Once upon a time there was a hero.
When you saw the word “hero" above, who did you think of? Were they male or female? Smart or strong? Optimistic or foolishly brave? Chances are, you immediately imagined the most perfect version of a person that you’ve built up in your head. You created a million and one assumptions in a split second based on hundreds of tiny moments that have helped you define heroism in your own mind.
From the moment the protagonist of a TV show is first introduced into whatever battle they may be fighting, you feel the tension. The story progresses, and all you want, all you need, is for that tension to be broken. You want them to get the love they deserve. You want them to defeat the evil villain. You want them to overcome themselves to realize their full potential.
You want a superhero.
But in so many stories that are set in real worlds with realistic rules about how things work, you don’t get the superhero. You don’t get to follow a protagonist who is always right or perfect or has superpowers enough to overcome any obstacle encountered.
Why do people still enjoy stories that are so hopelessly realistic? Day in and day out, you go about your life with no superhero to save your day when things get tough. Why don’t people want something that distracts them from that harsh reality? Why don’t you always get that perfect superhero protagonist when you turn on the TV?
My favorite characters in shows have never been the ones of fairy tales. They were never the superheroes who came through no matter what, who never failed, who you could always count on to win the battle in the end. One would think it would be satisfying to have a sense of security in knowing the resolution would be there to break the fall once the building tension breaks. There is no point in listening to a story if you know how it will end. There is no point in telling a story that has already been told.
The best protagonists, the most uplifting, inspiring, hopeful heroes, are the ones who fall.
Not only do they fall, they continue to fall. They’re kicked when they’re down. They’ve been to the depths of the deepest, darkest holes in their lives, clawed their way back to surface level and tripped back down the rabbit hole once again. Just when they finally make it to cloud nine, they flop back down to where they started again. They don’t have a happy forever or a guaranteed resolution. They never win. They never overcome it.
But what do they do? They live.
They stumble, and they fall, and they shatter, and then they put their pieces back together and keep living. They keep living in spite of the overwhelming evidence proving that they’re going to crumble and break all over again. And if they’re not perfect, maybe they’re considered broken, but then, isn’t everyone?
Who do you picture when you think of a “hero?” Is it someone flawed? Someone who has been hurt but continues to go out and be the best person they can be? Someone who never seems to win? Someone who’s racked up more losses in life than victories?
What you want is a perfect story. You want assurance that everything will be OK in the end because you want, someday, for everything to be OK in real life too, but there comes a point when you realize that will never happen. Life never stops knocking you down, but you also continue to push through, more chipped, more scarred, but still brave and strong and hopeful. You continue to get up no matter how many times you’ve clawed your way out of a hole just to find yourself tumbling back down headfirst.
Broken heroes show the world that maybe stories aren’t about the happy endings. Stories are about the little happy moments that make up an endless middle that everyone trudges through day after day. The best, most interesting stories show that even fragile, cracked, beaten down protagonists can still be superheroes.
They show that even as flawed, wholly imperfect, broken human beings, we can be superheroes too.
And maybe it’s not so important to have a happily ever after as long as we have some happy-right-nows along the way.
