I was having a very similar conversation recently on the podcast around the idea of historical authenticity in film, specifically in reference to The Doors. One of our guests recounted an anecdote involving Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger (the keyboard player and guitarist of the band). Apparently, during an interview, one of them was asked if they remembered writing Light My Fire, and he began describing a scene in which Krieger plays the melody for the band, then Manzarek says, “Go have a walk on the beach while I figure out the intro.” Cut to: a fully formed version of the song. After listening to this retelling, the other band member interjected, “That’s not what happened — that was the film.”
It’s a perfect illustration of cinema's ability to ingrain in the cultural psyche a historiography of the past. These representations, filtered through affective narrative and formal stylisation, often become the dominant way a historical moment or figure is remembered, over and above the actual events. This blurring of representation and memory is a recurring by-product of 20th-century visual culture, and arguably, it intensifies in the digital era where myth and meme operate symbiotically.
Your piece also eloquently raises the increasingly urgent question: what does "positive" or "aspirational" masculinity look like today? It feels too reductive to say that the traditional heroic model is simply toxic and must be discarded. What’s more interesting is how those earlier archetypes, the ‘Great Man’ figures, the stoic martyrs, now have to be shot through with ironic self-awareness or existential doubt. The modern hero has to apologise for being a hero because heroism can not be considered a "pure" quality any more.
We see this reflexivity everywhere: in Marvel’s quippy undercutting, in the brooding trauma of The Batman, even in the self-loathing of prestige TV protagonists. Strength is no longer purely physical or moral — it’s emotional literacy, vulnerability, self-interrogation. But here’s the rub: if the traditional epic myth becomes culturally untenable, yet no new myth has been established to take its place, then the vacuum gets filled — often by online avatars of masculinity that thrive on grievance and spectacle.
There’s something to be said for the return of earnestness, even mythic excess. I’d argue that Braveheart (and even Gladiator) are useful not for what they say about history, but for how they channel the need for transcendence, that mythic register where courage, sacrifice, and moral conviction are stylised into forms of cultural aspiration. And while it's easy to mock the slow-motion battle cry or the swelling score, there’s a reason those tropes endure, they speak to a elemental human feeling.
I'm loathed to mention it but this is why spectator sports are so enduring. I was up until 1 am watching Rory McElroy win the Masters. It not exactly Mel Gibson crying freedom, but it was a story of vanquishing ones own demons and writing your name in history.
The cultural problem isn’t necessarily that we make films like Braveheart, it’s that we don’t know how to read them anymore. We demand realism from works whose power derives from romantic symbolism. Or worse, we discard them because their formal excesses don’t conform to current ideological tastes. In doing so, we risk flattening culture into the palatable and didactic.
I think your final point is especially astute: if we strip fiction of its capacity to exaggerate, imagine, or mythologise, we diminish our collective capacity for moral and emotional projection. Perhaps the issue isn’t that epic myths are dead, it’s that we’ve lost the interpretive frameworks to understand what they’re for.
Wow Dario this is such a brilliant analysis of my point - you are putting it so eloquently and I’m glad you agree. And I believe you are absolutely correct in saying that we’ve lost the ability to read this romantic symbolism, rather than it being dead. There is a terrible lack of cinematic and media literacy that unfortunately prevents kids these days to appreciate classics that have shaped us as a society. And in fact, realism isn’t even what they really want - look at how successful Everything Everywhere all at once was. It was a hit exactly because of this hyper awareness and self-reflexivity that you mentioned. Reading “the Culture of Narcissim” by Christopher Larsch has been super insightful in seeing how prevalent this auto-irony has become in society, where sincerity and true human feeling are ridiculed.
Thank you so much for this comment - I really look forward to discussing this with you!
Very interesting essay! I liked how you explained the utility of myths for boys and how the updated idea of hero is twisted... Now I want to see this movie hhhhhh😂
I was having a very similar conversation recently on the podcast around the idea of historical authenticity in film, specifically in reference to The Doors. One of our guests recounted an anecdote involving Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger (the keyboard player and guitarist of the band). Apparently, during an interview, one of them was asked if they remembered writing Light My Fire, and he began describing a scene in which Krieger plays the melody for the band, then Manzarek says, “Go have a walk on the beach while I figure out the intro.” Cut to: a fully formed version of the song. After listening to this retelling, the other band member interjected, “That’s not what happened — that was the film.”
It’s a perfect illustration of cinema's ability to ingrain in the cultural psyche a historiography of the past. These representations, filtered through affective narrative and formal stylisation, often become the dominant way a historical moment or figure is remembered, over and above the actual events. This blurring of representation and memory is a recurring by-product of 20th-century visual culture, and arguably, it intensifies in the digital era where myth and meme operate symbiotically.
Your piece also eloquently raises the increasingly urgent question: what does "positive" or "aspirational" masculinity look like today? It feels too reductive to say that the traditional heroic model is simply toxic and must be discarded. What’s more interesting is how those earlier archetypes, the ‘Great Man’ figures, the stoic martyrs, now have to be shot through with ironic self-awareness or existential doubt. The modern hero has to apologise for being a hero because heroism can not be considered a "pure" quality any more.
We see this reflexivity everywhere: in Marvel’s quippy undercutting, in the brooding trauma of The Batman, even in the self-loathing of prestige TV protagonists. Strength is no longer purely physical or moral — it’s emotional literacy, vulnerability, self-interrogation. But here’s the rub: if the traditional epic myth becomes culturally untenable, yet no new myth has been established to take its place, then the vacuum gets filled — often by online avatars of masculinity that thrive on grievance and spectacle.
There’s something to be said for the return of earnestness, even mythic excess. I’d argue that Braveheart (and even Gladiator) are useful not for what they say about history, but for how they channel the need for transcendence, that mythic register where courage, sacrifice, and moral conviction are stylised into forms of cultural aspiration. And while it's easy to mock the slow-motion battle cry or the swelling score, there’s a reason those tropes endure, they speak to a elemental human feeling.
I'm loathed to mention it but this is why spectator sports are so enduring. I was up until 1 am watching Rory McElroy win the Masters. It not exactly Mel Gibson crying freedom, but it was a story of vanquishing ones own demons and writing your name in history.
The cultural problem isn’t necessarily that we make films like Braveheart, it’s that we don’t know how to read them anymore. We demand realism from works whose power derives from romantic symbolism. Or worse, we discard them because their formal excesses don’t conform to current ideological tastes. In doing so, we risk flattening culture into the palatable and didactic.
I think your final point is especially astute: if we strip fiction of its capacity to exaggerate, imagine, or mythologise, we diminish our collective capacity for moral and emotional projection. Perhaps the issue isn’t that epic myths are dead, it’s that we’ve lost the interpretive frameworks to understand what they’re for.
Wow Dario this is such a brilliant analysis of my point - you are putting it so eloquently and I’m glad you agree. And I believe you are absolutely correct in saying that we’ve lost the ability to read this romantic symbolism, rather than it being dead. There is a terrible lack of cinematic and media literacy that unfortunately prevents kids these days to appreciate classics that have shaped us as a society. And in fact, realism isn’t even what they really want - look at how successful Everything Everywhere all at once was. It was a hit exactly because of this hyper awareness and self-reflexivity that you mentioned. Reading “the Culture of Narcissim” by Christopher Larsch has been super insightful in seeing how prevalent this auto-irony has become in society, where sincerity and true human feeling are ridiculed.
Thank you so much for this comment - I really look forward to discussing this with you!
Very interesting essay! I liked how you explained the utility of myths for boys and how the updated idea of hero is twisted... Now I want to see this movie hhhhhh😂
Thank you ☺️ I’d be interested to see what you think of the film!
Great essay, Sara. You're really showing your writer's chops across a broad spectrum of styles and meaning. Bravo!
Thank you so much David ! This means a lot 😊