The Hybrid Hero: A Contagious Counterexample

Abstract

Fictional heroes have been considered as moral exemplars and as entertaining and soothing characters. Their creators, however, do not work in a vacuum. Therefore, the emergence of heroic narratives is closely connected to a specific space and time context. In this article, I propose a heroic cycle which consist of three different heroic types creators use to cope with events in reality. This cycle consists of the classic hero, the flawed hero, and the contemporary (post 9/11) type of hero which will be defined and described as a hybrid hero. This hybrid hero became very popular in recent years and just as its counterpart, the franchised hero tries with a specific set of characteristics and moral frameworks, to provide a jouissance for audiences (Barthes, 1975). By doing so, these heroes try to sooth, entertain, or challenge their audiences. Both the hybrid and the franchised hero focus on the reception by audiences although their means and behavior differ on many levels. Although the research and development of the hybrid hero is still at its initial stage, this article elaborates on its construction and conceptualizations as fictional character and as moral challenger in today’s fiction. The hybrid hero challenges both audience and creators on empathic, moral, and narrative levels and is a contemporary symbiosis of heroic and villainous features. The text consists of two parts: first, background and contextualization and second, a description of a case study (The Borgia Trilogy, a theatre performance which Van Tourhout created) to clarify the empathic and narrative features of hybrid heroes.