When None Will Follow
Authority & Obedience in Our Stories
Our American society cultivates in us a strong distaste for obeying authority. Anyone who desires evidence of this need look no further than the heroes furnished by our popular media. To compare the heroes of our modern movies or TV shows with those of traditional Western literature (Hector, Aeneas, Charlemagne, Aragorn, etc.) is to compare two radically different sets of archetypes. Each has its own distinct approach to authority and to the practice of submission, and each implicitly values a different kind of behavior in a human being.
In traditional epics, the hero frequently has a band of men at his command. Beowulf lands on the Danish shore with fourteen armed warriors at his back; at the close of his story, he is the king of Geatland, and meets his noble end still leading a troop of his vassals against a dragon. So also in other traditional works: Aeneas musters the survivors of Troy; King Arthur rules the knights of his Round Table; Aragorn marshals the armies of Gondor.
But in a stunning contrast, the hero of the contemporary American epic has no subordinates. The gush of superhero movies in the last twenty years illustrates this pattern: Batman, Star-Lord, Tony Stark, Superman, Wolverine, Spider-Man—none of them has so much as a platoon of soldiers under his command. None is a permanent leader within a formal hierarchy. If ever they do give orders, it is to peers who are cooperating with them voluntarily. Even Professor Xavier of the X-Men franchise is an exception that proves the rule; though ostensibly the leader of the X-men, he actually functions like a philanthropic mentor who cannot seem to control his unruly protégés.
Independent & Irreverent
The American hero is also not under authority himself. He takes orders from no one. One cannot imagine Han Solo standing to attention and saluting his general, or Captain Jack Sparrow respectfully abiding a dressing-down from an admiral. We value just the opposite in our popular heroes: the independent, obstreperous spirit, the devil-may-care attitude. "Lone ranger," "maverick," "cowboy," "bad boy," "rebel without a cause," and "lone wolf" are all terms that we have added to the lexicon. We have contributed countless stock characters to the pantheon of radical autonomy. In fact, we relish this trait of independence so much that we even expect unruly attitudes from our heroes when they are (nominally) part of a hierarchy: James Bond, for instance, treating his MI6 superiors with cheeky disdain, or Captain Kirk defying orders from Starfleet.
And this impudence often seeps further, becoming a contempt of all things grave, august, and reverend. The popular hero's insolence extends not just to figures of authority, but to anything and anyone that invites respect. Tony Stark snubs an old man with a wisecrack. Wolverine chomps his unlit cigar with deliberate irreverence during a eulogy. Captain Malcolm Reynolds undercuts a solemn prayer with a quip.
These heroes do not stand on their own dignity, either; they are just as ready to make a joke at their own expense. They do not cultivate a personal air of gravity or noble bearing. In that sense, their irreverence is truly egalitarian. Noble carriage would hang upon them as incongruously as royal robes on a cowboy.
But personal gravity is no defect for the traditional hero. In C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, Frank the cabby and his wife, Helen, find themselves unexpectedly called to be King and Queen of the newly created Narnia. And with the vocation comes a lordly bearing:
They were dressed in strange and beautiful clothes, and from their shoulders rich robes flowed out behind them to where four dwarfs held up the King's train and four river-nymphs the Queen's. Their heads were bare; but Helen had let her hair down and it made a great improvement in her appearance. But it was neither hair nor clothes that made them look so different from their old selves. Their faces had a new expression, especially the King's. All the sharpness and cunning and quarrelsomeness which he had picked up as a London cabby seemed to have been washed away, and the courage and kindness which he had always had were easier to see. Perhaps it was the air of the young world that had done it, or talking with Aslan, or both.
Ridiculed & Rebuked
Christopher Hoyt is an Anglican organist/choirmaster, and teaches Sacred Music at Cranmer Theological House in Dallas. He was general editor of the hymnal, The Book of Common Praise/Magnify the Lord (2017) and is a composer of hymns and other church music (hoytcomposer.com).
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