Up@dawn 2.0

Monday, April 20, 2015

what's up with superheroes? 1 #12

Despite everybody having different ideas on what a hero is, I think we can all agree that superheroes are popular. They're in our movies, TV shows, literature. They are a part of our culture. But why do we all love them so much? Why do we count on them to always beat the bad guy? Well, I think Hank says some really good things about it in this video (start it at like 12 seconds).
Anyway, I think he makes a good point in saying that we see the Jokers, Green Goblins, and all of their evil buddies as simplifications of the everyday problems that we see. It is so much easier to say that we need to beat a bad guy to make everything good than to say that we have to solve complicated socioeconomic problems where no matter the solution, somebody ends up not totally fine. So it's almost like we need an extraordinary solution to make our "ordinary problems" easily digestible. Ordinary solutions to our complicated problems just don't work it seems.
 So maybe that's why we go to superheroes. Maybe their ability to surpass our limitations and take things into their own hands is what we ultimately want to do. We've all felt frustrated in the past by things that we couldn't control, but Ironman doesn't have to deal with that in the same way. (Of course we aren't talking here about how superheroes are written now with flaws and cracks and how their costumes can really be a facade covering up their own personal problems, i.e. Batman struggling with whether or not he's really a good hero.) Regardless, superheroes are able to make things feel right. They're able to clean things up and have nice clean ends to problems that we can't solve so easily. So maybe that's why we love them. At least that's what I think for now.

1 comment:

  1. I was a big fan of Adam West's Batman in the '60s. Mostly I envied his cave and his car, I think. Eventually I came to appreciate his campiness. The Dark Knight doesn't appeal at all.

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