Losing Our Heroes

 

Opening Words:

It was when I stopped searching for home within others

And lifted the foundations of home within myself

I found there were no roots more intimate

Than those between a mind and body

That have decided to be whole

~Rupi Kaur

 

Sermon: Losing Our Heroes

When it was revealed that Neil Gaiman, my favorite author, was a serial rapist I was devastated. In my teenage years, I had gone out of my way to get my hands on as many of his books as possible and I still to that day viewed him as both a writing and moral idol based on his non-fiction writings and talks. He had a profound impact on my experience of strong female lead characters and influenced my views on trauma and abuse. When I was in college I waited in a line that went around three buildings from 4pm until 11:30pm just to get one of my books signed by him. American Gods (one of his books) profoundly shaped how I interacted with religion and the power of belief. He was married to another one of my idols, the musician Amanda Palmer, and I thought that together they were unstoppable. My first hint should have been their messy divorce that divided the internet into taking sides with one or the other. Then, this information came out and my beliefs about Neil Gaiman as a Good person and moral exemplar were entirely shattered. I was heartbroken that someone I had looked up to so much turned out to be such a vile person.

I know that many other people in my age group had this experience when J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, came out as transphobic. So many people who had looked to Harry Potter as a source of moral excellence and genuine acceptance had their worlds blown apart.

But this phenomenon of our heroes being outed as bad people is not solely a product of the time we live in now. I remember when I was young, I learned that Gandhi was a perfect and admirable revolutionary with peerless beliefs and a strictly good moral code. However, when I was in high school, I learned the truth about Gandhi. Despite his impact and good intentions, he was wildly racist and treated POC with extreme disrespect. He was also incredibly sexist, treating women (especially his wife) as lesser beings and fighting against access to birth control. This is not even to mention some of the practices he participated in to prove his celibacy and religious views.

It isn’t easy to lose our heroes. Every time another famous person is outed as a rapist or racist, I feel my heart break a little more for those who looked up to them. Sometimes it can feel like losing our heroes makes us lose faith in humanity as a whole. “If even they’re a horrible person, then what hope do the rest of us have?” Although losing our heroes isn’t entirely unique to this time, it is more prominent because of social media and our obsession with knowing the details of celebrities’ lives. Therefore, it seems like almost every week that more evidence comes out against people we look up to.

So how do we take this? How do we deal with losing the people who acted as our idols and moral compasses? Does it mean that all of our idols are bad people? Do we have to stop enjoying their work?

Well to answer the first question—how do we deal with this—I think it’s important to first acknowledge our own heartbreak and anger. These are extremely valid feelings that we should feel when someone does something despicable. Then, I think it’s important to recognize that everyone, even celebrities, are human. This means that they are just as liable to do terrible things as any other person, if not even more so because of their access to power and influence. After recognizing this, we should help in doing the work to hold these people accountable for their actions, not allowing them to get away with things because they are rich or powerful. Then, we are allowed to grieve. In this grief, I think it is most important to recognize the values and beliefs that you had admired in this person and realize that you were not at fault for looking up to them because you saw these things. Remember that the ideals and values that you saw in this person are still valuable and good, even if they were unable to uphold them themselves.

Then, “does this mean that all of our idols are bad people?”. Objectively, it does not. However, it is important to still keep in mind that these people are human, and looking at them as infallible is simply unrealistic. There will always be times that people mess up or do something wrong. It’s how they choose to deal with these things that matters. Obviously, there are degrees of messing up that are acceptable, and those that are not, but overall people should be allowed to make up for the mistakes that they make. For example, Zach Braff (an actor in the show Scrubs and a film director) wrote the movie Garden State, where he displayed Natalie Portman as the perfect example of the sexist Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. However, later on when he was confronted with this accusation, Braff owned up to it, saying that he made a mistake and had learned from it so that he could do better in the future. Because of this, I am able to see Zach Braff, one of my idols, as a human who made a mistake and learned from it rather than as a bad person.

The last question: do we have to stop enjoying their work? This answer is complicated and nuanced. On one hand, the good things that you got out of their work and example were not fake. You genuinely experienced these good things and learned from them, so they are still valuable. However, we cannot just stop there and say “death of the author” or separating the art from the artist is good enough. At the very least, we owe our favorite works of art or our preferred social revolutions a more critical eye with our new perspective on their authors beliefs and actions. More often than not, we unfortunately find things that we had not seen before that support these poor views and choices. For example, in Harry Potter, the existence of goblins as big-nosed and frugal is inherently anti-Semitic due to the cultural context and existing tropes, whether she intended it or not. Despite these issues and her actions, there are still positive things one could draw from Harry Potter. However, we owe ourselves the critical thinking to determine what those really are and what falls short. In addition, it is important not to support these people or their platforms, especially monetarily. This means not buying books by Neil Gaiman or purchasing Harry Potter merchandise. Because these people can and will use their platforms and the money they get to continue to spread hate, as J.K. Rowling has done by donating exuberant amounts of money to anti-trans organizations. And, perhaps most importantly, we should offer loud and focused support to the groups being harmed by these issues without shaming those who draw good things from their works.

As a whole, losing our heroes is hard. It’s complicated and messy and painful. But it is also an important part of growing up to see our heroes as human beings, perhaps worthy of our admiration, but also flawed and capable of making mistakes. When we lose our heroes it also presents us with a fantastic opportunity to reassess our own values and the things we admired about these people. In a sense, it allows us to become our own heroes by championing the good and worthwhile values that we saw in these people. So, I invite you to take a critical look at your heroes and the values and beliefs that you appreciate in them and decide how you want to live out these values and beliefs yourself.

 

Closing Words:

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver