Underdogs vs Overlords

Who We Root for Defines Us

I'd already been attending kindergarten for a month when I turned five. That was on a Monday. It must have been a Monday because two days before I turned five one of my favorite childhood Saturday morning cartoons aired for the first time: Underdog!

The show followed the heroic exploits a of mild-mannered pooch named Shoeshine Boy (voiced by Wally Cox) who ducked into phonebooths to emerge as a canine version of Superman whenever evil threatened (usually also threatening his love interest, the reporter Sweet Polly Purebred, voiced by Norma MacMillan).

At the tender age of four I’d no idea what the term underdog meant, of course, but I already knew I loved dogs and the idea of a secret identity—especially one that was heroic.

And of course I hadn't a notion the entire concept of Saturday morning cartoons was dreamed up initially as a marketing ploy by mega food corp, General Mills, to sell sugar-coated breakfast cereals. I certainly ate my share of them, though (sorry GM, but my fav was Cap'n Crunch from Quaker Oats).

All these decades later I still love dogs (who doesn't?) and the idea of a secret heroic identity (who wouldn't), but not everyone habitually roots for the underdog.

Oh, they will tell you they do, but the self-styled "underdog" many root for is often an overlord who realizes most people want to believe they're cheering for a longshot player—especially one up against some swaggering, over-confident competitor, be it a cartoon villain, an opposing sports team, or a political opponent.

If the majority of people really rooted for the underdog, we'd be living in a different world.

As a species, we wouldn't have created the stratified societies we have, eon after eon: societies of haves and have-nots, of advantaged and disadvantaged, of exploiters and the exploited, of overlords and underdogs.

Frankly, I think those who truly root for the underdog—those who walk the walk, as it's said, and don't just talk the talk—are a living minority. Such a mindset calls for a certain subjugation of the self.

It's much more common a mindset to suppose disadvantaged individuals are disadvantaged because of some personal failing. They're lazy, perhaps. Maybe they didn't take advantage of opportunities that came their way, "chose" not to pursue higher education, or "chose" a low-paying job.

The list is practically endless for those who want to pin blame on individuals (other than themselves, of course) rather than on the basic societal framework humans construct again and again and again.

It's a framework largely fueled by two things: fear and greed. And since it can be easily argued that greed itself is fueled by fear—the fear of insufficiency and want—let's just center fear as the archenemy.

Fear is humanity's overlord.

And what counters fear is courage, which brings us right back around to our cultural love of heroicism. It's really a kind of irony.

Humans foster and thrive on fear while fantasizing about courage. Think on it.

Aren't most of your favorite books, movies, and stories in any medium about someone screwing up their courage to face down some fearsome thing, either internal or external?

What if we decided to foster and thrive on courage instead, if courage wasn’t just fodder for entertainment? What if we stopped merely pretending to root for underdogs and actually began structuring society to eliminate disadvantages that engender them?

I guess we never will because the greatest fear of all is the fear of equality.

Even through imagery and language we reinforce this idea of stratification, of what's worthwhile being above us: the ladder of success, the glass ceiling, reaching for the stars, the pinnacle of a career. Why not the level playing field of success, the glass wall, reaching for a neighbor's hand, a career's satisfying plateau?

Societal mindset is centered on competition. We're raising our children to believe in a land of plenty (for a few) rather than in a land of enough (for all) because of yet another fear: socialism.

Socialism is the antithesis of the system we live under now: oligarchy. And oligarchy only thrives in America because the majority of people, despite declarations to the contrary, root for the overlords, not the underdogs.

In a socialist society the chief goal of production shifts from profit to use, with an eye toward the equitable distribution of material resources among all people and free access to many goods and services.

It sounds awful, doesn't it? I mean if you're an oligarch (or root [read: vote] for one).

Then again, if we tossed out fear and made sure everyone had enough of everything they need (don't conflate needs with wants) what would authors and screenwriters have left to write about? Maybe how deluded, selfish, and merciless humans used to be?

I dunno. You tell me—maybe in comments below. What does the entertainment industry look like in Utopia?

Oh, and in a slight aside (but still on topic—both in keeping with Underdog and entertainment industry elements) it's of relevant note to the ongoing SAG/AFTRA strike that Robert Ragaini, who sang the Underdog theme song, never made more than the original fifty bucks he was paid to do it.

At the time of the recording he was a struggling singer in New York, so when he was offered a job to sing the opening for a proposed cartoon series, he naturally took it. However, he was offered no contract and wasn't yet a member of SAG (the Screen Actors Guild).

After later becoming a successful jingle singer and hearing his Underdog work used year after year, he realized what he should have been earning, especially once the theme came out as the music track of a Reebok commercial. He filed a claim with SAG but there was no extant documentation to support his suit.

Ragaini is the Underdog underdog.

And while maybe in a true utopia we wouldn't need labor unions, in our Oligarchy run by overlords, we sure as hellfire do.

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Thanks for joining me on another Monday morning muse.

In the housekeeping dept., congrats to Mary Hanlon of Pittsburgh for winning last Thursday’s weekly drawing to win books and become a character in my next novel. Her name goes into the year-end final drawing.

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Hope to see you next week! Leave a comment if there are specific topic you’d like me to address in future weeks.