The Flaws of Appreciating a Flawed Character

  Presently, most of what I read is non-fiction. But in my early youth; and when I get a chance now, science fiction has been my genre of choice. Because of this, I am in a constant argument with my best friend about the value of a science fiction character, as opposed to the value of a serious, realistic character. (Think Star Trek vs. No country for Old Men. This argument applies to all types of storytelling.)

 

    Great works of literature always boast "complex" characters. Macbeth; Heathcliff; Dorian Gray. These characters are multidimensional, because they are not just paragons of justice and morality. These characters reflect real people's weaknesses, where "heroes" like superman or Indiana Jones do not. Superman and Indiana jones are perfect, they will never let you down, they will never lose. We know this from the very beginning of the story. They are always likable, and they can always outwit the competition. They are unrealistic because, supposedly, everything under our sun (contrary to the son of Krypton) will let you down. And stories with "realistic" characters are here to caution us against trust, against idolatry, and against hope. Because those are the realm of fairy tales.

 

    May I be the first to say fuck that. America used to be a country of heroes. We had Babe Ruth and Neil Armstrong. Our president may or may not have slept with Marilyn Monroe. We were the military demigods of the world. "The Americans are coming" meant an unstoppable force. We had nobel laureates and we had Olympians. We had heroes. Elvis. The Beatles. These were more than people--they were a personification of hope. These did not let you down. ( I don't mean to make this centered on America, and before a war starts, yes I know The Beatles were British, but they were heroes to American youth as well.)
    Now we break down our celebrities. Television Shows constantly cover rehabs and moral failings and drug addled deaths. I'm not naive enough to think heroes of the past century didn't have dark secrets--they most certainly did--but our culture didn't drag their successes over the coals of their failures. When Jimi Hendrix died, nobody laughed. Nobody made entire bodies of online comedy devoted to his "predictable descent." 

 

    Here’s my problem in a nutshell: having the flaws of our stars and “heroes” being exposed and examined has stopped being a matter of disgust and started to be a matter of acceptance. We expect every new, wonderful, person to have some fatal vice, so when it comes out that they killed their mother/molested the neighbor’s child/stolen millions of dollars from taxpayers/have done more cocaine than can be reasonable concealed on an aircraft carrier, it's not a “scandal” anymore. It is as if these things are okay because we do not expect a perfect being anymore. These things are not ok. I don’t want my heroes to be jackasses in real life. I don’t want to find out that Clark Kent beat Lois Lane. Celebrities, like it or not, are the de facto social leaders of our culture and when they are allowed to be torn down, our culture goes with it. 

 

Here’s the hard part: people are not going to stop doing horrible things in real life, and we can’t really let someone off the hook just because they are a good role model, because if they have committed an atrocity, they have kind of forfeit their legitimacy in sculpting our culture. This is not a problem in fiction however. This is why super heroes had such a powerful ethos during their prime. This is why the same tropes are still appealing to my generation today (The Marvel Motion Picture Universe). 
There is great value in knowing the weakness that mankind has within them. East of Eden, Of Mice And Men, Heart of Darkness are all extremely important books in the body of human thought because they show us the potentials for evil within ourselves. (Yes, two of those were by Steinbeck. He is my favorite author. If you haven’t read Cannery Row, it will fix all the problems in your life. Seriously.) But I do not want to live in a world where thousands of innocents are wrongfully incarcerated every year. I want to live in a world where someone like Michael Westen will help you solve the problems that are tearing you down. I want to live in a world where everyone is beautiful and witty and the biggest problems in your life can be solved by the end of a fifty minute spot, or at least by the end of the season. I want to live in a world where people always make the right moral choice. 

Yes, sometimes that’s a grey area, but nine times out of ten it’s extremely clear cut and most “grey areas” are results of the wrong moral choice some time ago. If we start living our lives more like The Avengers and less like Game of Thrones, we’ll end up living in a more healthy, more friendly society. We crave stories that are “dark” and “gritty” and “real” because those are more consistent with our expectations of the real “cold, harsh, unforgiving world.” This is all true. The world for the vast majority of people is cold, harsh and unforgiving, but has it occurred to us that such circumstances are at least subjectively horrible and that instead of seeking out a reflection of the injustice that does exist in real life, we should seek to alter our reality to instead reflect the golden age as materialized by our fantasy?

    Tell me how I am a shallow book-burner in the comments below!

The Other Case for Sports

I'd like to prime this post by saying that I have never excelled as an athlete- I played sports as a boy, less as a teenager, and play slightly more now.  I've always enjoyed it, but have never been by any account a truly competitive athlete.  I was lucky enough to grow up as an artist in a thriving community of artists; a place where my particular skills, while not physical, were appreciated.  I was regarded as normal for being a writer and not a football player, encouraged to pursue what I was good at rather than  create myself in a more common image.  But I never lost respect for athletes, or spited them for their skill- in fact I harbor deep admiration for people who dedicate their lives to doing something they love, whatever it may be.
It has, however, been a process understanding the role that professional sports play in our lives as human beings, and uniquely, as Americans.  Our national appreciation is unique only in that we were the first to elevate our athletes to the temporary divinity they enjoy- but that distinction is a marked one. To take a more holistic and long-term view of sports is more instructive, at least to me, in understanding why they are truly so important to us.  We frequently get lost in the Yahoo! blips about LeBron and the Miami Heat's Grey Goose filled chalice sipping bar tabs of $200,000, and the itemization and free-market structure of nationalized professional sports.  Many sports have come to be understood as a series of prominent stalwarts paving the way for future athletes to excel- a cinematic narrative of home runs, slam dunks, touchdowns, and the heroic personalities that score them.

But that's not the way I appreciate the game, and many of my friends who are athletes have expressed similar sentiments.
No, I think many athletes and fans alike take a more sociological appreciation to the game; and since the dreamy cataclysm that was the 2010 Giants World Series Win, a breath of friendly clarity has renewed in San Franciscans that appreciation.  As with a globalizing world, our teams have become less and less associated with the localities they are from; it was only on the dangling precipice of luck that the 2010 Giants roster flung together an amalgamation of athletes uncannily glued to the ideals of the city they would play for, and an even thinner strand of possibility that put us back on the map.  Like San Francisco, the Giants are quirky, unconventional, and decidedly confident.
2010 made me remember how a sports team can truly unite a community- putting to use not the personal faculties of the individual players, but the common stock of dedication of a group of people to bring happiness and joy to their fans.  Sports have done this for communities in the past, and still do, and it is through this lens that I admire these men and women.

 

It is through this lens that I watched the Eurocup Finals today, as Spain and Italy toiled for the most prestigious honor in the world of European sport, two nations that have, in the span of the Euro crisis, lost much of the stability that once underpinned their gloriously vivacious cultures.  Bearing through the hard times, their Futbol clubs acted again as chivalrous vicars on the grand stage- an economically beleaguered Spain pinning a 4-0 win on the green, undoubtedly producing an evening that, as I blog, is being soaked in pride and blood-red Sangria.  Now being hailed by sports columnists as potentially the greatest soccer team ever, I hope that the likes of Vicente Del Bosque and Xavi Hernandez carry the Spanish people through these difficult times, and that the Italians can stomach the results with graceful candor and similar patriotism.

As we head into the Olympics this July, four years deep into a global recession that has sunk the hopes of millions of fellow humans, let's think about these Olympians not as celebrity deities, but champions of humanity, esquires showcasing the determination and enduring spirit of our species.