Hero Image
I learned the term Hero Image from a movie and television production designer. He was sure that it wasn’t just useful, but essential, to choose just one image to represent?, guide?, summarize? a whole story.
Posters, playbill covers and book covers are sometimes hero images…right? You don’t want to give away the ending in a poster, but this title gives away the literal ending of this play, so the covers have free-reign to choose whatever image they want to sum up the whole show.
I picked up Death of a Salesman again because I feel that Willy Loman might be the Hero Image of the USA.
This version of our USA story is a tragedy. I had actually forgotten that Willy dies at the end of Death of a Salesman. Yes, I understand that Willy’s end is in the name of the play; and, I am aware that I just wrote an essay about how impactful this show has been on me. This American Everyman became omnipresent for me as I soon as I saw this above actor buckle Willy’s belt and pick up his valises, though. The tragedy was not the ending of the life, that was not the heartbreaking part. The tired, disillusioned, defeated dad coming home with his suitcases was tragedy enough. That’s what stuck.
Willy Loman became that always-there character that doesn’t change, and I keep seeing him sitting at so many kitchen tables. Maybe because he does die in this show, he stays stuck in that unresolved limbo that the above image captures so well.
Every single one of us that saw that production saw our own dads and uncles onstage. Even those of us who worked on the show had a stunned whoa moment. I wonder if I had that moment when I read Death of a Salesman in high school like this Madi did in college:
That actor in my American theater hero image of Death of a Salesman is Charles Roc Dutton. I grew up watching him weekly on his show, Roc. He played a family man/garbage man / everyman. In this sitcom he got to be an everyman hero. 20 years later, when asked what role he wanted to play, he chose this Arthur Miller tragic hero. huh.
Roc was a sitcom. Do sitcom heroes always have to be humble in their aspirations? because the set doesn’t change…they literally can’t go anywhere? And folks are tuning in weekly, so you can’t kill off the lead...after whom the show is named?
uhhh…this is the same set as Death of a Salesman. I didn’t really realize how much the 1990’s is full of white metal cabinetry and swirly floral wallpaper like the 1940’s until now. Is Roc a plain old happy hero show because it is a sitcom, or because Roc is 20 years younger? Charles created this character. This character is less Roc Dutton, and more like Willy Loman.
I am a little afraid to look up the episode of Roc in which he wonders if he can or should imagine a life in which he does not drive a garbage truck. 10 year old me remembers that Roc and his wife decide his life is great as is, and she kisses him before he apologizes to his friends and coworkers for wanting something else. I remember no other episode or moment of that show. I watched every episode with my whole 8 person family on my parents’ queen bed every week. These screen captures of episodes are ringing bells, but no content is coming in. Just feelings and the assertion that a wife’s kiss might be enough.
What if we did make that same set!?!? for Death of a Salesman?!?! Opppurtunity missed? We got it close enough, I think. At least I got to have all of that history with Roc to feel like I knew him and all of his vibrant American male hope. As a kid, I knew him as that first dad coming home full of hope and bounce, and as a young adult working with him as this second dad, defeated and disillusioned:
My personal blend of obliviousness, forgetfulness and hope allows me to miss the word “Death” in Death of a Salesman and read this play for the twentieth time thinking that Willy will look at his life and like it enough to accept a kiss from his wife and apologize to his friends and family for wanting more.
That photo is the hero image of American theater. It shows up in every publication from Yale’s drama school and Rep theater. I know some of you will have other plays and their posters in mind, maybe Hamilton or Oklahoma! — we will talk about those another time. More of you will have other actors in mind when you think of that role; we will talk about them another time, too. But, I am sure that this progression of humble sitcom dad to the quintessential American tragic hero 20 years later is remarkable enough for us to at least pretend that I am right about this one: Charles Dutton in that doorway is the hero image of American theater.
Nevermind. I take it back. That Willy Loman is my hero image. Or, the perfect 2009 Willy Loman.
Just like Oprah and Rosie became my after-school moms when my mom went back to college and then to work; Roc Dutton was my weekly dad and then daily re-runs dad from age 9 to 14. Unlike the talk show hosts that supplanted my mom, I fuzed my dad with Roc. I probably saw the original episodes flanked by a sibling and my dad. I know well what my dad’s arm and side feel like from the years I got to occupy that spot (it was a honor spot we had to trade around, most often I was seated at the foot of the bed or on the floor). I fused all of those physical feelings of my dad’s presence and body with Roc Dutton on screen — similar size and shape. Television in the 1990’s was hum drum and repetitious like real life. Roc Dutton gave dad lectures that I heard on repeat because of those slices I would catch of reruns as I flipped through the channels when I got older. I was probably watching those reruns from the divot in my dad’s mattress that he wore down over those decades.
This is why we hire television actors in theater. We all have a history with them.
Can you agree with me that this is a special preparation, though? ‘Roc’ was a Willy Loman precursor. The weekly sitcom/daily struggle to make it in middle class America, and to make peace with middle class America. It’s happy in the daily and at the end of almost every episode.
And then, we get Roc in middle age as Willy Loman. Same fun powerful guy. But defeated.…
Gosh.
If you are new here, welcome! This means that you are neither my husband nor my mother and will not love me anyway if I write essays that are too long…neither of them reads past the third divider line, either….but I have so many more thoughts that I want your opinion on! Please open the next essay for the rest of this discussion of Hero Images And chime in if you have something to share.
This March I am looking at Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. If you want a copy of the play, please read the last article, and request a copy of the play in the comments!
Does it makes sense for us to watch all of the episodes of Roc? 72 22-minute episodes + a bonus one that Fox wouldn’t air, but BET did. I watched all of the Eartha Kitt Batman episodes with my kids to prepare for a show…
well, if you want to watch Roc, let me know and I will send you a DVD box set, or a pass to watch it on Google Play…it’s free online — but too many commercials are going to mess up the effect. If you do it, I‘ll do it with you.
