HEROES WITHOUT A FILM, FILMS WITHOUT A HERO:
HEROPHOBIC VOICES IN POSTMODERN INDEPENDENT CINEMA
by Philip J. Hohle, Ph.D. (2013)
Introduction
On Memorial Day 2012, the MSNBC network aired a brief debate over the use of the term hero to describe the actions of military personnel who demonstrated a will to sacrifice for the country by performing physical acts of bravery in war. A panel debated the need for a better, more neutral term for heroic action that is removed from political ideology. Such a debate illustrates an observable trend in contemporary culture, particularly seen in independent film, where ideologues are out to create new cultural stories with a new kind of hero. This includes a makeover of the appropriate acts and agencies for this new breed of protagonist. Some filmmakers banish the classic hero from their narratives and replace them with characters whose passive and innocuous agency may represent an ongoing sea change in what constitutes heroic action in western culture. While films that feature a deconstruction of the hero can be seen in many studio-backed projects, one can clearly see this trend in cinema that is unbound by the traditional formulas of Hollywood. Whether at the cineplex, at the art film festival, or in the comfort of the home theater, this exnomination is quietly filling our culture’s psyche with a new heroic image.
This essay will include a brief review of the roots and traditions of orthodox heroic agency found in the narratives of western culture, particularly as it is portrayed in the cinema. From this perspective, we will examine an emerging trend in independent film that may indicate a sea change in how our narratives celebrate heroes and heroic agency. This essay will consider if these new kind of heroes represent a wholesale exchange of values in our culture. Alternatively, the essay will also consider the emergence of a new kind of protagonist. To describe the lead character or primary role model in a film whose agency is dysfunctional or even missing completely, we will use the term aheroic. Along the way, this essay’s examination may help explain the difficulty of the MSNBC panel in using the word hero to describe a U.S. soldier.
The Context: A Review of the Literature
Orthodox Heroes in Narratives
Before analyzing the hero in independent film, let us examine what a hero is in a classical, orthodox sense. Carl Jung believed that the idea of the hero was permanently wired in the minds of all humanity. This “collective consciousness [is made up of] archetypes [that are] definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere” (42). The heroic figure is one of these archetypes that have persisted throughout time. The classic hero Beowulf represented this particular archetype for students of literature for generations. While recent reconstructions in film threaten this particular character’s longstanding role as an archetypical hero, mythologist Joseph Campbell argued that the concept of the heroic archetype is universal and timeless. In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, he compares the stunning similarities of the heroic archetype among world civilizations throughout time. In a journey he describes as the monomyth, the hero is compelled to search for and experience a transformation that benefits both this character and the community. Again and again, the general pattern is repeated: The hero is called to adventure, drawn into the innermost cave or belly of the whale (sometimes in the unconscious) where s/he faces trials that when overcome lead to redemption and transcendence. The hero finally returns to his community with a boon or elixir that benefits his community (Campbell 36-37, 245-246).
Often, the hero begins the adventure with personal flaws that put the journey in doubt. Dangers abound, and would-be heroes can be misdirected or even killed before achieving transcendence—a heroic story that becomes a tragedy. In other stories, the would-be hero refuses the call to pursue a higher goal, which turns his/her situation into “a wasteland and [so] his life feels meaningless” (59). An aborted or failed journey may serve as a cautionary tale that can still serve a rhetorical teleology—to maintain the moral structures that bind the society and help conserve the demarcation between heroic and unheroic action. A hero may be flawed and still be successful, but the hero can never complete the journey if s/he loses control over the unconscious Id that can manifest itself in childish obsessions, selfish grandeur, or even a lust for power. Further, the hero may not always be popular—persevering even though s/he may never fully return to the community s/he left. Other heroes fail and “instead of returning, [decide] to retreat one degree still further from the world” (Campbell 196). Often, a supernatural intervention is needed, “and he is born back into the world from which he came” (216). Campbell recognized that heroes can be flawed and rejected, and his/her journey may fail, but the orthodox hero is firmly grounded as the central focus of our cultural narratives and that ultimately, the hero strives for the good of the community.
Modern And Postmodern Heroic Revisions In Narratives
From the orthodox understanding of the hero, we find ourselves in a modern or even postmodern age where the integrity of these classic cultural narratives is threatened. Jean-Francois Lyotard wrote, “The postmodern condition is the result of these grand narratives ceasing to be credible” (37). For this study, we define postmodernism as an audacious and relentless questioning with deep suspicion the agenda of all our traditional cultural narratives. We would also argue what might be called an autopoeisis effect, where the postmodern condition is deepened as these alternative grand narratives reproduce and become entrenched within a closed system. In other words, the postmodern condition not only is a response to the perceived incredibility of traditional narratives, but these postmodern cultural narratives on film become an exnomination that aids in the banishment of tradition.
Where the modern condition retools the classic hero to perform in ways compatible with the new millennium’s zeitgeist, the postmodern shift takes it a step further and challenges any sense of universality found in the agent and agency of the hero. With no higher or noble purpose, a would-be hero is stripped of agency. This is the concern of post-structuralists like Manish Sharma, who argue that de-historizing works—separating them from Jung’s and Campbell’s universals—allows the critic to unabashedly address the text from within a contemporary sensibility and without regard to historical accuracy or respect toward the ideological exegesis from which the work emerged. For those in these postmodern schools of thought, such insight serves to “‘rescue’ [classical heroes like] Beowulf from the clutches of various critical monsters . . . . from the ‘omnivorous grasp’ of more traditional critics” (Sharma 61). The aim is to reach deep into the roots of culture in order to destabilize traditional heroic metanarratives and make them less blasphemous to a postmodern society. As a result, critics speaking from this perspective might celebrate heroes that use agency rooted in a new set of cultural values, or even heroes that employ no effective agency at all, making it difficult to consider protagonists as heroes in an orthodox sense.
Perhaps the best interpretation of postmodern sensibilities on film narratives is found in a discussion of art cinema. Unlike mainstream studio film, theorist David Bordwell recognized that the characters in this genre have little direction or purpose.
Characters may act for inconsistent reasons . . . or may question themselves about their goals . . . . Choices are vague or nonexistent. Hence a certain drifting episodic quality to the art film’s narrative. Characters may wander out and never reappear; events may lead to nothing. (96)
While Bordwell admits that many of these characteristics are already evident in what we would call modern cinema, this study proposes that this dearth of ideals to be part of the postmodern turn, particularly as these stories escape beyond the art house cinema and become more evident in traditional mainstream film venues. I will explore Bordwell’s definition again later when we discuss independent films.
These postmodern characteristics can be recognized in mainstream film. Frances Auld, a professor of literature, considered the archetypical hero “broken” as she examined alternative, unorthodox heroic structures in contemporary remakes of the Beowulf classic tale (417). Rhetorical critic Janis Hocker Rushing agreed, “The old heroic myth, once essential and glorious, has run its course . . . . Its continuation is dangerous” (117). Another literary scholar Eileen Jankowski set about a systematic “questioning the origin and nature of violence, heroism, and honor; the danger in demonizing the ‘other’; and the proper exercise of power in a society marked by random violence” (427). She considers the best postmodern hero to be an existentialist, “more likely to consider the reason for the opponents’ behavior before confronting them in battle” (429). Now they must have the “the skills of a psychological detective [in addition to the] traditional heroic characteristics of remarkable physical prowess and superb confidence” (429). This new unorthodox hero comes packaged with much more doubt, moral disillusionment, and compassion than physical agency.
Cultural critic Dario Llinares claimed that he isolated a strategy in Apollo 13 used by director Ron Howard to maintain hegemonic heroic power in his film through the use of orthodox heroes. Llinares complained that, “Its absolute precision visually shapes a past which becomes the authentic reality of the event” (166) and that the power of the film’s narrative “deliberately undermines the possibility of critical interrogation” (168). According to Llinares’ logic, Howard is guilty of telling its story too well in addition his failure to tell a different story. He further chides, “[Howard’s] utopia lies not in reaching for an increasingly indefinable future but returning to an imagined ideal of the past” (169). In a pejorative sense, he used the term retropia to describe this fidelity to the heroic structural conventions of the past. These positions clearly illustrate the axiological dimensions of this debate.
A part of the postmodern shift is seen in the move from the collectivist to the individualist. Scholar Robert Samuels saw a twist of postmodernism in what he called automodernism. “The power of new automated technologies to give us a heightened sense [emphasis original] of individual control often functions to undermine the awareness of social and cultural mediation” (225). Freed by technology from social norms, the unorthodox postmodern hero has no taboos or motivations for action and thereby acts within a vacuum.
A related characteristic of postmodern thinking shapes the hero’s agency in contemporary film: the arising distrust of institutional authority. While the hero may be willing to act, s/he may be paralyzed, unable to serve the cause of institutions that, by fact or perception, are corrupt. One can easily sense that popular cinematic narratives increasingly portray our traditional institutions as immoral and unworthy of serving. Llinares saw Howard’s portrayal of the astronauts in Apollo 13 as flawed because it fueled the ideological superiority of the United States. It became for him, “nostalgic idealism emptied of any political or cultural dissent” (168). Thus, the astronaut’s heroism is contaminated by the institution they serve. Jankowski sees the orthodox portrayals of heroism as supportive of U.S. militarism. Her implication is that George Bush’s “cowboy diplomacy” (431) was inept and anything but heroic in the context of an enlightened world. In her analysis of Beowulf & Grendel (2006), Jankowski quotes director Sturla Gunnarsson: “We’re taking the hero myth and turning it on its head. The hero myth is a story of tribalism and ethnic cleansing” (430). Clearly, a change in the definition of hero is well underway, even in mainstream film.
The causes of Christianity and religion in general have motivated many heroic actions throughout the history of western cinema, but postmodern paranoia does not exclude religious institutions. Auld notes in Robert Zemikis’ Beowulf (2007) that the Christian character Hrothgar, the leader of the Danes in the tale, exhibits “both the social and physical structures of Christianity, but both are badly flawed, left open to his selfishness and lack of human empathy” (418). In the abuse of a slave named Cain, Auld notes that Danes demonstrated the “self-serving aspects of Christian ethos” (418). The unorthodox hero can no longer find motivation in the Christian faith.
Featured in this discussion of postmodernism is an analysis of the state of the uniquely masculine hero. According to feminist scholars, orthodox heroic action is an excuse for masculine dominance—a tattered and soiled parade banner of a once grand narrative in our culture. At first glance it seems fit to discuss it as a component of postmodernism—a replacement of the masculine grand narrative with a more compassionate one as feminist ideology seeks to expose male hegemonic agency. Heroism emerges from a Peter Pan mentality, according to Tara Moore, “the unapologetic deployment of aggressive, childlike masculinity” (¶ 10). Llinares chaffes at Ron Howard’s choice of Tom Hanks as an astronaut, apparently because Hanks is not masculine enough to clearly demonstrate male hegemony in retropia. “[The choice in casting] is therefore ideologically perfect for the apolitical, overtly nostalgic construction of an idealized, non-threatening masculine hero” (169). Literary scholar Bill Schipper argues that if a male character is to be considered credible for today’s audiences, they expect him to be flawed, and incapable of sexual purity (425). Rushing complained that even efficacious female heroes like Ripley in the Alien series act too much like men to be credible or appreciated. Further, she demonstrates the feminine perspective in evaluating heroic agency by questioning the very premise of who should be considered the antagonist in these films. Instead of the good Ripley battling the evil alien, they see the alien’s suppressed anger understandably brought forth by masculine hubris resulting in the justifiable evil unleashed by the Furies (Rushing 115-116).
These critiques are a sample of a school of thought that essentially seeks to remove all semblance of a masculine nature from the hero, particularly any threat or use of physical agency. Rushing proposes that the orthodox male hero is too egotistical, didactic, and dogmatic to be of any use in the new cultural narratives. Yet this assumption brings us back to the central questions of this essay. Does this new unorthodox hero represent a new set of cultural values that differ sharply from the classical model? For example, does the unorthodox female hero fundamentally differ from the orthodox male hero in terms of agency? Is the difference best understood by examining the basis of power from which each hero acts upon when choosing agency and performing heroic acts? Or as Rushing argues, does the difference lie beyond the chosen means and instead, within the teleological rationalization for the action itself? If so, perhaps even revenge is heroic when unleashed for a good cause.
Further, does a postmodern culture consistently read the actions of the orthodox male hero as fundamentally motivated by selfish ambition? Does the hero push an agenda of greed and consumerism in order to feed his hungry ego? Conversely, do postmodern filmmakers correct this by producing unorthodox heroes whose actions are ego-free sacrifices made in order to balance power, reuniting what was separated and cleansing what is soiled? Or do these new cultural narratives feature protagonists who are devoid of any heroic agency whatsoever? These questions will guide our review of contemporary independent film.
Evolution in Filmmaking
Before we examine some film texts, it is important to justify the focus on independent film. Using Bordwell’s taxonomy, much of independent fare can be considered art cinema. He considers this branch of cinema not as much as a marketable commodity as it is an artist’s expression. He also believed that art cinema differed from Hollywood fare by the functions of style and theme, particularly when one examines the realistic experience for the viewer, the distinctive imprint of the auteur on the film, and the preponderance of ambiguity in the narrative—represented as a break in the “cause-effect chain” (95). This realism and ambiguity is seen in the “psychologically complex characters [who lack] . . . defined desires and goals. . . . [Whereas] the Hollywood protagonist speeds directly towards the target; lacking a goal, the art-film character slides passively from one situation to another. (96)
Art cinema filmmakers project their own sense of uncertainty and meaninglessness upon their audience. Their subjective angst becomes “the overriding intelligence organizing the film for our comprehension” (97). Bordwell argues, “seldom [one finds verisimilitude] at the level of groups or institutions; in the art cinema, social forces become significant insofar as they impinge upon the psychologically sensitive individual” (97). Thus in postmodern art cinema, one would not expect the feminization of the male hero to be a dominant concern. Simply, while the feminist presumably seeks to make a better world, the postmodern filmmaker may find no hope in such activism. Neither masculine nor feminine agency is held in regard.
Independent film then reserves the freedom to either mimic the classic Hollywood style and themes, or to follow the filmmaker’s own personal journey wherever it leads. While emerging filmmakers seek distribution deals to help pay the bills and fund future projects, they are essentially free from any constraint or convention that would stand in the way of their expression. Yet Bordwell acknowledges the significant impact these forms are having on mainstream film production. “A small industry [of] International film festivals, reviews and essays in the press, published scripts, film series, career retrospectives, and film education all introduce viewers to authorial codes” (97-98). As viewers become more familiar with these codes, they are more likely to be mimicked in more mainstream narratives.
The Death of the Orthodox Hero
As the growing independent film industry becomes less isolated from mainstream culture, these evolutions raise other important concerns. The mainstream industry is actively encouraging the development of more independent cinema in order to feed the growing appetite people have for entertainment. Subsidiaries of major studios develop smaller budget films or more unconventional stories, while other companies specialize in placing independent films in theaters and on television. The expansion of cable and satellite networks has resulted in a greater demand for more movie channels and the programming to feed them (i.e., Independent Film Channel). It is important to track the extent this economy has enabled the migration of these independent films from alternative art-house cinemas or film festivals to more mainstream television channels and the mega-cineplex.
Film watching behavior is also undergoing change. Inexpensive DVD technology allows films to skip theatrical release and still reach a modest audience. Already, Internet streaming has proven to be an effective way for alternative stories to reach a larger audience. What was once confined to the art house cinema now is represented equally on the Netflix streaming menu alongside Hollywood blockbusters. The decision to skip theatrical release and go straight to video may no longer represent a financial or artistic failure of the film. Viewers may never know or care that the film never played in a theater.
Much less restrained by the economic and cultural hegemony of the mainstream Hollywood industry, these independent films with their alternative narratives of postmodern angst and hopelessness may soon take root in our culture’s psychic narratives. Again, one might argue these perspectives have already have become the exnominated voice of our culture and settling in as the new collective unconscious. We can look at what has happened to the hero in these independent films to recognize an historic sea change in our culture’s mythology.
The power of the mass media to directly manipulate society is debatable. Some would argue that closely held beliefs are not influenced directly by the mass media (Rogers 311). However, whether direct or indirectly, the film industry does more than just mirror society. Theorist George Gerbner saw the power of the mass media to inculcating culture with its own narratives. His cultivation theory argues that heavy viewers of television are exposed to more violence and thus they tend to surmise that the world is more deprived and dangerous than it actually is. If so, people who watch many movies on television may believe that institutions are more corrupt than they are or fear that all young black men are criminals. The cultivation theory holds that these ideas become stabilized or fixed in our culture’s attitudes because they are voiced with an exnomination that is no longer challenged.
These institutional processes of the mass-production of messages short-circuit other networks of social communication and superimpose their own forms of collective consciousness—their own publics—upon other social relationships. The consequences for the quality of life, for the cultivation of human tendencies and outlooks, and for the governing of societies, are far-reaching. (Gerbner 69)
If postmodern independent film is cultivating a change in our culture’s stories, just what is the nature of that cultivation? Literary scholar Robin Norris gives us a hint of this seeding in her introduction to a series of essays on recent cinematic treatments of the Beowulf story. The filmmakers have changed the hero myth “by resisting Christian ideology, hero worship, and demonization of the Other, and by blurring the boundary between human and monster” (437). The consequences of this seeding are sobering according to Carl Boggs and Tom Pollard, who warned of “far-reaching psychological transformations . . . as conventional formulas, narratives, schemes, and ‘role models’ give way to a more diffuse, fragmented, and confusing parade of images” (173-174).
In Zemeckis’ version of Beowulf (2007), the pitiful and misshapen outcast Grendel is “denied either social or physical generative potential. He can never create except through the destruction and consumption of those structures he can never negotiate as a man or an equal human” (Auld 420). Toward the end of his career, Beowulf morns to his warrior friend (Auld, quoting the film), “We men are the monsters now” (419). In Zemeckis’ film as in others, the audience may find it increasingly difficult to distinguish the protagonist (man) from the antagonist (monster).
When the hero becomes as scary as the monster, Vogler calls it Herophobia (xx). In The Writer’s Journey, he illustrates the classic hero’s journey that often includes a confrontation of the monster inside the psyche (30). This inner conflict often has a plot parallel with a physical monster that threatens the hero and his community. Further, the shadowy villain may once have been a hero who “is so convinced his cause is just that he will stop at nothing to achieve it” (68). While the orthodox hero must admit but suppress his monstrous DNA on the road to becoming whole, the postmodern unorthodox hero placates and even embraces his monster side in an attempt to find wholeness. Conversely, Vogler finds that even in classic tales a monster character can become the hero, but only when they act in compassionate and human ways that result in a boon for the community. The monster must embrace the good and stand in the light—there is no heroism found in the destruction of the good village.
Where the orthodox hero ultimately recognizes his calling, the postmodern protagonist remains disconnected from heroic agency. Instead of slaying the monster, this hero is concerned over the perception that slaying of trolls or aliens may be a form of politically incorrect genocide (Norris 436).
Since this ambiguous teleology is a characteristic of art films we expect to find this motif prevalent among the independent film we examine. Bordwell evaluated this new aptitude: “With the open and arbitrary ending, the art film reasserts that ambiguity is the dominant principle of intelligibility, that we are to watch less for the tale than the telling, that life lacks the neatness of art and this art knows it [emphasis original]” (99). When box office numbers are of little importance, the independent filmmaker is free to experiment with alternative forms, structures and story arcs.
Scope And Limits Of This Study
What follows is an examination of this new hero and the teleology of heroic action found in selected independent films from recent festivals. The study will not attempt a comprehensive review of all films nor of all festivals. In order to demonstrate the existence of alternative heroic structures in independent film, this analysis simply relies only on the recent films screened by this one reviewer at the 2012 Sundance and South by Southwest (SXSW) festivals. Of course, not all films screened deviated from the classic heroic structure, but this sample should be adequate to illustrate the freedom of independent filmmakers to venture beyond those constraints. Likewise, this study will not attempt to draw precise parallels between the characteristics of art cinema to these specific independent films. Any similarity will become self-evident as they are discussed. In true postmodern spirit in this essay, these fragmented cinematic texts will be reconstructed as a whole to provide some insight into the journey of the new hero.
Finally, any study of heroes that seeks to revisit classic structures may appear retropic to some scholars. Nevertheless, grounded in our review of the characteristics of the orthodox hero, we can examine contemporary independent cinema to determine if the hero’s quest has ended or if a new hero has been born.
Methodology
In order to provide a uniform comparison, Kenneth Burke’s dramatic pentad will be applied to each film discussed. The pentad lends itself well for such an exploration of heroic action, as the critic is challenged to identify the act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose of the film as well as note any dominant interactions between elements of the pentad that may provide insight (Grammar of Motives xv). Using the pentad to examine a film, one should discover the exigence from which a call to action occurs—the scene. Operating within this scene, a clear protagonist-agent performs some significant act using whatever means s/he has available—the agency. These all point to some identifiable purpose.
In addition, Vogler provided some fixed points of reference in The Writer’s Journey as a part of his thorough catalog of orthodox heroic structures and all their variations. In particular, we will search the many faces of hero in classic film for a suitable comparison to the agents in these independent films. Finally, Joseph Campbell’s anthropological monomyth provides revealing links to the universal roots of the orthodox hero’s journey. These will guide us as reference points as we search for heroic structures in these select films.
Review of Select Independent Films
Taiwan Oyster (SXSW Film Festival, 2012)
This film is a beautifully photographed and lyrical film written, directed and produced by the brothers Mark and Mitchell Jarrett. Like many classic hero adventures, this film is a journey to complete a task against all odds for a higher good. Friends Simon (Billy Harvey) and Darin (Jeff Palmiotti) are expatriated young Americans living aimlessly in Taiwan where they earn a living as schoolteachers. The scene is the distant land of Taiwan, a comfortable hideout isolated from the pressured demands of life at home in the states. They demonstrate no skills or show no honest preparation for their job and make light of their tasks. They seem less able to teach as simply play with the students. As a result, they undermine the stuffy standards of their rule-bound school principle. They belong to a larger group of western hipster friends who meet often to drink heavily and tell stories. Simon is the agent and like the others, he is running from something that is never revealed to the viewer. He wears a belt with the name “Bill” tooled on the back, symbolic of his missing identity and a marker for the existential crisis that he has apparently battled for some time.
Jed, a fringe member of the group dies in a tragic accident while at a party. Simon and Darin decide to fulfill an unwritten vow of the group to make sure no member’s body is unclaimed and left to be buried in a pauper’s grave, but is to be taken to some sacred place and buried with a ritual sacred to their (adolescent) masculine honor, a ceremony that includes the playing of the deceased’s requested song. The two friends rescue (steal) the body from the morgue and set off on a meandering quest to find a suitable spot for burial, one honorable and worthy of the brotherhood. After an alcoholic impaired journey of hundreds of miles carrying a rotting corpse, they finally agree on a spot and bury the body. Yet this journey is not the act, but the agency, the means to a higher end. For Simon, the journey completed and the duty fulfilled is a means to find himself. It is not found in satisfying a promise to the friend, since they barely knew Jed and his request was merely a scribble discovered on a bathroom wall. It is Simon’s own symbolic burial and rebirth that provides the true act—the death of his wandering spirit and the return of his original self—a refocused, whole individual who, at the end of his quest, will glimpse a new purpose for living through the veil of his existential fog. That is, if the act and agency serves the purpose.
A subplot helps confirm this pentad’s verisimilitude. Nikita (Leonora Lim) is a local girl who joins the journey, not as a mentor or guide, nor as a shadow of the hero’s unconscious (Vogler 26, et. al.). Instead, she is just one more casualty in the existential typhoon, joining the journey to search for something beyond her banal existence. Even though chemistry builds between the compatible Simon and Nikita, the balm of love is prematurely spilled due to Simon’s impotence and a soul connection is never made. Instead, dirty and hung over, Nikita and Simon drift apart as the journey ends. After the awkward burial in a random place and with only a substitute song, the trio returns to where their journey began. Incapable of love and impotent in finding his purpose, Simon returns to his previous state untransformed, bringing with him no boon or elixir. Even with the duty more or less accomplished, he is left fulfilled. He is unable to cross the final barrier in returning to his true self (Campbell 218, et. al.). He ends the journey by buying a drink and hitching a ride in the back of a pickup truck through the urban nightscape—a single shot that lasts for several minutes. Simon is emotionless; his only action is to manage to light a cigarette in spite of the wind.
The hero’s ending is left ambiguous by the filmmaker. We find nothing that suggests a transformation in the protagonist. Instead, the losses mount and if anything, the hero comes away more damaged than he was before. He brings nothing with him and no one benefits from his return. As the opening credits hint, this trio is much like the dysfunctional Bundren family in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, characters who also find themselves on a journey that increasingly decays into physical and moral horror. Both narratives are postmodern tragedies— stories not only without a surviving hero, but made even more tragic by the complete absence of a character with the fortitude to become one.
Crazy Eyes (SXSW Film Festival, 2012)
The male agent in this cautionary tale is a character with more wealth than he can manage. While Simon in Taiwan Oyster makes pocket money by teaching, Zack (Lucan Haas) is a slacker millionaire. He has a young son and an ex-wife, but his two primary occupations are to drink himself bleary every night and to obsess over Rebecca (Madeline Zima), the only girl in his assortment of girlfriends who refuses to have sex with him. While the chemistry between the two is palatable—their relationship involves considerable flirting and talk about sex—much of the attraction is contained within their long bouts with alcohol and drugs. At times, the flirtation turns dangerously close to rape, a disturbing act to observe in a hero.
The scene is an existential world wrecked by substance abuse, denigrated with poor body hygiene, and infected with money. Agent Zack’s quest is to win Rebecca—what he believes to be the golden key to his happiness. The courtship is the agency to the true purpose of fulfillment. The act is for Zack to grow up, to suppress the desires of the Id, and to accept the traditional mantles of father to his young boy, son to his dying father, and husband—or at least as a proper suitor—to the girl he loves. For any hero, this cam be a precarious journey filled with obstacles. In actuality, Rebecca is merely the destination for this journey and she battles her own demons. Claiming to be in another relationship, she vacillates between flirting and repulsion, which only maddens Zack. He represents for her both a balm as well as a threat to her well-being.
Narratives like Crazy Eyes are challenging, since on the surface Zack plays both protagonist and antagonist—both the hero and his own dragon to slay. The struggle is internal, and the viewer can only watch the catastrophe—the cruel execution of his potentially functional personality kept helplessly drugged and imprisoned inside his psyche. In the end, the terrible Id wins and destroys the potential his relationships once had. Inside what Vogler calls the inmost cave (143), Zack finds no agency to heal the rift with his dying father. He bullies and destroys the innocent faith of his son. He finally seduces Rebecca, but ends up damaging her. After winning the obsession of his life, this impaired young man senselessly tosses her aside like a used tissue. True to the pattern, the viewer is left with nothing but ambiguity and perhaps even some anger over the incapacity of two lovers to overcome the obstacles of their own personality flaws. It is certainly a defective heroic quest—a tragedy of epic proportions.
King Kelly (SXSW Film Festival, 2012)
One of the most confounding concerns for critics and viewers alike is the classification system distributors that use. K5 International is set to distribute King Kelly, classifying it as a comedy. Yet like others in this essay, we will find that it is an unmistakable tragedy, and this confusion over definitions is a part of the same issue.
This film’s hero is female and she actually completes her quest and achieves her goal in the story. The scene is a grown woman (sexually) living inside a teenager’s body in a world where parents are irrelevant and female-teen sexual power is king. Kelly, the agent, is the star of her own voyeur website where she has built a considerable following with a strip-tease act. Kelly’s loyal followers include a state trooper who she knows only as Poo Bear.
Kelly is indeed king of her world. Her parents are clueless and unable to control her activities. She uses her friends, both male and female, and trades favors to her advantage. Machiavellian in intent, her purpose is to defend and expand her kingdom. Her act is to repair a breach in her security—a drug deal gone badly due to her ex-boyfriend repossessing the car he loaned her. He drives off with the drugs Kelly was supposed to deliver in the car’s trunk. Her agency is manipulation. Nothing is sacred or beyond her limits for use in serving her purpose—to maintain her dominion.
Akin to Campbell’s monomyth, Kelly’s journey takes her to the inmost cave where the hero and her companions endure an ordeal of conflict (155). She calls in favors from Poo Bear in order to retrieve the drugs, but his help comes with a price—sexual intercourse, a sacrifice Kelly reluctantly agrees to endure outside the protection of her webcam fortress. In the end, she uses her agency to escape with what she came for and manages to save her kingdom. She will post the video of the journey and ordeal, adding to her fame and power.
Unlike the other protagonists in this essay, Kelly demonstrates orthodox heroic characteristics like persistence, efficacy, and resiliance. What is postmodern about the quest is that the elixir she brings back is only for the voyeuristic community. While some heroes bring back a boon that improve the community, King Kelly’s boon will only further harm the subjects in her kingdom. This heroic journey is a tragedy in disguise—the unorthodox hero makes a classic journey and endures an ordeal, but returns only with more of the poison that caused the crisis in the first place.
Leave Me Like You Found Me (SXSW Film Festival, 2012)
Sometimes, two heroes are on a journey and need each other to complete the quest. Considerable drama and potential satisfaction characterizes the both the near misses and ultimate reunion of the co-heroes to overcome the final obstacles and endure the ordeal together as one. In this tale, the two would-be heroes are the co-agents: Erin (Megan Boone) and Warren (David Nordstrom). The scene is a world where nurturing relationships are hard to find, where trust is elusive, and commitment is rare. They are a part of a community of friends where couples are married and establish homes and raise families—connected nuclear units that support and stabilize the entire society. As a couple, Erin and Warren were once a part of the community but failed in their relationship. It was only after meeting at the marriage of another couple that they were able to both agree on purpose: to fulfill themselves in their relationship and recover their place as a stable couple in their community. Thus, the act is the quest to restore their relationship. The agency is a camping trip: a series of real and symbolic journeys that take them deeper and deeper across the threshold into the inmost cave where they experience doubt and face conflict. For each, the ordeal is the discovery of the other’s dual nature, one nature represents unhappiness (death of the individual) and the other is the source of the elixir that will heal their loneliness. This dissonance is not discovered (or remembered) until they trek off into the wilderness and become lost, a symbol of their journey to recover their relationship. During the trek they separate but find no solace in it. They frustrate and anger each other, but in the end, they realize that the ordeal is worse alone than with each other.
They end the film as a couple, but the unorthodox heroes find but meager elixir. The filmmaker leaves the viewer with the ambiguous suggestion that the relationship is no more stable and restored than it was before the breakup. In fact, the journey was nothing less than a descent into the cave without a full return. This heroic journey, like the others, is one where the story ends before the ordeal is overcome in perhaps a temporary victory before some scant hope for redemption is gained.
The Comedy (Sundance Film Festival, 2012)
Interestingly, this story is similar to Crazy Eyes without the romantic element. The agent Swanson is yet another wealthy young man with time on his hands. The scene is New York City. It is a place of wealth, but short on transcendence. Swanson’s purpose is unclear. The filmmaker, the character, and the audience are all lost in meaningless pursuits within this film.
Swanson’s act is to test the world, to poke at it like a child jabs a snake hoping for a response. It is a dangerous activity and Swanson’s metaphorical stick is the agency—sharp disrespect for the status quo and for anything sacred. This quest is typical of art cinema in that it is a series of fragmented moments or episodes that as a whole represent meaninglessness (Bordwell 99). The would-be hero’s journey starts and remains in the inmost cave. The ordeal is simply living the existential reality of his privileged life. Swanson tests, but fails to find any redemption or transcendence in any of his relationships. He literally pokes his comatose dad and ridicules the male nurse who cares for him. He makes crude sexual suggestions to his grieving sister-in-law. He adds pornographic images to the memorial slide show for his father. He dresses like the homeless and gets a dead end job with the apparent hope that some pain might bring back his humanity. His small group of friends provides little consolation; with the possible exception that they are so similarly disgusting that Swanson may perhaps sense in them that he has not yet reached the darkest part of his own cave. This rat pack enters a church, and desecrates the holy space—but God does not send lighting to electrocute him. As with all his other jabs on the quest, no one or no thing strikes back, so Swanson continues to spiral deeper and deeper into his psyche.
The film ends with this unorthodox hero by the waters of the seashore, playing with a child. He does not enter the waters for a cleansing baptism—for a symbolic drowning of his corrupt personhood. Metaphorically, he avoids looking at the reflection of himself in the deep pool of his unconscious (Jung 18-19). Instead, Swanson remains content to endulge the childish Id to remain and frolic on the shore.
Kid-Thing (Sundance Film Festival, 2012)
The child hero is a common archetype (Jung 151ff). There is something about the innocence of a youthful protagonist that suggests they will find transcendence easier or deserve it more than a jaded and selfish adult. However, this film goes well beyond this consideration. The scene in this film is a world where adults have completely abdicated any meaningful role in raising children. Annie (Sydney Aguirre) is the preteen agent, living with a single father (Nathan Zellner) whose own agency is limited to hypnotizing chickens and driving in demolition derbies. He is self-hypnotized—veiled from recognizing the needs of his daughter and impotent in filling either the role of father or mother. His parenthood is a demolition of any moral structure for Annie. When she actually comes to him for advice, she is literally unable to wake him from his stupor.
Like Swanson, Annie has no clear purpose. Out of school (or skipping it), Annie wanders from one episode to another. Her act is a search for meaning. Like Swanson, she pokes at things with both literal and figurative sticks, her agency, in order to test for a reaction. And like Swanson, Annie finds no life in these people or institutions to guide her.
Her descent into the inmost cave is synonymous with the discovery of a woman trapped in a hidden well in an overgrown forest near her home. Like the woman desperate for rescue, Annie is in need of redemption from her lack of purpose. A rescue presents an opportunity to realize a purpose, so for a while, Annie uses her agency to steal food and throw it down the well to the woman—small acts that provide a fleeting sense of meaning and importance. Predictably, the woman soon becomes desperate and demanding of a rescue, presenting a barrier for Annie that she is unable to overcome. She is unprepared on her journey to adulthood to pick up the cloak of humility and serve another human being in need of help. Annie flees from her ordeal (and that of the woman). Avoidance is the solution, and the woman expires from neglect.
This unorthodox heroic journey ends differently from the other films examined in this essay. Instead of continuing on her fragmented journey for meaning, she unexpectedly returns and flings herself into the (dry) well—a figurative leap into the waters. While impulsive, her act is heroic in the sense that she may save her life by losing it. While the filmmakers leave her fate ambiguous as one might expect, the narrative does provide a glimmer of hope beneath the shock. Tragic as it is, the certitude of death (or at least the real pain of her new ordeal) may provide the missing meaning in her short life.
An Emerging Post-Modern Heroic Structure
While this sample of independent films is a rather narrow, patterns emerge in the form of a new model that help us conceptualize the differences between orthodox heroic structures and the less orthodox conceptions. As such, a new term is justified to illustrate these differences; this postmodern agency can be termed aheroism. The new model can be expressed in the following way.
| Name | Description | Period | Characteristics |
| Heroism
(Separate natures dominated by the nature of light) |
Orthodox (classic) | Pre-modern | Full monomyth journey; confident hero returns improved, bringing elixir |
| Anti-Heroism
(Single nature, unresolved dominance) |
Transitional | Modern | Full monomyth journey; flawed, reluctant hero returns, bringing elixir |
| Aheroism
(Separate natures dominated by the nature of darkness) |
Unorthodox | Postmodern | Incomplete monomyth journey (tragedies, cautionary tales); hero refuses the calling, refuses to return, or returns with poison |
The model illustrates the transition from the heroic to the aheroic, involving a consideration of the divided nature of the soul. The modern hero is a one who struggles with the battle between the two natures inside his/her psyche, while the postmodern hero gives in to the Id and the darker face of the unconscious. The conflict can take on many forms, including these proposed below.
|
Nature of the Orthodox Heroic |
Nature of the Unorthodox Aheroic |
|
Protagonist |
Antagonist |
|
Action/Direct |
Inaction/Meandering |
|
Human |
Monster |
|
Accomplish/Increase |
Survive/Diminish |
|
Sexual/Potent |
Asexual/Impotent |
|
Fortunate |
Tragic |
|
Health/Wellness |
Disease/Unwellness |
|
Creative/Provider |
Creaturely/Consumer |
| Humor |
Ridicule |
| Sacred |
Profane/Mundane |
The tension between these valued opposites also afflicts the transitional modern hero. Rich drama characterizes the stories rising from within this cultural psyche. Since only one idea can dominate, the modern human must strive to resolve this dissonance so one perspective can rule. “A man without a dominating [ideology] would be a thoroughly abnormal phenomenon” (Jung 62). Campbell added,
The hero . . . discovers and assimilates his opposite . . . either by swallowing it or being swallowed . . . . He must bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh. (108)
So the struggle may always exist to some degree with heroes of any type or age. While this conflict is vivid and interesting, both orthodox heroic adventures and unorthodox postmodern tragedies can be just as compelling as the modern version if, at a minimum, they raise the question of resolve between these opposites. Typically, a satisfying viewing experience is found in the nature of the struggle and in the resolution and the ultimate outcome, but no character who fails to recognize or struggle with this tension can be identified as an orthodox hero.
Conclusion
Have only the darker Machiavellian or Nietzschean desires for power been banished from our cultural narratives or is the hero completely dead? Certainly from either case, the hero’s journey is clearly impeded in today’s films, especially from films and filmmakers who are freed from economic necessity to stick close to proven story arcs. Heroes are banished by restless critics who cry, “Is that all there is?” when faced with a protagonist who wills to undertake a journey for a cause. The result is an exnomination that declares the hero to be dead, a recurring and dominating voice that erases the memory of the hero who once used orthodox agencies to challenge worthy opponents and replaces him/her with a new kind of unorthodox hero. This voice creates a loop, an autopoiesis that both fuels our cultural shift and celebrates it. The voice surrenders all sense of agency to the darker, unconscious side of the nature. Gideon Haberkorn used another term to describe the effect, “It makes sense to regard such evolutions from ridicule to reinvention as palimpsests, as the earlier versions are criticized, scraped off, and newer versions are reinscribed over them” (323). Certainly, one can argue this has been the process for many years and this new aheroic role model is creeping into the mainstream.
The orthodox hero may be around for some time—filmmakers and critic hardly can deny the existence of these archetypes that have served humankind since the beginnings of recorded history. But without purpose and agency, the aheroic protagonist is lethargic and nihilistic. Perhaps the true difference is the lack of a soul in these postmodern heroes. Jung suggested, “the soul lures into life the inertness of matter than does not want to live” (26). Even if these postmodern narratives provide some substance for the viewer, “the boon brought from the transcendent deep becomes quickly rationalized into nonentity, and the need becomes great for another hero to refresh the word” (Campbell 218).
Perhaps a soul with a viable ethical framework will be required of protagonists in the unstable future. Jung wrote, “It becomes very clear how much the cure of neurosis is a moral problem” (40). Perhaps over time, we will get over our herophobia. Campbell encouraged filmmakers and critics alike to keep the hero around, “It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse” (391).
Is the hero dead in film? Have they begun to languish within our collective consciousness? Perhaps not, but the careful critic with a more conscious viewing public would do well to consider the transformations well underway in cinema, especially the herophobic voices taking the stage in independent film. As a result of this sea change of values, critics and scholars should pay close attention to the long-term social consequences of this new monomyth—cultural narratives that replace the orthodox heroic protagonist with an aheroic model, those that exchange elixir with poison and redemption with revenge, stories that substitute a coherent teleology with a fragmented journey toward meaninglessness.
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