Help me understand the Super Hero genre

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

I like your take and I think maybe you identified the thing that irks me most - the Good and Evil morality tale that plays out. I tend to respond more to characters with more moral ambiguity - perhaps I'd like the flawed hero's more, but I think the genre paints them into that good and evil paradigm.

The good ones have a lot of ambiguity.

Batman has always been my favorite. The appeal of Batman is twofold. 1) He's traditionally portrayed as "just a man". A really really really ridiculously skillful man, but mortal with no mutation, magic, or alien power. 2) He's morally ambiguous, mistrusted by the people he has given his life to protect, pushing the boundaries of just how far the ends justify the means.

The superhero stories that appeal to me do not have clear good vs. evil. They explore the themes and pressures that add up to good and evil, but I don't buy into it if it tries to make a black and white point. I'm much more interested when it explores the nuanced psyche of real people. Batman Begins I think is a good example. It tackled the subject of fear, making the point (among others) that while fear is a tool often used for evil ends, fear itself is amoral, turned evil only by those that choose to use it for such.

I'm not a huge fan of the genre, I haven't really been exposed to a whole lot of it. But from what I have seen, Batman is by far my favorite. It's always morally ambiguous, Batman possesses a highly damaged psyche. He's always struggling to separate what he wants from what he knows is right. I'm sure there are others as well that I'm just not familiar with, but that's what does it for me.

[Gemini Cricket]

I've enjoyed reading the X-Men comics since I was like 8 or so. I didn't know it back then, but there are a lot of gay themes that play throughout their comix, cartoons and movies. Mutant discrimination = homophobia.


In fact, in a recent take on the X-men (Ultimate X-Men) Colossus is gay. He and Northstar from Alpha Flight are dating...

[Strangler Lewis]

I enjoy the "familiar" super hero movies well enough. On the other hand, it's something of a guilty pleasure. I don't see much meaningful difference between the super hero (and Bond) movies that this crowd anticipates and flocks to and Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Bruce Willis movies that I doubt inspired similar reactions. It's all tough guys kicking ass while spouting extremely tiring one liners.

What really gets my goat, though, are the recent TV shows like Heroes and all the Profiler-type shows where the cop sees dead people, or the future, or ten seconds into the future, or into the victim's mind (all the while with a shocked quizzical look on their face). I like my Hollywood liberal, skeptical, secular and anti-war. If I want to watch a war show, give me a good episode of JAG or Rat Patrol over a p**ssified, me-too-kind-of show like Heroes.

[3894]

EuroMeinke, you would have made a hell of an anthropologist. Nice questions.

[scaeagles]

Why am I not surprised the Heroes is one of the only shows I make it a point to watch and Strangler hates it?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Boss Radio made some great points. Mythology, yes, and I'd extend that to the Jesus story as well. Movies like Star Wars and the Matrix also push the "super hero" button.

I think it does all boil down to Good vs Evil, especially in the conflicted ones. The battle is played out from top to bottom - Peace vs Anarchy, Crime vs Justice, Justice vs Vengeance, Helping others vs Helping yourself, Guilt vs Redemption...decisions decisions decisions.

Peter Parker didn't stop a criminal because he didn't care, and that criminal killed the only father he'd known. Wrong decision, which he attempts to right forever. In the various Batman incarnations, he always gets to blame himself for his parent's death in some way (though he was only a kid and really wasn't his fault).

It also has to do with Trial by One Person vs Trial by Committee. There's a good reason Batman rises up only in a Gotham that is corrupted, with cops on the take. Bureaucracy vs individual decisions is another choice where we get to weigh pros and cons. There's something very satisfying in a universe where the guy that saw the criminal perform a crime is totally justified to beat the sh!t out of him. But this leads to the whole "won't kill the supervillain, even after countless attempts by the supervillain to kill the good guy." Good vs Evil again - controlling your base instinct and letting true justice prevail. That is, if the villain doesn't kill themselves somehow.

Addendum - I love the idea of doing a Civic Good but without having to join a Committee. Hmmm.

I push this out to One Person (or small band) against The System. Luke and the Rebels vs The Empire. Neo and Zion vs the Matrix. You can't control me, muthafckas.

Good bad good bad good bad....though I'm no comic book person I think that pretty much describes the genre, and every other compelling story ever written.

[Alex]

I think there is also a lot of appeal in the idea that in being different/unique you are actually superior to everybody else and not the opposite.

Personally, I'm not much into super hero stories except in movie form. I haven't read a comic book since I was a pre-teen and then it was mostly the Scrooge McDuck comics my dad had.

For me, while it isn't the only thing I love about movies one aspect is the ability to create visually convincing non-realities. And the abilities of the medium have finally begun to catch up to the ideas behind fantasy (which I enjoy in written form) and comic books (which I don't). I have no real interest in the old Spider-Man movies, the Batman TV show, early Superman, etc.

[3894]

Originally Posted by Alex

I think there is also a lot of appeal in the idea that in being different/unique you are actually superior to everybody else and not the opposite.

Good point. Why does the superiority have to be secret do you think?

[Alex]

Because when you're 13 and feel like you're completely different than anybody else and they hate you for it, the superiority apparently isn't obvious. It must manifest in some way others don't easily see.

[Boss Radio]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Boss Radio made some great points. Mythology, yes, and I'd extend that to the Jesus story as well. Movies like Star Wars and the Matrix also push the "super hero" button.

I think it does all boil down to Good vs Evil, especially in the conflicted ones. The battle is played out from top to bottom - Peace vs Anarchy, Crime vs Justice, Justice vs Vengeance, Helping others vs Helping yourself, Guilt vs Redemption...decisions decisions decisions.

Peter Parker didn't stop a criminal because he didn't care, and that criminal killed the only father he'd known. Wrong decision, which he attempts to right forever. In the various Batman incarnations, he always gets to blame himself for his parent's death in some way (though he was only a kid and really wasn't his fault).

It also has to do with Trial by One Person vs Trial by Committee. There's a good reason Batman rises up only in a Gotham that is corrupted, with cops on the take. Bureaucracy vs individual decisions is another choice where we get to weigh pros and cons. There's something very satisfying in a universe where the guy that saw the criminal perform a crime is totally justified to beat the sh!t out of him. But this leads to the whole "won't kill the supervillain, even after countless attempts by the supervillain to kill the good guy." Good vs Evil again - controlling your base instinct and letting true justice prevail. That is, if the villain doesn't kill themselves somehow.

Addendum - I love the idea of doing a Civic Good but without having to join a Committee. Hmmm.

I push this out to One Person (or small band) against The System. Luke and the Rebels vs The Empire. Neo and Zion vs the Matrix. You can't control me, muthafckas.

Good bad good bad good bad....though I'm no comic book person I think that pretty much describes the genre, and every other compelling story ever written.

I tried to mojo you, but the mojo machine was not having it...so, yes, beautifully stated.

I think that in the fantasy of swift justice being dispensed by a masked vigilante, we feel a sense of vindication, whereas in the real world when someone takes the law into their own hands, we view it with more suspicion than admiration.

Costume + superpower = Justification of vigilantism.