Have We Lost Our True Heroes?

From time to time I like to watch tv (actually more often YouTube) with my sons. I want to know what they are watching and what influence the programming will have on my kids and on their peers. Recently I watched an episode of a show which left me in complete shock. The show's heroes were looking for a way to help a friend. In the end they chose to rob a bank, framing an adversary for the crime. After surprising my son by calling the heroes the bad guys, I had to explain how a true hero would never rob a bank. The conversation left me pondering a question: one I would like to ask you now. Have we lost our true heroes?

This is something I find myself thinking about ever since watching a PBS series covering the history of television. In one of the episodes the show's creators looked at the evolution of the television hero. Early heroes were clearly defined, often wearing white and always doing what's right. Over the decades our heroes have become more "real" which tends to translate into more flawed. As a result our heroes have picked up a tendency of wrestling with internal moral dilemmas almost as often as they wrestle with bad guys.

The PBS episode talked about a number of different heroes over the years, many of which were characters I grew up watching. My earliest memories of tv heroes were of Superman and of the Lone Ranger, though I watched them in rerun. There were people like Speed Racer, who occasionally made a wrong decision or two but always had his heart in the right place. The PBS series moved from these types of heroes to people like Hawkeye Pierce on MASH, who once performed an unnecessary surgery in order to get an inept officer off the battlefield. This moral dilemma challenged the viewer to decide if it is right to do wrong if doing so would save lives.

The PBS episode ended by talking about the show “Dexter” in which the hero kills bad guys who would have otherwise escaped justice. The official webpage for the show describes Dexter as a crime solver by day and serial killer by night. As the local forensics expert, he is able to hide his crimes from the investigators with whom he works. I have only watched one episode of Dexter which I admit I found entertaining. It is also perhaps one of the most challenging programs in which to find a true hero. Even Dexter struggles with whether or not his life as a vigilante is acceptable and so should the viewer.

While I understand the entertainment value of having a hero who also qualifies as a bad guy, the trend is still troubling especially in a show aimed at kids like the one with our friendly neighborhood bank robbers. The target audience for Dexter is old enough to process whether or not the ends justifies the means. And while most kids understand that robbing a bank is wrong, the message sent when the "heroes" are the robbers is not the one we need today. When this is what we present as good we lose something important. We lose our heroes and in the process we lose our children.