More thoughts on smart heroes
"Even bomb-makers could be heroes in 1962" -- Warren Ellis, Planterary
Sometimes the Cold War seems very far away, doesn't it? I mean, it basically ended as I was leaving high school, and that was 20 years ago. But that's not really so long ago, really, and it's worth looking, as we go down this odd literary/pop culture journey, to look at what constituted a hero in the time when a lot of the building blocks of our cultural landscape were being built. Especially the Marvel Revolution in the '60s but also the concurrent DC Silver Age.
Peter Parker was a student with a keen interest in science, which is what put him in the lab to be bitten by a radioactive spider; Reed Richards was a scientist who -- along with his friends -- stole his own experimental rocket for an experiment; Bruce Banner was a scientist building bombs before he rescued a teenager who was trespassing from certain death, exposing himself to radiation in the process; Henry Pym was a scientist working against Soviet spies; Tony Stark was a weapon's developer; Hal Jordan was a test pilot; Barry Allen was a police scientist; James Bond was a spy; John Steed and Emma Peel were spies; Number Six was a spy; The Doctor was an alien adventurer, yes, but first and foremost he was a scientist.
The Cold War overtones really write themselves, don't they? You don't need anything more than a thumbnail sketch to understand the world that produced these heroes. Oh, there were exceptions. The X-Men were the product of either youthful alienation or the Civil Rights movement, depending on who you asked and the angle you looked at them from. Superman was still Superman, and Batman was quickly becoming a cartoon in the hands of Adam West. But by and large, the new heroes were Cold Warriors, and they reflected a bit of what people felt were needed to win that particular war. And science was a big part of that. (Remember, even the Apollo astronauts were scientists.) The new heroes were born in the shadow of the arms race and the space race.
It's different, now. Our world is far more complex, or at the very least, more overtly complex. (After all, out of that laundry list of "new heroes introduced in the Cold War" presented above, all of them are white, and only one is female. How out of whack is that?) Today, we have the war on terror, yes, but also an economic crisis and global warming and a diverse, multicultural population and gay rights and the Internet, and frankly, I can kind of see how people get exhausted just thinking about it.
So the heroes that reflect that world are ones that, ostensibly, can navigate that type of world, who can navigate conflicting, concurrent realities; who can seek out information, who understand how things work. And perhaps that's why scientists and detectives have come back into the fore. Because frankly, even if the ostensible hero of the piece isn't the greatest brain in all creation (I'm looking at you, Harry Potter!) then he or she at the very least has someone always by their sides who is. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg; Harry Potter and Hermione Granger; Olivia Dunham (no slouch on her own, actually) and Walter Bishop; Jack Harkness (who at least knows his way around technology) and Toshiko Sato; Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian. Without the brains of the operation, the hero is absolutely completely fucked. (And yes, I know, Tosh dies at the end of Torchwood Season 2. And they are indeed kind of fucked without her.) It's no longer a "smart ally who comes in when necessary," such as Superman and Professor Emil Hamilton or James Bond and Q. No, they pretty much have to be held up as an equal. Buffy might be the Chosen One and all, but her success is largely a team effort; Harry Potter might be the one who's destined to defeat Voldemort, but there is no way he's getting there on his own. Even the heroes who are wickedly smart all on their own, such as Veronica Mars, has Mac to do the heavy computer lifting; Rick Castle and Kate Beckett are both sharp cookies, but let's face it, medical examiner Lanie turns up most of the important bits; and if Katara and Toph aren't exactly portrayed are geniuses in Avatar: The Last Airbender, they're waaay smarter than Aang, and their main purpose on the show is to teach him water-bending and earth-bending, disciplines at which which they're both respectively shown to excel.
On the one hand, it seems a bit odd that the heroes are no longer scientist-adventurers as they were at the height of the Cold War, but i think that's more the emergence of a nuanced world view than anything else. (someone, inevitably, is going to rant against portrayals of smart people in media today, here, but at least in the above examples, I'm not seeing it.) Audiences seem more comfortable with the concept of a team, now, as opposed to a lone operator, a value in diverse individuals having complimentary skills. Batman works with a team in the comics, most notably uber-hacker Oracle, and Hell, in recent issues, he's got a whole Batman corporation going on; John Watson, in the recent BBC version, at least, is both a competent doctor and a hell of a shot, both of which being skills Holmes needs to be successful. The Doctor's the odd one out of this trope, mostly, but his companions do tend to be sharp, observant and, most of all, grounding. He doesn't need their skills so much as he needs people to hold him down to reality.
But all of it begs the question, is Hermione Granger any less of a hero than Harry Potter?
Sometimes the Cold War seems very far away, doesn't it? I mean, it basically ended as I was leaving high school, and that was 20 years ago. But that's not really so long ago, really, and it's worth looking, as we go down this odd literary/pop culture journey, to look at what constituted a hero in the time when a lot of the building blocks of our cultural landscape were being built. Especially the Marvel Revolution in the '60s but also the concurrent DC Silver Age.
Peter Parker was a student with a keen interest in science, which is what put him in the lab to be bitten by a radioactive spider; Reed Richards was a scientist who -- along with his friends -- stole his own experimental rocket for an experiment; Bruce Banner was a scientist building bombs before he rescued a teenager who was trespassing from certain death, exposing himself to radiation in the process; Henry Pym was a scientist working against Soviet spies; Tony Stark was a weapon's developer; Hal Jordan was a test pilot; Barry Allen was a police scientist; James Bond was a spy; John Steed and Emma Peel were spies; Number Six was a spy; The Doctor was an alien adventurer, yes, but first and foremost he was a scientist.
The Cold War overtones really write themselves, don't they? You don't need anything more than a thumbnail sketch to understand the world that produced these heroes. Oh, there were exceptions. The X-Men were the product of either youthful alienation or the Civil Rights movement, depending on who you asked and the angle you looked at them from. Superman was still Superman, and Batman was quickly becoming a cartoon in the hands of Adam West. But by and large, the new heroes were Cold Warriors, and they reflected a bit of what people felt were needed to win that particular war. And science was a big part of that. (Remember, even the Apollo astronauts were scientists.) The new heroes were born in the shadow of the arms race and the space race.
It's different, now. Our world is far more complex, or at the very least, more overtly complex. (After all, out of that laundry list of "new heroes introduced in the Cold War" presented above, all of them are white, and only one is female. How out of whack is that?) Today, we have the war on terror, yes, but also an economic crisis and global warming and a diverse, multicultural population and gay rights and the Internet, and frankly, I can kind of see how people get exhausted just thinking about it.
So the heroes that reflect that world are ones that, ostensibly, can navigate that type of world, who can navigate conflicting, concurrent realities; who can seek out information, who understand how things work. And perhaps that's why scientists and detectives have come back into the fore. Because frankly, even if the ostensible hero of the piece isn't the greatest brain in all creation (I'm looking at you, Harry Potter!) then he or she at the very least has someone always by their sides who is. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg; Harry Potter and Hermione Granger; Olivia Dunham (no slouch on her own, actually) and Walter Bishop; Jack Harkness (who at least knows his way around technology) and Toshiko Sato; Jack Bauer and Chloe O'Brian. Without the brains of the operation, the hero is absolutely completely fucked. (And yes, I know, Tosh dies at the end of Torchwood Season 2. And they are indeed kind of fucked without her.) It's no longer a "smart ally who comes in when necessary," such as Superman and Professor Emil Hamilton or James Bond and Q. No, they pretty much have to be held up as an equal. Buffy might be the Chosen One and all, but her success is largely a team effort; Harry Potter might be the one who's destined to defeat Voldemort, but there is no way he's getting there on his own. Even the heroes who are wickedly smart all on their own, such as Veronica Mars, has Mac to do the heavy computer lifting; Rick Castle and Kate Beckett are both sharp cookies, but let's face it, medical examiner Lanie turns up most of the important bits; and if Katara and Toph aren't exactly portrayed are geniuses in Avatar: The Last Airbender, they're waaay smarter than Aang, and their main purpose on the show is to teach him water-bending and earth-bending, disciplines at which which they're both respectively shown to excel.
On the one hand, it seems a bit odd that the heroes are no longer scientist-adventurers as they were at the height of the Cold War, but i think that's more the emergence of a nuanced world view than anything else. (someone, inevitably, is going to rant against portrayals of smart people in media today, here, but at least in the above examples, I'm not seeing it.) Audiences seem more comfortable with the concept of a team, now, as opposed to a lone operator, a value in diverse individuals having complimentary skills. Batman works with a team in the comics, most notably uber-hacker Oracle, and Hell, in recent issues, he's got a whole Batman corporation going on; John Watson, in the recent BBC version, at least, is both a competent doctor and a hell of a shot, both of which being skills Holmes needs to be successful. The Doctor's the odd one out of this trope, mostly, but his companions do tend to be sharp, observant and, most of all, grounding. He doesn't need their skills so much as he needs people to hold him down to reality.
But all of it begs the question, is Hermione Granger any less of a hero than Harry Potter?
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