Heroes

Weather: Sunny, dry, mild... I might even mow the grass today.
Listening to: Faithless - No Roots
Lunch: Cap'n Crunch & Wheat Thiins (well if I'm going to tpe I can't cook too)

Since I plan on attending a discussion of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, I thought i ought to sit through the series again and get back into the frame of mind to discuss it. The first episode of the series, which features Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell discussing mythology, brought up some issues which seemed timely.

Campbell and Moyers discuss the hero's journey and transformation. Campbell uses the example of being drafted into military service as a transformation of the hero. This is followed by images of the Vietnam War as Campbell talks about the motivation of the hero... fighting for a people or an idea. Suddenly we cut to images of protestors chanting, "no war." Then Campbell says something which caught my attention. He says that a hero fights for something he believes in and that makes him a hero. You can disagree with his belief but you cannot diminish the heroism. This is an interesting point because it divorces the hero from morality. The heroism is inherent in the acts... in the drama. An ordinary man is transformed into a hero and is tossed out of the realm of ordinary men and women. He or she goes beyond the average human experience. They make a personal sacrifice for something, they achieve a perspective that is of a higher order than the average human is granted, they forge order out of chaos. So when we talk about heroes, we don't necessarily mean our personal heroes... but the hero as a type.

Ashley and I saw Zhang Yimou's Hero this weekend. It also puts a few ripples in the notion of a hero. Jet Li's character, Nameless, is assumed to be the hero... but to whom is he a hero... what side is he aligned to? The Hero is not necessarily one who fights on the side of good or for any side in particular. Nameless is transformed by his quest and it is his quest which ultimately becomes heroic. (If you haven't see Hero yet, stop reading because the ending is the enticing part of this thought...) Nameless is indeed transformed from assassin to hero at the end. He realizes something that was beyond him previosuly. Revenge is tempered into the greater good. That is to say, Nameless was motivated by a small local concern and through his pursuit of that local concern he comes to see a larger concern which eclipses his own desires. Thus, he is executed as a traitor but buried as a hero. He dies so that peace will eventually reign.

The plight of Nameless in the film is interesting as he shifts from personal scale to national scale in his perception. Arguably, the character representing Emperor Qin Shi Huangti disolves from national icon of the Qin empire to a person as Nameless gets physically closer and closer to him. The use of the Emperor's hall to illustrate this is great. The story of Nameless's exploits alters slightly each time he takes a few paces closer to the emperor. This journey from Zhou to the seat of the emperor is his hero's journey and he evolves at each pace. The climactic moment the two finally touch each other is that moment the Emperor becomes a man, and Nameless becomes the empire. One has become vulnerable and realized the view of the average man, the other has glimpsed the designs of the Emperor on a scale which he was unable to see before.

I believe Nameless did intend to kill the Emperor as planned right up until the very moment he touched him. At that crucial moment, the hero emerged from the assassin's shell. The two men inverted... became each other for split second and Nameless understood, just as Broken Sword had done previously. Nameless saved the empire and ensured peace among the seven nations under the Qin by emerging as the hero at this moment. Afterwards, Ashley and I wondered about the necessity of executing Nameless... but it is clear to me now that the assassin's shell needed to be killed in order to ensure the eternal life of the Hero he had become.