HEROES
Heroes serve a vital function in every culture and every time. They reconcile existing social tensions, affirm community values, and give people symbols to help shape their identities. Heroes are what people imagine them to be, they exist only so long as they are needed, and are transformed according to people's needs and expectations. Such needs were acute during the Depression years when much of what Americans had come to assume about their culture was in a state of disarray and disintegration. New types of heroes emerged to address this confusion. In an age of disorder, heroes defied, embraced, or subverted the chaos. In so doing, they helped the public survive it. Traditional heroes no longer sufficed during the Great Depression, when scarcity and widespread unemployment called into question the traditional middle-class axiom that success followed hard work. As millions were victimized by forces beyond their control, the "self-made men" and Horatio Alger heroes of yesterday gave way to the suffering, outlaw, and trickster heroes of the Great Depression.
Throughout 1930s American culture, victims assumed heroic proportions: the impoverished Joad family of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, the tragically afflicted Lou Gehrig, the resolute Rhett Butler at the end of Gone with the Wind, and the migrant workers and union organizers celebrated in the songs of Woody Guthrie. Herbert Hoover, the most famous self-made man in America, had become the chief villain of the Depression, his very name synonymous with misery and hopelessness. Taking his place was a son of wealth and privilege struck unexpectedly by a debilitating disease. Franklin Roosevelt's struggle with polio and his courageous triumph over adversity mirrored how suffering Americans imagined their own plight.
Outlaw heroes, on the other hand, refused to be victimized. Turning the Victorian work ethic inside-out, they cynically demonstrated the benefits of subverting and assaulting the system. Such Hollywood gangster films as Scarface (1932), Public Enemy (1931), and Little Caesar (1931) mocked immigrant and business success stories with Italian and Irish-American antiheroes who advanced in their "professions" through ruthless ambition, deceit, and murder. The exploits of such real-life bank-robbers as Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger excited Americans so much that the authorities felt compelled to remind people that these were criminals and not folk heroes.
Other heroes found it more suitable to simply work around the system. The hard-boiled detectives of pulp fiction and film existed alongside the legal authorities, going places where the police would not and achieving results that they could not by circumventing the law. Pulp and comic book superheroes such as the Shadow, Batman, and even Superman sometimes came into conflict with the police in the course of their own vigilante crusades. At a time when the institutions of power seemed inadequate in the face of social crises, these heroes appealed to the desire for swift and righteous justice.
Sometimes humor is the best response to a bad situation, and Depression-era trickster heroes spoke to that virtue. Building upon the comedic working-class sensibilities of Charlie Chaplin and pioneering in the art of improvised anarchy on film, the Marx Brothers ridiculed the ruling classes even as they dished out self-deprecating humor for the unemployed. Mae West mocked the "important" men in her films and demonstrated the sexual power that women could wield over them. Warner Brothers cartoon characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck provided even more outrageous laughs at the expense of snobs, fat-cats, and blowhards. In such heroes, powerless Americans could see the qualities of resilience, resourcefulness, and wits that would get them through the difficult days. For these were the true heroes of the Great Depression, the common people themselves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Levine, Lawrence W. "American Culture and the Great Depression." Yale Review 74 (winter 1985): 196–223.
Sklar, Robert. City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield. 1992.
Susman, Warren I. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. 1984.
Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. 2001.
