The Exponent - columns


01-17-2003	Previous edition: 01-16-2003

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Heroes sell out, adulation falters

My little brother doesn’t have any heroes.

That’s what my mom says anyway.

The kind of heroes my mom means are those that would give my brother direction — give him something to aspire to. Of course, when my mom says words like "directionless" and "without goals," she means "adolescent." She’s worried that there’s nobody he’ll try to be like, and so he’ll end up a nobody.

But what is a hero anyway? A year and a half ago we were stepping over each other to label anyone a hero. Bombed a country that attacked us? Hero. Showed up to work on time? Hero. Didn’t screw up my order at Denny’s? Hero. We took a perfectly good workhorse of a compliment and bludgeoned that thing like a piñata. It’s become a near-cliché now.

It says a lot that calling someone a hero still means a lot more than calling them "nice."

I’m worried that soon I won’t have any heroes left. I started out with too many: madmen, musicians, writers, brawlers, drinkers, comedians, cartoonists, intellectuals, idiots, infidels, expatriates, adulterers and cuckolds. But now, they’re all trying to sell me cars.

I like to use the word "hero" to elevate these people above my mediocrity. They’ve done or created things I couldn’t, which just makes me aspire more.

But now, all I have to do to aspire to what my heroes do is appear in commercials for Sports Utility Vehicles.

Sir Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay were the first people to the top of the world. May 29, 1953, they summated all 29,028 feet of Mt. Everest — the highest peak in the world.

And then fifty years later, he tried to sell me a sports utility vehicle. Even though it’s harder to drag your dying carcass to the highest point on Earth than it is to drive a big car over some speed bumps on the way to the outlet mall, the ads would have you believe that both contain the same sense of adventure.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is just a writer from Indianapolis that wrote one of my favorite books, "Slaughterhouse Five." Over the years, I’ve read enough of his books to think of him as a personal friend, even though we’ve never met. But in a new commercial, he uses that friendship to sell me a Nissan Murano.

So Vonnegut wants me to buy an SUV, too, so that I can meet him in a forgotten bookstore and he can draw on the title pages of his own first editions.

In Amarillo, Texas, the same day Hillary and Norgay summated Everest, composer Danny Elfman was born. Elfman’s work is easily recognizable but he’s most famous for his theme to "The Simpsons." I rabidly collected any soundtrack that he worked on, but now I’ll need to rabidly collect the soundtracks to Ford commercials.

Now, a mean part of me wants to say my heroes have sold out in old age. Their artistic integrity has grown so old, that it’s just rotted off. To quote still another one of my heroes, comedian Bill Hicks, if you’ve started making commercials, "you’re off the artistic roll-call."

I’m just hurt because I like to think of these accomplishments as meriting a free pass for life. No one whose exploits thrilled me should have to stoop to commercial work. Hero is a word we use to separate those we admire from ourselves, but heroes get eye boogers in the morning too. And they too have to pay the bills. Vonnegut hasn’t written a book since "Timequake" in 1997, and though I hold him in high esteem, he’s not making the list of the Top Ten Authors of the Century. Hillary may appear on the five dollar bill for New Zealand, but that doesn’t guarantee that he’s got a lot of them himself.

Is it fair of us to expect our heroes to turn down commercial crap-work? Being in a position where car companies are approaching you for help should be a positive thing.

We abound in failures, not heroes. Failures would seem to have artistic integrity by the bucketful. But they can’t even give it away. Did all the failures of the world get together and decide to make the heroes feel guilty for their fame?

So I’m offering my services. I’m no longer going to be above appearing in car commercials - even for cars that I don’t own. The Super Bowl is just a few weeks away, and there’s still time to work me into your commercial.

I’ll read a Patrick O’Leary poem in a voice over - or I’ll even write the commercial! I’m not above it anymore.

[Tom picks up his little brother, Andy, from school in a new Chevrolet Tahoe (or whatever car you’re trying to sell).]

Tom: How was school?

Andy: Fine, I guess.

Tom: You know, Mom’s worried you don’t have any heroes - that you’re going to end up directionless for the rest of your life because you don’t have any role models.

Andy: That’s silly. Of course I have role models. Like this 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe. With its 4.8 liter V8 and four wheel antilock break system, it’s tough and dependable. The way I want to be.

[Tom, misty-eyed, pats Andy on the shoulder.]

Tom: That’s Chevy, they’re like a rock.

Tom McHenry is a senior in the School of Liberal Arts. He can be reached at opinions@purdueexponent.org.

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