Heroes?
Monday, March 10th, 2008Hero - it’s a nice boy notion that the real world’s gonna destroy.
- Steve Taylor
In the last couple of days I’ve seen two blog entries from totally unrelated blogs about “heroes”. Not the TV show, actual heroes. Our personal heroes. There’s another blog that brings up heroes too, but in a completely different way.
The first two blogs are beingfrugal.net and cpyu.org (you may have to scroll to the 3/4/2008 entry). The third (Quit Your Day Job) mentions a documentary about the lives of people who are attempting to make a living by dressing as superheroes on the streets of Hollywood for photos.
To quickly deal with the third entry here, it looks like an interesting movie. These people are basically pan-handling and there is something intriguing in seeing how they justify their life to themselves and others. It’s a bit more interesting to see that they’ve chosen superheroes - essentially savior figures - as their method of survival. How much of their character’s persona leak into their real life? Are they happy with their situation (it doesn’t appear so from the trailer)? Are they doing anything to escape that situation? Do they even see any of the options they have? It could be a moving story.
The other two blogs focus on personal heroes. People who inspire us. People whom we respect. I like what Walt says on his CPYU blog:
If you asked me to write down a list of my heroes I’d stumble a bit. I had heroes when I was a kid. … I suppose that as an adult I don’t often use the word hero. Instead, I talk about people that I respect and admire.
I’d agree with that (and actually, Walt is one of those people for me). It’s interesting that both of those blogs move away from the typical definition of a hero as someone to idolize.
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a fan of superhero stories. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and others are great reading/viewing, and (as with many fictional characters) can be inspiring and can teach some great lessons. They’re also great escape-ism. But they are fiction and ultimately are simply a figment of imagination. Many kids look to sports figures as their heroes. There is ample evidence (especially with the recent revelations of drugs in sports) of the failure of those athletes to be worthy of the title “hero”.
The lines of a song from the 80’s keep coming to mind: “Hero - it’s a nice boy notion that the real world’s gonna destroy” (Steve Taylor: “Hero” [see below*]). Earthly heroes will always fail.
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t people to be looked up to - to be respected and admired. It’s just to be aware that people will fail so be sure you aren’t moving from admiration to worship or idolatry. (For what it’s worth, I believe the authors of those two blogs have that concept down.) As a parent, I think it’s extremely important to make that point to my kids. That’s not an issue yet for me — my kids are too young to have to deal with this — but it’s something that will, at some point, need to be taught.
*for those of you who thought this was going to be about the TV show “Heroes”, here’s a YouTube video that uses clips from the show against Steve Taylor’s song (and here are the lyrics):
Technorati Tags: heroes, cpyu, steve taylor, parenting
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