American society and its endless need for heroes

Few societies in history have displayed such a constant and insistent need to produce heroes as the United States. It is not enough for an event to take place, nor for people to act with courage or competence. In the American cultural framework, every incident must be accompanied by the elevation of one or more individuals to the status of “hero”. A firefighter who does his job is no longer just a professional trained to save lives, he becomes the embodiment of valor. A bystander who helps rescue a lost child is not simply a person acting out of instinct or decency, he is transformed into a symbol of sacrifice and goodness. The word hero is invoked so often, so casually, that it has lost its meaning while paradoxically gaining in spectacle.

This is not merely linguistic inflation; it is a cultural necessity. American society does not settle for moderation, for quiet dignity, for the understated recognition that other cultures bestow on those who distinguish themselves. It requires the exaggerated figure, the mythic archetype presented not in whispers but in shouts. Where European traditions gave us El Cid or Beowulf, tales transmitted across generations with solemnity, the American model demands something more immediate and more grotesque: a hero manufactured in real time, broadcast through media, decorated with flag imagery, and celebrated as proof of the nation’s vitality.

The obsession is no accident. It is woven into the fabric of American identity, and its most visible expression is the superhero genre itself, a cultural creation that could only have emerged in the United States. Superman, Batman, Captain America, characters larger than life, draped in the symbols of justice and patriotism, constructed to embody values in their most exaggerated form. These were not just stories for children; they were cultural blueprints, preparing generations to seek, and to need, the heroic figure as a measure of reassurance.

But the craving for heroes does not remain in the pages of comics or the screens of Hollywood. It spills into every sphere of American life. It is there in the constant use of the term “hero” to describe professions like police officers or soldiers, elevated beyond their human complexities into untouchable icons. It is there in popular entertainment like wrestling, where choreographed fights are presented as moral dramas between good and evil, heroes and villains, cheered by crowds who knowingly suspend disbelief. And it is there in the intimate rituals of daily life, from the public marriage proposal to the need for collective applause in moments that elsewhere would remain private.

This constant performance of heroism reflects something deeper: a society that craves validation. The hero is not only a figure to be admired but a stage upon which national anxieties are soothed. Every hero becomes proof, proof of resilience, proof of morality, proof of national greatness, even as the underlying reality may be one of fragility and decline. The exaggeration serves as a mask, a way to project strength in a world where strength is increasingly uncertain.

The following chapters will explore this phenomenon in detail: the manufacturing of heroes in everyday life, the superhero genre as a uniquely American mythology, wrestling as a cultural theater of false heroics, the rituals of private life that demand public applause, and the psychology that sustains this endless cycle. At its heart lies a paradox: the more America insists on its heroes, the more it reveals its dependence on spectacle, and the more fragile the reality beneath that spectacle appears.

The manufactured hero

In the United States, the word hero is not reserved for the exceptional. It is used for the everyday, the routine, and even the accidental. A firefighter who saves a life is certainly courageous, but in most societies, this would be seen as the natural fulfillment of their duty, a professional performing their role with skill and bravery. In America, however, the narrative does not stop there: the firefighter must be exalted, honored with medals, parades, and media coverage. They are no longer just a worker doing their job, they are a hero, a symbol elevated above the collective.

This inflation of heroism extends far beyond emergency services. Soldiers are routinely described not simply as members of the armed forces but as “our heroes”, regardless of the circumstances of their service. Teachers who endure difficult conditions are called heroes. Healthcare workers, especially during the pandemic, were not only thanked but canonized as “frontline heroes”. Even delivery drivers, during lockdowns, were briefly given the same rhetorical halo. In each case, the ordinary is reframed as extraordinary, as though the act of fulfilling one’s responsibilities requires mythologizing.

The American media plays a crucial role in this process. News outlets eagerly search for stories of individuals to spotlight, crafting narratives that elevate personal anecdotes into tales of heroism. A man who pulls someone from a river is no longer just a quick-thinking passerby; he becomes the face of resilience and courage for an entire news cycle. The need is not just to report the event but to personalize and dramatize it, to find the character who can embody collective values. The individual is turned into a stage upon which national ideals are projected.

Underlying this is the American cultural preference for individualism. In many other societies, achievements are credited to teams, institutions, or communities. In the U.S., the focus must always narrow to the lone figure who “made the difference”. The narrative demands a face, a name, a body to pin the medal on. It is not enough that a group of firefighters contained a blaze, the spotlight must fall on the one who carried someone out of the smoke. It is not enough that a search-and-rescue team functioned seamlessly, the camera zooms in on the individual who pulled the missing hiker from the woods. Collective effort becomes background noise; hero worship requires a protagonist.

The language itself reinforces this inflation. American English is saturated with terms like “hero”, “champion”, and “legend”, used casually and constantly. A sports player who scores at the last minute is a hero. A politician who survives a scandal becomes heroic. Even entrepreneurs and CEOs are framed as visionaries saving society through their innovations. The boundaries between genuine courage and mere visibility blur, until the term hero becomes less a recognition of sacrifice than a currency of public approval.

What makes this phenomenon peculiar is not that America produces heroes, every culture does, but that it does so with such frequency and intensity. There is a compulsion to dramatize, to exaggerate, to elevate even the mundane into the mythic. This is not heroism as a rare spark of greatness, but heroism as a constant performance, demanded by audiences, fueled by media, and validated by applause. It reflects a deeper need in the American psyche: the desire to constantly reassure itself of its own strength and virtue through the manufacture of heroic figures.

In this way, America has democratized the mythic. Anyone, in theory, can be a hero, provided the narrative machinery is activated around them. A headline, a news segment, a viral video, and suddenly, an ordinary citizen becomes the bearer of extraordinary meaning. Yet the very ubiquity of this process erodes the value of the word. When everyone can be a hero, heroism itself loses its depth, becoming a spectacle rather than a substance.

Superheroes and flag bearers

If the United States has a unique claim in cultural history, it is the invention of the superhero. While myths and legends of extraordinary individuals exist in every civilization, Hercules in Greece, El Cid in Spain, Beowulf in England, the samurai epics in Japan, these figures belonged to the past, carried forward through oral tradition and literature. America, by contrast, manufactured its heroes for the modern age and wrapped them not in ancient symbols but in the language of mass media and consumer culture. The superhero was not just a character, it was a product, a reflection of national identity, and ultimately a projection of American ideals onto the global stage.

The archetype emerged in the 1930s, a time of economic despair and rising political instability. Superman appeared in 1938, a being of near-divine power sent to protect the weak, stand for justice, and embody a sense of optimism. Unlike mythic figures of the past, Superman was branded with the colors of the American flag. His very existence was a declaration: America would produce its own gods, and they would wear red, white, and blue. Captain America followed in 1941, wielding not just super strength but a shield painted like the nation’s banner. These characters were not subtle allegories; they were direct symbols of American exceptionalism in a world spiraling toward war.

This was no accident. In a country obsessed with individualism and spectacle, the superhero was the perfect synthesis. He (and, less frequently, she) was larger than life yet relatable, an outsider blessed with power but driven by morality. He combined the immigrant narrative, Superman as the ultimate outsider, arriving from elsewhere to embrace America, with the frontier myth of rugged individualism. The superhero was not a collective hero or a symbol of community resilience; he was a savior figure, the lone individual who could save the world when institutions failed. This mirrored the American narrative of the “self-made man”, amplified into the realm of fantasy.

The genre grew alongside the nation’s geopolitical ambitions. During World War II, superheroes fought Nazis and Japanese enemies. In the Cold War, they battled communism and alien threats that mirrored the paranoia of the age. In the 21st century, they have expanded into cinematic universes that dominate global culture. Hollywood exports not only entertainment but a mythology of salvation, with American heroes saving not just New York or Los Angeles, but entire planets. The subtext is clear: only America produces saviors, and only its heroes can protect humanity.

The iconography reinforces this message. Costumes often incorporate national colors, stars, stripes, and symbols of power. Superman’s “S”, Captain America’s shield, Wonder Woman’s eagle emblem, each becomes a visual shorthand for authority and virtue. Even when not explicitly tied to patriotism, superheroes embody traits the U.S. projects about itself: technological superiority (Iron Man), military dominance (Captain Marvel), resilience through trauma (Batman). They are avatars of national aspiration, designed to reassure audiences that America remains a moral and cultural leader.

What makes the American superhero unique is not just his exaggeration but his grotesque excess. Where older myths left room for nuance, flaws, and tragedy, the superhero is often presented as incorruptible, absolute, and unambiguous. Even when “dark” storylines emerged, Batman’s trauma, Iron Man’s hubris, the Watchmen’s cynicism, they only reinforced the American need to retell the hero narrative through new lenses. The superhero cannot be escaped; he can only be reinvented. He remains the anchor of a culture that craves redemption through characters.

The dominance of the superhero genre today reflects the depth of this obsession. While European cinema produces intimate dramas and Asian film industries experiment with genres, American box offices are monopolized by caped figures saving the world in endless sequels. These are not just movies; they are the modern scriptures of American mythology, consumed by global audiences who may roll their eyes at the excess but continue to pay to see them. The superhero is America’s most successful cultural export because it embodies what the nation values most: spectacle, power, individualism, and the constant reaffirmation that someone, wearing the right colors, bearing the right symbols, will save us.

Wrestling as national theater

If superheroes are the American mythology of the page and screen, then wrestling is the mythology of the arena. Few spectacles reveal so clearly the U.S. appetite for scripted heroism as professional wrestling. On the surface, it is a sport, athletes competing in the ring, testing their strength before a roaring crowd. But peel back the facade, and it becomes obvious that wrestling is not competition at all, but theater disguised as sport. Its punches are pulled, its outcomes preordained, its storylines scripted in writers’ rooms. And yet, far from diminishing its appeal, this artificiality is the very reason for its success. Wrestling thrives because it delivers exactly what American culture demands: clear heroes, clear villains, and an endless cycle of redemption, betrayal, and victory.

The wrestlers themselves are less athletes than living superheroes. They wear costumes, adopt grandiose names, and embody archetypes. Some drape themselves in the American flag, proclaiming patriotism as their brand. Others are cast as villains, foreign adversaries, rebellious outlaws, or grotesque caricatures of greed and arrogance. The matches are battles not of skill but of narrative: who will triumph, who will fall, who will be redeemed. Crowds do not attend for authenticity; they attend for the drama. They know, on some level, that it is fake, yet they suspend disbelief with fervor because the spectacle gives them what they crave, heroes to cheer and villains to despise.

This is where wrestling becomes more than entertainment. It reveals a deeper cultural habit: the willingness to embrace scripted heroics as reality. Unlike sports in which outcomes are uncertain, wrestling guarantees satisfaction. The hero may be beaten down, humiliated, and bloodied, but in the end, he rises, conquers, and claims the championship belt. The morality play repeats endlessly, cycling through characters, storylines, and generations, but always returning to the same core message: the hero will prevail. It is myth made flesh, performed night after night for audiences who crave reassurance more than competition.

The aesthetics of wrestling mirror those of American society at large. The emphasis on spectacle, fireworks, lights, music, exaggerated gestures, transforms the ring into a stage. The wrestlers speak in slogans, deliver speeches that sound like political rallies, and frame their victories as proof of righteousness. The crowd responds not with critical detachment but with euphoric participation, chanting, waving signs, and treating the performers as if they truly embodied the values they claim. Wrestling is politics as theater, theater as sport, and sport as mythology, compressed into a single spectacle.

The parallel with superheroes is unmistakable. Just as Captain America battles Nazi villains in the comics, the patriotic wrestler defeats the foreign antagonist in the ring. Just as Batman endures suffering to rise again, the wrestler stages his fall only to come back stronger. Just as the superhero’s powers are exaggerated beyond realism, the wrestler’s strength is performed with grotesque dramatization. In both cases, the goal is not to portray reality but to construct a fantasy of victory, a reassurance that the system will always provide saviors.

For outsiders, the devotion of fans to wrestling can seem absurd. How can people cheer so passionately for something so transparently fake? But this is precisely the point. Wrestling’s fakery is not a flaw; it is its essence. It offers audiences not reality but the comfort of a scripted moral universe, where villains are punished and heroes triumph. It reflects the same cultural impulse that drives the constant search for real-world heroes: a refusal to accept ambiguity, a need for clarity, spectacle, and emotional resolution.

In this sense, wrestling is not a sideshow of American culture but one of its most revealing stages. It is the live-action proof that America’s obsession with heroes is not confined to fiction or headlines but extends into ritualized performances where people knowingly embrace the false because it satisfies a deeper need. The wrestling ring is America in miniature: a place where reality bends before narrative, where spectacle triumphs over substance, and where heroes are always larger than life.

Heroics in private life

The American obsession with heroes does not stop at public spectacles like comics, cinema, or wrestling. It infiltrates the most intimate aspects of life, where even private rituals are transformed into stages for public approval. Acts that elsewhere remain modest or personal become, in the U.S., opportunities for performance, moments in which individuals cast themselves in the role of protagonist, demanding an audience to validate the scene. Heroism becomes not just a national narrative but a personal performance, carried out in restaurants, stadiums, shopping malls, and city streets.

Perhaps the most striking example is the marriage proposal. In much of the world, a proposal is a quiet exchange, a private decision shared between two people. In the United States, it is increasingly a public ritual, staged on one knee before crowds of strangers. Stadiums project the moment on giant screens, restaurants pause to watch, and entire groups cheer as the expected “yes” is delivered. The act is less about intimacy than about spectacle. The proposer becomes a kind of hero, applauded for bravery, romanticism, and boldness. The presence of witnesses is crucial, for their cheers transform a personal choice into a public validation.

This is not accidental but psychological. A public proposal creates social pressure that compels acceptance. To say no under the gaze of dozens or hundreds of onlookers would seem cruel, humiliating, even un-American in its refusal to cooperate with the performance. The audience, therefore, becomes an accomplice, ensuring the script is followed: the hero kneels, the partner accepts, the crowd cheers. It is, once again, theater disguised as life. The engagement ring becomes the trophy, proof of the hero’s success.

This theatrical instinct extends to smaller gestures as well. Birthdays, graduations, job promotions, each is dramatized with excessive symbolism and applause. In American schools, children are often showered with certificates and awards for the most basic achievements, reinforcing from an early age that recognition must be public, that even ordinary effort must be validated by spectacle. The child is encouraged to believe that participation itself warrants celebration, an early rehearsal for the hero-worship culture they will later encounter in adulthood.

Even grief and tragedy are folded into the performance of heroics. Funerals and memorials often highlight the deceased as heroes, regardless of circumstance. Soldiers, firefighters, and police officers are given ceremonies that elevate their memory into legend. Ordinary individuals who die in accidents are described in heroic terms, their actions reframed to fit the narrative of bravery. Death becomes not merely an occasion for mourning but another stage on which society projects its need for larger-than-life figures.

What emerges from these rituals is a pattern: Americans are taught to view life itself as a sequence of stages where one must step forward and perform, hoping for the applause of others. The culture of the hero saturates the personal sphere, demanding that milestones be framed as moments of triumph rather than quiet steps in a human journey. Heroism is not reserved for grand deeds; it is distributed across ordinary acts, magnified by an audience, and sanctified by public validation.

The irony is that in seeking to make private acts heroic, their authenticity is often eroded. A marriage proposal becomes less about two people deciding their future and more about the spectacle of the gesture. A graduation ceremony becomes less about knowledge acquired and more about photos for social media. The heroic narrative consumes the personal, turning human experiences into episodes of an endless performance.

This tendency reflects the deeper American need for constant reassurance through applause. Just as the nation elevates firefighters or soldiers to the status of national heroes, individuals elevate themselves to the status of personal heroes in front of friends, strangers, or digital followers. The public becomes the guarantor of meaning; without witnesses, the act feels incomplete. Private heroics are thus never truly private, they are staged for validation, applause, and the illusion of greatness.

The psychology of applause

To understand why American society is so dependent on heroes, one must also understand its deep reliance on applause. It is not enough for an act to be brave, generous, or meaningful; it must be recognized, celebrated, and broadcast. The audience is not incidental, it is essential. The applause validates the act, transforms it into myth, and confirms the individual’s role as a hero. Without witnesses, the performance feels incomplete. In this sense, American culture is not only about creating heroes but about ensuring that every act is seen, acknowledged, and celebrated.

This obsession with witnesses can be traced to the country’s cultural DNA. The United States has long cultivated a spirit of individual exceptionalism, where personal stories are elevated as proof of national virtue. But exceptionalism requires recognition; it demands that the individual’s story be told, heard, and applauded. Applause becomes the social contract that sustains identity. To be heroic in America is not merely to act; it is to act in such a way that the public affirms it.

Consider the marriage proposal once more. The one-knee gesture, made in private, is a tender symbol of commitment. Made in public, it becomes an act of bravery staged for the crowd. The applause ensures that the proposer is not only accepted by their partner but also celebrated by strangers as a romantic hero. The psychology is powerful: the presence of witnesses compels acceptance, while the applause confirms that the act was worthy. What should be a personal exchange becomes an episode of social theater, with validation serving as the climax.

The same psychology applies to the constant declaration of heroes in news media. A firefighter who saves a life in silence has performed an act of courage. But only when the cameras arrive, only when the mayor speaks, only when medals are pinned to the chest, does the act become “heroic” in the American sense. The applause of the community transforms reality into myth. This is why American media is saturated with human-interest stories that elevate ordinary acts into national narratives. The applause is not background noise, it is the lifeblood of the story.

In entertainment, the pattern becomes explicit. Wrestling audiences chant slogans and cheer for their chosen hero, fully aware of the scripted nature of the spectacle. The applause is not about authenticity but about participation. It reassures the crowd that their voices matter, that they are part of the hero’s journey. Hollywood blockbusters, especially superhero films, function the same way. The climactic moment, the hero rising after defeat, the villain’s downfall, the patriotic speech, is always designed for applause, whether in the theater or in the cultural imagination. Applause is the ritual that reaffirms the myth.

Psychologically, this reflects a deep-seated insecurity. Applause is a form of collective reassurance, a way to suppress doubt by overwhelming it with affirmation. A nation unsure of its future, its values, or its stability clings to applause as proof that it still matters. Every cheer, every ovation, every declaration of heroism is a way to drown out the possibility of fragility. Applause becomes not just recognition but a kind of cultural anesthesia, numbing uncertainty with noise.

The need for witnesses also reveals how thoroughly American life is mediated by performance. Social media amplifies this dynamic: every achievement, every milestone, every trivial act is posted, liked, shared, and applauded. The digital applause becomes indistinguishable from the physical applause of stadiums or ceremonies. Both serve the same function: to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, to elevate the self into the heroic, and to reassure individuals that their lives have meaning because others approve of them.

This is the psychology that sustains the hero culture. The hero exists not for themselves but for the audience. Their acts matter because they are seen, their stories matter because they are told, their identity matters because it is applauded. Without witnesses, there is no hero. In America, applause is not the consequence of heroism, it is its condition.

A decadent empire’s mask

The United States has built an entire cultural edifice around the figure of the hero. From firefighters in the news to superheroes in cinema, from wrestlers in arenas to lovers kneeling in public, the performance of heroism permeates every corner of American life. Yet beneath the noise of applause and the spectacle of capes and flags lies a harsher reality: the constant need to manufacture heroes is not a sign of strength but of fragility. The louder the hero narrative is shouted, the more it betrays the insecurity it is meant to conceal.

This is the mask of a decadent empire. In its youth, America’s power was evident in material achievements: industrial growth, technological innovation, military victories, and cultural dynamism. Today, much of that power is in question. Industry has been hollowed out by outsourcing, infrastructure is decaying, political systems are polarized, and trust in institutions is eroding. Faced with these realities, the culture compensates by doubling down on spectacle. If material strength falters, symbolic strength must be amplified. If real heroes are scarce, symbolic heroes must be manufactured in abundance.

The superhero genre illustrates this perfectly. Never before has it dominated American entertainment so thoroughly. Decade after decade, the same stories are retold, rebooted, and recycled, each one louder, brighter, and more exaggerated than the last. These films are not about exploring new ideas but about reaffirming the old myth: that salvation will always come, that the hero will always rise, that America still produces saviors. The cultural dominance of the superhero is not proof of vitality but of cultural stagnation, a retreat into fantasies that reassure rather than challenge.

Wrestling follows the same script. Once dismissed as lowbrow entertainment, it is now understood as a metaphor for national life. The scripted victories, the over-the-top villains, the euphoric chants, all reflect a society desperate for clarity in a world that no longer provides it. Reality is messy, complex, and often disappointing. Wrestling offers a controlled universe where good triumphs, bad is punished, and the audience always leaves satisfied. It is not truth but comfort, staged again and again for a culture that fears ambiguity.

Even the rituals of private life reveal this insecurity. The public proposal, the staged graduation, the endless awards ceremonies, each reflects the same need for validation. The individual becomes a hero in miniature, applauded by peers, confirmed by witnesses. It is not enough to live; one must perform life. The performance conceals the doubt, the applause silences the anxiety, and the ritual masks the emptiness.

What unites all these phenomena is the refusal to face decline directly. Instead of confronting the erosion of economic stability, political coherence, or cultural innovation, the United States produces heroes as distractions. The firefighter on the news, the soldier on parade, the wrestler in the ring, the superhero on screen, all are masks worn by a society that knows it is weaker than it once was. The hero is not proof of greatness but an attempt to simulate it, to project strength where it is fading.

In this way, the American hero is less a person than a prop in a national theater of denial. He exists to reassure, to distract, to convince audiences at home and abroad that the nation still embodies vitality. But the very frequency with which these heroes must be produced betrays the opposite. A truly confident society does not need constant reassurance. A truly powerful nation does not need to shout its greatness from every stage. The endless creation of heroes is not the expression of power but the performance of insecurity.

The mask is convincing to those who want to believe, and many do, both in America and beyond. But masks cannot hide reality forever. Sooner or later, the spectacle falters, the applause fades, and the society beneath is revealed. The obsession with heroes, then, is not America’s strength but its weakness, the clearest sign that the empire projects power because it doubts its own endurance. It is not the hero that defines the United States, but the desperate need for one.

The cult of the hero

The United States has elevated heroism from an occasional recognition into a permanent cultural ritual. From firefighters in news headlines to superheroes on the silver screen, from wrestlers in choreographed arenas to ordinary people proposing in shopping malls, the country insists on turning life into theater, and theater into myth. What is striking is not that America produces heroes, every culture does, but that it does so with such frequency, such exaggeration, and such insistence that the hero has become less a rare figure than a constant necessity.

This relentless production of heroes reveals something fundamental about the American psyche: an inability to rest with ambiguity or modesty. Acts that elsewhere would be described simply as brave or responsible are in America recast as legendary, wrapped in spectacle, and amplified through applause. The hero is not just celebrated; he is inflated, exaggerated, made into a symbol far larger than the act itself. It is not enough that someone acted with courage, they must be transformed into proof of national vitality, into evidence that the system still produces greatness.

The creation of superheroes in the 20th century was the natural extension of this tendency. Where other nations inherited mythic figures from the past, America invented its own for the modern age, dressed them in spandex, and draped them in its flag. Wrestling extended the logic, offering nightly performances of victory and redemption in front of roaring crowds. Private life followed the same path: marriage proposals staged for strangers, awards given for participation, ceremonies that transform the ordinary into the heroic. Everywhere, life becomes a stage, and Americans are taught to live not as individuals but as performers in a never-ending theater of heroism.

Yet beneath this constant spectacle lies fragility. The need to manufacture heroes so frequently is not a sign of confidence but of doubt. It reflects a society that compensates for its economic decline, its political paralysis, and its cultural stagnation with symbols of strength. When reality weakens, spectacle must be intensified. When true innovation falters, superheroes must save the day on screen. When communities fracture, wrestling crowds chant in unison, reassuring themselves that at least here, good and evil remain clear.

The American cult of the hero is therefore both a strength and a weakness. It inspires individuals to act with courage, to imagine greatness, to aspire beyond the ordinary. But it also masks the insecurities of a nation that cannot face its decline without distraction. The applause is real, but it is also hollow. The spectacle is powerful, but it cannot replace substance. The hero remains central not because America is strong, but because America needs constant reassurance that it still is.

In the end, the hero has become America’s most enduring export, its most universal language. The world consumes its superheroes, its films, its myths, and even its wrestling spectacles. Yet what the world is really consuming is a reflection of America itself: a culture that seeks salvation in individuals, that craves applause, and that insists on living inside a story where heroes always rise. Whether this story will sustain the nation in the long run, or whether it will collapse under the weight of its own exaggerations, remains the question of our time.