Acorn

Okay, so my mom had "Oprah" on, and I happened to be in the same room. I got slightly sucked in as I watched Emilio Estevez tear up while talking about his new movie "Bobby," which he wrote and directed. Estevez-who I've only know so far from "The Breakfast Club," "St. Elmo's Fire" and his role in the classic "Mighty Ducks"-was barely composed when he spoke about how he holed himself up to compose the screenplay about the night in 1968 on which Robert Kennedy was shot.

I couldn't understand why he was getting so worked up about this. Ok Emilio, you wrote a movie. It is a big accomplishment, but why the tears on national television at 4 o'clock in the afternoon? Perhaps it was the subject matter. I only know a few things about Bobby Kennedy-he was a great speaker, came from a cursed family, was running for president when he was assassinated and was a Kennedy-which is pretty synonymous with being a womanizer.

But then my mom said something that really got me thinking: Back in the 60s, personal life aside, people really thought Bobby Kennedy was going to change the world. And he might have, which is probably the most disappointing aspect of his death.

I'm not going to pretend to know much about Kennedy, or the political ideals for which he stood, but after talking to my mom, it became apparent to me that there was a time when he was a hero in the eyes of Americans.

Every generation has its heroes-those individuals who stand out among their peers and make some difference in the world. But they are not heroes simply because they made a change-plenty of people changed the world for the worse. They are heroes because they embodied-at least in the minds of the people watching them-ideal human values.

I fear that today, we have very few heroes.

And where are we to look for them? Politicians? World leaders? Are these two words even really that closely linked anymore? Religious leaders? Academics? Doctors? Pop icons? Artists? Where do we turn?

It seems as though in other points in history, heroes were much more clearly defined. Presidents, soldiers, social justice activists, regular people who risked their lives for something they believed in-they were all heroes, and were, for the most part, duly recognized for their work. We even have schools and streets named after them.

They just don't make people like they used to.

Movies about heroes are always about heroes from another time. Every generation must look to its past for heroes. People are much less flawed when only their accomplishments are remembered. They are even more revered, despite their flaws, when they are from an ancient past-and for some generations, the ancient past can go back only a few decades. Perhaps it is because of my naïvete as someone looking back on the past, that I see people as something better than they actually were.

But I don't think that I am alone in doing this. 

How many movies, monuments and statues have been dedicated to World War II?

How many memorialize the ancient Greek civilization? Or the glory of Rome?

What about King Arthur? Western civilization idolizes a person who may not even have existed-but he stands for everything that we hope to find in a leader.

The actions of these heroes are always in the past tense. We don't look at world leaders today and think that they are going to better the world. We shudder at the possibility that they will only make it worse, and don't give them the benefit of the doubt that their goals are altruistic. But sadly, most of the time they don't deserve it.

There are some good people out there, people that improve the world because they believe that it's the only right thing to do. They may not be in the limelight, but they are out there.

Who are they?

Today, we can find heroes in social activists, in the soldiers over in Iraq, and more generally, in people who do good deeds simply because they know that the world needs them. I find it fairly obvious from the recent election, no matter which party you side with, that there isn't really anyone out there that brings hope to the nation, in the grand sense. No one is saving the world. Everyone makes promises and comes up with clever rhymes to discourage citizens from voting for their opponents, but no candidate really promises a better country.

And that's what we look for in a hero-someone who will "fight the good fight" despite the odds, as cliche as that sounds. But then again, heroes are cliche, although they are unfortunately rare ones.

Where do we find such a person or such people? Looking to the past is futile. And we certainly can't look up. We're going to have to start looking around.

Jackie Ryan is a junior English major.

Article Tools