The Hero's Journey and Punching Nazis

We live in a politically divisive time. Right now, the world is filled with a lot of rhetoric about great and evil, good guys and bad guys, the right and the left, patriots and enemies.

So let’s just take a moment and talk about hero narratives, and what that means today. The Hero’s Journey, as identified by American scholar Joseph Campbell, is the most common storytelling trope, and unsurprisingly thus one of the most common plots in cinema. The 12-point narrative structure about (exclusively male) heroes includes The Call To Adventure, where the hero sees a wrong in the world and is invoked to right it; and encounters with Tests, Allies and Enemies, where the hero recognises who the good guys and bad guys in the world are – and thus acts accordingly.

Now, let’s name some films.

Inglourious Basterds. Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Captain America. All Through The Night. The Rocketeer. Swing Kids. X-Men: First Class. 49th Parallel. Escape In The Desert. Lifeboat.

All of these films follow the narrative structure of The Hero’s Journey, and one of the major encounters with an enemy in these films involves a singular act: punching a Nazi.

Neo-Nazi and self-proclaimed leader of the “alt-right” Richard Spencer was punched last month, an act that caused Spencer’s followers to denounce the violent act, and set liberals into a frenzy as we debated the ethics of punching someone in the face. What was missing from these debates, however, was an acknowledgement of how we as a culture have defined heroism, and how a new generation of fascists and bullies are picking and choosing how to embody that ideal.

Young men involved in the far right are adopting dangerously misogynistic and homophobic perceptions of masculinity, as demonstrated by Nicholas Pell’s now infamous Irish Times glossary of terms used by white supremacists. Pell’s use of the word “cuck” to dismiss “weak or feminine men”, and repeated use of the term “alpha” denotes a limited and patriarchal view of masculinity, one that celebrates aggressive machismo, social dominance and the oppression and dismissal of others. The rhetoric of these men also refers to an “order” to society and the world; a euphemism for social hierarchies that prioritises white men over all other people. These men believe that by fighting for the oppression of other people, they are restoring the world to its rightful state.

But you know who else represents physically embodied masculinity, assertive beliefs and a desire to right the wrongs of the world at any cost?

Heroes in films who punch Nazis in the face.

Am I endorsing violence? Not necessarily. (In the case of neo-Nazis, not not necessarily, either.) But I think we need to start acknowledging the messages that films and pop culture transmit about heroism and masculinity, and what parts of this narrative are being self-servingly adopted by politically-minded men today. When we have spent seven decades now teaching young men that their visions of the world and their personal fulfilment is always right, and also that Nazi-style adversaries can and often should be met with violence – what parts of these narrative should and are likely to change now onscreen? At a time where white supremacists and neo-Nazis are becoming more vocal and powerful, is retaliation going to remain a fantasy only acted onscreen?

And will we start seeing more Heroes’ Journeys that are more true to life, where a white man believes that the world owes him power and validation – only for him to realise that his sense of entitlement may actually makes him the bad guy?