Holding out for a Hero

So Kingdom of Heaven was on cable the other day and as I was watching it and drooling over Orlando Bloom, I started thinking about old vs. modern conception of masculinity. In another time, ideals such as honor, respect, courage, ingenuity, and loyalty were valued. These ideals were often summed up in overarching concepts such as chilvary in the West and code of the samurai in the East. Most men, although more so men of the upper class, adhered to these ideals, which were entwined with the chronological process of their coming of age. They lived during violent times, but there was meaning to their actions, their loss, and their gains. Fear gave way to faith. And they seem to live their lives with purpose, even if some of those purposes were misguided. Though I am not in the position nor well equipped with wisdom and knowledge to judge whether the past was better than the present, when I see a movie like Kingdom of Heaven or The Last Samurai (granted they were not superbly great movies) I do understand something of that Modernist nostalgia for the past.

Maybe we tend to idealize the past, but it just seems in the world we live today where there are mindless violence, useless adrenaline rush, and reckless boredom, many things seem less meaningful than they were in the past. We are not so different from societies of the past. We still live under the influence of our society’s ideas; we blindly follow our leaders’ agendas; we hope the truths we live by will bring us happiness. People didn’t seem to change much, but ideals and values have. Honor and courage are replaced by freedom and materialism. We’ve got freedom (though limited) but we seem lost in all the choices, or rather the illusion of choices, and a bit jaded by the itching notion that maybe we’re not as free as we imagine. We chase after money, knowing that it will bring a comfortable life, but we’re not sure if that’s enough. And materialism just seems like a method of entertainment so as to distract us from our boredom and meaningless lives.

We seem so desperate for meaning, even though some of us aren’t even aware of what that desperation means. I wonder about those men in the past, those warrior souls…who would they be in our modern world? Would they be a gangster? A violent housebeater? A drunk? What would they do with their passion for life, their will to die for something larger, their strength and energy? Maybe I’m oversimplifying the matters. Perhaps even with meaning, some people will still be ruthless and cruel, taking advantage of the weak in order to prove their masculinity.

But more than likely, I think a lot of people have a misguided notion of what masculinity is. It’s not mere violence, not mere strength, not just about size or brute force and not about “having balls” (our pathetic modern take on bravery). Picking on the weak, or worse on women, does not make you a man. Looking like Arnold does not make you a man. Being a jackass and pulling pranks do not make you a man. Driving recklessly in a ricerocket, or worse tailgating in a big truck, does not make you a man. Those are all just desperate attempts to prove something. But if you have to work so hard to prove it, then more than likely, you’re just covering what you lack. And maybe today, the concept of masculinity is dead. It died when there is no more chilvary, no more honor, no more faith.

Today, I hear mostly about violent men (criminals), cunning men (politians), and I know men who are smart, men who are lost, men who are jerks, men who are lovers, but none of whom I would say is really a hero, the kind people used to tell stories about in the past, the kind that truly inspire. I don’t really expect that kind of a hero to exist anymore since our world doesn’t seem an ideal place to nurture such a character, much less would appreciate such a person. But when I watch these movies, I wonder if such a man did exist once or is he just a figment of someone’s great imagination.