The Lure of the Hero

Beowulf was the top grossing film this weekend. The film version of an Old English poem was the top grossing film this weekend. Some may say that it had to do with the way the movie was made, with the special effects. Nonsense. Nobody goes to a film for special effects. People go to see a movie because of the story. And, while this version of Beowulf was not quite the story told in the original poem (some modern Hollywood sensibilities snuck in, which I will get into here in a moment), it is the kind of story not generally being told in Hollywood of late -- with some notable exceptions. And it is these notable exceptions which deeply interest me, because Beowulf is part of a trend.

There has been a recent rise in Heroic Epics, such as Gladiator, Troy, Alexander, 300 and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Beowulf and Troy are both based on ancient epic poems -- a genre nobody reads anymore in either high school or college (if you have or have had a teacher who assigned such works at The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, or Beowulf, count yourself lucky). This is a shame because recently there have been some excellent translations of these poems. Fagles' translations The Iliad and The Odyssey are masterpieces -- and I cannot wait to read his translation of The Aeneid. (Incidentally, don't ever read a prose translation of any poem -- prose translations miss much of the meaning of a poem, much of which is carried in the rhythms of the works.) But let us get back to the fact that we are seeing a spate of heroic epics on the big screen. Why are we seeing so many of these kinds of heroes?

I think it is because, in no small part, we are missing the heroes in our own culture. While Achilles can certainly throw a epic-hero-sized hissy-fit, I don't think anyone wouldn't want this man to be on his side in battle or to be his friend. Further, we see incredible leaders, facing down overwhelming odds (themselves, and not just sending others out to do the dirty work for them) in Alexander and 300. What we see in each of these movies is goodness and virtue standing up -- and being struck down. But notice too that in being struck down, the hero wins. Achilles knows he will die if he kills Hector, but he kills him all the same, making it possible for the Greeks to defeat the Trojans (Agamemnon dying at the end of Troy was annoying for several reasons -- not the least of which being that they stupidly prevented themselves from being able to do the Oresteian trilogy). The Greeks in 300 all know they will eventually die -- but they do so to let the Spartans know just how dangerous the situation is, so they will fight against the Persian invasion. Alexander, too, pushes himself to death to conquer the world, and bring Greek civilization to the world (while respecting the peoples he conquered -- something that was truly unique at the time). The common theme: these are all men whose fires burned too bright not to burn out quickly -- though without them, those they loved faced defeat. We see this too in Beowulf, where Beowulf arrives to defend an old ally of his father's, and later sacrifices his own life to protect his people.

The main problem I have with the movie Beowulf is the apparent need of Hollywood to give Beowulf a weakness. The first one is his falling in love with the queen -- something that was unnecessary, which made him appear weak right away (and a bit sappy), and which they really did nothing with. Then they had Grendel's mother tempt Beowulf with something that there was no indication Beowulf even wanted or cared anything about. As a prince whose father died, he was a king anyway. The fight with the mother was sacrificed in order to figure out a way to connect the third part, where Beowulf fights the dragon, to the first two parts. This of course follows more traditional storytelling, but I wonder if there could not have been some other way of doing so than to make the dragon Beowulf's offspring. In the places where they stick to the original story, Beowulf is an incredible hero. But the places where they deviate from the original story, Beowulf becomes, in my wife's words "a bit of a wimp." Which is a real shame.

But despite the weakening of these stories by Hollywood (except, thankfully, 300), they are still the most archetypal heroes we've seen in a long time, whether in film, plays, or novels. The usual postmodern attitude is that people aren't interested in these kinds of stories, that these kinds of stories aren't realistic, and that they are elitist. Nonsense. Beowulf was the top grossing film this weekend. People are interested. Next, there are different kinds of realism -- and why should art be "realistic" in the sense in which they are taking about? I'm with Aristotle on this: literature is more important than history because literature is more philosophical, speaking about what could and should have been, while history only tells us what was. Thus, art should not be realistic in the historicist sense. And finally, again, the fact that people seem to love hero movies says that they are not elitist. The same accusation is typically raised against rhythmic, rhyming poetry, despite the fact that children love this kind of poetry, and it was found in every culture, in every language, throughout all of human history. It is the Modernist and Postmodern poetry that has been incredibly elitist -- nobody even likes it, except pretentious Ph.D.'s in literature, who make their careers talking about poems only ten people have ever read -- and likely ever will read, they are so bad. This is not to say that I myself don't like many Modernists and even Postmodernists -- but there's a reason why if a contemporary book of poetry sells 50 copies a year it is on the "Best Seller's" list.

There is a strong disconnect between what intellectuals think people should be interested in, and what people are interested in. This doesn't necessarily mean the intellectuals are wrong (insofar as they encourage people to read classical literature over romance novels), but they should at least take pause at the fact that movie adaptations of The Iliad and Beowulf -- the kinds of works they denigrate and declare as elitist -- are so popular. When I taught 8th and 9th grade honors Literature, we did the complete Iliad and Odyssey (Fagles, tr.), respectively. They were incredibly popular. Boy and girls both loved it. African-Americans, Hispanics, and whites all loved it. The 8th grade boys were particularly interested in the ancient Greek gods, and would argue about who was the toughest. I remember one young man, an African-American, who was really into Zeus. One day he asked me if Zeus was white, or if he could be any color. I pointed out to him that we had read in the Iliad where Zeus and the other gods went to Ethiopia, and I asked him, "How do you think the gods appeared to the Ethiopians?" He thought for a second, smiled, and said, "Cool." So anyone who says these works cannot transcend race and gender either are not trying hard enough, or their anti-Western attitude is so entrenched that they will sacrifice the greatest works ever written just to tear down Western civilization.

And perhaps that is what this interest in heroes is all about. Heroes do have to destroy, yes. They do have to kill. But they do it, not for the sake of destruction, but to create. Or to protect what they value, or who is valuable to them (who is loved by them). People want to see virtue in all its glory. They want to hear stories of heroism. they want to know that there are people out there who are truly great -- which gives them hope of perhaps being truly great themselves one day. People need a model of greatness -- and that's what stories of great heroes give them. Hopefully, Hollywood will continue to give us these kinds of stories. Hopefully, they will cease giving in to the politically correct crowd who want to take away some of the hero's heroism for such nonsensical reasons as "realism" -- as though heroism isn't truly real.