Dirk Dunbar, Director of
the Interdisciplinary Humanities AA to BA program, Okaloosa-Walton
College and University of West Florida, Niceville, FL
Abstract
American mainstream film from the 1950s
to the present has advanced a barrage of countercultural heroes
that bears witness to the shattering of traditional cultural
assumptions and to the emergence of new values that help define
popular culture. By examining the nature of the countercultural
journey across a variety of genres I hope to show how the
cinematic quest to define the characteristics of the new hero
mirrors growing perspectives regarding race, gender, sanity,
spirituality, and environmental relations.
I believe . . . to achieve this reintegration
of the repressed feminine, the masculine must undergo a
sacrifice, an ego death. The Western mind must be willing
to open itself to a reality the nature of which could shatter
its most established beliefs about itself and about the
world. This is where the real heroism is going to be (1993,
444).
Richard Tarnas
[1] Thanks largely to the 1960s Zeitgeist
and the commercial success of films with countercultural ideology,
the conventional "Hollywood" hero is not necessarily
the paragon of pride, masculinity, and aggressiveness that
he used to be. Although the "feminine side" is cliché
and dominant-vision heroes still dominate "movies for
guys who like movies," the good-over-evil protagonist
is being challenged by dissenting-voice personae who expose
and transcend, often through a painful transformation, obstacles
of sexism, racism, nationalism, and speciesism. Hundreds of
characters¾from Gandhi to ET, Billy Eliot to Patch Adams,
and Pocahontas to Erin Brockovich¾are searching for tolerance,
human potential, and environmental harmony. More apt to cry
and meditate than kill and conquer, the emerging hero seeks
a victory over the ego rather than an "evil" other
and, in the process, invokes characteristics that mirror a
larger cultural vision¾- one based in civil rights, feminism,
deep ecology, Eastern philosophy, ecopsychology, creation
spirituality, Green politics, and other movements that seek
to define human identity beyond the constructs of our capitalist
culture, militaristic mentality, and strictly patriarchal
notions of the divine. After briefly discussing the American
monomyth, I will survey a few of the "thousand faces"
of the countercultural journey that reflect the turmoil and
potentials of our current cultural moment.
The Superhero of the American Monomyth
[2] The conventionally macho Hollywood hero
does fit an archetypal pattern. He is the extroverted warrior
whose adventures end with the conquest of evil and the capture
of the treasure (the prized female and/or riches). However,
in concert with most of Western culture's myths and legends,
Hollywood has made that archetype a stereotype from the rough
and ready cowboy to Rambos, Top Guns, and Die Hards.[1] As John Shelton Lawrence and Robert
Jewett show, the "superhero of the American monomyth"
serves as "the zealous crusader who destroys evil"
and not only saves his endangered paradisiacal community but
also serves as the selfless source of communal "redemption"
(2002, 6). Unlike the Jungian warrior of "the classical
monomyth" archetype (popularized by Joseph Campbell)
that focuses on rites of initiation, the American superhero
conquers the evil other but does not need any rites of initiation
because he "requires no personal fulfillment" (2002,
357). He already holds all the answers, and, as fate would
have it, is always able to carry out his will. Careful to
honour the cultural experience and heroic traits that created
and bolster the monomyth, Lawrence and Jewett recognize that
"the monomyth's failures lie in the stereotypical identification
of who is evil, its melodramatic exaggeration of evil traits,
its facile belief in selective punishment, and the assignment
of a retributive role to nature and to superheroes" (2002,
358).
[3] One of film's early monomythic heroes,
Ben Cameron, gives birth to the Ku Klux Klan in The Birth
of a Nation (1915). Incensed by forces that threaten his
idyllic home and community, Cameron and clan rescue the "quaint"
way of life of southern belles, chivalry, honour, and supremacy.
Tellingly, the evil others are the black bucks¾including Gus,
whose attempt to rape Cameron's sister leads to her death,
and Austin Stoneman, the "Northern liberal" who
empowers Silas Lynch, the mulatto whose dream to create a
black empire imperils the Southern paradise.[2] The climax, which purportedly led to the jubilation of audiences,
occurs with the famous cross-cutting scene that shows the
ever-growing Klan on horseback coming to the rescue of angelic,
helpless women who are threatened with certain atrocities
at the hands of bloodthirsty, sex-crazed bucks. The white
men are ready to kill the women with the blunt ends of their
weapons rather than letting the blacks touch them. The movie
ends with a giant, superimposed Jesus who blesses the ballroom
of dancers celebrating the Klan's victory. Typical of the
American monomyth, the film's "pessimistic premise"
is that, as Lawrence and Jewett explain, "citizens are
merely members of a spectator democracy in which they
passively witness their redemption by a superhero" (2002,
29).
[4] The penultimate monomythic genre, the
Western captures the savage "Injun," the helpless
squaw, and the domesticated "Tonto." The cowboy's
nemesis in films from The Covered Wagon (1923) to Apache
Uprising (1966), the Native American¾if characterized
at all¾tended to be an unintelligent savage in need of domination.
In Stagecoach (1939), Geronimo, whom we never see,
and his companions haunt the trail that an eclectic crew of
passengers finds necessary to traverse. Except for a close-up
of an Indian "ally" and a reaction shot of a squaw,
in the only other scene in which Indians appear it is their
weapons not their faces that are shown. During their attack,
the dressed-in-black gunslinger holds his pistol to the head
of the woman he desires because of what we are to assume the
savages will do to her. It is left to Ringo Kid (John Wayne),
a salt-of-the-earth hero, to bring protection and justice
to the Wild West. Reminiscent of Odysseus and foreshadowing
Rocky, Ringo helps defeat the aboriginal enemy, gets his revenge
in a one-versus-three showdown, and wins his girl. In the
meantime, the native antagonists are depersonalized and demonized.[3]
[5] The monomythic hero not only lacks feminine
traits, but also demystifies and objectifies women, who have
been subject to the "male gaze" since the inception
of Hollywood.[4] James Bond films lay bare the monomythic
roles of women. Even the old, evil lesbians who are immune
to his charm (and whom he often kills) fall prey to the secret
agent's objectives. Regardless of genre, women serve as property
to be controlled, manipulated, and saved. Moreover, when "redemptive
violence" is called for, women must be avoided for their
weakness, as Lawrence and Jewett explain, make them "acquiesce
in an evil rather than destroying it" (2002, 153). Only
in "life-after-violence," when the community is
redeemed by the superhero, are women "desirable partners"
(2002, 154).
[6] The monomyth has set the stage for the
countercultural hero, who is seeking to understand a world
that is not experienced in strict black and white terms, one
that dissuades the demonized "other" and restores
archetypes that have been traditionally suppressed. As Carol
Pearson avers, we are witnessing the initiation rites that
mark the shift of the values and worldview of the Warrior
archetype to those of the Magician archetype. The warrior¾whose
journey is outward and involves self-assertion, competition,
and conquest¾is giving way to the magical inward journey that
involves a transformation of ego-dominated goals to ones of
service, healing, and compassion. According to Pearson, "The
movement from Warrior to Magician archetype hinges on the
ability to stop regarding the enemy out there as ‰not me'
and to begin seeing the shadow in oneself" (1998, 192-193).
The Archetypal Feminine
[7] As established in a vast array of fairy
tales, folktales, and films, the challenge of the archetypal
feminine is, as A.B. Chinen avows, "waking the world."
In order to wake the world, women must embark on their own
journeys, recognize and reclaim their innate power, sensitivity,
and wisdom, and incite men to acknowledge the "drug"
of male privilege (1997, 247). With the increase of multidimensional
women's roles and female directors, more women's issues are
finding mainstream audiences. For instance, If These Walls
Could Talk (1996) offers a disturbing look at abortion
and articulates the need for women's choice, and The Burning
Bed (1984) exposes the impasse that confronts abused women
who seek freedom. Norma Rae (1979) and Silkwood
(1983) are historical dramas that champion women who fight
the establishment. Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) and
The Joy Luck Club (1993) resound female solidarity
while Chasing Amy (1997) and The Tango Lesson
(1997) defy female sexual conformity.[5] Practical Magic (1998) and
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002),
though kitsch-filled, aim at feminine spirituality. Amidst
hundreds of female journeys, the end remains consistent: to
overcome patriarchy by cathartically freeing the archetypal
feminine. Thelma and Louise (1991), Contact
(1997), and The Color Purple (1985) exemplify the journey.
[8] Criticized for stereotyping men, Thelma
and Louise leave their men for a weekend alone, but embark
on a satirical "buddy-film" journey through the
Wild West¾complete with panoramic landscape shots, including
phallic-looking rock formations. Thelma is a naive housewife
who caters to her belligerent husband, while Louise is a tough,
easily provoked waitress who has been hardened by rape. The
journey begins when Louise shoots Thelma's would-be rapist
and proceeds through bouts with men who seal their demise.
After J.D. teaches Thelma the pleasures of sex and steals
their money, Thelma and Louise undergo a role reversal that
convolutes any notion of stereotype. In two decisive close-ups,
Thelma articulates her transformation: "Something's crossed
over in me"; "I don't ever remember feeling this
awake." Her proclamations are garnered by greenery in
an otherwise desert-like background. The newly empowered protagonists¾driven
by an awakened animus¾drink, smoke, cuss, discard their cosmetics
and jewelry and don men's hats and demeanors while finding
resources within that surprise even them. The gruff, muscular
policeman becomes a weeping weakling when they force him into
the trunk of his car, warning him to be good to his wife or
she may "turn out" like they did. A redneck truck
driver falls to his knees yelling at "the bitches from
hell" after they reprimand him for not respecting his
mother, sister, and wife and blow up his tanker (another phallic
symbol). The climax and resolution occur simultaneously as
the two women end the manhunt by driving off a cliff into
the womb of the Grand Canyon. In a freeze-frame, the women
are suspended in air, dramatizing their martyrdom and emphasizing
their cause is alive.
[9] Criticized for stereotyping black males,
The Color Purple is filled with heroes who battle patriarchy.
Not only is Celie raped by her "Pa" and has her
children taken from her, but she is also brutalized from childhood
to adulthood by her arranged husband, Albert, or "Mister."
She is awakened from her "slavery" mentality with
help from, among others, the preacher's prodigal daughter
Shug¾Mister's mistress. Shug's tender touch and kisses key
Celie's transformation because they ignite the awareness that
personal/sexual relations can be gentle and caring. Although
Shug's first words to Celie are "You sure is ugly,"
she teaches Celie beauty's inner quality and helps empower
her to leave Mister, who, amidst many inhumane acts, hides
Nettie's letters from Africa. His pathetic means of communicating
is symbolized by the zoom lens that fades into the mailbox,
which becomes increasingly decrepit as the film goes on, suggesting
his ever-dwindling control over Celie, nature, and his own
life. The karmic hex that she throws on Mister, who takes
it seriously, signals the film's climax as well as Celie's
newfound spiritual power. The resolution occurs when Celie
reunites with her sister and children and, from a distant
hill, a repentant Albert smiles. While the children only speak
a tribal African language, the whites are minor, background
players. Much of the hope-and-love ideology is related through
Celie's letters, the ones she receives from Nettie and those
she writes to God. The colour purple, symbolizing nature's
divine majesty, bursts from extensive shots of flowers surrounding
Celie playing "patty cake" with Nettie, walking
with Shug, and at the reunion. As a motif the colour affirms
the sacred connection between nature and women.
[10] Unlike Celie and Thelma and Louise,
Dr. Ellie Arroway is introduced in Contact as a woman
beyond stereotypes, despite her dependence on a father figure
(which offended some feminist critics). A confident scientist
who has suppressed her "women's intuition" in favour
of machines, data, and mathematical probabilities, Ellie has
dedicated her life to the discovery of extraterrestrial life¾which
she does in the process of recovering her stifled feminine
qualities. Her catalyst, Palmer Joss, is a liberal religious
leader who¾in touch with his "feminine side"¾is
studying the effects of technology on third world countries
when they meet. He constantly challenges Ellie's atheism and
obsession with rationality and gives her a compass that serves
as the film's primary motif. While fighting patriarchal forces
(from her boss to a Christian terrorist), Ellie undergoes
a transformation via a trip through a cosmic birth canal to
a distant planet, Vega. She arrives in a fetal position surrounded
in the womb of her suddenly invisible spaceship, which¾in
one of many exaggerated scenes¾quivers when she touches it.
The experience reshapes her understanding of higher powers
and the sacred in nature. She finds comfort in her alien-incarnate
Father, but it is nature's beauty that validates her ecstatic
revelation and mitigates her consuming scientific convictions
with cosmic reverence.
[11] Thelma and Louise, The Color
Purple, and Contact impart strong ecofeminist messages.
Emphasizing the close connection between nature and the archetypal
feminine, all three films utilize powerful landscape shots
wherein the protagonists experience moments of self-realization,
solace, and renewal. Their attempts to "wake the world"
to male prejudice and attitudes of dominion are amplified
by the stars, the canyons, the flowers, and other natural
conduits to the awareness that tolerance and compassion are
not only prerequisites to being humane, but also signal our
planetary purpose.
Afrocentric Journeys
[12] Unlike the female hero, whose liberation
was gradual, the rise of the black hero,¾specifically the
male,¾was meteoric. Counting the success of non-Hollywood
"race movies" from filmmakers such as Oscar Micheaux,
mainstream roles for blacks changed abruptly with the rise
of one actor, Sidney Poitier.[6]
Poitier's characters spoke to authority-questioning youth,
carried the aims of the civil rights movement, and fit black
archetypes into a white world, which is why¾beyond the packaging¾the
actor was Hollywood's number one box-office star in 1967.[7] Archetypal black journeys have become common
mainstream themes. The made-for-television Roots (1977)
made famous the character Kunta Kinte who is kidnapped from
his homeland and suffers slavery. The miniseries follows his
and his descendants' journey from captivity to liberation.
Shaka Zulu (1983)¾also made for television¾captures
the effects of colonialism and tries valiantly to do so through
the eyes of a proud Zulu leader and his tribe. Sounder
(1972), nominated for best film, actor (Paul Winfield), and
actress (Cicely Tyson), tells the story of a black sharecropping
family in Depression-era Louisiana whose love overcomes poverty
and racism. Tyson also received acclaim for her role in The
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1973), which depicts
the protagonist's life from childhood as a plantation slave,
through the Civil War and Reconstruction, to the civil rights
movement. Many Civil War and civil rights movies contain multidimensional
black roles, three of which were played by Denzel Washington.
He depicted the murdered South-African activist, Steven Biko,
in Cry Freedom (1987), won an Academy Award for his
role as a soldier in a black regiment in the Civil War movie
Glory (1989), and portrayed Malcolm X (1992)
in Spike Lee's film.
[13] The most prolific black mainstream
filmmaker to date, Spike Lee has navigated a vast terrain
of cinematic techniques and inter- and intra-racial themes.
The award-winning Do the Right Thing (1989) assails
stereotypes and bigotry. An actor-to-camera montage of a black,
white, Puerto Rican, and Korean spewing slurs against one
another captures the intent: to show the absurdity of hatred.
Whether or not Mookie should have thrown the garbage can through
Sal's window is left for the viewer to decide, but the act
did transfer the hatred directed at Sal and sons to the business.
The thematic ambiguity is marked by the film-ending quotations
of the pacifistic Martin Luther King, Jr. and the young, angry
Malcom X¾- one of many binary opposites that carry the film.[8]
The colour red, the strongest motif besides Public Enemy's
Fight the Power, emphasizes the destructive power of
heat, fire and hatred¾which is counterbalanced by the cooling
and healing powers of water (including showers, ice, and the
party at the fire hydrant). Jade is the sister/mentor archetype
to her money-counting brother, Mookie. The soft-spoken Jade
is also the binary opposite of the angry, outspoken Tina,
who, like most women in the film (young and old), tries to
incite the value of fatherhood and male responsibility. While
revealing opposites in confrontation, Lee seeks a union and
balance, which is conveyed clearly by the archetypal World
Parents, Mother Sister and Da Mayor, who serve as moral guides
of the community and, after overcoming their differences,
are "still standing" at the end.
[14] Lee's focus on the "hood"
helped make it a common subject. However, àà
la blaxploitation and other inversions of the American
monomyth, most of the stories concentrate on men and are riddled
with gratuitous violence¾as in New Jack City (1991),
Juice (1992), and Menace II Society (1993).
[9] John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood (1991) is regarded, fairly
and unfairly, as the prototype of gangsploitation films. Nominated
for best director and screenplay and one of the highest money-making
films made by a black, Boyz relates the coming-of-age
tale of Tre Styles in the midst of gang violence. Although
women are depicted as crack-using "hos," dependent
girlfriends, and lazy welfare mothers, Singleton breaks the
fatherless black-family stereotype by providing Tre with a
loving father, Furious Styles, who teaches the value of nonviolence,
afrocentric awareness, and lessons regarding culturally biased
IQ tests and racial genocide. The movie-ending call to "increase
the peace" represents Singleton's thematic intent and
the violence that occurred following the original showing
verifies the film's urgency.[10]
[15] Along with the increase of black filmmakers
and cinemas in black communities, the advance of black themes
involves the rise of successful "indies." Kasi Lemmons'
Eve's Bayou, the highest grossing indie of 1997, breaks
stereotypes by depicting a wealthy black Louisiana family's
fight with dysfunctional relationships, and does so through
the eyes of Eve, the youngest daughter who confronts her family's
failures in a brutally honest manner. The indie Slam
(1998) relays the journey of Raymond Joshua, who is sent to
prison for selling marijuana. Many scenes were shot with actual
inmates in a Washington D. C. prison, which, along with montages
of ghettos and graveyards, call for a new male identity in
black urban communities. Joshua confronts his inner and outer
battles through poetry, which¾along with his nurturing fellow
poet, Lauren¾becomes his source of salvation. A redeemed Raymond
returns to the drug and violence-infested "Dodge City"
preaching the absurdity of an "eye-for-an-eye" moral
code and the power of nonviolence.
[16] The abundance of black archetypes in
film reflects a growing awareness of African and African-American
ancestry, history and mythology, tribal religions and rituals,
fashions and names, and song and customs. Called "Afrocentricity,"
a term popularized by Molefi Asante, that awareness serves
as "the transforming power" that seeks to engage
"our collective will to peace and consciousness"
(1988, 94). Afrocentricity recognizes race as a political
concept, not "a biological or anthropological fact";
and once accepted, it forces us to see movies, other people,
politics, and religion with new eyes (1988, 95). Afrocentricity
not only clarifies the black cause but also serves as a universal
challenge to create an egalitarian society,¾a challenge that
more and more filmmakers are invoking.
From Injuns to Earth Wisdom
[17] While most pre-World War II movies
reinforce the "Injun" stereotype, most post-Vietnam
movies exalt Native American cultures. For better and for
worse, the themes tend to fall into three overlapping camps:
those that parade Indian protagonists as reconstructed "Thanksgiving"
heroes, ones that display the renegade as a good-over-evil
protagonist, and those that present the white-man-turned-Indian
hero. In the first camp are films such as Squanto: A Warrior's
Tale (1994) and Tecumseh: The Last Warrior (1995),
wherein the evils against the Indians are predictably told
and the vengeful warrior of each film settles the dispute
with little violence, hatred or realism. The second group
is exemplified by the Billy Jack trilogy (1971, 1974,
1977), which portrays a Native-American/hippie neophyte who,
time after time, upstages his oppressors with quasi-civil
rights pontification and lots of violence. His "Indian"
rituals include getting bitten repeatedly by a rattlesnake
that makes him "one" with "brother snake."
In a more legitimate but still conventional manner, Thunderheart
(1992) relays the story of an FBI agent who has neglected
his Native American heritage but, via a "cowboy and Indian"
battle on sacred ground, undergoes his own vision quest and
conquers the evil-doing white businessmen. The vision quest
is aided by the Indian sheriff/shaman, played by Graham Greene,
the (Canadian) Sidney Poitier of Native American films. The
German "Indianerfilms"¾such as in Sons of the
Great Bear (1966) and Apaches (1973)¾fit here.
[18] Movies such as Little Big Man (1970),
A Man Called Horse (1970), and The Last of the Mohicans
(1992) break stereotypes and even offer insights into Native-American
sensibilities, but do so through the eyes of white men. Dances
with Wolves (1990), the apex of the "white Indian"
genre, charts the transformation of Lieutenant John Dunbar,
who is introduced as a depressive bent on committing suicide
by riding into the front lines of the Confederates. He survives
and, given his choice of posts as a reward, decides to move
to the frontier "before it's gone." He chronicles
his interaction with the Lakota Sioux, who are allowed to
speak their native tongue (which is conveniently taught to
Dunbar by an Indian-integrated white woman who becomes his
"squaw"). Fittingly, the first word exchanged between
Dunbar and the tribe's Holy Man is "buffalo," for
it is the relationship to the animal that epitomizes the conflict
between the white man and the Indians. In a riveting scene,
the Sioux undertake a sacred buffalo hunt but kill only the
ones they need, whereas another scene shows a field of rotting
carcasses left by the white men who kill for the tongues and
pelts. Although Dances with Wolves does little to depict
the myths, rituals, and spirituality inherent in Native-American
earth wisdom, like a growing number of movies, it shares a
strong environmental message based on an alternative worldview.
[19] The first completely Indian-made film,
Smoke Signals (1998), focuses on friendship, love,
loss, reunion, atonement, and reservation life. Scripted by
Sherman Alexie and directed by Chris Eyre, the film features
two Coeur d'Alene Indians¾- the strong, athletic Victor and
the quirky, story-telling Thomas¾- who go on a trip to retrieve
the ashes of Victor's father. Victor tries to teach Thomas
to be a stoic, angry brave, but it is Thomas and Suzy Song
who help Victor forgive his father and confront his own demons.
While the trip serves as a vision quest, the film aims at
exonerating Indian fathers for the evaporation of their culture.
Besides jesting about John Wayne and Dances with Wolves,
it decries Indian alcohol abuse and the mainstream socialization
of their culture. With less humour and more anger, Eyre's
Skins (2002) also depicts reservation life. During
the opening credits a narrator relays data regarding the joblessness,
alcoholism, and death rate on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
(the poorest county in the U.S.) over a montage of graveyard
pictures at Wounded Knee¾situated in the middle of the reservation.
The enemy is alcohol, the authorities that allow its rampant
distribution, and Native helplessness. The elixir is brotherly
love, forgiveness, and symbolic justice. Shortly after his
brother dies an alcoholic's death, the other well-intending
hero, Rudy Yellow Lodge, throws a bucket of paint from the
top of the Mount Rushmore, leaving a red tear running down
George Washington's face.
[20] The shift in projections of Indians
can be summarized as the transformation of the savage Injun
to the noble savage to, if the trend continues, a subjectively
authentic Native American. The first shift, as Robert Berkhofer
explains, simply inverts the monomythic structure by casting
the benign "countercultural Indian" as a good rather
than bad stereotype in order to deflect "some Whites'
disquietude with their own society" (1979, 103). Without
trivializing the aboriginal earth wisdom that propels much
of religious rhetoric of popular culture, to stereotype Indians
as the mystic healers and keepers of nature's secrets is¾as
S. Elizabeth Bird attests¾to keep Indians "deeply impersonal
and distanced, once again ignoring Indian people as individuals
and allowing real Indian people no subjectivity" (1998,
11). One can only hope that more movies such as Smoke Signals,
wherein Native American archetypes, heritage, and individuality
meet, continue to find mainstream audiences.[11]
From Teddies to Hippies
[21] As feminist and civil rights sensibilities
found voice in film, movies such as The Wild One (1953),
Rebel without a Cause (1955), and Easy Rider
(1969) suggest how the youthful counterculture turned the
forms of revolt into principles of revolution. The original
antihero, Johnny, leads his delinquent group of teddies (the
Black Rebels Motorcycle Club) against a town (Wrightsville)
of god-fearing citizens¾and their right-wing sheriff¾who have
no understanding or compassion for the free spirits. That
lack of understanding drives Johnny and cohorts to anti-social
behavior and incites the citizens-turned-mob beating of the
existential hero, making him the first cinematic martyr of
the generation gap. Johnny's love for a local girl tempers
his rage, and, in an atypical act for a male hero, he cries.
The tears signal his need for compassion and the inability
of society to fulfill that need, a given for James Dean's
characters. The epitome of misunderstood youth, the rebel
Jim Stark and his companions, Judy and Plato, seek love from
their dysfunctional families. Stark's parents are content
to move from town to town to avoid confronting the source
of their son's inevitable social troubles. Stark's alienation
from his weak, compliant father and over-bearing mother is
allayed by the death of Plato (a name loaded with Western
values), at which time the weeping son falls to his knees
and embraces his Dad's legs, thereby bringing order to home
and society.
[22] The fate of the easy-riding heroes,
Wyatt and Billy, is void of resolution and signifies a deeper
pathos between society and the emerging counterculture. "Captain
America" and Billy are blown off their motorcycles by
a redneck's shotgun because the low-budget, non-Hollywood
script was not beholden to cinema's classical paradigm and
because the new martyrs knew there was more to life than submitting
to Western culture's internalized voices of authority. So
they sell drugs, throw away their watches, and travel across
America in search of adventure, which includes tripping on
LSD in a graveyard, practicing free love, facing bigotry in
all shapes and forms, partaking in a commune, and memorializing
Route 66. Advancing causes of beats, hippies, and intentional
communities, Wyatt and Billy incarnate the spontaneity, ecstasy,
and earth-centered spirituality that the film¾- amplified
by rock‑ and‑roll anthems about peace, freedom,
and the new values¾- aspires to ordain.[12]
The Surge of Countercultural Heroes
[23] All kinds of countercultural heroes
have questioned status-quo values, norms, and stereotypes.
Anti-heroes, superheroes, aliens, gays, and the mentally and
physically challenged are just a few in the myriad. The antihero
may be the protagonist furthest on the outskirts of social
conformity. The fascination with antiheroes¾demonstrated by
the success of Taxi Driver (1976), Pulp Fiction
(1994), and Fight Club (1999)¾indicates a growing dissatisfaction
with stereotypes and questions the very identity of the Hollywood
hero. For instance, the heroes of Fight Club turn out
to be the same dysfunctional person who narrates the film
in a stream of consciousness way that identifies the symptoms
and sources of his pathology,¾namely, insomnia, dissociation,
a dehumanizing job, unnatural relationships, obsessive hatred
of consumerism, and violence. Hoping to crash while flying
around the country to attend fight clubs that he created to
help him and other disaffected young men exorcise their frustrations,
the protagonist/antagonist runs headlong into his painful
self-discovery. His journey is a social commentary. So is
Aileen Wuornos' in Monster (2003). A lost soul who
is victim as well as victimizer, her journey not only implicates
society for her plight, but also allows viewers to comprehend
her misanthropic deeds. The movies does not make her horrific
killings more palatable, nor is she absolved, nor are we meant
to necessarily sympathize or identify with her, but we are
asked to recognize her humanity and our own cultural dilemmas
in a world filled with acts of terror.
[24] Superheroes have also donned "darker"
faces. Figures such as Superman (a monomythic supersaviour
in the 1978 version) have given way to id-based creatures
that have to overcome their own shadows before they can save
the innocent. Although their powers are a boon to the community,
they are a curse to the superhero. The hideous Darkman
(1990) whose mutation brings his superhuman strength, the
1992 Batman whose dark side is psychoanalyzed, the
Shadow (1994) who knows "what evil lurks in the
hearts of men," and the beasts Hulk (2003) and
Hellboy (2004) are just a few superheroes that¾while
remaining true to the monomyth¾put into question the conventional
boundaries of "good" and "evil," at least
as they are perceived internally. The shadow/dark side is
demonized, but it is also recognized as part of the superhero
and not just an evil other "out there." The quintessential
example is Star War's Darth Vader, who is not only
revealed as the Father of the rebellion's saviour, but also¾following
his redemption¾as part of the divine triune with Yoda and
Obi-Wan.
[25] While Earth-threatening, lizard- or
bug-like aliens in movies such as Aliens (1986) and
Starship Troopers (1997) are fashioned after those in
War of the Worlds (1953), newer depictions show a kind,
highly intelligent being, as in ET (1982), Starman
(1984), and K-Pax (2001). Such figures defy the violent
characterization of extra terrestrials and indicate that ours
is not a cold, unfriendly cosmos. The consummate alien saviour
archetype may be ET who descends from the heavens, shares
his love, heals others (including plants), dies, is reborn,
and returns to the stars. ET becomes one with Eliot, symbolizing
that only as a child can one enter the cosmic kingdom. Following
the same journey in different costume, with the same innocence
and purity, Starman and Prot (the hero from K-Pax whose human/alien
identity is left for the viewer to decide) confirm the need
for love, trust, and environmental harmony,¾all of which is
insinuated as realizable should humans learn to assure further
evolutionary adventures. As Caron Schwartz Ellis states, "Our
spacemen are important to us: They give us hope in a world
in which our vision of the stars is obscured by pollution
and the potential for nuclear holocaust" (1995, 93).[13] Hope in the future defines the
Star Trek worldview, which, as Michael Jindra shows,
"is one of the most visible locations to witness religion
in popular culture" (2000, 168).
[26] The influx of gay heroes, as chronicled
in the Celluloid Closet (1996), is marked by a shift
from either comic "sissy" figures or brutal victimizers
to sensitive, intelligent protagonists. As a production line
from the film states, "Hollywood, that great maker of
myths, taught straight people what to think about gay people,
and gay people what to think about themselves." Once
overwhelmingly negative, those views are changing by virtue
of sympathetic, compassionate roles in films such as My
Own Private Idaho (1991), The Birdcage (1996),
and Philadelphia (1993). Although Philadelphia,
the most commercially successful of the group,¾minimizes gay
identity and lifestyle in favor of mass appeal, viewers are
exposed to the fear and suspicion of Joe Miller when he meets
Andrew Beckett and are meant to experience his catharsis as
the two become friends. Also questioning social norms, the
heroes in Rain Man (1988), Forrest Gump (1994),
and I Am Sam (2001) refute the roles¾à la
Psycho (1960)¾traditionally accorded the mentally challenged.
Although the films create their own kind of stereotypes while
trying to defuse stereotypes, the intent is noble: to redefine
popular notions of what it means and how it feels to be handicapped.
Similarly, the twelve year-old dwarf Simon Birch (1998),
breaks physically handicapped stereotypes by acting on a mission
that he claims was sent to him from God. While saving a group
of children by prying open the door of their submerged bus,
he dies, thus fulfilling his martyrdom.
[27] Many countercultural heroes¾from doctors,
teachers, and soldiers to lawyers and politicians¾challenge
norms from within the system after experiencing an awakening
that leaves them questioning their professions, relationships,
and even their reasons for being. Patch Adams (1998)
is introduced as a suicidal man who, helping a fellow patient
in a mental institution, discovers his purpose:¾to become
a doctor. Advocating joy, laughter and love to "treat
the person" as well as the illness, Adams prevails despite
being indicted by colleagues for attempting to "destroy
objectivity" and demoting doctors "to the level
of our patients." Facing similar accusations, John Keating,
the nonconformist teacher in Dead Poets Society (1989),
incites his students to think "outside the box"
in ways that so disturb the administration, faculty, and parents
of an elite private school that, predictably, he is forced
to resign¾only to be redeemed by his students' climactic goodbye.
[28] Senator Jay Bulworth transforms his
political platform after planning then averting¾following
his (dark night of the soul) suicide in Bulworth (1998).
Renewed, he disregards his previous rhetoric and blares out
truth as he sees it through rap songs. Incited in part by
an old black muse who appears to him intermittingly, Bulworth's
"vulgar" style of communicating and incrimination
of bankers, the film industry, and oil and insurance companies
for their destructive greed, make him a champion of the oppressed.
He not only finds newfound purpose and vigor, but also triggers
hope and responsibility in those around him. After Bulworth
is reelected and then shot by his insurance agent, the film
ends outside the Sinai Hospital with old black prophet restating
the subtext: "Be a spirit, not a ghost." The transformation
motif also drives Civil Action (1998), which is based
on a successful lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, whose life is changed
while indicting a tanning company that is contaminating a
rural community's water. He is introduced as a hypocrite claiming
that the patient's pain "becomes my pain," but slowly
learns to empathize with them, their plight, and their environmental
cause. In the end he forgoes a huge payment to stand by his
clients who, ultimately, help free him from himself.
[29] Unlike classical war heroes who overcome
evil enemies in Gung Ho (1943) and The Green Berets
(1968), an increasing number of protagonists recognize war
itself as the enemy. Heroes in The Deer Hunter (1978),
The Killing Fields (1984), and Thin Red Line
(1999) see the evil "other" as depression, alienation,
and insanity, and try to understand human purpose in the face
of war's hell. The title, The Deer Hunter, foreshadows
the transformation of Michael, who kills a deer early in the
film and purposely misses a big buck that he chases into a
face-to-face confrontation near the movie's end. On the first
hunting trip Michael explains angrily to his bewildered friends
the art of "one shot" in killing a deer (a metaphor
that turns excruciating during the Russian roulette scenes).
Holding up a bullet and exclaiming the Zen dictum, "This
is this! This is this!", Michael affirms the seriousness
of death and the sacredness of life. Packed with religious
iconography, brutal war scenes, gender wars, and the insanity
that accompanies human violence, the film remythologizes Christianity
around Michael, who returns home from Vietnam wearing the
scars of war that make small talk, deception, and the fabricated
roles of daily life intolerable. Friends slip the epithets
"Jesus" and "Christ" in front of his name
and, right before his covenant with Nick, Michael,¾drunk and
angry,¾strips naked and collapses into a crucifix on the asphalt.
The resolution begins on the second hunting trip when, surrounded
by a mountainside and near a powerful waterfall, Michael fires
his final, deer-freeing "one shot," looks the buck
in the eyes and asks softly, "Okay?" He then turns
to the waterfall and screams "Okay?" in hopes of
redemption with nature.[14]
Finding the True Self
[30] The search for authenticity defines
a genre of countercultural heroes, as in Billy Elliot
(2000), Pleasantville (1998) and The Truman Show
(1998). Billy Elliot, in the face of internal doubt and social
condemnation, finds himself through dance. Using the money
his father gave him to take boxing lessons, Billy sneaks into
a ballet class and realizes his passion for life as well as
dance. Dance not only offers him a nontraditional rite of
passage but also, as Thomas Kerkhoven (2003) suggests, impels
him through a cycle of self-awareness,¾a cycle that emulates
the mythology of Shiva Nataraja, the Dancing Lord. David and
Jennifer, the heroes in Pleasantville, are transported
from their mundane daily life into the utopian 1950s town
on TV. Literally serving as the harbinger of the 'sixties
Zeitgeist, David questions authority, incites emotion, promotes
rock-and-roll, and brings change to a "Father Knows Best"
town where nothing changes. One by one, the characters turn
from black and white into coloor as they "turn on"
to the new culture. Also captured in a TV plot, Truman Burbank,
the hero of The Truman Show and the first infant ever
adopted by a corporation, is the unwitting actor in a mechanized
world that depends on conformity. The false paradise and the
technocratic powers of Christof (or "anti-Christ")
holds Truman "safe" in its artifice, but cannot
deter him from his quest. From the depths of his basement/unconscious
the "true man" plots his reconstructed self.[15]
With help from a woman who offers him love and a glimpse of
true personhood, Truman literally runs into the edge of the
only existence he knows, appears to walk on water, and exits
through a door on the horizon of the fake world.
[31] The heroes in Seven Years in Tibet
(1997) and The Fisher King (1991) also retrieve messages
from the unconscious, but do so by transcending their formidable
egos. Seven Years in Tibet begins with Heinrich Harrer
leaving his pregnant wife to go climb Nanga Parbat in the
Himalayas. Although he departs in pursuit of an egocentric
calling, his initiation includes being a prisoner of war and
a tutor for the Dalai Lama, and his return finds him transformed
on a mountaintop with his son. The movie's theme, articulated
by the Tibetan tailor, proclaims that Western culture honours
men "who push their way to the top" while Easterners
emulate those "who abandon the ego." Harrer learns
from the Dalai Lama that "life is dear to all" and,
inevitably, the Tibetan cause becomes his.[16] Also introduced as self-indulged,
the "fisher king," Jack Lucas¾- a successful radio
talk show host¾- falls into an abyss that conquers him. Minutes
after practicing the fateful words, "Forgive me,"
while putting on a facial in the bathtub, Jack watches a news
bulletin that indicts him because a caller took his anti-yuppie
message seriously and killed patrons of a trendy restaurant.
His fall is immediate and lasts three years (three seconds
on the screen). Saved physically then spiritually by Parry,
Jack discovers that Parry's wife was killed at the restaurant
and, as a result, Parry the professor became the mad and homeless
street knight. Mixing his study of the Fisher King with demonic
hallucinations, brutal flashbacks, and the idea that the Holy
Grail could¾along with his newfound love¾heal him, Parry pushes
Jack into the role of saviour. Fighting Parry's demons, Jack
brings Parry the Grail (a millionaire's trophy) and frees
him from a coma's grip. The act, of course, liberates Jack,
as is demonstrated in his movie-ending declaration of love
for his misused, but faithful girlfriend, Anne, who is linked
to the Grail as a symbol of the nurturing feminine. While
Parry shouts the subtext¾- the need for "a reverence
for all forms of life"¾- to Jack's assailants, Jack fulfills
the plot through self-redemption.
The Classical to the Countercultural Saviour
[32] Lawrence and Jewett maintain that the
"supersaviors in pop culture function as replacements
for the Christ figure, whose credibility was eroded by scientific
rationalism" (2002, 6-7). While they offer many examples
and convincing explanations, the overwhelming commercial success
of The Passion of the Christ (2004) offers a stark
exception to their premise. The Passion proves that
at least some elements of the Christian narrative can still
drive the American monomyth, wherein the passive, even "guilty"
community is redeemed through the hero via excessive "redemptive
violence." Rather than exhorting the violence as typical
monomythic saviours do, the hero endures the sadistic torture
inflicted by the evil others, including the repulsive Jewish
clergy, the hateful Roman soldiers, and androgynous-looking
Satan who appears at the filmmaker's whim throughout the movie.
In line with the American monomyth, the major actors are white
and Christ, a physically imposing figure, is aided by divinely
ordained fate that helps him carry out his redemptive social
task in selfless perfection.[17]
[33] Along with Luke Skywalker, whose journey
George Lucas pulled wittingly from Campbell's Hero of a
Thousand Faces, Neo in Matrix (1999) typifies both
the classical hero's journey and the monomythic saviour.[18] The Call begins when Anderson
(Neo's "unreal" name) reads the words "wake
up" on his computer. The Departure from the "ordinary
world" starts when he follows the "white rabbit"
and chooses the red pill. Refusing to accept that "He
is the one," Neo (the "new" Christ) begins
the Initiation with help from his guides, Morpheus and Trinity.
Born again, physically and spiritually, complete with amniotic
fluids and multiple umbilical chords, he transcends the mechanistic
world controlled by artificial intelligence. The real world¾laid
waste by nuclear weapons¾is part of the subtext relayed distinctly
by Agent Smith to Morpheus: humans, whom he likens to a virus,
are incapable of living in harmony with the environment. Neo
accepts his plight and eats the goo and lives in a dungeon-like
spacecraft but enters the matrix to find out, with the help
of allies, who he is. His descent into hell, prompted by the
"Judas" Cypher, is symbolized in his return to save
Morpheus (the amorphous "Father"). After Neo dies
and is reborn via a kiss from Trinity (the fairy princess/holy
spirit), he fulfills the Oracle's prophecy by learning to
control the matrix and reaches the final stage, the Return.
His message,¾the revelation gleaned from the unconscious and
carrying overtones of Eastern philosophy,¾is explicit. In
the final scene, while setting the stage for the sequels,
he talks to the audience from a payphone, claims that the
new world order is irrepressible, and ascends to the heavens.
[34] Despite the persistence of monomythic
saviours, countercultural ones¾as in Powder (1995),
Phenomenon (1996), and Stigmata (1999)¾are prevalent.
Like ET, Powder is a race-free, androgynous hero who serves
as a mirror to others and wishes only to return home. His
extraordinary abilities stem from being in the womb when his
Mother gets hit by lightning. Super-intelligent, innocent,
empathic, and "like a little child," Powder represents
the energy that connects all existence. Although the science
is flimsy, the film prescribes education, pantheism, environmental
awareness, and compassion. Besides being lifted into a cruciform
position by the electricity generated by the Jacob's ladder
in his science class, Jeremy (Powder's name) is able to read
and transfer the thoughts of those around him, an ability
that lets the redneck deputy experience the anguish of the
dying deer he shot. After overcoming the bigotry of classmates
and doctors, Powder ascends unsurprisingly into the heavens
in the final scene through a lightning storm¾leaving behind
his legacy of human potential.
[35] George Malley imparts the same legacy
in Phenomenon. Malley receives his extraordinary abilities
after he is hit with what appears to be a supernatural light
descending from the night sky (the hallucination, we learn
later, is the result of a brain tumor). He too has powers
of telepathy, telekinesis, a photographic memory, awareness
of life's connectedness, and unending compassion. Also hunted
by governmental and scientific authorities, George was a stable
part of a healthy community until his powers became manifest¾which,
though he uses them to save the life a young Portuguese, triggers
a persecution that only his closest friends see through. After
attempting to "tell the people" what is happening
to him, George retreats to his girlfriend's home to die. He
shares an apple with Lacey's children, explaining to them
that like the apple they ingest, he is part of them as they
are part of everything. Tuned to a thought-provoking rock-and-roll
soundtrack, the theme that life comprises inseparable forms
of energy is reiterated through George's constant realization
that his abilities are not willed by him, but gained through
a "partnership" with nature. The major motif, the
wind blowing through the tree tops, brings George enlightenment
while he is hoeing in the garden and¾after his death¾fills
Lacey with peace. After she rocks her children in rhythm with
the swaying, the resolution is jump cut to the final scene
wherein friends gather to celebrate the birthday and purity
of the dead hero.
[36] One of mainstream cinema's rare female
"Christ" figures, Frankie Page undergoes a transformation
in Stigmata. She is introduced as single, an atheist,
and a hair stylist who drinks, smokes, cusses, and fornicates.
Her internal conflict is foreshadowed during the credits by
a montage of blood, Jesus on the cross, and Frankie "sinning,"
which is amplified by Billy Corgan's hard-rocking but chant-filled
Whatever Happened to Mary. Her stigmata experiences
are pure melodrama but the message inflicted upon her, that
"The kingdom of heaven is within you and all about you,"
comes from the ancient Gnostic text, The Gospel According
to Thomas. Helped by Andrew Kiernan, a scientist-turned-priest,
Frankie survives the church's witch-hunt and, in an Exorcist-like
scene, is crucified. Gradually, she conquers her sinful habits
and¾as Hollywood would have it¾becomes a St. Francis-like
nature mystic. Symbols such as the sun, doves, flowers, wind,
water, and fire reveal that spirituality is not a matter of
dogma, priests, or buildings, but an internal experience of
the divine as nature.
The Environmental Hero
[37] Witness to the boundary-free "categories"
constructed here, most of the heroes that I have discussed
carry an environmental message intended to ignite earth-centered
spirituality. The protagonists in Instinct (1999) undergo
nature-based transformations tailored to that message. Ethan
Powell is an anthropologist who abandons human culture in
favor of the gorillas he studies and learns to love. Imprisoned
for killing two of the game wardens that killed his "family"
of primates, Ethan teaches his psychiatrist, Theo Calder,
the value of the aboriginal love of nature. Distinguishing
between the industrial "takers" and the primal "sustainers,"
he insists that the obsession with dominion has wreaked environmental
havoc and alienated us from the more-than-human world. Attempting
to link sanity with earth wisdom, he also reveals ways in
which social institutions and hierarchies perpetuate their
own ends by creating human "game-players" unaware
of their enslavement to the system and, ultimately, of their
planetary purpose. The strongest motif¾symbolizing baptism¾begins
with Ethan when, amidst the gorillas, he lifts his arms in
a crucifix position and raises his face to the falling rain
and ends with Theo doing the same in the middle of the street.
[38] The first cinematic environmental hero
may have been the animated Little Hiawatha (1937),
the Indian boy who, on the journey to become a hunter, befriends
the animals he intended to kill. Animated environmental heroes
are standard. Pocahontas (1995) shows John Smith that
it is the colonialist attitude that is "savage"
and destructive to life's ecosystems. With help from Grandmother
tree, Smith learns the folly of pushing his worldview and
values on tribal people who have sustained a long tradition
of harmony with nature. The fairy Krista in Fern Gully
(1992) teaches Zack the lumberman a similar lesson and, in
a pivotal scene, asks him to feel the tree's pain on which
he carved her name. The smoke rising from the forest-destroying
machine literally becomes the beast of technocracy, which
is overcome by the fairies' trust and the magic of Krista's
rebirth. The circle of life, a subtext in both Pocahontas
and Fern Gully, is the dominant theme of The Lion
King (1994),¾Disney's first animated film featuring only
animals since Bambi (1942). As Mufassa explains to
Simba, grass is consumed by antelope, which are devoured by
lions that, upon death, return to the ground to continue life's
circle. The Pride Lands dry up when "the balance of nature"
is tipped. The restoration plays on Christian myth and the
animals are, as usual, anthropomorphized, but the film clearly
indicates that Hollywood's transformed hero includes the animal
kingdom.[19]
Conclusion
[39] Via commercial success, the countercultural
hero has become a commodity, which helps explain why the journeys
of the new hero, male and female, still suffer from Hollywood
kitsch¾and not just when it comes to endings. In most countercultural
films, the forces representing authority, modernity, and technology
are portrayed as a mandatory evil. Even in films where good-and-evil
binary opposites are mitigated, they are transmuted regularly
into ideologies that depict battles between culture and nature,
technocracy and the counterculture, aggression and cooperation,
and other polarities that pit the violently ignorant against
the enlightened. In short, despite fundamental changes in
character, the stereotypical structure of the Hollywood hero¾which
represents "us" against "them"¾is deeply
ingrained in the film industry and the Western psyche. But
a transformation is taking place. Despite the continued impact
of the American monomyth, a new hero is being constructed
by an increasing number of filmmakers (especially as more
independent films "go mainstream"), and one very
important reason transcends financial gain. The transformed
hero reflects a cultural trend based on a vision that could
mark our Age as a turning point in cultural evolution. As
Carol Pearson avows:
When we think archetypally, we
also can recognize the deep structure behind ideas in different
fields that predominate in any historical period. When the
Warrior archetype was dominant in Western culture, theology
focused on the struggle between good and evil, biology emphasized
the survival of the fittest, meetings were run along authoritarian
lines by majority rule, and organizations took on hierarchical
structures, like the military. As the Magician archetype
emerges into consciousness, we see theologies emphasizing
oneness, biology stressing ecological interdependence, meetings
run according to rules of consensual decision making, and
organizations becoming flatter and more egalitarian in structure.
When archetypes are strong in the culture around us, we
must be open to them or risk becoming irrelevant (1998,
287).
[40] The Magician archetype contains, according
to Pearson, the power to transform, to reinvent personhood
in lieu of a changing world,¾a process that Erich Neumann
called "centroversion." Unlike the West's extraverted
hero archetype whose victory occurs over the dark forces that
impede ego-consciousness, the centroverted hero has as his
or her goal the transformation of the psyche, wherein the
feminine unconscious is reintegrated with the masculine ego.
Calling it the latest stage in the evolution of human consciousness,
Neumann regards centroversion as the process whereby the ego
recognizes the whole self and willingly submits part of its
domain to the powers of the unconscious,¾a phenomenon that
could and should determine the fate of both the individual
and humankind:
The civilization that is about
to be born will be human civilization in a far higher sense
than any has ever been before, as it will have overcome
important social, national, and racial limitations. These
are not fantastic pipe dreams, but hard facts ... The turning
of the mind from the conscious to the unconscious, the responsible
rapprochement of the human consciousness with the powers
of the collective psyche, that is the task of the future
(1973, 393).
[41] The androgyne is a predominant archetype
used to convey the transformation that transcends the classical
hero's journey. Among others, June Singer (1989) affirms the
masculine bearing of the classical journey and details ways
in which the new hero is integrating the long-established
(but forgotten) androgynous archetype, wherein the archetypal
masculine and feminine are reunited.[20] The reunion represents the recovery of the
"balanced psyche," of wholeness, health, and a newfound
connection to, as Singer explains, "an innate sense of
a primordial cosmic unity" or "oneness" which
existed "before any separation was made" (2000,
5). That oneness refers to a balance of qualities with which
any man or woman can reunite without losing masculine or feminine
traits. In most cases, the androgynous male discovers his
anima by confronting his ego-limitations and seeking peace,
inner and outer, while the emerging female hero not only demands
equality but also finds the freedom to express a re-mystified
feminine impulse, replete with intuition, empathy, and a sacred
sense of connection.
[42] The sheer number of films with androgynous,
centroverted heroes offers clear testimony to a collective
awakening, one that I believe is part of a new cultural project
that could supply postmodern culture with a vision that directs
global citizenry to new levels of peace and to new kinds of
prosperity. That vision, which Charlene Spretnak calls "ecological
postmodernism," attempts to depict humans at home in
the cosmos, to redefine sanity with the Earth in mind, to
deconstruct the masks we have placed on our enemies, and to
recognize the spiritual in the natural.[21]
The ecopsychology in Instinct and Powder, the
ego-to-eco transformations in Seven Years in Tibet
and Civil Action, the ecofeminist sensibilities in
The Color Purple and Contact, the Afrocentricity
in Do the Right Thing and Slam, the Eastern
philosophy in Gandhi and Matrix, the aboriginal
earth wisdom in Pocahontas and Dances with Wolves,
the creation spirituality in Stigmata, and the Green
politics in Bulworth all point toward a common goal:
a centroverted hero whose victory is presented through the
death and rebirth of ego consciousness in a journey intended
to supplant aggression, revenge, and material gain with self-discovery,
equanimity, and planetary identity.
References
Berkhofer, Robert. 1979. The White Man's
Indian. New York: Vintage.
Bird, S. Elizabeth. 1998. "Introduction:
Constructing the Indian, 1830s-1990s." Dressing in
Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular
Culture. Ed. S. Elizabeth Bird, 1-12. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Bogle, Donald. 1974. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,
Mammies, & Bucks. New York: Bantam.
Chinen, A. B. 1997. Waking the World:
Classic Tales of Women and the Heroic Feminine. New York:
Tarcher/Putnam.
Churchill, Ward. 1992. Fantasies of the
Master Race: Literature, Cinema, and the Colonization of American
Indians. Monroe, ME: Common Courage.
Green, Ronald. 1998. "Oscar Micheaux's
Interrogation of Caricature as Entertainment." Film
Quarterly 51(3) (Spring), 16-31.
Ingram, David. 2000. "Fly Away Home
and the Hollywood Conservationist Movie." Scope: An
On-Line Journal of Film Studies (December). http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/film/journal/articles/fly-away-home.htm
Jindra, Michael. 2000. "It's About
Faith in Our Future: Star Trek Fandom as Cultural Religion."
Religion and Popular Culture in America. Ed. Bruce
Forbes and Jeffrey Mahan, 165-179. Berkeley: University of
California.
Kerkhoven, Thomas. 2003. "Shiva on
the Durham Coalfield: On the Pertinence of Hindu Myth to the
Film Billy Elliot," Journal of Religion and Popular
Culture (Summer). http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art4-billyelliot.html
Lawrence, John Shelton and Robert Jewett.
2002. The Myth of the American Superhero. Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans.
McKelly, James. 1998. "The Double Truth,
Ruth: ‰Do the Right Thing' and the Culture of Ambiguity."
African American Review 32 (2) (Summer), 215-227.
Neumann, Erich. 1973. The Origins and
History of Consciousness. Tr. R.R.C. Hull. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Pearson, Carol. 1998. The Hero Within:
Six Archetypes We Can Live By. 3rd Edition.
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Schwartz Ellis, Caron. 1995. "With
Eyes Uplifted: Space Aliens as Sky Gods." Screening
the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American
Film. Ed. Joel Martin and Conrad Oswald Jr., 83-93. San
Francisco: Westview.
Singer, June. 2000. Androgyny. 2nd
Edition. York Beach, ME: Nicolas-Hays.
Spretnak, Charlene. 1993. States of Grace:
The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. New York:
HarperCollins.
Tarnas, Richard. 1993. The Passion of
the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped
Our World View. New York: Ballentine.
Vogler, Christopher. 1998. The Writer's
Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 2nd
Edition. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese.
Weir, Peter (Interview with Michael Bliss).
1999. "Keeping a Sense of Wonder," Film Quarterly
53,1 (Fall), 2-11.
Notes
[1] For a discussion of how formulaic the male-oriented
journey has become, see Vogler (1998).
[2] For an analysis of black stereotypes, see Bogle
(1974).
[3] See Churchill (1992) for a critique of cinematic
portrayals of Native American stereotypes.
[4] Films such as Pretty Woman (1990), in which
a prostitute meets her prince charming, still cater to the
so-called "Cinderella syndrome," much as the animated,
thin-clad, large-breasted Pocahontas falls victim to the "Barbie
syndrome."
[5] The Tango Lesson is representative of a variety
of critically acclaimed independent films starring women,
such as Like Water for Chocolate (1992), Daughters
of the Dust (1992), and The Piano (1993). The impact
of the feminine indie is epitomized by Maya Deren's 1943 Meshes
of the Afternoon, which many film historians regard as
the pioneer work of the New American Cinema movement.
[6] For a discussion of how Oscar Micheaux put twists
on black stereotypes, see Green (1998).
[7] In the first film with rock-and-roll songs, The
Blackboard Jungle (1955), Poitier plays a delinquent-turned-hero
that helps pacify hoods in an angst-ridden high school¾a role
he fulfills as a teacher in To Sir with Love (1967).
He received an Academy Award for his role as a drifter who
helps nuns renovate their church in Lilies in the Field
(1963, one year before blacks could legally sit with white
audiences). In A Patch of Blue (1965) and Guess
Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) he befriends a white girl,
and as Virgil Tibbs he fights racism In the Heat of the
Night (1967).
[8] Other opposites include the white
police and black "trouble makers," whose confrontation
ends in the death of Radio Rahim, whose love-and-hate brass
rings epitomize the plot. Dialogues between youth and the
elderly reflect the generation gap. Buggin' Out and the "wake-up"
calling DJ Love Daddy are black counterparts. Pino the segregationist
and Vito the integrationist are white ones. Sal's Italian
hall-of-heroes juxtaposes Smiley's pictures of Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Malcom X. James McKelly (1998) describes the
profuse number of binary opposites used by Lee as "cultural
signifiers" of what W.E.B. Dubois called "double
consciousness."
[9] Characters such as Shaft and Superfly, while commanding
black power, reinforced the black buck formula (one that Pam
Grier characters flauntingly reversed). Most of blaxploitation's
blacks were ghetto dwellers that, often lacking family values,
suffered oppression at the hands of black crime lords¾a view
advanced by The French Connection (1971) and The
Godfather (1972). Even in civil rights movies such as
Mississippi Burning (1988), blacks serve mostly as
scenery, are weak and scared, and inspire pity rather than
respect; while the white FBI agents serve as saviours. A similar
formula is found in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Ghosts
of Mississippi (1996), and Amistad (1997), in which
heroic white lawyers rescue their black clients.
[10] Singleton's Rosewood (1997), based on the
1921 burning of a small, successful black community in rural
Florida, does what Mississippi Burning fails to do¾namely,
conveys the travesty of racial violence through the eyes of
strong, self-respecting minority.
[11] Obviously, other minorities¾such as Asians and
Hispanics¾have been afforded archetypal roles.
[12] Youthful lifestyles have become standard themes,
from the homespun American Graffiti (1973) about youth
of the 'fifties to the Dazed and Confused (1993) kids
of the 'seventies to stereotypes of 'eighties youth in The
Breakfast Club (1985) to the "no-future" youth
in Larry Clark's disturbing Kids (1995) and Bully
(2001). Correlative to his cult status, Kevin Smith helped
define Generation X from Clerks (1994) to Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) by attacking everything
status quo, from religious and political conservatism to the
film industry, and by promoting multiculturalism, sexual diversity,
religious freedom, and nonconformity.
[13] Ellis outlines how the "Cold War aliens"
that embodied our fear of "the Other" prior to the
1960s has given way to "kinder, gentler aliens"
who "addressed our deep fears about technology and answered
spiritual questions about our destiny" (1995, 83).
[14] Clearly beholden to the monomyth, the film's evil
other, the Vietnamese soldiers who have no respect for life,
are a source of conflict and redemptive violence. The communal
resolution occurs as Michael and comrades sing "America
the Beautiful" and toast Nick.
[15] The film's director, Peter Weir (1999) likens
Christof to Dr. Frankenstein and Truman's basement with the
unconscious, a connection that Weir links to the basement
where Jung claims to have had some of his epiphanies.
[16] A number of films¾such as Gandhi (1982),
Kung Fu (1972), and Kundun (1997)¾have expressed
the value of Eastern philosophy for Western culture.
[17] Lawrence and Jewett, writing prior to the release of The
Passion, describe how Mel Gibson took the monomythic plot
of the Lethal Weapons films (1987-1998) and extended
it backwards in time to Braveheart (1995) and The
Patriot (2000), focusing on redemptive violence. They
also discuss Gibson and company's historical fabrication of
the life, enemies, and conquests of Braveheart's William
Wallace (2002, 153-167). The construction of The Passion
seems to me to follow the same patterns, which, as many critics
insist, characterize an obsession with pain, martyrdom, and
the damnation of the evil "other."
[18] A prototype of "the new Christ," Neo
discards, as Lawrence and Jewett explain, "the ineffectual
baggage of the Sermon on the Mount" in favor "a
duffel bag full of pistols, guns, and explosives needed to
destroy the command center of political evil" (2002,
7).
[19] As demonstrated by the Free Willy trilogy
(1993, 1995, 1997), Fly Away Home (1996), and other
such films, wild animals are often transformed from a danger
and/or obstacle to human culture to beings with intrinsic
value. See Ingram (2000) for a discussion of that transformation.
[20] Lawrence and Jewett admonish the macho, hierarchical
nature the monomyth promoted by Campbell and "culture
critic" Bill Moyers, who, "like most Americans,
are cheerfully oblivious to the implications of superheroism
and the aristocratic political values in the materials they
celebrate" (2002, 12).
[21] See Spretnak (1993).
