Why Are Our Heroes So Damn Lonely?

Why are our heroes such loners? They are either uninterested in woman, widowed, unable to consummate with the one they love or scandalous womanizers. Occasionally they do get the woman, but more often that woman changes from sequel to sequel. Sure there is always someone interested in them, but bad things happen when they get together. The most obvious case is Superman II, where marriage and love led to the world being taken over by aliens and Clark Kent getting his ass kicked in a small diner. In Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility," in other words, ditch the dream girl or pay the price (he doesn't completely and pays the price of being replaced by a new version). The dazzling new Sherlock finds a star detective very similar to the original book, in other words a virgin who codes gay (accept for the innuendo of a relationship with the allusive Irene Adler -- in the book, she is quickly killed off (as she was at the beginning of the recent movie sequel). The question is why?

A number of possibilities surfaced in my contemplation of this seemingly foolish consistency. 1) By making the hero lonely at the beginning, it is easier for them to hook up with someone in the end. The problem with this solution is that they too often do not do so. From Dirty Harry to the Terminator, the redemptive hero cannot, or does not, find love. Sure Rocky finds love, but Rambo never does, and Rocky ends up divorced and alone by the time we get to the last foray in the series. This does work in romantic comedies and even romantic dramas, but here we are talking about heroes not mere protagonists, so the answer still seems suspect. But maybe 2) It provides a better entryway into the interpellation so important to film. In other words, lonely people are more apt to watch movies (and particularly to watch television) and the identification with the characters can thus be that much stronger -- fomenting the real power of film, to allow us to essentially live the lives of the characters and narratives on offer. This seems a more reasonable explanation except that so many people go to movies these days that it is a risky strategy. Further, one could argue that female viewers want those lonely men to find love. There is probably some truth here, but it again doesn't seem to offer sufficient explanation. 

A third possibility eliminates any deeper motivation ... 3) Writers are lonely and even if they are married with kids, they have to write alone. It is the lonely vocation and that loneliness manifests itself in film. This seems like a viable argument except that the producers of television and film do take into account the audience and thus while the writers might start writing from this perspective, those buying and selling the script will make sure it can draw the audience in. This leads to a related 4th possibility ... 4) Los Angeles is such a lonely city it is not surprising that the epicenter of film and television would produce lonely characters. This tradition goes back at least as far as Film Noir, the genre that captured the loneliness and alienation of the modern, urban man in the post-war period (as well as his feelings of lost masculinity). The Noir film seemed to speak to the impossibility of modern love and the illusion of the idealic world that Hollywood was otherwise selling. The tension has arguably continued to manifest itself in film and on TV screens, with cynical writers unwilling to fully sell the idyllic dream they know the studios want. This leads to the last possiblity I will consider here: 5) Laziness. Hollywood has increasingly relied on tried and tested formulas for success. Just as Noir had a loose formula it tended to follow (asynchronous, confusing narratives, femme fatales, dark, moody lighting, slippery moral protagonists, etc.), so too do hero films and the happy couple, ala Nick and Nora Charles, is just too tough to sell.

The truth probably lies in the intersection of these five arguments, but it does pose a series of interesting questions about the reception of films and shows based on the lonely hero. What does this tell us about our notion of the hero? What does this mean for democracy? Does this invite us to be heroic ourselves, or rely on others? What kind of role models are we providing for our children? In future posts, I will consider each of these questions in kind. But it does seem telling that so few of our heroes find happiness, even in saving the day (as one last example, Paul Newman in The Verdict -- gets the girl, finds out the girl was a spy, wins the case, refuses to get the girl back).