Heroic Tales in the Twenty First Century — an addendum
I wrote my previous essay too soon. Just when I thought that there was nothing more unrealistic, showing a basic contempt for basic human psychology, than the scenes I had seen so far in the Third Season of THE ARROW, I stumbled across the pièce de résistance.
I added the following words to the middle of the column, right after describing the absurdity of having the shy, molar-filing-meltingly smoking-hot computer genius girl throw herself at the eccentric billionaire and end up cavorting in bed with him. It gets worse.
Two or three episodes later, after, long after, the eccentric billionaire and the molar-filing-meltingly smoking-hot computer genius girl have enjoyed all the sensual pleasures of the marriage bed, and he has fornicated with her like a randy goat in rutting season, then and only then he tells her he loves her.
And the writers decide that this, the revelation that he loves her, is startling and surprising to her, as if she were a blushing virgin and not the proverbial cow who need not be bought because she gives away her milk free of charge.
This was so clunky, so absurd, so unbelievable, so unlike the way a real girl with any real self esteem would act, I cannot even fathom whether the writer is attempting a cynical ploy to manipulate the viewers emotions and doing it very, very badly, or if the writer is stupid enough to think that this is a reaction any young female of the species homo sapiens could actually encompass.
Are you telling me eccentric billionaire did not tell the girl he was making love to that he loved her? Not at any point before, during, or after the sex act? And she stood for that, and thought it was normal?
Does anyone think this is normal? It is sick. Something is broken in the soul of anyone who thinks this way.
Women make all the first moves in Twenty Firster mythology, and they sleep with men who don’t say ‘I love you’ because they do not think themselves worthy of love. And so they sleep around like unpaid whores, having been told that whoring around does not damage the self esteem, and meanwhile the poor Twenty Firster girls do not understand why their suicide rate is climbing so high, so fast.
Twenty Firsters write characters who behave with almost suicidal ignorance, immorality and stupidity because there is something suicidal in their whole mindset.
And yet in the same episode, the writers can portray Christlike acts of bravery, self sacrifice, and compassion, and have deep and three dimensional realistic emotional reactions to great tragedies and great acts of heroism, expert writing, as good as anything in the very best of novels, carried out with seemingly effortless skill and grace. Because those areas are not areas strained by political correctness, and so their natural genius is allowed to flower.
It is the contrast that shocks me. It is like seeing an Olympic ice skater performing the difficult tricks and leaps without flaw or hesitation, but who then makes astonishing pratfalls of comical clumsiness in one and only one patch of ice. And I wonder why the skater cannot see that one patch of ice.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
