DieRuhe: No. But then, people have always told me to stop taking things so literally. If he had asked "What are some of your favorite things?" I would have posted some. But words like "heroes" and "influences" go beyond merely liking or appreciating something, in my opinion.
No, I think you interpret the question correctly. I think it's about the things that shaped us a bit, at least some of our values and sensitivities. Alain Resnais made a great film, "My American Uncle", in which (amongst many things) the protagonist stories are interrupted by little sequences of films they relate to, or see themselves through (Resnais would do a similar thing later, with popular songs instead, titled "same old song", even more awesome). And I think the tv series "dream on" was based on this principle too. I think we are all invluenced by some myths, characters, fictional or exemplary situations, through which we learnt morals, self-expectations, etc. This goes from the bible to comics, or movies, or historical figures, or fairy tales, or even legends. Though it can be subtle, and always uniquely shaped by our unique synthesis of the immense variety of soirces we grew with. I think we are always accompanied by ghosts (of people absent, still existing, deceased, or fictional) that judge us, and, in a way somewhat "frame" our experiences. They may be hard to pinpoint, or just too much recombined to even let anything to pinpoint. And they may be outgrown, and lurking far behind everything else. And they may have always been very distant voices, playful mirrors (they don't have to be direct, conscious references). But, I don't really trust people who claim to be coming from themelves only. Or people who claim that the fuctions that bombarded them all life long never had any impact on their outlooks, aims, and values.
Actually, for a long time I answered that I had no hero, which is true, in the sense where I have an ironical distance to all of them, and many of my influences were contradictory (as for everyone), but with time, I look back with tenderness at some figures of my own selective mythology, and I see how they mirror some of my values and aspirations. Maybe I see them more clearly in contrast, now that I grew to betray them. They were possibly too obvious before.
