What is a Hero?

Start by asking students:

• What is a hero?
• Who are some of their favourite heroes in media (TV, movies, cartoons, comics, video games, etc.)?
• Can they think of examples of real-life heroes? (These could be people they know, people alive today, or people in history.)
• What makes someone heroic?
• When you imagine a picture of a hero in your mind, what do you see?

You don’t need to come to any sort of agreement on these questions, just  get students to start thinking about them and name some examples.

Now have students think specifically about media heroes. You can prompt them to think about Disney and other animated movies, Marvel and other superhero movies, and video game characters. (You may wish to have students do this in groups or as a whole class.) Remind them that they are listing not just the main character of different works, but characters that fit the definitions of a “hero” discussed earlier.

Have students list the following:

• What do these heroes look like? (Remind them to think about things like gender, race, ability, body shape, etc.)
• What challenges do these heroes face?
• How do they solve their problems?
• What is their greatest achievement?

(You may want to write the answers on the board, or have students write them on chart paper.)

Next, ask students to name some examples real-life heroes. If you have access to age-appropriate books, comics or short videos about heroes, you can use those as inspiration; if not, you can have students list their own heroes and prompt them with examples of real-life Canadian heroes such as Terry Fox or Viola Desmond.

• Appearance
• Challenges and how they solved (or tried to solve) them
• What is their greatest achievement?

Have students discuss:

• What are some similarities between the real-world and media heroes? Some differences?
• How many media heroes used some kind of violence to overcome obstacles? How many real-life heroes did that?
• Ask students if they know the word genre.
  • Make sure they understand it means the type or category that a media work fits in, such as a superhero story or a Disney princess movie.
  • Media makers often draw on the conventions of the genre they’re working in, and audiences expect to see those same conventions.
• Now ask: What about the genres of the media hero stories might make the heroes more or less likely to use violence? Would audiences expect heroes in that genre to be violent, or not violent?
• Think back to when you imagined a hero in your mind. Was the image more like a media hero or like a real-life hero? Why do you think that might be?
• What are some lessons we learn from real-life heroes? What are some we learn from media heroes?