The Trouble With: Heroism

The other night I began to watch the Netflix show Kaos, a very hip, clever, louche and well-made spin on Greek mythology.  In the opening episodes, we have a unique telling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Kaos renders Orpheus as a charming and cheerful rockstar — a bit of a golden retriever.  Eurydice is a complex, troubled young woman who has fallen out of love with her spouse after being swallowed up by his celebrity.  

Of course, Eurydice dies, and Orpheus attempts to “save” her — as the myth goes — by getting permission from the Fates to enter the underworld and bring her back from it.  And in order to keep Eurydice in a sort of Greek Purgatory long enough for him to “save” her, Orpheus has stolen a ritualistic coin from her casket so that she does not have the mythological fee to cross into her next life.

Which she very much wants to do.  Eurydice, in the Kaos retelling, is suffering deeply from her abandonment by her mother when she was a child, and she is ready for another life.  She is not sad to be dead.  She wants to go on, try something new.  She goes to cross into her next life, is rejected because she was not buried with a coin, and weeps.

Meanwhile, the man she does not love and wanted to leave is hell-bent on bringing her back to Earth so that she may be with him.  Solipsistic.  Myopic.  Self-centered.  And one of the most insidious kinds of self-centeredness — that which masquerades as love and care for someone else.  That which calls itself heroism.  Orpheus believes he knows what’s best for someone else — thinks in his heart that he could not possibly be in the wrong.  But he is blindly acting out, without Eurydice’s permission, that which is best for himself. 

The trouble with heroism is the simple notion that there is someone to save.  Perhaps this makes sense with regard to a baby or a child — someone who does factually not have the resources to save themselves.  But most of the narratives of heroism we are exposed to are adults “saving” adults.  What does it say to those we are saving that we believe they cannot save themselves?

The classical narratives of heroism I’d say we’re generally fed, in U.S. culture, at least, feature someone well-equipped and powerful saving someone unequipped and powerless — usually depicted as a man saving a woman [sigh, eyeroll].  

While it’s often true that those with power and resources have the ability — if not the responsibility — to aid those with neither, there’s a place in which narrative conventions override genuine care, and under the presumptions of power — via sex, skin color, wealth, status, privilege — a countering powerlessness is assumed, incorrectly. And in a way, made real.  Through heroic acts, those who are being “saved” can actually and ironically be made powerless.

I think of a TikTok I saw recently, a video of a House Representative William Keating demanding that Rep. Keith Self call their colleague Rep. Sarah McBride, a woman who is openly transgender, by her proper address during a House committee meeting.  Self maintained his stance of calling McBride “Mr. McBride,” and Keating said he would not take part in the meeting unless Self respectfully called her “Mrs. McBride.”  Self responded by adjourning the meeting.

Yet Rep. McBride was in the room and had the ability to defend herself — and she was.  By wryly calling Keith Self “Madame Chair.”  Which is hilarious, no?  (Slay.)  After the fracas, McBride said that she was “disappointed” Self adjourned the meeting.  She said she was there to serve the people of her state — other issues aside.

Rep. Keating’s heroism, in this case, was not coming from an Orpheus-eque self-interest.  He was undoubtedly disgusted and frustrated with and tired of Rep. Self’s gross disrespect.  Yet his actions also demonstrated a disrespect.  His stance, with his transgender colleague in the room and in a place of personal agency, steamrolled her.  He accidentally treated her as weak, in need of defense, and not capable of self-determination, paradoxically showing disrespect, though he believed he was fighting it.  He did not follow her lead or ask her if she’d like help or ask her what she wanted in the situation.

The universe ever playing on a theme, another media example of misguided heroism recently came to my attention, in the second season of HBO Max’s Hacks.  Two start-up talent agents, colleagues Jimmy and Kayla, go to a lunch with a potential client, a major celebrity who grew up with Kayla — which is how the agents got the meeting in the first place.  The celebrity continually bullies Kayla, rehashing some childhood bullshit, and eventually Jimmy calls the celebrity out on it, says she’s not treating Kayla fairly, they don’t even want to work with such a rude person, and then he storms out of the meeting.

Later, at the elevator, Kayla confronts Jimmy. She tells him she was hurt by his lack of respect in taking over the meeting, ruining the business relationship and assuming Kayla couldn’t handle herself.  Jimmy is baffled, and Kayla quits.  She tells him he obviously doesn’t think of her as a capable equal.

And this is what we keep coming back to.  How can you respect and honor someone and “save” them at the same time?

There are certainly many cases where people need help.  But help is not heroism.  In help, you aid someone in their own efforts.  You do not make the effort for them.  In help, we support people in pursuit of their own goals; we do not choose a goal for them and then enact it.  In help, we do not assume.  We communicate.  We respect.  We serve.

Let’s come full-circle to another interpretation of Greek mythology — Disney’s animated Hercules film.  The creators had the good sense and sense of humor to mock the idea of traditional heroism in the meet-cute between our dear boy Herc and his heartthrob Meg.  In the film, Hercules has been literally trained that the way to obtain “hero” status is to save a “damsel in distress” — a “D-I-D.”

He comes upon Meg having an altercation of sorts with a nasty hoofed character and proceeds to intercede, against Meg’s will and to her sophisticated annoyance.  “Aren’t you a Damsel in Distress?” Hercules asks her.  “I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, I can handle this,” says Meg.  “Have a nice day.”  But Hercules overrides her and continues his personal quest to save her.

(Hopefully you’re not missing the obvious parable for what unfolded in the house of representatives between Reps. Keating and McBride.)

I’d like to see every superhero ask his damsel if she needs saving, and if so, how she would prefer such saving to go.  We’re not talking about pushing strollers out of the way of oncoming buses or grabbing your friends arm if she’s about to trip and fall off a cliff.  We’re talking about instances where we have the time and space to recognize someone’s autonomy, understand that their will and assessment of a situation might be different from our own, and question what our motives really are in proffering aid.  Are we coming from a place of anger and knowing, or are we coming from a place of loving and learning?

Maybe we could all benefit by doing more from a place of loving and learning.  From doing less talking and more listening — even to those we think we understand.  I know for myself that I could.