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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 3233188" data-attributes="member: 25619">I think it's more than a US question.  Every country but the US, the British Empire, and arguably Russia that fought in WWII -- which is pretty much every country but Latin America, Africa (arguably they did fight as colonies, but with more involvement from some than others), and the Middle East -- "lost".  From China, Poland, and France on the winning side to Germany, Japan, and Italy on the losing side, and across smaller countries from Belgium to Thailand, the experience was a national humiliation -- being conquered, occupied, and having to deal with the psychic burden of collaboration or active participation in Nazism or its Japanese and Italian counterparts.So pretty much everybody but Americans, British, Australians, and Russians reflexively think "war is bad", "war is always wrong", and "there's no such thing as a winnable war, it's a lie we don't believe anymore" (the last is the Sting quote -- he's British, but he wishes he wasn't, as being Western and rich is embarassing).  That's metasized more generally into "heroism is bad", "nationalism is bad", and now even "my countries existance is bad" -- note the rise of the EU as a way to abolish any blame for Germany's Nazi past or France's collaboration.  Add to that the end of Empire for Britain, France, Belgium, and the rest of Europe, and it re-inforces the idea.  All their 19th century heroes were racist villains, their WWI heroes were foolish pawns of the system, their WWII "heroes" are best not talked about in most countries, and post WWII the story is mostly "can't we ignore all problems and just concentrate on the Eurovision song contest and how to retire early?"I think this accounts for the "axis of weasel" attitude in European-influenced Western "high culture", as reflected in "serious" art, movies, literature, etc. from both sides of the Atlantic.In western "low culture", I think America does predominate, and the primary anti-heroic impulse comes from the 1970s.  It's the reaction to Nixon's betrayal of the trust of the American people, both in losing in Vietnam and in trying to steal the election (which he would have won anyhow) at home in the Watergate scandal.  The result was that most Americans -- especially people turning of age in the 1960s through 1970s -- grew up in an age of pervasive cynicism about government, the military, military heroism, and "goodness" in general.  The good side of that is the collapse of the old rules that kept down blacks, women, gays, etc. with a new attitude of freedom, but the bad side is general breakdown of respect for the good parts of older values.  On the right, it was embodied in me-first capitalism and "there is no society" (a Thatcher quote) politics of attacking the concept of government and trying to shrink it.  On the left, it was embodied in "special interest" politics -- my group wants this.Culturally, a bit of counter movement to the counterculture began with Star Wars.  It's the first "heroic" movie where people who were fighting were good made since maybe 1968's "The Green Berets".  It's the antithesis of movies like "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now".  As Bart Simpson said, "There are no good wars except Star Wars, World War II, and the American Revolution."I think D&D's first (and honestly only) cultural revelance in the late 1970s and early 1980s is related to that upwelling of yearning for heroism and derring-do coming out of Lucas and Spielberg tapping into what people had been starved of.I'd bet people are starving for heroes again.  In particular, two fairly recent "lack of hero" cultural bits really struck a nerve with me:1) The latest Superman movie.  Superman has a illegitimate kid with Lois Lane, and he wants to carry on an affair with her even though she's married to another man?  This is not my 1950s Superman -- I thought he was better than us in more ways than being bullet proof.  This anti-heroic Superman failed spectacularly at the box office, as I understand it.2) Enterprise, the latest Star Trek series that took Star Trek off the air for the first time since 1987.  It started out heroic enough, but it went down in it's second season, a plot about striking back at 9/11 terrorism thinly veiled.  It turned into Git'mo in space in some episodes, but where it really jumped the shark morally, I think, was an episode where Archer pirate attacked a neutral starship and stole their engines, leaving them marooned in space, because he had to complete the mission.  Spock or Kirk or even Picard would have said no to that, fate of humanity on the line or not.  I could hear the Kirk line in my head: "If we sink to the same barbarism as our enemy, there is no point in defending humanity, for we're already gone."Anyhow . . . enough cultural blah-blah from the long hung up his diploma poli sci/history nerd.  I do agree that currently the anti-hero seems to be everywhere, but I don't agree that everyone necessarily likes it.  Time for scruffy, rebellious squeeky-clean heroes to rise up!</blockquote>

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