Rules Of The Game #7: Hero Story

[koganbot]

This week's column:

Hero Story

This is something of a prequel to my book, since it ends where the book starts, with the idea that we tend to define ourselves as corruptible and contaminated. Also, I think it's a pretty great piece; in fact, a desire to see it in print was one of my motives for proposing the idea of a column to the Las Vegas Weekly in the first place.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.*

Also, when I get the chance (I'm going to the eye doctor first, which means I'll be blind for half the day) I'm going to see how I can relate the Hero Story to notions of social class, and maybe will respond on this thread to some of Alex's, Hazel's, Dave's, Mark's, Kat's, Martin's, Josh's, et al.'s comments about class in previous koganbot comment threads. E.g., is "Hero" just a role or is it also a class? I'd say it's at least sometimes the latter, though it's a class that people can enter or leave. I also think that class relations can help structure a social environment even when the people in that environment recognize that no one fits into the classes. E.g., high school students can believe that no one is actually a prep or a freak or a jock or a skater or a greaser or a burnout or a hood (that is, everyone has characteristics that puts him at odds with the categories he's supposedly near to) but also recognize that these terms can map the social landscape. And crucial to the idea of social class is that there be some inequality: of power, wealth, prestige, competence, jurisdiction, beauty, something. One thing that's going on in the Hero Story is a misalignment - prestige comes from opposing power (or creating your own power in opposition to some other power). And the Hero Story is really unclear as to who holds the power that the Hero is defying: is it the suits? the conformist masses? the conformist musicians? And the Hero Story being a story, it needs some problem or conflict or it has no plot, and since class implies inequality and conflict, the Hero Story would welcome the notion of "class," even when it's attempting to overthrow the notion.

*UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"class relations can help structure a social environment": yes, it's like a map helps you find your way, even though the lines on the map aren't always there in the world (some of them are but some of them aren't)

"hero as class" -- isn't the thing with categorisation when you want to use a description to help move a situation from A to B, so you map A (to show what's wrong with it), and it tends to freeze it in ppl's mind as HOW THINGS EVER WERE AND WILL BE -- the useful idea of hero is that it is a story, ie an arc, a journey, a movement, it embodies action-towards-transformation (of self AND of the world), but can (like any written description) get trapped in the first roleplaying tableau (description as prescription)

so "hero as class" is brilliant if it gets things moving, but horrible if it causes things to get stuck

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Isn't the answer to the question "Why do we tell the hero story?" contained in the first paragraph, about not talking about why music moves us - the hero story is the validation for our being moved by music, and its telling becomes a stand-in for the story of that emotion.

(That's what I'm arguing in my Pitchfork column that I submitted last night, anyway!)

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

The clip I saw on VH1 yesterday of Dee Snider saying (while washing his expensive car) that he can no longer conjure up the kind of self-righteous anger that inspired "We're Not Gonna Take It" springs to mind...

I think it's most certainly a role, because if it was a class it would be so gigantic as to be useless. Much of contemporary conservative discourse centers around various hero stories--see, for instance, David Brooks' recent column on Bush v. Tolstoy (!). It's not exactly absent from the left, either. I think most people use hero stories to make their day-to-day lives more bearable.

Dereliction of curiosity

[koganbot]

Haven't had a chance to look at anyone else's livejournal in the last two weeks. Damn, I'm so far behind.