Heroes

Mark Hadley | 26 February 2007

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Heroes
Seven Network
Rated M

Maybe it’s only a boy thing, but did you ever tie a tea towel around your shoulders and pretend you could fly?

I remember spending hours climbing and re-climbing our front fence with my best friend so that we could jump off with said tea towels in place. And for the fraction of a second it took for our feet to touch the ground, we were heroes.

The Seven Network’s new US purchase Heroes is likely to be one of the big performers on Australian television this year, having already collected huge audiences in the US. It taps into that desire to discover that you are more than average.

Locally, 2.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the debut episode of a drama that follows the lives of a group of teen and twenty-somethings who are beginning to discover they have extraordinary abilities. One realises his paintings contain clues to the future; another that she can instantly recover from any injury.

Their challenge is to understand what is happening to them before they are nabbed by the clandestine government agency that seems to lurk in the background of many of these dramas.

However Heroes marks an interesting departure from the superhuman men and women of the past. Previous entertainment ages required our comic and movie champions to survive some ordeal or earn their hero status. But the characters of this drama, like the X-Men of recent fame, are simply ‘born that way’. They are the product of the unstoppable progress of the human race.

The plot of Heroes is built on the back of a sort of ‘evolutionary triumphalism’. Dr. Mohinder Suresh, a lecturer on the paranormal informs his students, “Tiny variations in man’s genetic code are taking place at increasingly rapid rates … Is man entering a new gateway to evolution? Is he finally standing at the threshold to true human potential?” The implication is that this force of nature that is changing the people of our world is unstoppable, regardless of the consequences to governments, the status quo or belief systems. You might just as well decide to halt the turning of the earth itself. Change is as inexorable as the progress of a glacier.

And therein lies what is probably one of the major fault lines between programs like this one and the Christian world view. At its most basic level, the Christian faith maintains the universe rests on fundamentals that will not change. The nature of God, right and wrong, humanity’s inherent evil, the appointment of Jesus as our Saviour, the progress of all history toward a final judgement day – these are all fixed. However the evolutionist demands that all things are in a constant state of flux.

It’s not surprising then that in programs like Heroes the ‘bad guys’ are invariably linked with the powers of conservatism. In Screwtape Letters CS Lewis reflects on the word games Hell teaches people to play. Society has learned to replace “… the descriptive adjective ‘unchanged’ … [with] … the emotional adjective ‘stagnant’.” A failure to adapt, adjust and amend has thus become evidence de jure for a flawed philosophy. After all, in a universe where such evolutionary ‘leaps’ are the norm, no-one can claim to have a mortgage on things like ‘truth’.

Another difference between ‘old school’ heroes and Seven’s Heroes is the tendency to make self-awareness rather than service the ultimate goal. The champions of previous ages understood intuitively the link between the privileges they enjoyed and the responsibilities they implied. They didn’t necessarily need to know how they came to have their special powers.

However, this current crop of heroes are more concerned with their need to understand their new life, than the purposes their abilities might be put to. There are characters who seem to break the mould like Hiro Nakamura, a lowly Japanese company drone who gains the ability to teleport. His fascination with comic books leads him to conclude that “Every hero must learn his purpose. Then he’ll be tested and called to greatness.” But his role appears to be one of comic relief.

For the most part, there are no meta narratives, only personal ones. The series’ plot lines are largely driven by the characters’ need to discover themselves. This, the narrator announces, is the primary motivation of every individual. “Perhaps we would be better off not looking at all, not delving, but that is not the human nature. That is not why we are here.” One can’t help thinking though that future episodes will find these new heroes resenting the pressures their gifts bring to bear, rather than embracing opportunities to serve.

I’m the sort of guy who thinks questions over and over and over. My long drives to and from work are filled with arguments for debates I didn’t win in Year 10 and responses to tut-group philosophies I failed to combat at uni.

Someone once asked me in an interview who my heroes were – and I was stumped. But I think about it all the time now, and I have concluded that they are my dad, and his hero, Jesus. Both are definitely ‘old school’ heroes. They lived lives of sacrifice, not seeking to big-note themselves, but not shunning controversy either. They put their abilities at the service of others and didn’t avoid the associated cost. This is the sort of heroism that ultimately inspires for every day life. Not because it offers notoriety, but because you don’t need any special abilities to follow their footsteps.

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