality has been institutionalized. A
paradoxical
process? Certainly, and as such particularly apt to illuminate the
basically
contradictory nature of the notion of 'individualism.'" (165)
Riane
Eisler, quoted by Penelope Prentice in her essay calling for women to
reclaim
their power in society as peacekeepers, says, "Ours is a species that
quite
literally lives by stories and images, by the myths--be they religious
or
secular--that tell us what is 'sacred,' 'natural,' and 'true.' And for
a long
time our conscious minds have been fettered by stories and images that
serve to
maintain a dominator system." She goes on to say, "the all too
familiar archetype of the hero as killer (all the way from Odysseus to
Rambo)
inculcates the minds of both men and women with the notion that
domination and
conquest--whether of women, other men, other nations, or nature--....
The
powerful archetype of woman as evil seductress (from Circe in the Odyssey
to Glen Close's role in Fatal Attraction) serves to
further justify
men's domination over women and the Feminine." (Prentice
2-3)
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Every
successful society must have means by which it indoctrinates its
members into
the society's system of values and morals. One of the darker aspects of
the
hero is the role he plays in disseminating these values. If one looks
at the
heroes outlined in other parts of this site, one notices they are
mostly
European and all warriors, fighting and even killing to solve their
problems. They reflect the violent history of their respective
societies in conquering
other groups. The hero reflects the appearance and values of the
dominant
societal group and justifies the society's crimes against others by
showing the
hero's strength and violence resulting in the hero's people gaining
independence, usurping power, or obtaining any of a number of other
results
favorable to the dominant group, usually at the expense of marginalized
groups.
Obviously, this reinforces violence as the only means of gaining power;
in fact,
for persons living in a nation with violent heroes, it's hard to
imagine any
other way. And, unfortunately, being militarily dominant has
historically been
very effective in maintaining dominance for privileged groups.
In
today's global village, however, the hero's aggression and
nationalistic/ethnic symbolism are detrimental to cooperation among and
within nations. Breen and
Corcoran in "The Myth in the Discourse" say, "We can see that
other societies are culturally-constructed but we feel that our world
is not at
all the result of a historical process. As innocent myth-consumers, we
read our
myths as facts instead of culturally-constructed images." (25).
In
other words, Americans no more doubted John Wayne was going to beat
those "brainwashed
Japs" than Nazis believed they could and should commit genocide against
"filthy
Jews". The hero justifies the actions of a nation--but only if one is
part
of the group the hero represents.
Another aspect of the hero that is
potentially dangerous is the misapplication of his story in modern
media. In
Campbell's examination of the hero's life, he outlines three steps of
the hero:
separation-initiation-return. Campbell emphasizes the hero not only
conquers
the problem, but returns to society to "bestow boons on his fellow
people."
(Thousand
30). Ken Burke points out that in modern American cinema, the
fixation on
the conquering or initiation aspect of the hero has hidden the full
life of the
hero--that of maturation into leadership and wisdom--from viewers of
modern
myth. Ancient heroes would often return after their journeys to marry
and lead
a mature life, imparting their hard-won wisdom to their people. Burke
says the
lack of portrayal of this part of the hero's life in modern media leads
to an "arrested
adolescence" that "constantly avoids social responsibility and marital
commitment." (6).
The
result is an incomplete individuation process, with members of a
society caught
in a dangerous, "self-destructive individualism," (3)
unable or unwilling to reconcile the worlds of personal ego and
community that
Campbell believes the heroes were trying to show could be done. The
necessity
of heroes, Campbell felt, was to "pull together all these tendencies to
separation, to pull them together into some intention." (Power
134)
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