Anyone who doesn’t have a vivid mental image of Lisbeth Salander or know who Mikael Blomkvist works for probably thinks Tim Lincecum is a 4-foot, 11-inch 90-pound private investigator, covered in tattoos and Aubrey Huff works for Millennium Magazine.
The late Steig Larsson introduced Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist to the western world in his hugely popular Swedish trilogy based upon the Byzantine relationship between a 90-pound female private investigator/computer hacker extraordinaire, and a crusading journalist. The Millennium Trilogy kicks off with “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo.” It is followed by two other page-turners, “The Girl who Played with Fire,” and “The Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest.”
They’re thrillers. Even I’m not mean enough to give away the plots. The books are fast paced with lots of action, and more than a smidgen of graphic violence. Oh. And did I forget the sex?
Wikileaks (OK, Wikepedia) claims that in real life Larsson was a journalist who witnessed a gang rape. Pedophilia, the sex trade and rape are prominent in the novels. Misanthropy and violence towards women is ubiquitous.
According to reviews, Lisbeth Salander is perceived as a uniquely original heroine. She is — to a degree.
However, those of us raised on Westerns in the early days of black and white TV know otherwise.
Our weeknights were filled with outcasts like Salander — only they were handsome white males — denizens of the old west. We were weaned on “Have Gun Will Travel”, “The Rebel”, “Branded”, “Cheyenne”, to say nothing of “The Lone Ranger” and dozens of others.
The protagonists in those Westerns Paladin, Johnny Yuma, Jason McCord, Cheyenne Bodie and Tanto’s partner all had much in common with Lisbeth Salander.
They were loners. They had their own code of honor. They were unafraid and disdained cowards. Most important, society had them pegged wrong. Like Lisbeth’s, their past was always murky. (Jason McCord, a West Point grad was “branded” a coward because he was the sole survivor of a massacre at Bitter Creek. The song said, “Branded, marked as a man who ran/What do you do when you’re branded,/And you know you’re a man?”). And who knew what was up with the “masked man’s” past?
Just as McCord was pegged with the pejorative “coward,” Lisbeth was pegged by the State and the press as a “psychotic lesbian S&M Satanist,” who was legally insane.
Each of our youth’s Western outcasts was compelled to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way,” — much the same as Lisbeth. Armed with a photographic memory, an uncanny ability to hack into computers and a taser, she took on corrupt policemen and bureaucrats, sadistic lawyers, organized crime, and depraved doctors. She is merciless on men who abuse women due to what happened “in the Evil days” (won’t give that away).
Despite their physical differences (male, tall, handsome, charismatic, vs. “a pale, anorexic young woman who had hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows, with a wasp tattoo on her neck . . .”) why do these characters have so much in common?
It’s unlikely Larsson knew that “Johnny Yuma was a Rebel” who carried a signature sawed-off shotgun and decided to rip off his persona and attach it to hip, punk chick with a taser.
Joseph Campbell would tell you that the Millennium Trilogy is simply another variation of the “The Hero Myth” — stories that have been with us since Gilgamesh was first “printed” on cuneiform tablets in 7th century BC. In Nineveh.
Hero myths are all basically the same story — though they all have variations.
From King Arthur to Luke Skywalker, a hero arrives from “elsewhere”, comes to a new world — (country to city), meets a mentor; passes tests; enters dark places; endures “baptism by fire;” almost dies, and then is resurrected.
There are other elements, but the point is that somewhere in our collective unconsciousness there is a need to know that “heroes” are out there who will protect us, fight for us, and do the right thing — even though we as frail human beings may fall short.
What is particularly cool about Mr. Larsson’s Opus, is that he’s reminded us that heroes come in all shapes and sizes — that white males don’t have a monopoly on heroic activity — and that oldsters like “moi” need to be reminded that new heroes — which don’t fit our preconceived stereotypes — are out there — like the heroes of our youth — ready to make the world a better place — regardless of gender or color.
(Jeff Warren is a newcomer whose family didn’t arrive here until the ‘50s. He is a businessman, husband and father of three. His website is www.jeffwarren.com.)
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