Myths and heroes: under which conditions can we define someone and his history as a myth or a hero ?

 Myths and heroes

I'm going to talk about the notion myths and heroes.

A myth can be a traditional or legendary story usually concerning a being hero, or an event with or without natural explanation. It mays not have proofs that they happened or had been true but as people retold them, some parts may have been changed by mistake.

And indeed a hero, which may be in a myth by the way, is a person who is admired for their courage, qualities or achievments. But we can ask ourselves, under which conditions can we define someone and his history as a myth or a hero ?

To illustrate this notion, i'm going to talk about the life of tow famous people, Charlie Chaplin and Franck Capra who were both in the cinematographic industry.

In this first part i will focus on the notion of myth. As I said, a myth can also be a person, that's why I chose to speak about Charlie Chaplin.

To judge if we can consider him as a myth, we have to know a little more about his life.

In class, we studied Charlie Chaplin's birography. He was born in London in the 90's, he was poor and had one and only thing in mind : success ! That's why he decided to join America « the Promised Land » as he called it.

He had to pass through Ellis Island, and when he arrived on the american territory, it was the consecration for him.

He knew about the deepest of him even that he was made for the cinema. When he arrived he has moreover say « Hello America ! I'm CC, and soon my name will be on the lips of all of you, and your women, and your children too ! »

According to the years, with his many projects, movies like Modern Times, or even The Gold Rush, he became really famous, and more and more people knew his name thanks to that.

So we can talk about fame but not myth yet.

People liked him because he brought something new to the cinema, a new dimension of comedy, but also in the way to study character, the emotions and the social satire presents in the movies. Charlie Chaplin was always te main character of his movies, beacause he know his qualities. Everybody knew him for that, and also because he was a full character, he was recognizable among 100 people, with his mustache, his derby, his cane and his big shoes ! That's why we can now talk about a myth, Charlie Chaplin is not just an actor, he is knew by all for his talent and his story, and those one pass through the year. We know him today, as much as we knew him a few years ago, that's what make him a myth.

In the second part I'm going to use Frank Capra's story to explain the notion of hero.

There are differents manners to be a hero, and a someone can be a hero for someone and not for somebody else but we're going to see in what is he consider as it and why.

Frank Capra is an italian-american film director, producer and writer. He came to america for « the American Dream » as many migrants at the beginning of the 90's !

He made many movies throughout his life and had a lot of success because he made a real depiction of the America that americans wanted to believe in. And in a way, just for this, some americans took him for a hero.

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