We love paying $12.50 to immerse ourselves in the story of a fearless hero who saves the world while wearing the morals of a villain. Sometimes heroes need to kill everyone in their path, commit theft, arson, treason, betray their friends and family, and desecrate an entire city in order to save innocent lives.
We celebrate Hollywood heroes regardless of their actions, so long as they’ve got sex appeal. And movies don’t do well unless the good guys win, so we know they’ll eventually get around to saving innocent people.
Destruction comes with the territory of being a hero. When you’re on a mission with the fate of the world at stake, it’s okay to demolish an entire city killing innocents, including women and children. It’s an unfortunate “casualty of war,” as they like to say. And they’re right. The very thing that makes someone a hero is destruction – destruction of oppression.
You can’t be a hero to a group of people without destroying their oppressors. You’ll never be seen as a hero if you try to have a conversation or “work things out.” However, hero status is virtually guaranteed when you seek destructive revenge for perceived injustice relatable to others. People don’t want a hero to make their word better – they want a hero to lay down the law and teach their oppressors a lesson.
Kind of reminds me of Columbine.
Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of teenagers see Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as heroes.
In real life, we wouldn’t praise someone if they dropped a bomb on our house or executed our entire family in front of us. We wouldn’t give a damn who they were saving, and we certainly wouldn’t consider them a hero. But we’re willing to suspend those reactions in front of the big screen. Why?
Human beings are not-so-secretly fascinated with violence and destruction.
This sense of duty and mission is the reason military and spy movies are so captivating. It is in our nature to desire to feel important, to have a mission, break the rules and fly by the seat of our pants… to fail and then refine our tactics and up our game until we emerge as the victorious hero who saves the world.
But this isn’t just something kids do. This isn’t something mentally ill people do. This is something we all do.
Some of us do it by putting lives in actual danger, and some of us never take any risks at all, so we fork over $12.50 for a movie ticket every time we want to experience that adrenaline rush. We don’t want to get our hands dirty, so we let someone else do it for us; we live vicariously through characters on the big screen from the safety of our dilapidated, smelly theater seats.
Real risk is for other people. That’s why so many people see Eric and Dylan as heroes. They don’t have to get their hands dirty in order to feel like justice has been served.
Eric and Dylan took risks those people aren’t willing to take. They’re fulfilling their need to feel important by holding Eric and Dylan as heroes. They’re not willing to take the risk themselves. They’re not “there” yet. They aren’t entirely hopeless. They’re still hanging onto… something.
Risks are a requirement to play in this world.
By not taking any risks, you’re actually taking the biggest risk of all. The risk of living a mediocre life, never finding your joy and never truly living.
Dylan and Eric took the biggest risk of all. We call them cowards, but they were not cowards by any means. They faced death head-on, with no holds barred they planned and executed their own deaths. They saw it coming. They breathed it in with every inhalation. They counted down the number of meals they had left to eat on this planet. They were admittedly scared at times, but fear never stopped them.
Have you ever noticed that villains take more risks than heroes? And heroes only take risks when they wear the morals of a villain? Set aside good/bad, right/wrong and really look. It’s the villains who take the biggest risks with the biggest stakes.
I invite you to consider that perhaps we are the cowards, hiding behind our fear of death. And the reason we hate them so much is because we can’t face the way they unflinchingly embraced their own deaths.
They risked everything: their own lives, everyone else’s lives, their futures, their parents’ lives and reputation… they even risked the lives of their own friends in order to pursue their goal. Their mission mattered more than life itself.
We hate them because they gave their lives for their personal definition of freedom from oppression, yet we’re not willing to risk so much as being criticized to get what we want for our own lives.
I don’t think movies are to blame, I think movies show us what’s deeply hidden in our souls, fears, desires, and curiosities we’re too afraid to face. After all, who makes the movies? We make the movies. The big screen only shows what’s already in our hearts and minds.
Imagine if we pursued our positive dreams and goals with the same disregard for risk as Hollywood villains and school shooters have. Imagine if we were willing to die for the opportunity to pursue our big dream…
Instead, we hold back, sit on the couch, order a pizza and say, “eh, tomorrow’s another day…”
We all feel a drive to do something without anyone’s permission, to run freely through this world, without concern for anyone who may wish to stop us—and vanish through obstacles like a ghost walks through walls.
But something holds us back. Perhaps we’re not willing to risk being seen. Failure.
Maybe we’re all just winging it. Struggling and striving to keep up appearances, maintain an identity and survive.
Maybe we’re the cowards, hiding behind the fear of non-existence disguised as the fear of death. Maybe having the guts to do something with your life is a rare trait.
Maybe most people don’t feel any real urge to do anything at all until death is staring them in the face. Maybe most people only feel compelled to take action when nothing matters anymore… when suffering and death are an inevitable reality. At that point, there’s nothing left to lose. Why not put yourself out there?
Villains never wait to take inspired action.
Perhaps we can learn something from them.
Perhaps we can learn something from Eric and Dylan, too.
Regardless of their actions, they didn’t sit on the couch, gain 100 pounds eating potato chips while watching Netflix every night for twenty years, working the same boring job, complaining about the same boring people, posting the same boring shit on Facebook day in and day out.
What they did was wrong, but they’re no different than any Hollywood villain.
Think about that the next time you watch a movie and celebrate the destruction caused by the hero of the movie. Ask yourself, “why am I feeling excited to watch a virtual depiction of destruction and death, but real-life destruction and death is bothersome?”
This isn’t about Eric and Dylan.
This is about you.
What’s the difference between a destructive, yet celebrated Hollywood hero… and Eric and Dylan? Eric and Dylan are saints compared to James Bond, who has a kill count of at least 597 people. Why is Bond celebrated while Eric and Dylan are condemned?
Why do we enjoy and celebrate the depiction of violence when it’s attributed to someone we’re told is a hero?
What happened to morality?
Anyone have a Cracker Jack box? Asking for a friend…
