Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes"

"I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!"

Thants.

NSFW, obviously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGvH86wfrzk

And she was terrific in Fleabag.

The Cornetto trilogy are excellent. I'm a big fan of Three Colours (my favourite is White) and I think that actually in the same way that Kieślowski clearly doesn't care about the supposed theme, he just wants money to make movies, we can say the same for the Cornetto movies. We're bringing the commonalities to it in our interpretation, Wright didn't pour great effort into ensuring that these movies "work" as a trilogy, but they do if you squint, in the same way that Kieślowski didn't put great effort into relating his three films to the French flag but if you squint you can make it work fine.

No, he was sent to Slough house over his reaction to that mistake. He disobeyed orders, caused panic at an airport, and assaulted a civilian. Now, that would have been fine if he was trying to save lives, but the whole thing was just a training exercise! He deliberately put people in danger just to massage his own ego; he absolutely deserved to be "exiled".

It's a parody of all British police procedurals simultaneously. It's the Airplane! of police shows... I won't say it's the Police Squad! of police shows, because that was spoofing US tropes, this spoofs UK tropes, but yes it's full of very serious actors saying very unserious things.

And yes, it has a gruff Scottish man (John Hannah) as lead D.I. Jack Cloth

There is no 'r' in Miller.

He's being an ass in order to push people to do better, and at the end of the day (over and over again) he cares about Justice or at least the National Interest, but he cares about the Slow Horses more (in his way).

The flatulanece (et al) works as a filter: can you see past the boorishness?

Coe has extraordinarily high SA and makes decisions immediately. They might seem impulsive, but when he acts, it is always with forethought.

(Yeah, Coe is our favourite character.)

Hmm really?

In the first couple episodes, he definitely is, but I think they level him out a bit later on so that the viewer actually ends up liking him.

In the books, he is much more consistently unlikable.

(Don't bother with the books, IMO--show is better while still hewing quite close to them).

In some ways similar to Lamb in Slow Horses, though I think Lamb is a very good manipulator of people (he gets others to do what he wants without telling them directly), whereas the Dep. Q guy doesn't engage at all.

That's not a critique - being a comforting source of unchanging familiarity is part of the point of a newspaper comic. But it is very different to H2G. Arthur Dent might be a bumbling failure who is flung around by forces out of his own control, but his life still changes and he still changes. He still grows a little bit as a person.

A hypothetical english person might feel trapped by their class and station and "win" by accepting it but the american character always has a chance to rise

In very broad strokes, Quixote says my perceptions and ideals are true and apparent evidence to the contrary must be a misunderstanding/ chance/ magic. His agency is to frame the world’s meaning in his own terms. Until finally he gives it up.

Candide accepts societal moral framings (i.e. rationalizations for wrongdoing) naively, but is slowly worn down by the evidence that they’re a sham. But in facing the seemingly intractable harshness of reality, he doesn’t become so cynical as to cede his own agency entirely—“Il faut cultiver notre jardin.”

To me that feels like a wiser response than absurdity or despondency.

1) Starting the story by Resisting the Call to adventure -- in a way that reveals strong character motivation (a strong desire to live)

2) He suffers a series of trials that slowly push him to the opposite view: That he must act boldly and selflessly if he is to survive (and thereby also save the Discworld)

3) He performs a heroic act (even if only armed with a "half-brick in a sock") contributing to the good side's overall victory

Although to be fair, he does tend to revert by the start of his next story.

Probably, because that's the most popular example of Charlie Brown as a sucker who never learns, but it's a core part of his character and is shown by many, many other gags. There's also a recurring gag with Lucy and April Fool's Day. There's a whole family of them around baseball and Peppermint Patty. There's another recurring gag where he tries to fly a kite.

The comic can't depict Charlie Brown as able to learn - since he never succeeds,† if he could learn, he'd never do anything at all.

† There are a couple of temporary exceptions. When he runs away from home he meets a gang of littler children who respect him. When he has to wear a paper bag over his head at camp, he becomes a success for the duration.

(And yes, I'm delightful at parties.)

Homer maybe the lowest version of a protagonist "loser" tolerable to American viewers, but he still has far too much agency compared to a British loser. "Lisa needs braces" and "Do it for her" are very hero-coded, and would never happen in a universe where the Simpsons are a British family.

Another barometer is American remakes of British shows, where the loser character is given redeeming qualities or circumstances rather than just letting them be the losers they are, such as David Brent vs. Michael Scott in their respective "The Office" roles. I suspect soaked-in-the-wool loser characters don't poll well in American focus groups hired by studios.

Same with Peter Griffin but he is confident and fiercely dominant. He doesn’t feel like a loser.

Even Michael from the office who is a “loser”, has a lot of redeeming qualities like genuine care for his employees, terrific salesman and a position of leadership.

Moreover, if Indy had not gone to Nepal, then Toht (having obtained the headpiece) and Belloq might have used a staff of the right length to find the Ark. Had they also captured Marion and taken her along to their secret island base, Jones would not have been there to tell her not to look, and thus her face would have melted off too.

Of course, Toht and his henchmen might also just have killed her in Nepal.

Alternatively, as Toht and company followed Jones to Marion, and might not have found her otherwise, they might never have had even half the headpiece of the staff of Ra, and the Ark thus would have remained undisturbed in its resting place, leaving the baddies to deal merely with the wrinkles and creases associated with aging appearing on their faces in the fullness of time.

So: Jones keeps Ravenwood alive, and puts the Belloq and his Nazi colleagues in a position to have their faces melted off. Jones also offed a couple of Nazis and other baddies along the way.

I think that's just bad script writing.

To be absolutely fair, I think in that era of American cinema there was a norm that you very clearly delineate apart what the protagonist accomplishes from what comes about by an act of God. Indiana Jones does nothing because the Nazis have to get their comeuppance for blasphemy.

I heard many people who grew up before 2000 remark younger people listened to more varied music than they did at the same ages. And I heard none remark the opposite. But some of the same people remarked knowledge of older television and movies had declined seemingly. And none remarked the opposite.

That's how I see Charlie Brown, as do many of my friends. We frequently use the "CB missing the football" as an analogy for the Democratic Party - over the past several decades years, the party has been a long series of swing-and-misses (notably their ability to win the popular vote but lose an election, and even more their inability to beat Trump, twice).

And from what I've seen of the cruelty and lack of empathy in American culture, I stand by my assessment.

This discussion is about American culture, and I have reasons for my criticisms. That you can't conceive of any such criticism as having any possible rationale beyond randomness and racism is what makes good faith discussion difficult here. Forgive me if I've given up even attempting nuance after having my efforts be met with snark and midwit dismissals time and again.

But in the future I will keep in mind that only pro-American views are allowed in threads like these. I keep forgetting this is supposed to be a safe space for the very people responsible for the myriad problems we're not supposed to mention. Sorry for harshing the vibe.

The episode where Angelica breaks her leg and Stu is basically forced into indentured servitude as a result is a masterpiece:

Didi: Stu? What are you doing?

Stu: Making chocolate pudding.

Didi: It's 4:00 in the morning. Why on Earth are you making chocolate pudding?

Stu: Because I've lost control of my life.

EDIT: Saying that, there is still a strong positive national identity. We're just too embarrassed to express it strongly (see patriotism), because of our fall from grace.

Victory wasn't worth the cost. It would've been better to give the entire empire to the Germans to maintain peace. It'd be lost anyway in a short amount of time. Even forcing King George and Kaiser Wilhelm to marry would've been better for them than German Republicanism and the British Royals becoming Kardashians with crowns.

(...And yes, that does sound like what it looks like is coming for the US, though it's not quite there yet.)

In 1966 there was an industrial disaster where a school was submerged in coal waste and 116 children died. The coal company offered £50 per child as compensation. There was a national outcry that marks the change in attitude and the compensation was increased tenfold to £500 (quite a lot back then). Did we see this in Flint with the polluted water, or in Ohio when that train derailed with all the chemicals?

There's something about having absolutely everything in the world and then pissing it all away in an enormous own goal of world wars that is extremely humbling and I'd like to think that plays a key part in the British psyche and I think its for the better.

My grandparents were the war generation I knew, having lived through the blitz, and all they wanted was to sit in the garden and have a nice cup of tea. They didn't want to be the best or were looking externally for validation. Just a nice sit down and a chin wag and I think that's a positive way to be, as opposed to what I imagine was the driving force of the Imperial era in always wanting more and trying to prove how "great" our nation should be. We proved how great we are in two of the most destructive wars in the world's history where the entirity of Europe lost. We suck.

I'd say they're charismatic and funny, but irredeemably bad people. It was refreshing that the show didn't shy away from that; in lots of comedies, the characters are basically psychopathic if taken literally, yet we're still supposed to like them and to see them as having hearts of gold if they make the occasional nice gesture. Always Sunny just leaned hard into portraying them as terrible people who were only 'likable' in the shallow sense needed to make the show fun to watch rather than an ordeal.

But I think the creators eventually lost sight of that -- I remember the big serious episode they did with Mac's dance, and I just find it baffling because in order to buy into the emotion we were evidently supposed to feel, we needed to take the characters seriously. And as soon as we take the characters seriously we are (or should be) overwhelmingly aware that we're watching people who have proven over the previous umpteen years to be irredeemable sociopaths, which kind of takes the edge off the heartwarming pride story.

The genius of IASIP is to just lean all the way into this trope. The characters are never sympathetic and never redeem themselves. It's almost an experiment in whether you can make people feel sympathetic toward awful (but entertaining) characters just through long familiarity with them. (Yes.)

Worf continues to grapple with honor and restoring his family name, but he's too stubborn and proud to "debase" himself to defeat his political opponents.

Sisko refuses to accept that his fate is preordained, leading to one disaster after another every time he tries to go his own way. His loyalties are also split because of his status as Emissary, straining his relationship with both sides - not to mention the cultural issues.

Odo's pride is his constant downfall, and despite arguing that he's an island unto himself, he's miserably lonely and constantly pining.

Kira can't get over the trauma of her past, and although she does mellow out as the series goes on, when she gets triggered she goes on a rampage.

Dax's past hosts leave her in constant conflict, and she's usually trying desperately to appear in control, even when it's obvious she is not. In Jadzia it's particularly bad due to her issues with Curzon and Joran.

Nog is desperate for adult approval, and is in constant search of ways to gain respect, sometimes to disastrous results.

I see a similar kind of dynamic in Parks and Recreation, which is maybe a more culturally native take on the same kind of show, where Leslie is also ultimately a comedic failure, but with the edge sanded down by a certain amount of (mostly fruitless) competence and especially a seemingly inexhaustible well of enthusiasm and optimism that can't help but infect most of the people around her.

I doubt the character of Ace Rimmer [what a guy!] would have translated at all.

He doesn't succeed so much at work but he does in his personal life

The reason "Bring me a shrubbery" is funny and why people endlessly quoted Holy Grail is because almost everyone in the US watched Monte python at one point or another. Part of what made people do those quotes is the fact that regardless audience, you know you'll get a laugh because they too know the context for the phrase.

I don't think there's a single piece of media like that. Not at least in the last 10 years. I mean, funnily, I think you've nailed Skibidi as a rare exception, at least for the younger generations.

I haven't seen anything like them on TikTok and I'm on there enough to have noticed. Maybe you're talking about the dumb alien short videos of them telling a joke to each other and snickering, that doesn't compare.

Beyond the first minute or two, I'd not class Skibidi Toilet as any kind of humor. It's a serialized silent (late-era-style silent with synced foley but no dialog) sci-fi action war epic told without intertitles.

with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry

And what about 'Spitting Image'?

I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Harry Secombe just a couple years before he died. He was quite surprised to run into an American who knew who he was. Most American's only know Peter Sellers.

Key and Peele and Chappelle's Show were also this kind of show, but are pretty old now.

- Monkey Dust

- The Fast Show

Interesting observation, thank you! Lot to noodle on there :-)

I'm not actually disagreeing with you, but I wonder how you think you know this to be true?

And even in the next few seasons, the core run of the show, he's only a bit more lovable. He's still pretty bad!

But certainly as they went further and further along he became more and more of a lovable doofus, very unlike David Brent.

Naruto and Sasuke spend much of the entire series pining after each other, and when they do finally - uhm - "resolve their differences", the show tacks on two female counterparts to marry them off to like an afterthought.

I don't blame Kishimoto for this, I blame the shonen crowd more for shaping their expectations on what is clearly a yaoi story

Are there? Or are these gaps of knowledge?

For instance, you claim that "they did a particularly poor job of justifying the sacrifice as being required". The first problem is that no one claims it was absolutely necessary. God is not compelled or coerced by anything greater or outside of him. This is why I wrote "an act that is not necessary, but as Aquinas says, most fitting". It is most fitting as part of a freely chosen, greater providential plan that you can say best manifests the divine nature and especially in relation to mankind. You might call this a necessity relative to this plan or under the presupposition of this plan, but it is not absolutely necessary. God could choose to forgive sin with a snap of the proverbial fingers.

> I suspect it resonated more strongly with people of the era whose primary mode of interacting with gods was via sacrificial propitiations, modern relgions rarely stress that part.

What are these "modern religions"? New Age cults? Various Westernized consumerist varieties of Buddhism? Occult stuff like theosophy? Other neopagan attempts to retreat from history back into myth? Whatever they are, and putting aside principled criticism, their "modernity" already works against them, as empirically, it can take a little time for the inner faults of a worldview or religion to result in tangible crises. History is littered with all sorts of cults and heresies that have since long been swept into the dustbin of history. Does anything remember the Cathars, the Gnostics? (Curiously, we're experiencing a bit of an unwitting gnostic revival now in secular Western culture. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.)

In any case, modern ideologies often gladly dismiss the sacrificial demands of justice, because they first dismissed sin. And they dismissed sin, because they did not wish to think of what they desired to do as sinful. It chafes and eats at the conscience and contradicts a certain desire for a kind of ontological autonomy, which is to say, self-idolatry. But denial of sin - with sin as an choice taken with some degree of conscious assent - is always a bad move. Repressing such knowledge or losing the vocabulary to talk about it only places you in helpless submission to it. Every sin causes a disintegration of the self, however minor. The universally observed and conspicuous pre-Christian sacrificial propitiation of ancient peoples may have been mythological, but it drew from the well of the human psyche. (The tradition of the Church would say they prefigured the true and perfect sacrifice of the mass. Even here, many low-information Catholics, encouraged by the opportunistic cultural upheaval after Vatican II, have absorbed modernist sensibilities, failing to recognize that the mass is, above all, a sacrifice made on an altar.) There is no justification for the belief that modernity has somehow transcended the human condition and banished human nature. We have merely obscured the meaning of certain impulses at our own peril, dressing them up in what is often a flaky pop-psychological terminology. We still project guilt and scapegoat. We still experience the impulse, but without the proper outlets, it becomes a destructive and self-destructive force. The demand for sacrifice still exerts pressures on the psyche, whether it is acknowledged consciously or not, resulting in all sorts of weird and pathological behaviors and mental states.

I mean, that description works almost as well for MacGyver as for The Doctor, so I am not sure it is the most un-American hero possible.

No, it is not. The previous post’s words were that "the English displayed massive control over their own fate". They did not. Their arses were saved by French battalions who resisted well beyond what was expected from them. I am happy for them. I am an Anglophile and they were, and still are, friends and allies. Allies lives are also worth the sacrifice. But then I think you at least owe the truth to your friends that gave their lives to save you. All the other efforts would have been utterly futile otherwise.

> Human agency shaped the fate of the nation.

But now you’re saying something completely different. Yes, human agency was at play, but not theirs. They were saved by actions outside their control. Not completely, because the boat evacuation in itself was an achievement, but still. They could do it in 10 days; they could not have done it in 2.

> The relevant point though is that the example doesn't make much sense in context of the belief that men are powerless to shape their fate.

Dunkirk is a terrible example for what you were trying to prove. So yes, the example does not make sense.

What makes the firepit so heartbreaking is that it’s almost an example of attempting upward mobility the correct way, since — as you note — in the upper echelons of the American class system, taste and style and behavior are what really stratify people. The problem is that the purchaser lacks the class background to understand the shibboleths and so gets led terribly astray. It’s like some poor fool trying to seem very educated and cultured by reading The New Yorker (if you want to impress, try the New York Review of Books, or better the London Review of Books).3 This information asymmetry is what defeats so many attempts at direct social climbing. You can’t make a frontal assault on the class above you. They will see you coming.

It's heartbreaking that hackers (and "technocrats", with the sole exception of the above masters of p-hacking??) have not really taken into their system that cultural mobility >>> economic mobility, given how much easier it is on paper..

(I'd say HN is a laudable attempt tho at uh CULTURAL REVOLUTION that parallels this admins' :)

I think someone else said that even the "Jobs-Powell dynasty" is going to take a couple generations to get close to the Drumpfts? (How about the Vance dynasty?)

Oh. I try to remember theres often an implicit downward in front of mobility

https://archive.ph/2026.01.23-052820/https://www.thepsmiths....

So it isn't classless?

A "lagniappe" is a bonus, so the videos are just bonus tracks.

(if you want an exercise with them, however, attempt to figure out by which means the folks depicted in which video make a living:

  a) by what they do   "gur guvatf jr yvxr qba'g pbfg n ybg bs zbarl"
  b) by what they own  "ubzvrf ba ybpx sbe vafvqre genqvat"
  c) by what they know "V chg gur BT va 5.0 TCN"

I also believe Adams was trying to point out, very gently, the same cultural difference I called out in the comment I replied to, i.e. that the American culture attaches certain expectations and connotations to the word "hero" not because they are intrinsic to it, but because of American bias.

I was going to reply to jacquesm's comment above about Forrest - they both embody some stoic qualities - but you touched on that anyway.

> Bilbo, yossarian, Rincewind

Yossarian! Outstanding. Bit of a cynic more than a stoic perhaps? You're right about Bilbo. Frodo I think not so much. And Samwise of course is pure American.

I'm not so sure it applies to Arthur Dent, who tends to roll from one situation to the next. There is resolve, but it never really rises above.

I think there is similarity in the storytelling, that both characters find themselves in extreme situations, and somehow navigate them despite their own limitations.

This site is for curious conversation, not combat or activism, and this is only a site where people want to participate because enough people make the effort to keep pushing for it to stay curious rather than combative. The only reason I saw your comments is because other users flagged them for being in breach of the guidelines.

We understand the guidelines are open to interpretation, and that it can take some time to become familiar with the culture and norms here. You can learn more about how the moderators apply the guidelines by reading the comments posted by dang and myself:

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When the hobbits return home, Merry and Pippin (and to lesser extent Sam) are the ones leading the liberation of Shire. Frodo has been traumatized by his experiences and no longer wants to see any violence, no matter the cause. But he cannot adjust to civilian life either. He is invited to live in Valinor. Not as much as an honor, but because his involvement with the One Ring has made him a relic of the past, like the elves. Middle-earth is no longer a place for him.

I guess Frodo is the main hero. He is left the ring and is forced to leave his home. His shortcut through the old forest nearly kills the entire party until he's rescued by Tom Bombadil. He then nearly dies in the barrow until he's rescued again by Tom.

He doesn't know what to do at Bree until Strider helps him. He succumbs to the temptation to put on the ring at Weathertop and then becomes a burden to the rest until Rivendell.

He doesn't know how to get into Mordor until Gollum helps him. He gets stung by Shelob and captured by orcs and it's only because Sam took the ring that the whole mission isn't blown.

He runs out of strength climbing Mount Doom and again he's saved by Sam carrying him. When he gets to the Cracks of Doom he fails to destroy the ring and is saved by Gollum attacking him.

And even back in the Shire, he can't settle and ends up leaving.

He's just not a very heroic figure and more affected by circumstance, continually requiring rescue. Maybe a bit more like Arthur Dent than it first appears. :)

And yet all these heroes only hold back the tide for so long before evil pervades everything and Beauty leaves this world. These heroes might save the day once, but decline is relentless.

The Lord of the Rings itself might be a bit optimistic because it’s about the protagonists. And even then, Frodo leaves irremediably scarred, having failed his task; Arwen rejects immortality; Eowyn turns away from conventional heroism, having been traumatised by her losses and the war; and Merry and Pippin come back as strangers in their own homeland. In the end, the world still keeps moving on, towards its inevitable decay.