ARE WE FLOODED WITH HEROES? The Australian hero: Positive role model or commercial media fabrication?

Every individual needs a positive role model to look up to. Australia, as a young country, is endowed with many heroes who have achieved different feats at a national and individual level. Today heroism plays a central part in our cultural identity and spreads pride throughout the hearts of many as effectively as floodwaters spread water throughout the Lockyer Valley. We greatly admire and respect those whom we have acknowledged as heroic because of there actions. Do we not sometimes ask ourselves whether their efforts are even worthy of acknowledgement? We call a crazy bushman wearing a ‘metal bucket’ on his head a hero and a musician who can create a tune from a wobble board who does not even reside in this country an icon. The majority of these so-called ‘heroes’ have done little more than a superhero’s side-kick which in most instances is little to nothing at all. They have been honoured, for example, for their mediocrity or acts of terrorism. The criteria for a real hero have been corrupted and flushed away by today’s technological knowhow via the materialistic communication media.
A hero can be defined as an individual of “distinguished courage or performance, admired for his noble qualities” [First definition, Macquarie Dictionary: p. 832]. Nobility is not a popular concept in the current materialistic cultures of today’s world. It is evident that this definition does not apply to most of Australia’s heroes. In the case of Ned Kelly, his popularity is based predominantly on his fight against the established authorities of his time. This fits well with the popular Australian anti-authoritarian attitude and the Australian “tall poppy” syndrome. However idealistic his motives, Ned Kelly used robbery and murder as the methods to achieve his aims. These are hardly “noble” actions and not worthy of imitation or adulation.
The communication media present a hero as someone who can capture the attention of the largest number of people and can retain this attention for an extended period of time, thus earning large sums of money for media conglomerates and their associated companies. They do whatever they can to stimulate our materialistic taste-buds. Media communications are designed to engineer a passive audience, one which will accept whatever raw reality rubbish is on offer and will consume whatever is recommended, to the commercial advantage of the corporate bedfellows of the media magnates. For example, the sale of products promoted by successful sports persons often leads to huge financial gains. The media intend the population to swim with the materialistic and amoral current rather than against it. In this environment they foster the development of “heroes” who will enhance their commercial gain. Successful sports professionals, are established as role models. The behaviour imitated by the bulk of the population is often not admirable from an ethical or moral point of view – sporting heroes are often more famous for their unruly behaviour, binge drinking and sexual promiscuity than for any real ethical contribution to society. Success in sport has become the sole criterion for hero status and sport has become the national religion in Australia. The Australian public is constantly flooded with a deluge of morally and ethically bankrupt ideas, and these are packaged in the form of irrational and unquestioning hero worship.
So powerful is this commercial force that it subdues even the long-established cultures of those from other parts of the world who migrate to Australia. In time most of them worship the quintessential Australian hero and gradually forget their valuable cultural roots. Although Australia is nominally a multicultural society, it is in reality very much a mono-cultural society. Those who show little interest in competitive sport remain very much on the fringe of society.
Those Australians who discovered a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women enjoyed only the briefest period of acknowledgement. They ought to be considered genuine heroes for their years of struggle and sacrifice which led to the prevention of a widespread and deadly disease.
The meaning of heroism in Australia has evolved over the brief history of our nation to denote success in the sporting or entertainment fields. It has little moral or ethical reference. Heroes enjoy an enduring adulation regardless of their lack of ethics and moral values. In fact such lack often enhances their hero status. This is regrettable as the media not only promote this distorted image of what a hero should be, but also encourage the population, and in particular its younger members, to imitate the behaviour of their heroes. In this way they are inhibiting humanity’s advancement towards an enlightened society. They should be a shining example of moral, spiritual, intellectual or physical ability.

Bibliography
Bernstein, A., last updated 2002, viewed 24 February 2012 http://www.mikementzer.com/heroism.html
Google Images, last update 2012, viewed 4 March 2012, http://friskymongoose.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/marvel-characters.jpg
The Macquarie Dictionary, 1982, Macquarie Library Pty. Ltd., Australia