Time I think to look at the Hero and the Villain.
Is Six a hero? Is Two a hero?
Since man first started telling stories, whether in oral or written form he has spoken of the hero. Be it Ulysses, Moses, Jesus Christ or Beowulf, heroes have always been with us.
Whether based on historical figures or fictional characters the hero says as much about the storyteller as it does the person who identifies with the hero.
All writers, be it poetry, prose, novels or screenplays by definition invest their own thoughts, dreams, fears and in some cases moral outrage of society in their works.
Stephen King once described himself as a writer, comparing himself as McDonalds to Haute Cuisine.
Heroes can be pretty obvious in some literature as are the Villains. The White hatted Cowboy vs. the Black hatted ones. Who doesn't know 'Black Bart'?
In our world the more sophisticated viewer/reader wants more of our heroes and villains. Not so black and white.
Our heroes are flawed, our Villains are flawed. They may even be more alike than either is aware of.
The hero since the ancient Greeks, male or female was someone who often from their very weakness, overcome their fears to overcome danger and adversity through self sacrifice.
"The need of the many, outweigh the needs of the one."
They are often moral examples to us. Hercules, Achilles, even Superman.
Six is certainly 'flawed'. He is morally vague, drinks too much and because of his job has and because of his own personal grief has deliberately distanced himself from his fellow man. (Holy Ebenezer Scrooge, Batman).
He rises above all this and sacrifices himself for the Good of The Village. In the Classical sense he is a hero.
But so is Two. Two has sacrificed the love of his wife on a physical plain in both New York and The Village. She exists in a comatose state in both for the benefit of the wounded. Helen/M2 is also a hero. (Heroine).
We also have the anti-hero. Also morally vague and more in it for himself/herself then for the good of the community. Somehow they manage to do good but not in a morally acceptible way.
To pull from Popular culture again Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name from the Dollar Trilogy.
The first film, "A Fistful of Dollars' (1964)is taken from the Akira Kurusawa film 'Yojimbo' (1961) and Dashiell Hammets Novel 'Red Harvest' (1929), and even Carlo Goldoni's 'Servant of Two Masters' an eighteenth century play. Everything old is new again
.
The evil Villains are greedy land barons fighting for control of the town. The sherrif is useless pandoring to either side to keep his job and his life.
In typical American Western fashion in wanders the 'Hero'
called 'Joe'in the first film. He has no compunction against killing but does so merely for profit. He does however always let the other guy draw first. Nor does he shoot people in the back or steal horses. (Ahh the code of the West.)
As he shoots up the town, dispatching both sides he takes the time to re-unite a mother and child. (isn't he just a wonderful man after all).
There is a soft side to this killer after all.
Not surprising the film became a huge hit as the war in Vietnam began to escalate.
Violence as the answer is not new in films or literature and as I've posted before something Leo McKern's Number Two pushed Number Six to 'for the good of the community'.
Who are your heroes? What do they mean to you? More imporatantly why are they your heroes?
Says a lot about us collectively and individually doesn't it?
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