A piece linked from Instapundit to an American Digest, where the author of the latter commented the following after seeing the movie ‘Flight 93’:
is that heroism is a virtue that most often appears among us not descending from some mythic pantheon, but rising up out of the ordinary earth and ordinary hearts when the moment calls for actions extraordinary.
In my terminology, people are made into heroes only when something is to gain from them, either politically, morally or financially. Take for example the Flight 93 event: passengers trying to take over the plane (that’s the current explanation of events) with the result that the plane crashes. I call that a human tragedy, a tragedy caused by the human instinct to try to survive at all times. If the Flight 93 passengers were heroes, that would make my parents heroes too: after all, living under extreme stress for 3 years in the Japanese camps, surviving the chaos afterwards and then, trying to make a life out of it. Wouldn’t they qualify for a ‘Flight 93’-like movie, country songs praising their life (uh) and, yes, a wall of flowers errected in honour of them, preferably in a crescent shape? Obviously, back in those days ‘life just went on’ and people went on about, while in this day and age, everything needs to be labelled and “Hollywoodized”. Oh. You say, heroes die?
Murder she said! Alfons read Donna Tartt’s latest book (fansite). She reminds me of the girl of Twin Peaks. Anyhow: Having read Tartt’s very first novel (which happens to be a murder-mystery too), how come American authors are so obsessed with murder? Would that tell something about American culture?