Making Good Guys Cool Again

When I my interest in comic books was revived as a teenager, one of the characters that intrigued me most was Wolverine.

Like most other fans of that age, I was drawn to Wolverine because he was different than almost every other Marvel (and any) hero. He was brutal, blunt, explosively violent and often reactionary and seemed more than willing to kill the bad guys if it came down to that. He was Dirty Harry, The Man with No Name , the good guy who wasn't afraid to indulge in some real passion in his reactions, who was willing to use the bad guys' methods in the service of good. And moreover, he was the basis for some nice inner conflict among the X-Men, with his arguments with Cyclops, Storm and others over methods and motivation.

At that time, Wolvie was pretty much the only heroic "bad ass" around, but it didn't take long for comicdom to copy his success with a rash of vigilante type characters, some of which were new and some of which had been banging around for years but now took the spotlight to capitalize on the new atmosphere of acceptance and even worship. Ghost Rider, Venom, Comics got "darker" as a result, and the formula and characters resonated with people.

Comics weren't alone in their mood swing, either. Films and television also began featuring protagonists who often behaved more like antagonists; lying, scheming, manipulating and generally often being just a BIT less nasty than the villains they opposed. Alan Moore's psychotic vigilante, Rorschach, who breaks bones to extract information and throws villains down elevator shafts, is seen as "cool" in many quarters Michael Chiklis' character on "The Shield" was a violent, dirty cop, "The Sopranos" featured a mobster family whose actions were usually deplorable.

Even characters openly acknowledged as antagonists began to gain "fans" as their creators imbued them with an implied sympathy, despite horrendous past (and present) actions. The "X-Files" began to concentrate (and surreptitiously sympathize with) amoral schemers like Cigarette Smoking Man and Krycek, even going so far as to try to explain away acts they committed from previous seasons just to create doubt in the mind of the viewers as to whether they were truly as "bad" as originally depicted, in light of their newfound popularity. "Lost" introduced Michael Emerson as Benjamin Linus, a sociopathic Hitler wannabe who caught fire with fans and whose character seems to be constantly in a state of "sympathetic/unsympathetic" flux, despite actions which, in a previous age, would have instantly branded him an unequivocal villain.

As much as I appreciate these morally complex characters, it seems that the pendulum has swung a bit too widely the past decade or so, creating a situation where characters with deeply held moral beliefs and more traditional methods are at best laughed at, and at worst, castigated for being "uptight" or "boring".

It's an understandable development. Superman, to me at least, is inherently less interesting than Batman because he doesn't seem conflicted or torn in any way; he always knows the right thing to do, he always does it, and it's always for the right reason. Contrast this with Batman whose very essence is one of intense inner conflict; how far does he go to pursue justice, and what ends ultimately justify those ends?

Besides the natural boredom and exhaustion factor of having to identify with incorruptible heroes, society in general began to reflect more and more ethical ambiguity. The Vietnam War, abortion, capital punishment and other issues began to become cultural boiling points with good arguments on both sides and no easy answers in the offing. Parents clashed with their children, teachers clashed with their students, citizens clashed with their governments and parishioners clashed with their religious leaders. Unlike the early part of the twentieth century, the nation as a whole was no longer on the same page culturally or morally; all was in flux, and the rise of more complex protagonists was probably inevitable. Readers and viewers hungered for characters that reflected not only their own experiences and internal moral compass but the ever changing times around them. Unlike Superman and his ilk, who not only knew exactly what the right thing to do was, but DID it unflinchingly, the heroes' coveted by the new generation struggled with both defining morality and acting upon it, much like the audiences that identified with them.

None of this is a particularly troubling development, of course. Times change and art adapts to those changes; it's a formula as old as civilization. But like so many other facets of our modern culture, this one tends to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" in its pursuit of modernity. That is, while I applaud the tendency to recognize a more complex ethical code and the challenges such times present, I think the pendulum has swung a bit far lately to the point where ONLY characters with "darker"natures are accepted and those that at least attempt to adhere to some kind of consistent ethos are seen as hypocritical, judgemental and hopelessly out of step.

I submit that it's time to try to push the pendulum back a bit. While I'm all in favor of continuing to feature darker characters, I challenge modern writers of popular fiction (be it novels, television or film screenplays, or plays) to make "good guys" interesting and relevant again.

This won't, I admit, be an easy task.

We all have a tendency to root for the underdog, and this tendency is at the root of our strange willingness to forgive darker characters their flaws when they finally manage to do something heroic, while simultaneously being ruthlessly UNforgiving of good guys when they temporarily fall from grace. It may be that we naturally see ourselves a bit more in the "morally challenged" characters and therefore cheer them on when they rise above expectations, and we might compare the more traditionally moral characters to our parents, and thus, when they fall, they fall hard.

But just as growing up means seeing our parents in a more realistic and hopefully forgiving light, perhaps we should view these characters more sympathetically, not expect them to live up to ridiculous expectations and remember the vast amount of good they've done compared to their occasional missteps. Sure, it's great to have Wolverine slash and tear his way through a phalanx of bad guys, but if it weren't for Professor X and Cyclops, he wouldn't have a team to do that with and would more than likely be more concerned with surviving on his own than saving any damsels in distress. The fact that both the Professor and Cyclops have made moral lapses doesn't negate their many good deeds or there overall status as deeply decent human beings, in fact, it makes them even more admirable because it humanizes them. It gives their moral deeds something to bump up against and conflict with, namely, the human frailties we all possess but so few are able to overcome on a consistent basis, let alone do so while providing an example for others in the process.

We also need to acknowledge that while they are often though of as being "cooler" than traditional heroes, anti-heroes are only strong occasionally, and often still fall prey to their baser instincts. Anti-heroes win sporadic victories against their darker natures, while true heroes win the war against them. Day in and day out, Spiderman (and Batman, and many others) refuses to kill, despite massive temptation and enemies who don't blink when considering killing him or his loved ones. How "cool" is that? How much rougher does someone like Spiderman have it than, say, Wolverine, who routinely slices and dices his enemies, or the Punisher who blows away criminals left and right, never needing to stop for a more creative solution that will stop the immediate threat but yet preserve an admittedly difficult set of ethics?

I think that's the missing element in today's consideration of heroes. No one thinks about how hard it is to be good, day after day, fight after fight, when it would be so much easier to resort to the more brutal methods of the anti-heroes. How much stronger must the more traditional heroes be, in order to do this type of "double duty"; resolve the situation, end the conflict, save the innocent and STILL retain the moral high ground? The anti-heroes only have to complete one half of that task.

I'm not arguing for an end to the anti-heroes, or the morally ambiguous ones, or even the trend toward more complex villains. I think all of those developments are great. What I hope to see is a newfound respect for the "good" good guys, without whose light the anti-heroes' darkness wouldn't have any definition. And while it's fine to humanize villains like "Lost"'s Ben or "The X-Files"'s Cigarette Smoking Man, a bit and acknowledge that no human being is born purely evil, and that all of us are products of the events of our lives and how we react to them, let's not kid ourselves that if we encountered similar individuals in our daily lives we would loathe them and not be particularly inclined towards investigating their childhoods for sympathy cues. Villains can be human and elicit sympathy but for the purposes of the story, they are still villains.

I don't mind, and in fact, prefer heroes who don't always live up to their own standards, but I do think it's nice to have at least one character in the ensemble who at least HAS standards to live up to.