Heroism or just a croc?
"The big question is whether there is a way of reclaiming our discourse on heroism and courage from ... ready-made rhetoric."
The eulogising of Steve Irwin revealed some confused notions of heroism, writes Maria Tumarkin.
WHETHER WE LIKE IT or not, contemporary ideas of courage are not really forged in philosophical explorations and debates. The media, politics, and of course popular culture take the lead in defining what courage is and what it is not. Dominated by discussions of heroes and heroism, the public sphere is not particularly interested in complex, contradictory and non-telegenic forms of courage.
Ideas of courage are subsumed in the heroic. This unproblematic conflation of heroism and courage would not be such an issue (after all, the line between the two is far from self-evident), if only popular ideas about heroism were not so lazy and confused.
When Steve Irwin died in September 2006, speared in the heart by a stingray, he was instantly heralded as a hero by the Australian and international media. "Simple hero for a complicated age"; so ran the headline from The Daily Telegraph.
"Amid extraordinary scenes of mourning", wrote Kathy Mark for London's Independent, "Australians struggled to come to terms with the death of Steve Irwin."
Exactly the same language was used to describe the aftermath of two of Australia's worst recent tragedies - the 1996 Port Arthur massacre and the Bali bombings of 2002. The same sentiments and expressions, word for word. This easy slippage between descriptions of two major national tragedies and the accidental death of a celebrity betrayed not only the absolute debasement of the modern language of heroism, but a broader collective impasse about the meaning of both heroism and courage.

In the US, where the Crocodile Hunter was extremely popular, the media spoke of Irwin's life and death in strictly heroic terms. "I've interviewed presidents, kings and Oscar-winning movie stars," talk-show host Larry King said.
"My boys just shrugged. But once I talked to the real-life, world-famous Croc Hunter, well, that made me a hero." If we ever needed proof of the extent to which heroes and celebrities tend to form a continuum in the modern world - one big crossbred, indistinguishable mass - that was it, loud and clear.
Reportedly, the Australian women's basketball team used their emotional response to the news of Irwin's death as inspiration to win, with the devastation the players felt becoming their secret psychic weapon in a world championship final against Russia. After their victory, they were also branded heroes.