While watching “Hunger Games: The Mockingjay, Part One,” my mind wandered. When Katniss Everdeen gets her new set of arrows (this is not a spoiler, is it?), some are explosive – “trick” arrows, similar to the ones used by Oliver Queen on Arrow or Hawkeye in The Avengers.
When these characters came to mind, I started to sense a pattern. In the 21st Century, people love archers: Legolas in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films; Green Arrow on both Arrow and Smallville; Hawkeye over at Marvel is experiencing great popularity both on the silver screen and in the pages of his own comic; Neytiri from James Cameron’s Avatar; Sterling Archer; Merida from Pixar’s Brave and Katniss offer girls positive role models, while Hanna maybe not so much. I think there’s also a girl who shoots arrows in the Narnia movies, but I’ve never seen those. I started to think about why these archers are so popular.
America is supposed to be the country in love with guns, right? Well, Legolas got big right around 2001, just two years after the Columbine massacre, an event which was the first in a long line of tragedies that made such shootings an everyday occurrence. Maybe that’s not a coincidence. Maybe as a culture we’re starting to develop a distaste for guns. Except there has been no shortage of gun-centric movies and TV shows over the past few years. It’s not like there’s been an uptick in archery movies and a downtick in shoot ‘em ups.
The bow and arrow go back a long time. You can read about them in the Bible and they’re common to most cultures. In fact, cave paintings of archers from 20,000 BC have been found. If guns are a part of American culture, surely the bow and arrow are part of… human culture.
A bow and arrow actually take a lot of skill to use. I remember reading the introduction to the first volume of Green Arrow comics written by Kevin Smith back in the day when he talked about his own struggle trying to shoot an arrow. I, myself, had previously experienced humiliating myself in front of people at a Renaissance fair. It’s not easy. And to think of someone firing several arrows with marksman-level precision… well, it’s like being the Sherlock Holmes of offensive weaponry, kind of.
When compared to simple guns, the bow and arrow comes across as being “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.” It’s bringing a sword to a gunfight. To win, you have to be exceptionally skilled. Like being an amazing underdog. And that’s always been popular.
In a way, the bow and arrow have a sort of regality to them. The most famous archer is undoubtedly Robin Hood, even if you haven’t seen his latest movies or TV shows. And while he never used any trick arrows, he is the one whom all these other characters are channeling. He can be found in Arrow’s hood (or in the goatee the comics version used to sport) as well as the comic streak many modern archers seem to have. Hawkeye’s wisecracks come to mind. Even Legolas’ elegance is mostly devoted to jokes about his friendship with Gimli.
So all modern archers owe a debt to Robin Hood, a guy most people know as the noble thief who robs from the rich and gives to the poor. (I wonder why THAT would be popular to today’s Americans.) But it can’t be that simple since recent projects starring the character have failed to capture the public’s imagination.
Perhaps, in this age of drone attacks and missile strikes, a weapon that requires a personal touch: the muscles on fire as the arm pulls the bow string, the fingers aligning the arrow with precision – just rubs us the right way. Maybe that harkens back to a simpler time, before the McDonaldization of death, when it took more than the push of a button or the squeeze of a trigger to take a life.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.