After 9/11, many thought America would be hungry for heroes who would inspire us.

Hollywood exists, in part, to satisfy that kind of cultural need and, in the past 12 months, it has given us appropriate archetypal figures in movies like The Lord of the Rings and We Were Soldiers.

The box-office success of two recent releases, 8 Mile and Frida, reminds us that our culture also craves other sorts of role models — people whose better qualities seem worlds removed from traditional notions of virtue. These films' protagonists are supposed to be admired for their ability to overcome great obstacles in pursuit of personal goals. But their characters' value systems reflect a moral anarchy that's truly frightening, especially since the assumptions behind the value systems are never challenged by the films' creators.

8 Mile is, on one level, a familiar Hollywood fairy tale: a rags-to-riches show-biz success story that's a cross between A Star is Born and Rocky. The loosely constructed plot is a fictional riff on the early life of its star, Eminem, whose platinum-selling rap-music CDs have offended everyone from feminists and homosexual activists to conservative Christians.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, plays Jimmy Smith Jr., also known as Bunny Rabbit. Rabbit works in a Detroit factory by day, trying to save enough money to make a demo of his rap songs. His personal life is chaotic. Having just broken up with his girlfriend, who falsely claims to be pregnant, he moves into a rundown trailer with his mother (Kim Basinger) and little sister (Taryn Manning). Temporarily rooming with them is his mother's alcoholic, unemployed boyfriend (Michael Shannon), who's waiting to collect a big but unspecified settlement check.

Director Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential and Wonder Boys) and screenwriter Scott Silver skillfully capture the textures of that milieu where downwardly mobile blue-collar workers mix with welfare dependents. One of Rabbit's few appealing traits is his determination to escape and be more than “poor white trash.”

At night the white would-be rapper hangs out at black clubs with two black buddies (Mekhi Phifer and Omar Benson Miller) and a white, physically handicapped friend (Evan Jones). Rabbit competes in musical contests. His show biz ambitions are fueled by a local black promoter (Eugene Byrd) who claims to have industry connections and an aspiring white model (Brittany Murphy) who's willing to sleep her way to the top.

Rabbit has the occasional decent impulse (he's nice to his sister). But mainly his personality is consumed by a deep-seated anger that can be triggered at any time.

The filmmakers present the roots of this rage as poverty and a dysfunctional home life. However, there may be other causes. Rabbit's father is never seen or referred to, and one can speculate that this paternal abandonment may be the unconscious source of many of the young man's near-pathological outbursts.

The moral tools the would-be rapper has been given to cope with his environment are a social conservative's worst nightmare. His life appears untouched by any religious, political or educational influences. His entire system of values springs from popular culture in general and rap music in particular. He identifies completely with the inchoate rage of black street culture and makes it over into his own through cleverly rhymed lyrics that focus more on class than race.

Rabbit's final victory in a rap contest displays a breathtaking inversion of traditional values. He destroys his black opponent by revealing, among other things, that his rival is being raised in a household with (horror of horrors) two parents. The implication is that, for maximum street credibility, a one-parent, broken home is the desired norm.

Meanwhile Frida, based on Hayden Herrera's biography, represents a parallel Hollywood trend: the injection of what were once anti-establishment, avant-garde, bohemian values into mainstream popular culture. Frida Kalho (Salma Hayek) was a gifted mid-20th-century Mexican painter whose sexually promiscuous lifestyle and radical political beliefs are assumed to have important lessons to teach us today.

Director Julie Taymor (Titus) mounts a visually imaginative production that's morally obtuse. She and her four screenwriters are also unable to decide which of their mate-rial's many plot strands to focus on. The action begins with Frida suffering a horrible accident that leaves her in excruciating pain for the rest of her life. The movie appears to be a story about a woman's courageous achievements in the face of debilitating physical handicaps.

Then Frida falls in love with and marries (twice) the famous muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), whose infidelities surpass hers. We think we're watching a lusty, epic romance between artistic equals.

Both are also committed communists whose activities lead them to shelter Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) during his forced exile from the Soviet Union, and the movie wanders off into Marxist arguments over art and revolution. (Amazingly, the film-makers offer no criticism of this total-itarian ideology that later resulted in the deaths of millions.)

For viewers who yearn for moral stability, the movie offers Frida's two devoutly Catholic aunts who appear only briefly as comic relief. They sprinkle holy water on her house to protect her while Trotsky is living there. The filmmakers, of course, depict this negatively, as an action that's symbolic of the religiously repressive, bourgeois social order against which their heroine has rightly rebelled.

Since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, America has been in the throes of a national renewal in which spiritual values and family play a prominent part. 8 Mile and Frida remind us that instant gratification and permissive behavior still have mass appeal. America's culture wars are far from over, and some of its most important battles are being fought at your local multiplex.

John Prizer is currently based in Washington, DC.

8 MILE