Heroes, Villains and Protectors

Pop culture is filled with heroes. It is bursting with guardians. But are these characters good for us?

Tolkien's Aragorn and Christopher Nolan's Batman - these are protectors - born to privilige and moved to self-sacrificing duty by something akin to noblesse oblige.

In Max Brooks' World War Z, he uses The UK's Queen as an example of this. His character David Allen Forbes compares the Queen, who acts with the required self-sacrificing courage during the Zombie War, to the ancient castles that the British people resurrect for everyday use:

'Their task, their mandate, is to personify all that is great in our national spirit. They must forever be an example to the rest of us, the strongest, and bravest, and absolute best of us. In a sense, it is they who are ruled by us, instead of the other way around, and they must sacrifice everything, everything, to shoulder the weight of this godlike burden. Otherwise what's the flipping point? Just scrap the whole damn tradition, roll out the bloody guillotine, and be done with it altogether. They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.'

The trouble with these kinds of shields is dependence. These singular individuals, like the Dictators who protected Rome during desperate days, helps us to weather hard times... but what then? Harvey Dent, in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, describes Batman's fate as being to 'die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain'.

The problem of one person holding so much power, for so long, is not just the personal corruption of that individual or the immediate (and often lasting) changes to the social order. The most dangerous affect is the one it has on other individuals - dependence, from the most explicit cronyism to the most subtle shirking of personal responsibilities for the consequences of actions, deprives people of an essential and important aspect of their freedom - to make choices rationally, considering the results and accepting the consequences.

Aragorn's ambitions in The Lord of the Rings, to reclaim his rightful throne, and defend a people and a heritage; those ambitions still cannot prevent change. Even the return of the king can only reignite or keep alive the memory of how things were, not restore them. Much like the Rings of Power, used by the Elves to preserve the world as they cherished it, the crowning of Aragorn becomes an attempt to achieve a respite from the advance of time. But when Tolkien was asked what he saw as the future for middle earth, with Aragorn's line restored, he wrote that after Aragorn's time (Tolkien, 'Letters', p. 344) 'the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors -- like Denethor or worse'.

And others have asked the question, Is Batman actually bad for Gotham? His funnelling of resources into hi-tech vigilantism, that might otherwise have been used to stimulate the growth and investment needed to end the poverty that creates so much of Gotham's crime (and allows its more violent parts to flourish), was even pointed out to Bruce Wayne directly in the final part of Nolan's trilogy:

'This city needs Bruce Wayne, your resources, your knowledge. It doesn't need your body, or your life. That time has passed'.

These heroes, these protectors, when they stand up on our behalf, take onto themselves our own responsibility for the world we live in. We are able to shed from ourselves the consequences of our actions, because someone else has shielded us from them - in return for power. And that is a very dangerous bargain to strike. Rational consideration for the real consequences of our actions is an essential tool in building up the skill of critical thinking. When we give it up, we give up the skills essential to maintaining vigilance against precisely those abuses of power endemic to societies that give up responsibility to somebody else.

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References:
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+ Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises quotes from IMDb.com
+ Max Brooks' 'World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War'; Duckworth, 2007.

+ JRR Tolkien's 'Letters', p.344; quote taken from Michael Martinez's 'Exploring Tolkien's Fourth Age'; merp.com; 7 January 2000.