Cultural hero is a symbol of any culture. It reflects the mores, ideals, future aspirations of a particular society. Therefore, the transformation of the hero’s image becomes an indicator of the social changes. In modern mass culture, the image of the hero correlates with the image of the anti-hero, smoothly flowing from one state to another. A special place is occupied by the marginal trickster, who introduces chaos into the existing order, contributing to the de-idealization of the heroic. And the very concept of the heroic is undergoing changes. The mass person gets sympathetic to the trickster and even to the antihero, whose actions are often questionable, but the goals are noble. The reason for transforming the image of the hero are cultural and civilizational changes that crush traditional ideals. Creation of the hero’s image is subjective and depends on the needs, motives, goals, attitudes, emotions of a particular society, group, subject. In modern mass culture heroes and villains ceased to be unambiguous and one-sided, they went beyond the paradigm of good and evil, and it was the transition stage that brought these images together to the point of their full merging. Therefore, we can judge the value orientations of a given society, on the example of who is the model for imitation and education in society.
