The Hero Figure on the Outside of Society

So, since we didn't have a class last week due to the professor's presence at a conference where he presented a paper on Battlestar Galactica (which makes me incredibly happy, by the way), I have to do another reflective post for the one I missed last week. I was trying to come up with something related to BSG but I haven't watched the show for about a year and I'm drawing a blank. I'm sure that there are a ton of theories on how it relates to social science, but for the moment it's over my head. So, instead I will look at a theory that Professor Jackson brought up in yesterday's class that I found to be very interesting.

In our discussion of Speaker for the Dead and The Martian Chronicles, we got into a discussion of whether humans can ever truly understand the other, something I touched upon in my last post. However, one thing I didn't bring up is Jackson's suggestion that only outsiders in human society can relate to and understand the true outsiders, aliens. This got me thinking about occurrences of this trend in other pieces of science fiction. Obviously, this is a big part of Ender's Game and Speaker as Ender is the ultimate outsider. He is purposely separated from his peers from the beginning in order to cultivate his unique talents and abilities.

To less extreme extents, most heroes in science fiction films and tv shows are outsiders in some fashion. For the most part, the typical hero figure is relatively anti-social, somewhat of a loner, and usually exists on the fringes of society. Off the top of my head I can think of Han Solo, Mal Reynolds from Firefly, and Korben Dallas from The Fifth Element. While these characters are not outsiders in the same vein as Ender, they are outside the normal realm of society in various ways. Both Han and Mal are smugglers, criminals who don't have a place in the developed planets. Mal has a sense of honor from his time in the military, something which also separates him from the criminal world of which he is a member. Unfortunately there is no example of Mal's interactions with the "other." Han, however, originally has one friend only and it's Chewbacca, a completely different species. I mean, come on, they have a total bromance. Like Mal, Han is a criminal and (at least in A New Hope) is extremely anti-social and thinks only of himself. (My friend who's a psychology major even went so far as to write a paper on how Han is a typical example of someone with an anti-social personality disorder.)

The final character I can think of off the top of my head is Bruce Willis's character in The Fifth Element. Korben is an ex-military officer who is now working as a taxi driver. He lives alone, except for his cat, and doesn't like complications (we all know where this story is going). Korben frequently shows his dislike for the political system, something that is assumed to be from his time in the military; he basically wants to left alone, but, of course, he is the only one who can save the world. And he is also the only one who can really relate to and understand Leeloo, who is not human. It's hard to know exactly what she is, but she certainly represents an "other."