“What's right isn't always popular. What's popular isn't always right.” –Howard Cosell
They’re cold; their deep stares distant. Their methods, actions, and morals enrage because they confound. They exemplify defiance of explanation. Standing tall against a stark sky is the anti-hero, their shadow threatening the pure-hearted hero in all of us. What is it about this person that chills us and puts us on the defensive? Could it be perhaps, they are us, the us we are when no one is looking? Maybe our resentment of the anti-hero isn’t due to them at all, but to our fear and rejection of ourselves.
The human race has never been without critics. There have always been those who judge the actions of others through self-centered glasses. That unjust prejudice has been the catalyst behind our change from honest creatures into loping drones of superficiality. Moral majority has morphed into media majority, what’s good for ratings, is good for the world. Character is based solely on roaring crowds and box-office revenues. If one person’s opinion differs at all from that of the attention-span deficient public, they are deemed wrong and inherently evil. In a world that has tossed aside the basic principles of humanity, those of us who follow outdated “golden rules” are transformed into punching bags. Abnormal is normal, good is evil…and evil is?
Enter the anti-hero atop his arrow-wounded steed. He stands as a testament to unpopular beliefs, those of patriotism, decency, and doing right, no matter how hard. The anti-hero knows in order to arrive at the right conclusion the process may sometimes be unsavory. They have seen the carnage of war, felt the pain of loss, but know war and loss are not without their merits. They learn from mistakes and recognize mistakes are essential to progress. Nothing good is born good; nothing created by man can be done without missteps, for man is not divine.
The anti-hero doesn’t accept things at face value. They’ve been around and know full well peaceful facades can hide many dangers. They believe little of what they read and nothing of what they hear. Instinct and a finely tuned moral compass guide them. They are aloof and contemplative. And that opacity threatens, causing some to condemn them as calculating and cruel. When deeds and decisiveness dictate a person’s path, their intentions are clear, but a public so accustomed to ambiguity has no ability to grasp the clarity. The decisive person becomes brash and uncaring while society darlings flourish in their failure to make a decision at all.
So what does the anti-hero say about us? At first, we are impressed with their bravado, enamored with them perhaps. They laugh in the face of popular convention, thumb their noses at the norm, but in this world, the norm is anything but normal. Hence, the anti-hero is the true hero. Those of us who resent them don’t resent the person per-se, but the principle. If they are brave enough to stand up for what’s right in a world that seems to only value the opposite of right, if they risk reputation, life, and limb when we cannot, what we resent is our own cowardice.
Fairy tales and bedtime stories teach us heroism needs no explanation. The man in white saves the day not because his reasons are genuine or fair, but because he is “good,” the opposite of bad. The black hat will fall because they oppose the “good,” not because they necessarily deserve failure or their rationale is weak. We have grown from disillusioned children into cynical adults, conditioned to see only what is revealed to us. We read only one version of a story and are satisfied. All the while, that little nagging feeling troubles us. This is the feeling there is more to know, more to comprehend. And before we can succumb to our curiosity, we are bombarded again by the mainstream conventions that keep us from free thought in the first place.
If anti-heroes are the true champions of the world, what does that make of the so-called “good guy” heroes? As mentioned before, the term “good” is implied most often because someone is fundamentally opposite of “bad.” On the surface, they stand opposed to what we see as wrong. If someone is against murder, which is expected, they are good. If someone professes to be against the mistreatment of the poor, they are good. Sounds fair, but the logic is flawed. A belief or statement alone does not make someone good or evil. The devil is in the details and the true nature in the deeds.
The anti-hero falls into the watchful gaze of the critic far more than any other figure. Their reasons are questioned with fervent tenacity, though around them, the so-called heroes and villains stand unexamined. Oddly enough, society finds it much easier to victimize evil than to vilify the good. But what really astounds is most people’s inability to see good in the anti-hero. Their methods go down as the methods of madmen, their actions, no matter the outcome, emphasized as cruel. There are no excuses, no pity, for the people who make the decisions no one else is willing to make.
During World War II, one man held the loyalty of scores of people, military and otherwise. He inspired many with his words and passion. Another man was scorned for his nature, considered brash, rude, and dangerous. This man was even ridiculed and sanctioned by his own countrymen.
As history shows us, one of those men, the one who inspired such a following, would be responsible for mass genocide. The other would lead the allies in large strides to defeat the enemy and save lives. Adolf Hitler is regarded today as a villain, a man with a black soul on a crusade born of unadulterated hatred. But in his day he was thought by millions to be a visionary and harbinger of hope. The other man, General George S. Patton was an anti-hero. He was a soldier with true grit who never backed down from a fight, a man with unending patriotism. But his methods, his means to an end, have transformed him into someone ridiculed almost as much as the evil he relentlessly battled.
Now, more than ever, we are faced with tough decisions. To follow the crowd is more seductive than it has ever been. Opposing the ideas of “political correctness” and revisionist history can cause intense verbal onslaughts, get someone fired, blacklisted, and even physically attacked. Peace-mongers hurl firebrands along the paths of soldier’s funerals. The sons and daughters of the “free love” generation place as much value on the life of unborn babies as they do on a vermin pest.
Years of indoctrination have taught us to disregard what we don’t want to face. We address problems by skirting them. We respond only to rewards. Like a dog at the sound of a bell, we are controlled by our need to satisfy ourselves. The supposed issues that flood our senses are best served only when someone sees us doing our part. We brag on ourselves, trumpeting our actions on the Internet and pasting stickers on the bumpers of our cars. We trample each other in order to be the biggest hero.
Now is the time to take a good look at those around you and a long look in the mirror too. What have you done today and more importantly, why did you do what you did? The people who inspire you, the people you idolize, what do they teach you and who are they, really?
“Good guys” rise and fall, villains obfuscate and tantalize, but the world continues to turn. The anti-hero will always be working in the background, fighting the fight that changes the world, not just trying to put a band-aid on an 8-inch gash. Remember, doing what is right doesn’t always garner great rewards. Right and wrong are so much more than black and white. To know real evil, you have to know what it takes to be good, and good isn’t always easy. In the words of Johnny Cash, “I'd love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything's okay, but I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, 'till things are brighter, I'm the man in black.”
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