Criminals as Heroes in Popular Culture

Roxie J. James, Kathryn E. Lane, Roxie J. James, Kathryn E. Lane

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030395858
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

This book delves into humanity's compulsive need to valorize criminals. The criminal hero is a seductive figure, and audiences get a rather scopophilic pleasure in watching people behave badly. This book offers an analysis of the varied and vexing definitions of hero, criminal, and criminal heroes both historically and culturally.

This book also examines the global presence, gendered complications, and gentle juxtapositions in criminal hero figures such as: Robin Hood, Breaking Bad, American Gods, American Vandal, Kabir, Plunkett and Macleane, Martha Stewart, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, Ocean's 11, Ocean's Eleven, and Let The Bullets Fly.

© The Author(s) 2020

R. J. James, K. E. Lane (eds.)Criminals as Heroes in Popular Culturehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39585-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. “I Need a Hero:” Representation and Reinvention of the Criminal Hero in Mass Media

Roxie J. James¹ and Kathryn E. Lane¹

(1)

Department of English, Northwestern Oklahoma State University, Alva, OK, USA

Roxie J. James (Corresponding author)

Kathryn E. Lane

Abstract

The allure of criminals, heroes, and everything in between is nothing new. Consider the mythos of the western gunslinger, the romanticized view of pirates, or the rise of the Robin Hood-esque folk hero. The criminal hero is a seductive figure, and, in truth, audiences get a rather scopophilic pleasure in watching people behave badly. This introduction offers an analysis of the varied and vexing definitions of hero, criminal, and criminal heroes, it explores the historical context for society’s cyclical fascination with the criminal hero beginning with the Robin Hood figure, it traces the evolving image of the criminal hero, and it provides an in-depth analysis of two films in the Ocean’s Eleven oeuvre (Lewis Milstones’s 1960s production Ocean’s 11 and the 2001 interpretation starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt) in order to highlight the necessity of the criminal hero.

Keywords

CriminalHeroOcean’s Eleven/11

End Abstract

When you hear the word “hero,” what kaleidoscope of images cross your mind’s eye? Do you picture a well-defined physique and a cape billowing in the wind? Do you visualize a badge or a uniform? Perhaps you see a monument to fallen heroes or you recognize someone who demonstrates heroism. For many of us, the definition of hero can be both universal and personal. We would like to believe that given the opportunity we could be a hero ourselves. Yet, such a title was not always available to the common man.

Early mythological heroes boasted supernatural abilities and performed legendary feats that tested their physical, mental, and emotional tenacity. Historically, those same ancient heroes belonged to one of two categories—“deified human beings (esp. historical figures) whose great deeds had raised them to a rank intermediate between gods and humans, and who were venerated or worshipped; and demigods, said to be the offspring of a god or goddess and a human.”¹ The term “hero” itself comes from the classical Latin hērōs (plural hērōēs) meaning “man of superhuman strength, courage, or ability, favoured by the gods, man with heroic qualities.”² However as humanity evolved, so too did the definition of hero. No longer literal intermediaries, many heroes today are defined as “someone who helps without anything expected in return. Their gesture may be big or small, profound or not, it doesn’t make im’ any less of a hero.”³ Although the ideals and qualifications of heroism are changing, heroes are still the “idols of culture”⁴ that help shape humanity’s progression.

However, there is a dark side to having idols. The onset of print text and media means that our lives are now saturated with heroic images. No longer the godlike man of ancient times, every CPR performer, cat-from-tree rescuer, and whistle-blower is now lauded as hero. An embodiment of society, the hero figure is often manipulated and reconfigured as needed. As the world changed, so too did the image of the hero. The deified human and the demigod hero became the warrior hero, the warrior hero became the noble knight hero, and the noble knight hero became the distinguished gentleman hero. The industrial and French revolutions saw the distinguished gentleman hero become the self-made man hero, and the technological revolution saw the rise of the little man hero. Cultures establish a symbiotic relationship with a symbiotic ideal. As American historian Dixon Wecter explains in his text, The Hero in America: A Chronicle of Hero Worship, a hero “is selected because he seems to fit the mould desired by the masses—and, once his work is done, he is idealized to fill that mould even better.”⁵ For sociologist Orrin Klapp, “Heroes state major themes of an ethos, the kinds of things people approve.”⁶ And, for theologist Paul Kooistra, “Heroes express the kinds of things which a culture approves. They are human expressions of idealized social values.”⁷ And although these three scholars are writing within decades of each other—with Wecter publishing in 1941, Klapp publishing in 1961, and Kooistra publishing in 1989—their observations all point to the same thing—godlike or not, we need heroes.

It is baffling, however, that among this cry that lauds our need for heroes is a whisper that taunts our need for criminals. Villains, scoundrels, bad apples, badmen, rabble-rousers, murderers, thieves, degenerates, psychopaths, racketeers, ingrates, bandits, outlaws, undesirables, pariahs, and convicts—you may call them many things, but what you can’t call them is forgettable. So, while we may need heroes, we want criminals. More than that, it is about balance—a balance that the criminal and hero figure provide. As much as we need heroes, we need criminals—societal stability depends on the presence of both. Kooistra explains that our want of criminals may be influenced by three factors—the psychological perspective that posits them as “a response to fundamental problems facing the human species,”⁸ the cultural perspective that posits them as “symbolic expressions of cherished cultural values,”⁹ and the sociological perspective which examines “how social conditions influence the interpretations of the lawbreaker’s character and deeds.”¹⁰ These three perspectives come together to create a figure whose very existence is contingent upon society’s need for them—much like the hero.

Like the term “hero,” the term “criminal” finds a portion of its origins from the Latin crīminālis, but the term also has French roots as seen in the French criminel.¹¹ In the Anglo-Norman and Middle French criminel means “impious, wicked, pagan, that constitutes a crime, guilty of a crime, that relates to crime or its punishment.”¹² In the classical Latin crīminālis, the term was used to reference “of or relating to crime (2nd cent. a.d.).”¹³ In post-classical Latin, the term was taken to mean “sinful.”¹⁴ However, much like the definition of “hero,” the definition of “criminal” also changed as humanity and, more specifically, culture changed. Modern popular cultural vernacular has also been saturated with the term criminal. Some of its more recent demarcations have included, “when something is completely and utterly bad,” “when someone is so good looking it should be a crime,” “A person with a propensity toward violence, but not enough capital to start a corporation,” and “when something is uber cool in any way.”¹⁵ With this shift, the term becomes conflated with something not necessarily good, but not necessarily bad either.

Just as we find heroes and criminals throughout history, we also find those ambiguous figures who serves as both criminal and hero. And, like our hero and criminal figures, our heroic criminals are also present throughout history. As Kooistra explains, “throughout history we find a handful of individuals who have robbed and killed in clear violation of law, but who were not considered wicked or depraved.”¹⁶ These ambiguous figures are what this collection examines. By looking beyond the conventional definitions of criminal and hero, we can begin to “reconceptualize” the application of the term criminal hero, and discover that at its core, the paradox of the criminal hero finds it conception in discontentment—usually motivated by some corrupt authoritarian figure or regime.¹⁷ Their formulaic backstory is also usually the same,

They are driven to a life of crime either as a victim of injustice or for committing an act which the state, ...