{"id":2090,"date":"2018-01-25T23:05:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T04:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=2090"},"modified":"2018-01-25T23:05:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T04:05:06","slug":"the-great-american-hero-of-the-american-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/25\/the-great-american-hero-of-the-american-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great American Hero of the American Century"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some historians have dubbed the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century, \u201cThe American Century\u201d because of the dominance of its military, industrial, financial and cultural power.\u00a0 Assuming that the 21<sup>st<\/sup> Century will be a muddled mess, it may be that history will declare the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century to have been the golden age of the United States of America.\u00a0 So, barring the God Emperor restoring us to our former dominance it looks possible that the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century will be remembered as our high point.\u00a0 I was thinking about who can be considered the greatest and most representative fictional American hero of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century?\u00a0 If this were Ancient Greece or Rome we would look to epic poetry.\u00a0 For Modern European countries we might look to novels, plays or possibly Grand Opera.\u00a0 In addition to these, for Twentieth Century America we also have to consider several newer arts. \u00a0Motion pictures and comic books appeared during that time period.\u00a0 Several interesting candidates come to my mind from some of my favorite stories.\u00a0 From comic books there are obviously Superman and Batman.\u00a0 Movie characters that I can think of are Sam Spade from the \u201cMaltese Falcon\u201d and Peter Warren from \u201cIt Happened One Night.\u201d\u00a0 Both characters reflect the rugged independence and confidence that typify the self-image of American men from the time period.\u00a0 There are, surely, another dozen well-known characters from American books and movies of last century that represent the qualities that American men recognize as the archetype.\u00a0 I\u2019ll let the reader add some names to the list.\u00a0 But there is another artform that blossomed in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century, animation or cartoons.\u00a0 It is from this artform that I have selected the quintessential 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century American Hero, Bugs Bunny.<\/p>\n<p>Some may say that my roots in New York City have irrationally biased me in favor of this wisecracking lagomorph who sounds like he should be selling newspapers in Times Square or hot dogs at Yankee Stadium.\u00a0 But I\u2019m willing to provide a rational accounting.\u00a0 As I mentioned above, the characteristics of the American male (up until the snowflake generation) were self-confidence, optimism, independence, competitiveness, pride, egalitarianism, ingenuity and a sense of humor.\u00a0 Now, certainly no one normally displays all these virtues to the highest degree at the same time, in the real world but these are the characteristics that identify the ideal.\u00a0 My thesis is that Bugs is close to that ideal.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll start with the last quality first.\u00a0 I defy anyone to deny that Bugs Bunny practically defines mid-century American humor.\u00a0 The Looney Tunes were among the most popular things shown at the movie theaters across the country and Bugs was the most popular character in the cartoons.\u00a0 Bugs had a wise crack for every occasion and every antagonist.<\/p>\n<p>All the rest of these qualities are on constant display as the \u201cwascally wabbit\u201d battles any and every rabbit hating adversary from Elmer Fudd all the way up to Hitler and Mussolini.\u00a0 His intrepidity extended all the way up to Martians wielding disintegrator guns and gremlins sabotaging the very aircraft that Bugs is flying.\u00a0 And one last quality he exemplified was patriotism.\u00a0 In one episode he competed with various other characters to see who was the true \u201csuperman.\u201d\u00a0 But at the end he abandons the competition to become the true superman by donning the dress uniform of a US Marine.\u00a0 Of course, this was at the height of World War II.\u00a0 I think I\u2019ve made my case.<\/p>\n<p>So, here\u2019s to you Bugs, the Greatest American Hero.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s All Folks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some historians have dubbed the 20th Century, \u201cThe American Century\u201d because of the dominance of its military, industrial, financial and cultural power.\u00a0 Assuming that the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,237],"tags":[644,645,26,642,643],"class_list":["post-2090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-reviews","tag-20th-century","tag-american-century","tag-american-exceptionalism","tag-bugs-bunny","tag-looney-tunes"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Great American Hero of the American Century - Orion&#039;s Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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