Classics Shorts with Mary Beard - DO WE NEED HEROES?

by Panzer
Music
Who are your Heroes? Who's my hero? Who are your Heroes? That's a difficult question.
Batman. Barack Obama. My godfather. It's Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. I love Harry Potter. I'm
a great Harry Potter fan. Pankhurst, would be my hero we don't know where gender roles
would be now if it wasn't for the suffragette movement. Muhammad Ali you know he's inspired
me to be a better person. My grandma's one of my heroes- aww- yeah she she taught me how to
ride a bike. So what do you think makes a hero? They're the main character and they're not seen
as selfish or immoral. Usually Heroes like big strong muscular good looking. Good guys.
It's someone who you can count on to save the day. Well, I think a hero is just someone that inspires
people. Harry Potter’s pretty cool though. It sounds like we expect a lot from our heroes.
Mallory Blackman has written over 70 books including Noughts and Crosses.
What does she think makes a hero? When you're thinking, particularly about a novel,
do you think that your novels have heroes in them? I think a lot of them do um but again it depends
on your definition of hero, it seems to be a word that's kind of very it's bandied about a
lot now and it's made me kind of think of what is a hero? What I try and do is I'm trying to create
three-dimensional real relatable characters but some of those characters do step up and do heroic
things and they do things which will cost them dearly and it might mean that they they will lose
their family and in some instances they may even lose their lives but I don't set out to create
Heroes, they just happen to become that within the telling of the story. So your heroes are brave
they're often a bit awkward, they they kind of make a fuss about things they're not they might
not be easy to live with..? yes because they're real people- yes -and I think that's so important
because otherwise I think it's very easy to get the idea that a hero is someone who's who descends
from on high and they're all perfect and there's not a thing wrong with them and it's sort of like
the superheroes that that are so popular nowadays. When Superman was first created he it didn't
really do well until they they or it did better after they introduced a weakness his weakness was
Kryptonite and a superhero who has no weakness is boring and so what I try and do in my stories is
when I have people who are going against Society or going against convention it's because they know
they can lose something and I think that that's for me is a hero who who knows that but does it
anyway. I think you also uh wrote at least one episode of Doctor Who? It's always been on my
bucket list to write a Doctor Who, at least one, Doctor Who episode so I feel really lucky I got to
do it and I featured a real heroine of mine Rosa Parks who um did not give up her seat on a bus
for a white man and was arrested and it started the whole uh bus boycott in in Montgomery Alabama
um Rosa Parks lost her job, her husband lost his job, they had to move into a completely different
state. I want to turn the tables on you though now Mallory and I want to say that, you know, for
lots of people you're a hero you know you're in Stormzy's lyrics You Know, you're heroic you work
hard; how do you feel about being somebody else's hero? No I'm not a hero at all. I have problems
when people call me a role model for goodness sake no. I do, what I do, what I hope is that
through what I do I Inspire others to do the same or feel- you know what if she can do it so can I.
Our word hero comes from the ancient Greek word Heros. The ancient Greeks certainly had a lot of