by Carmen Van Kerckhove

I’m excited to announce that Elton and David will be taking turns recapping Heroes for us starting this week! Here’s a little bit about them, and their thoughts on the show.

Intro from Elton

My name is Elton and I’m an Asian-American who likes Marvel comics and Star Trek, so naturally, my favorite Heroes character is Hiro Nakamura.

Heroes is a show I started watching to get my weekly superhero fix. Like many of us, I have long been fascinated by fictional characters with superhuman powers. Why do we love superheroes? They excite, entertain, and inspire us all, but as a minority, I think the superhero’s most important function is to be someone with whom I can identify and empathize. Like superheroes, members of racial/cultural/etc. minorities are special and different, and therefore face unique challenges and responsibilities. Superheroes show us that we, too, can be strong, powerful, and proud to be different.

Intro from David Zhou

Hello, Racialicious readers! My name is David Zhou, an undeclared sophomore Neuroscience and Asian American Studies major writing to you from currently one of the most hate-shocked university campuses in the country! Yes, I’m talking about Columbia University, where in the last month there has been a nasty spree of hate incidents awful enough to render many of us speechless.

Luckily, there are enough diversions in my life to keep my mind off of the shocking amounts of hate in our society. I am an executive board member of Columbia University’s Asian American Alliance, with a special role in coordinating community service opportunities. Also, I write for The Blaaag, the official blog of our organization, dealing primarily with the identity and race politics relevant to Asian Americans through a lens appropriate for college students.

Serial television might be one of my most personal diversions. Heroes has for me come in a line of favorite shows that makes insightful claims about the world around us. Some of the other shows that I now watch do this as well: Lost speaks very intimately about issues of philosophy and human redemption. Battlestar Galactica builds a sort of glamour around military and civilian leadership, and hence the challenges thereof. (And, interestingly, all three of these shows spotlight up-and-coming Asian American actors.) Heroes speaks in a much more subtle way. There is a mythical quality to the way it deals with human interconnectedness. And while it attempts to make claims about scientific advancement and genetics, it tends to completely butcher the terms and concepts.

Heroes is especially adamant about representing people around the world through stereotype. As creator Tim Kring has said about the premise of the show, “we set out to make a certain statement about the world, … so the idea of it happening to, you know, blonde-haired blue-eyed people in Southern California just seemed kind of disingenuous to the idea.” To this effect, Heroes engages in a level of typecasting that few other shows dare venture. This is the show where a Hispanic painter uses heroin to unlock his powers, and a black father, as devoted as he is to his wife and child, escapes from prison on charges of robbery and murder. New characters on the show this season include a pair of Honduran siblings attempting to cross the US-Mexico border illegally and a black woman exiled from her home by the inescapably political Hurricane Katrina. After all of this, one could argue that there are few shows on television that stereotypically pigeonhole their characters as completely as does Heroes.

Therefore, in order for an analysis of this show to take place, one must inevitably examine the conflict between the intentions of global representation and the characters that are ultimately shown, inextricably bound by stereotype. The strength of this show will, in the end, come from characters being able to transcend expectations in achieving their own measures of heroism. So I, for one, watch the shows rooting for one thing in particular - the sexual breakthrough of Hiro Nakamura, the Japanese cubicle worker.