Via 2Blowhards I find this link to an interview with James Bowman by Christina Hoff Summers. Bowman has a new book out called, “Honor: A History.” I haven’t read Bowman’s book but I’m inclined to check it out. The subject matter is appealing, naturally, and Bowman seems to be fairly sensible about the pitfalls but also the virtues of a strong sense of honor.
When Edmund Burke responded to the French revolution—even before its worst excesses—by announcing that “the age of chivalry is dead,” he didn’t know that, even as he wrote, the age of chivalry was being re-imagined in a form that seemed and for a while actually was compatible with ideals of freedom, democracy and equality. The heroes of this re-imagining were the European romantics inspired, first, by the American Founding Fathers and then by Sir Walter Scott, and it produced what I call the Victorian accommodation between traditional honor and those new ideas of human progress. The reasons for the breakdown of this wonderful synthesis are many and complex, but it is not entirely clear that the breakdown was inevitable. The problem is, can honor be re-re-imagined without simply turning back the clock…?
One thing I take issue with that Bowman says in the interview is this. Bowman is speaking of educating children about honor and why the ideal seems to be so lacking:
I believe this is because their imaginations have been corrupted by fantasy, which assumed its present state of cultural dominance concurrently, but not coincidentally, with the decline of the honor culture. Compared with a nutritious diet of real heroism, the artificial excitement generated by the comic-book super-hero is like a sugary snack and kills off the appetite for the genuine article. Super-heroes are our culture’s apology for not having real heroes anymore. Heroes are okay only so long as they are acknowledged fakes, like Michael Jackson prancing around in a field marshal’s uniform.
It may be that Bowman is right, that Superheroes have supplanted respect for honor in the deeds of men, trivializing it. I can see Bowman’s perspective, but then I can also look to the Iliad and the Odyssey, the tales of King Arthur, Beowulf, St. George, and a number of other folkloric figures who might be seen in a certain light as the Superheroes of their day. When possessing or guided by a supernatural power, do the deeds of these figures invalidate those of mortal men? No.
The problem, if there is a problem, is the incestuous nature of media that makes it possible for people to immerse themselves totally in fictional universes with fictional heroes. I have always seen my interest in military history (that is, the heroes of the past, such as Alexander the Great) as an outgrowth of my early exposure to what Bowman here describes as fantasy. What can we do about media and fans that live in their own insular communities? Fandom delenda est.
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