Show Me A Hero Narrative Analysis

Active viewing remains necessary as many scenes end in questions with no answers. In classical narrative style, the following scene would answer a questions, either spoken or rhetorical, addressed in the previous. However, Show Me a Hero chooses to breaks down this linear storytelling. Instead the audience does not see answers until much later in the series. These questions are often not directly answered, but simply shown as the effect of a question. For example, the scene where Carmen explains to her boss why she needs a raise ends with her asking him, “So what do you say?” The show never shows or speaks about a direct answer, instead the audience sees Carmen making the decision to move her family to the Dominican Republic where it will be cheaper for them to live. This action indirectly answers Carmen’s question to her boss in a nonlinear style.

By using disjunctive editing to decenter the main protagonist, the series shows that the story is much larger than Nick Wasicsko and affects an entire community. Without the alternative style, the individual characters of the public housing community would not be as strongly present and would be interwoven with the main protagonist. The series could then fall victim to creating poverty porn or a “white savior narrative.” The characters would be used as pieces in Nick’s story, rather than be treated as individuals. In turn this would make Nick the cause of the people’s effect. Using the alternative narrative style, eliminates this possibility allowing Show Me a Hero to focus on the theme of social and political