While we’re on the subject of television, am I the first person to think of shows like Lost and Heroes as the television equivalent of “magic realism” in the novel? These shows have elements of science fiction and fantasy, but remain grounded in realistic narration, human relationships, and a world that more or less resembles our own (with certain quiet variations). As a result, they can achieve mainstream respectability and broad popularity, while true Sci-Fi remains somewhat of a smaller, niche market — the “outer space” of basic cable, if you will.
This is going to sound blasphemous, but Heroes in particular actually reminds me a little of Midnight’s Children in some ways. Remember this delightful passage from Rushdie’s novel:
From Kerala, a boy who had the ability of stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through any surface in the land–through lakes, and (with greater difficulty), the polished bodies of automobiles . . . and a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish . . . and children with powers of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri hills, and from the great watershed of the Vindhvas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischievously) been the cause of wild panic and rumors of the return of Giants . . . from Kashmir, there was a blue-eyed child of whose sex I was never certain, since by immersing herself in water he (or she) could alter it as she (or he) pleased. Some of us called this child Narada, others Markandaya, depending on which old fairy story of sexual change we had heard . . . near Jalna in the heart of the parched Deccan I found a water-divining youth, and at Budge-Budge outside of Calcutta a sharp-tongued girl whose words already had the power of inflicting physical wounds, so that after a few adults had found themselves bleeding freely as a result from some barb flung casually from her lips, they decided to lock her up in a bamboo cage and float her off down the Ganges to the Sunderbans jungles (which are the rightful home of monsters and phantasms); but nobody dared approach her, and she moved through the town surrounded by a vacuum of fear; nobody had the courage to deny her food. There was a boy who could eat metal and a girl whose fingers were so green that she could grow prize aubergines in the Thar desert; and more and more…
Ah, Rushdie: the old passages don’t disappoint. Of course, the different magical powers don’t map precisely to the characters in Heroes, but there are certain overlaps:
Claire Bennet (Hayden Panettiere), Mr. Bennet’s adopted daughter, who lives in Odessa, Texas, and has a healing factor.
Simone Deveaux (Tawny Cypress), an art dealer and gallery owner whose skepticism and complicated romantic life are tested. She was killed by Isaac, who was trying to kill Peter and hit the wrong target.
D.L. Hawkins (Leonard Roberts), Once an escaped criminal, he has the power to alter his physical tangibility and phase through solid objects, both inanimate and organic.
Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera), An artist living in New York who can paint future events during precognitive trances. He also writes and draws a comic book called 9th Wonders! which has also been shown to depict the future.
Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka), A programmer[7] from Tokyo with the ability to manipulate the space-time continuum.
Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg), A Los Angeles police officer with the ability to hear other people’s thoughts.
Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), a New York Congressional candidate with the ability of self-propelled flight. He is Claire Bennet’s biological father.
Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), A former hospice nurse and Nathan’s younger brother. He is an empath with the ability to absorb the powers of others he has been near and can recall any ability he has used in the past by focusing on his feelings for those from whom the abilities originate. He has shown that he is capable of manifesting multiple abilities simultaneously.
Micah Sanders (Noah Gray-Cabey), D.L. and Niki’s son and a child prodigy, Micah is a technopath, allowing him control of electrical signals, which gives him control of machines and electronic devices.
Niki Sanders (Ali Larter), The wife of D.L. and mother of Micah. A former internet stripper from Las Vegas who exhibits superhuman strength when her alternate personality, Jessica, surfaces.
Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), A genetics professor from India who travels to New York to investigate the death of his father, Chandra. Through his investigations, he comes into contact with people his father listed as possessing superhuman abilities. link
Mohinder Suresh, oddly enough, resembles Saleem Sinai, in that he is the person who ties it all together. And Cihlar, as the villain, resembles Rushdie’s Siva. Perhaps Clair Bennett as Parvati-the-Witch? Niki Sanders as a less villainous “Widow”?
I’m not saying the quality of the show could be compared, even remotely, to Rushdie’s novel. It’s more the idea of a large group of people who have supernatural gifts whose broader function isn’t entirely clear. In Rushdie’s novel, it becomes clear that the disintegration of the M.C.C. is a metaphor for the challenges to Indian nationalism — and Saleem Sinai’s special humiliation might be the humiliation of the first generation of India’s ruling elite. But what social or political message is Heroes trying to convey? It hasn’t become clear yet.
Lost, to me, always seemed like it was stealing from the glory days of The X-Files (with its emphasis on codes, paranormal phenomena, abductions, secret groups, government conspiracies). In fact, it’s what turned me off to the show; I was a devoted TXF watcher and I just couldn’t get involved with another series like that…
Don’t know anything about Heroes — or, unfortunately, Midnight’s Children. I’ll go hide in the corner while y’all discuss them. ^__^
Heroes–>sucks. Can’t get past the poor acting and I’ll watch almost anything sci-fi. Sorry to hate.
Battlestar Gallactica is the best show on television, hands down.
Great acting, awesome script, and kick ass effects. The first episode this season had me shitting in my pants. The Battlestar JUMPED into New Caprica’s atmosphere. DAMN!
Heroes sucks donkey dick. Seriously. Horrible, horrible show. Best analogy I can make is when one goes to a good food place, get served a nice looking meal, only to taste it and be utterly disappointed. Absolutely tasteless – not good or bad, just tasteless.
Just imagining Shiva (or is it Siva as mentioned here) with his gigantic knees always made me laugh.
While I love BSG, I may have to open a big ol’ can of rage on y’all. Heroes is freaking fantastic. I’ve got really into it; not every element of it, but I think it’s a damn’ good show. Also, no other show on TV has that many hot men on at the same time. Well, no not-for-pay show.
ooh, a post on Heroes. Like Sin, I’m completely addicted, but there are some serious problems.
The show is about a set of people who wake up one morning with abilities they didn’t have before. It’s all due, of course, to genetics and evolution, and there’s this whole “everyone is special but some people are more special than others” bullshit speech that taxi-driver Mohinder Suresh (not special, not white, catalyst) gives while driving Peter Petrelli (special, white) in the first episode.
And then it turns out, of course, that the vast majority of the newer, better, faster human model is – white. And American.
So why do I watch? Because I’m a total sucker for a main-character brown man on TV who isn’t a terrorist and has no criminal/shady background. And because I love Hiro Nakamura.
These are very simple thoughts which might require some explanation, but I have to go to class. Sorry.
cute, but a stretch i think.
hmmm – i vaguely remember a quote that all movies are a variant of religion – even the superhero sci-fi flicks are an expression of faith in the fallible, all-powerful, destroyer type nordic god
on that note – the mahabharat and the ramayana seem to dominate the desi movie-dom.
rushdie’s unique contribution has been to expose me and i suppose a fair bit of the literate world to the roleplayers and the fantastic element in the islamic tableau.
i havent come across a good representation of the african spirituality in books. any recommendations?
in essence, the writers’ work reflect the latent values they grew up with. what comes after the first 10 years is probably just the parsley on the turkey.
Can a definition of magical realism include the acceptance of a Supreme Being? I’d say yes, and Lost (and to a lesser extent Heroes) might be a reflection of our exhaustion at so much “reality” programming on television, which includes news channels. It’s not escapism, it’s a need to believe in something outside of and greater than the human condition: a form of religion.
What’s interesting to me is that in some countries and cultures, what we call “magical realism” is considered true. I suspect that in India you’re more likely to find someone who believes in the existence of a Goan girl who can multiply fish than you are to find in the U.S. someone who actually believes in the existence of a Hiro Nakamura or Claire Bennett.
JangiahMan,
i havent come across a good representation of the african spirituality in books. any recommendations?
Well, if you like Rushdie-an magic realism, you might try Ben Okri’s “The Famished Road.”
Vivek, I see your point — though to be fair, it’s not a huge surprise that Americans dominate an American show. (There is one black dude with special powers, and Niki Sanders’ also “special” son is biracial.) And don’t forget Hiro Nakamura…
You got that right, GujuDude. I’m no literary scholar, but I think it’s magically realistic and realistically magical all at once. 😉
yup, fair enough.
As far as the other characters, Hiro Nakamura is the only one with a plot line all his own (and it looks like it’ll get a lot cooler at some point). The other minority characters on the show are relatively flat:
“The Haitian” (what, he doesn’t have a name?): dark and mysterious, only seems to do what he’s ordered to do. DL Hawkins (the black guy): we still don’t know what his story is, and he only seems to be there to be framed by his wife’s dead sister’s super-strength spirit (wtf?) Isaac Mendez (the ambiguously Latino guy): paints the future, but only seems to do it well when he’s ON HEROINE, and despite being convinced that he’s going to save the world, he only seems to enable others to do the saving.
Someone I know who watched the first few minutes of the first episode told me, as she watched Niki Sanders’ character strip for the camera in the garage and then go to the kitchen to prepare her son’s lunch, “Oh god, just look at the way this whole thing is framed – her bare leg in the foreground as she kisses her son – I just know she’s going to be punished.”
Lastly, I think every single one of the heroes who’s been remotely reflective/inquisitive about his/her condition (stream of consciousness, dialogue, action, whatever) has been white. I can’t think of an exception. None of the minority characters seems to be very interested in how/why this happened or what it all means – the only one is Isaac Mendez, and it took Peter Petrelli to come into his studio and figure out that his paintings are sequential like a comic strip.
This is ridiculous. Your post coincides with my two-week old obsession with the show. It just started airing in India and I downloaded all of the episodes and watched them all in three days. I also think it’s fair to expect more in terms of race and gender from the writers of a show which is obviously meticulously and brilliantly conceived.
I see, Desi Ranma. Who knew Rumiko Takahashi was a Rushdie fan 🙂
but is there a question of “knees and nose, and nose and knees” in heroes??
I think of Sepia Mutiny as somewhat reminiscent of Midnight’s Children–sort of a virtual MCC, online instead of in Saleem’s head.
Thank you Amardeep.
Interestingly – I am watching some magic realism on MTV right now. There’s a guy with a head scarf singing ‘Tu cheese bari hai must must’ to a woman doing stomach crunches on a music video. O my word! her skirt started giving off yellow fluorescent highlights. she’s also wearing a white fez. whoa! she’s swinging her arms now. whoa! i say whoa! nice cheese.
Heroes is one of the better shows on TV. Last show that I enjoyed this much was the X Files, as of now X Files is still better.
speaking of “magic realism”, happy belated birthday to marquez!
That’s a really cool connection, even though it’s a bit ironic. Wasn’t one of the messages in Midnight’s Children that there was no room for heroes in India, with the exception of Gandhi?
fascinating post and comparison/analysis.
I wish Rushdie had gotten it right – It’s GOAN, and not Goanese…
Deep,
I’m a friend of Raveena’s actually. We met in Atlantic city. Enjoyed your posting- per your topic on magical realism, my mom told me that the creator of Mary Poppins was a Hanuman enthusiast and based the character of Mary on Hanuman. I thought this was pretty interesting. Sort of ties into the spiritual/metaphysical underlying theme of superhuman movies. I wish I had more information, but you should definitely look into this.
Interesting comparison, but Heroes doesn’t borrow from Rushdie so much as from 10,000 other science fiction works. The whole thing is a huge cliche, and to the people who love it for anything but the physical beauty of the characters…man, y’all have missed some good books. And even Rushdie wasn’t 100% original.
Specifically:
Ian MacDonald – “Desolation Road” – a character who could open wounds while AND two characters who could control machines, plus a few characters who could grow plants / had mystical relationships to greenery. Awesome book, and magical realism almost at Rushdie’s level, combined with science fiction (hard to do!). There are parallels between the two books, actually. I’m sure he “borrowed” some ideas from Rushdie, now that I think about it, but the novel is unique enough that it doesn’t smack of plagiarism.
Robert Louis Stevenson did “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” long before Heroes came up with the idea of a person with a very strong alter-ego. Homage via The Incredible Hulk, even.
And then there’s stuff like George R.R. Martin’s “Wild Cards,” which isn’t unusual in its treatment of superheroes, per se. But the superheroes go through the McCarthy hearings. Or “The Watchmen,” by Alan Moore, which is a great graphic novel (maybe the best) about superheroes, and the “reality” of them. It’s gritty, it’s touching, it’s an amazing story, and it left me speechless for an entire day after I finished it.
The Haitian, by the way, is totally stolen from the Red Mars / Green Mars / Blue Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson. The character’s name was Coyote, and he was of Carribean descent.
It’s funny to me that “Heroes” makes people think television is new and original, when to me literally every concept and idea in it is stolen from elsewhere and given the most superficial exploration possible. Ah, Hollywood.
yes, hats off to marquez and chronicle of a death foretold, although rushdie shall always have a special place. shalimar the clown almost pullled it off, it’s too bad that it doesn’t receive more recognition.
Aatchka, hi! Nice to hear from you. (I have to tip my hat to UNC after this weekend)
Salil, I wouldn’t say that Heroes is at all original. It’s just a new thing to have this particular type of show on prime time network TV — and have it find an audience bigger than the usual sci-fi audience.
Re: other magical realism set in the brown homeland, has anyone read “River of Gods”? Not bad at all, actually, and far better-edited than Rushdie.
This conversation is fascinating – are Midnight’s Children, Xmen and Heroes similar? Sure. But has no one noticed that Rushdie’s novel is for the most part an Indian revision of early Marvel comics? Not only does Rushdie frequently refer to Xmen heroes inside his books, but in Midnight’s Children he even presents us with a model of his own method: one of Saleem Sinai’s friend’s mothers recreates her son into a fantastic Eastern guru, based on the Superman comic that Saleem gave him. Saleem himself, like Professor X, uses his powers to cheat in school, loses all his hair early and is “bald”, and collects all of the Mutants/Children into a team with his, the most pervasive power.
I just started watching Heroes this week on DVD. I wasn’t even through the first episode when “Gee, this reminds me of Midnights Children” popped into my head. It is a bit of a stretch but the influence is there. I’d be willing to bet that the creator of heroes has a few copies of Rushdie on his shelf.
Hi all – When I Saw Heroes I immediately thought of midnight’s children. Yes, I think everyone on the wire here has addressed the similarity to many works. I am interested in other works like these fabulous fictions, I heard about Desolation Road, any other recommendations?