Right before he screams out that titular verse, I ready myself and exclaim: “We can be heroes/Just for one day!” Bowie shouts the words to be heard amidst the synthesizer, and I feel the applicability to my current existence. I'm pulled in every which way, and if I know one thing, it's that I live day to day wondering why. Wondering who I am and what I have to offer.
“Heroes” plays on the soundtrack of my teenage years, and it’s probably sealed into my frontal cortex the number of times I played it to stop myself from crying. Half the time, this ploy didn't work. My vocal cords are scarred from childhood, and my throat’s ridiculously sensitive to shouting. I would cry anyway. And now I hear Bowie yell out that phrase, and I feel it. I feel an energy (or rather a fear) awaken inside of me. I know that my unconscious lives by the optimism bias, that one day the future will come and my identity and purpose will come to fruition. But, that is not today. I’m not a hero today, and I can never be one.
Bowie speaks of an impossible love in “Heroes,” but there’s another side to the song. Just the idea of a “hero” complicates its holistic meaning. Look at the use of the song in the film The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Those teenagers aren’t traditional heroes found in epics or history books. The characters though heroically yoked a great many youths who viewed the film under a common, bildungsroman type experience. The song works because Bowie didn’t mean that type of hero. Bowie certainly focused more on the wistful love aspect of the song; though, what of the “hero”? The hero trope has a long history, and with the popularity of comic book superhero movies today, it deserves more attention.
Consider Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel, Watchmen. You’re probably more familiar with Zack Snyder’s 2009 cinematic adaptation of it, but read the graphic novel. Watchmen centers on humans who believe in making a difference by dressing up in costumes and grouping together as masked avengers to dedicate their lives in the service of the public by carrying out retribution and allotting proportionate punishment to offenders. That’s a long sentence, but stay with me. The novel (and the film to a lesser degree) dissects the hero trope by presenting men and women beneath masks and latex as fallible to explore how retired masked avengers cope. Here we have another, more realistic portrayal of the hero. Moore again characterizes these vigilantes as human, not free from judgment or illness, and that holds import in our societally sanctioned ideal of perfection.
This is what’s wrong with the concept of a hero. There are no heroes who vices are present quite like in Watchmen. The media feeds mass audiences ideals shrink-wrapped and ready to reaffirm a flawed norm. Certainly, Watchmen takes a dark spin on the hero, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone less than the age of 13 or perhaps 16 read the novel or watch the film, but we need it and works of its ilk to represent the other side of heroism.
Heroism equates solely with masculinity in comics, but masculinity does not yield heroism. In fact, to return to Bowie, he became a hero to a generation of individuals lost, as I was, in a world demanding so much from its inhabitants. He was a man, but he wasn't out to prove his masculinity. He did not need to need to dawn a mask of stoicism and fight. He skated the line we’ve made between the genders, and in his own way, dissolved it. He was a hero: he didn’t need traditional masculinity to prove that. And, whether you liked him or not, Bowie made it alright to be on the fringes of society. He made it alright to not cower in a claustrophobic submission to its suffocating pressure. But, I am late to the Bowie eulogies.
Heroes need a different mask, a different set of criteria to define them. I don’t see myself as capable of being filed away with those individuals normally considered to be heroes. I’m not a representative of my generation. I’m not a vigilante willing to serve the public. I’m not a dismantler of societal ideals. I am a twenty-year-old taking life one step at a time. And if that makes me a hero, just for one day, that’s fine by me.
