I am sorry to admit that perhaps my favorite thing about watching reality TV is psycho-analyzing the characters. Who’s with me? Yeah, not many of you are willing to join me in that admission, but I bet you are out there.
I was committed to not watching Tiger King, because it was so hyped up by everybody talking about it on social media. I am stubborn that way. Then, one night I walked into my bedroom, and my wife had just turned it on. All I heard was this line, “Monkey people are crazy, but big cat people will stab each other in the back.” I didn’t even know what program was on in which someone strung that sentence together, but, as I mentioned, as a person who likes to psycho-analyze the characters, I was hooked by that one sentence. When I was in the Army, I met the father of one of the Army wives in our flight school class, and he actually worked with chimpanzees and apes. He was missing an ear, and from some of the stories that he had shared, I had a sense that the cute chimpanzees we like to think about them as in the zoo are often anything but. So, when I heard that first part of the sentence, “monkey people”, I had a 30 year flash-back, which only added to my curiosity. So, there I was with one sentence committed to watch a program I had sworn that I would not watch.
The most salient feature that I found about Joe Exotic, the now-infamous main character, is that watching him is like getting a completing unfiltered look inside the mind of a human being. However he feels, whatever his impulses are, we are going to get to hear about it with almost no filter. So, on the one hand, Joe Exotic is wildly different than almost anyone else in the country. On the other hand, he is surprisingly similar to many, his primary differences only being his lack of a filter and his lack of impulse control.
Because he lacks these things, we get a chance to peer into true root human impulses and cravings. At one point in the program, Joe Exotic utters something that many other people act upon, but they would suppress ever uttering out loud. I forget exactly in the show he says this, and I may get the exact phraseology wrong, but he shouts something to the effect, “I will die a hero!”
Joe is not the first person to want to be a hero. He just uttered it out loud. Over the years I have referred to this as having a “Hero Complex” or having a “Craving for Adoration”. Many of us, and maybe all of us, at some level want to be a hero, or have a craving for adoration. Certainly, celebrities appear to have a degree of comfort with their craving for adoration, and it serves as a source of motivation for them to achieve the celebrity status in their careers, whether that be in entertainment, sports, politics or some other area.
Like most things, the “Hero Complex” or “Craving for Adoration” is only a problem when it is dysfunctional or out of balance. Joe Exotic is an extreme example of that. However, there are people in all walks of life who may struggle in this area, and often they are unaware of it. They may just feel a sense of angst about them, because they feel a need for adoration that is not being met. Joe Exotic’s approach can actually be therapeutic. If you just utter the words, “I am going to be a hero” then, perhaps, most rational, reasonable people will begin to realize how detached from reality and immature those aspirations may be.
What follows is a quote from the writing of missionary, Helen Roseveare. Yes, even missionaries, the seemingly most sacrificial among us, are not immune to these desires. “You no longer want Jesus only, but Jesus plus . . . plus respect, popularity, public opinion, success and pride. You wanted to go out with all the trumpets blaring, from a farewell-do that you organized for yourself with photographs and tape-recordings to show and play at home, just to reveal what you had achieved. You wanted to feel needed and respected. You wanted the other missionaries to be worried about how they’ll ever carry on after you’ve gone. You’d like letters when you go home to tell how much they realize they owe to you, how much they miss you. All this and more. Jesus plus. . . . No, you can’t have it. Either it must be “Jesus only” or you’ll find you have no Jesus. You’ll substitute Helen Roseveare.”
Helen was seeking God in perfectly selfless service, certainly a high aspiration. That was her calling. I am not suggesting that we all have to follow exactly in Helen’s footsteps. However, as we look upward toward heaven and outward toward others, rather than inward at our own desires, and, in fact, begin to strip away our selfish motives in favor of service to others, therein, we will also shed the craving for personal adoration, along with the angst that goes with it.