[rook]

You need to get a site pass by watching an ad to read the whole essay in Salon.

http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/05/30/heroes/

NBC's hit series "Heroes" was the most-watched new show on network television this year despite its demanding plot lines and stretches of subtitled Japanese. Its season finale, which aired May 21, dominated the 9 p.m. time slot. What explains the show's popularity, especially with younger viewers? I think it is that, like the Fox thriller "24," "Heroes" is a response to Sept. 11 and the rise of international terrorism. But while "24" skews to the right politically, "Heroes" seems like a left-wing response to those events. In fact, it functions as a thoughtful critique of Vice President Dick Cheney's doctrine on counterterrorism.

In Bush and Cheney's "war on terror," the evildoers are external and are clearly discernible. In "Heroes," each person agonizes over the evil within, a point of view more common on the political left than on the right. Each of the flawed characters is capable of both nobility and iniquity. In Bush's vision, the main threat remains rival states (Saddam's Iraq, Ahmadinejad's Iran). States are absent from "Heroes," as though irrelevant. "Heroes" makes terrorism a universal and psychological issue rather than one attached to a clash of civilizations or to a particular race.
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More commentary from his blog.

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/cole...e-wars-my.html

It seems to me that this is the continental rift in the contemporary culture wars, between those with a nationalist, black and white view of geopolitics, and those who can see past US actions as sometimes unfortunate (backing Islamic fanatics against the Soviets in Afghanistan) and as producing "blowback" [in Ron Paul's term] or boomeranging on us.

I am not saying that “Heroes” takes sides on such political issues, but I am saying that its moral vision would give little aid and comfort to the American nationalists. In "Heroes," a lot of characters are driven to do things they regret and to harm the people around them without fully intending to. Terror is not something produced by other people, with brown skins and different rituals, but is a danger within each human being, even within WASPs.

[Mathsorcerer]

I will disagree with one point by this blogger: Heroes has nothing to do with the aftermath of 11 Sept whatsoever. True, it did touch on it with the last few episodes (especially after "Five Years Gone"), but the gist of the show does not.

Superheroes, the struggle to find one's place in the world, the question as to whether one should make a difference if one can, and the question of coming together to right wrongs are much older than 11 Sept. In fact, they are as old as humanity--Gilgamesh, whose tales were written down in the earliest period of the Mesopotamian civilization, was basically a superhero.

[Sam]

I hate Salon. I wish I had grabbed that domain name before they did. One-word domains are gold nowadays.

Um, I have nothing to say about this thread's topic.

[rook]

Here is the part I thought everyone would jump on in the Salon article.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature...es/index1.html

Heroes" also acknowledges the subjectivity of any discussion of "terror." The show's moral vision is far too nuanced to give aid and comfort to American nationalists. The serial killer in the cast, Sylar, played by Zachary Quinto, is the closest thing "Heroes" has to a pure villain. He seeks out and removes the brains of the other mutants. In the season finale, when it is clear that Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) is the mutant who is in danger of losing control of himself and destroying New York, even Sylar's wickedness becomes ambiguous. Sylar, in a position to rub out Petrelli before the latter explodes, realizes that were he to destroy the time-bomb mutant, he would turn out to be the true hero. He wants to kill Petrelli and save New York, but for the wrong reasons.

What happens next is an implicit argument against Cheney's 1 percent doctrine. Just before Sylar can make himself into a perverse sort of hero by killing Peter Petrelli, Hiro Nakamura runs Sylar through with his samurai sword. Nakamura saves Petrelli, but New York remains endangered. Likewise, cheerleader Claire Bennet is in a position to shoot the human bomb (who once saved her from Sylar) and so to prevent the blast, and Peter Petrelli himself, fearing his own power, implores her to do so. She does not take the shot. Both of these plot twists could be seen as decisive rejections of deploying evil to forestall disaster, and of Cheney's impoverished view of human nature.

Ultimately, Peter's brother, Nathan the politician, who can fly, swoops down and grabs Peter. Instead of following through on a scheme hatched by his mother and Mr. Linderman to have him emerge as a soft dictator in the aftermath of the apocalyptic conflagration, Nathan ascends with Peter into the heavens. The explosion lights up the night sky above New York harmlessly. Tim Kring, who has spoken of wanting a redemptive ending to the season's story line, is apparently conveying the Gandhian message that compassion and brotherly self-sacrifice are more effective in preventing terrorism than naked ambition and hard-line tactics.
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I disagree. In 5 years now, Sylar clearly let Peter blow up the city. Once more he even let Peter blame hm for the bomb that blew up the city. That is how Nathan becomes President. Somewhere along that 5 years, Sylar killed a changeling or shape shifter and Nathan and used the changeling power to assume Nathan's identity. There was never any scenario that Sylar becomes a hero by stopping Peter from blowing up the city.

[Sam]

Dude, who cares? Religious fanatics think the Teletubbies are promoting homosexuality, and this guy thinks a TV show about superpower people is a statement against the Bush Administration. You want to believe something hard enough, it's not that hard to convince yourself.

[Mathsorcerer]

It's the Law of Five, Sam: look for something long enough and with enough creativity and you will find it.

I can't think why people are purposely injecting politics into Heroes. Actually, that isn't true--I do know why: it is because some people see everything as politicized. Why they have such a narrow world-view is a question that I truly cannot answer.

Neither a self-sacrificial approach nor a hard-line approach can prevent terrorism. Terrorism is like a force of nature--it happens from time to time and all you can do is clean up afterwards.

[The_Heroic_Loser]

This is why I'm never gonna get into politics when I grow older. It's just too.....political.