Recently, I was
wasting lots of time on the internet researching a
post I wrote for the AllMovie blog about
TVTropes.org, when I ended up in a vortex of ideas about modern hero archetypes in movies, and whether the idea of coolness is as ancient as anything or, in fact, approximately no centuries old. See if you can follow me on this one.
I was thinking about movies that are kind of trope-tributes, like Legends of the Fall. Opinions divide on its quality, but all I'm thinking about is how the story is intentionally made up entirely of themes lifted directly out of the Western Lit playbook, like Cain and Abel, the Prodigal Son and Tristan and Iseult. So details aside, the premise here is a premise you've seen many, many times.
The page from the playbook that got me going is the following. You have two brothers: one is the Awesome Brother, who is sometimes Prodigal, usually rebellious, and tends to be adored by everybody, even though as a matter of type, he rarely has his shit together. Then you have the other brother, who we'll call Not Awesome -- he's what TVTropes would call the
Un Favorite, and he's often the victim of
Parental Favoritism, even when he stays behind and acts as the
Dutiful Son, taking care of the homestead while the Awesome Brother disappears to sew his oats or find himself or whatever.
What stands out about most modern tellings of this story is that even though Not Awesome is given every opportunity to earn our sympathy, even though he spends all his time accomplishing things, endeavoring to gain the approval of his father or girl, even though we know his low-ranking status in the family is totally unfair, he still seems kind of wormy and pathetic. Whereas the Awesome Brother (who TVTropes rightly points out is often
Troubled But Cute, a type that also includes the Dylan McKays and Jordan Catalanos of the world) never tries to earn anybody's approval, and yet he oozes wonderfulness and charisma, beloved by both the characters and the audience, even though he's kind of a fuck up. And the lovable bad boy has the same MO in movies without the sibling element -- he doesn't identify with any of his responsibilities or obligations to anyone else and we love him for it.
It's one thing to buck the system like Robbin Hood or Zorro, running around with a cape and a sword, declaring your rapscallion ideals to the world and doing lots of hero-type-things, even though technically, you're on the other side of the law. But literarily speaking, it seems like quite another to buck the system without embracing another one, to endear yourself so effortlessly to the audience by
not ascribing to things, by
not trying hard or doing right. And then getting all down about it -- often tempering your dispassion towards the structures of the world with a streak of melancholy, and a painful self-awareness about the lack of meaning in everything.
Morose motherfuckers have appeared in plenty of stories, but even Hamlet doesn't elicit this kind of swooning, and his ennui was circumstantial anyway. I could be wrong, but it seems like Troubled But Cute is entirely an invention of the 20th century. Maybe I'm dumb or just reading it all wrong, but I can't think of a major example that predates Holden Caufield when it comes to a character evoking such gut admiration from the audience by way of smirking detachment, with underlying feelings of bitchy, existential angst. In fact, the whole idea of a hero struggling with his identity, rejecting society and somewhat aloofly embracing nothing at all, seems decidedly post Jazz Age American. When else did people have the time and money for this kind of thing?
I'm probably bound to eat my words, but I can't help drawing the ridiculously ambitious conclusion that the emergence of this concept in literature was more or less the invention of cool. James Dean cemented the rebellious but detached character type with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, and the flame's been carried by everybody from Fonzie to the emo vampire leading guy from Twilight. Like with anything, the theme gets watered down with each incarnation, but the general sentiment persists that coolness equals not playing by the rules. And more importantly, that coolness doesn't come from what you are, but from what you aren't. It comes from not buying in, not caring, not trying. Cool is supposed to be effortless. It might be cool to have a motorcycle, but having a motorcycle really means not caring if your hair gets messed up or if it's cold out tonight or if you die in a firey Mac truck explosion running from the state cops.
That's why when you get a modern reading of all these tropes in a sort of visible-template type movie like Legends of the Fall, you end up with a story where Brad Pitt spends the whole movie following the whims of his wild, free spirit, fucking up who knows how many lives in the process, but somehow remaining the ooey gooey center of all the other characters' worlds and ours by simple virtue of not giving a shit (except about that third brother dying, but that's just that pesky melancholy streak). Meanwhile, his brother Aiden Quinn (the Not Awesome Un Favorite) spends the whole movie working diligently to make something of himself -- going to college, marrying the girl Brad ditched, getting elected to public office -- and just makes the audience cringe with every new accomplishment, earning only pity and disgust for so flagrantly giving a shit -- namely, about what other people think.
I guess you could easily interpret the Troubled But Cute Awesome Brother Rebel Bad Boy as just a popular, slightly warped manifestation of strength and confidence being rewarded while weakness and doubt aren't. Or even easier, it's just fantasy heroism for modern life, where this weird promise that the non-great could one day become great is just too much pressure, and the deep down, we'd all rather not care than entertain the excruciating hope. Or maybe I'm totally off, and the bad boy dates back as far as man's been able to keep his hair looking disheveled but sexy. You can still run from the state cops on horseback.
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