The first comic book exposure I had was to the old Batman films. Colorful, dark, strange villains (and Tim Burton!)…the me of the present day doesn’t doubt why I loved the Batman movies as a kid. To this day I can barely stomach a film with Jack Nicholson in it because I just thought he was so damn creepy as the Joker.
But that’s besides the point. Batman: the story of a boy whose parents were killed, leaving him billions in inheritance. The kid goes on and grows up into a playboy with a bone to pick. His need to avenge his parents evolves into a need to protect the corrupt city of Gotham (for the longevity of the series, most certainly). Bruce Wayne owns his own technology company and makes his own weapons. He is a self-made hero (as many of them in the comic world tend to be) and decides to fight crime without help from the law. If a man in a bat mask and black cape saved you from gunfire and then turned around and punched the assailant in the face, the initial reaction after shock would likely be in thanks to the masked man.
This is how heroes have generally been defined—saving those who cannot save themselves. Fighting crime when others won’t, can’t, or when there aren’t enough police to take care of the population. Heroes, then, are supposed to be a solution to the lack of police forces in the world, correct? This is how we have seen them for years. Superheroes are those who have taken it upon themselves to do GOOD. It’s only later when many story lines have passed that authors consider the possibility of this going bad. What if the person who fought crime became a criminal himself? Although in these stories, the readers/viewers generally know that the heroes are being blamed for doing something bad.
An article I came across today says that the superheroes of today aren’t heroes. A study done by psychologists states that the “modern-day superheroes” are different from those “your parents watched and read many moons ago.” They use Iron Man as an example, and I would like to say that is bull. They even reference that the Iron Man we’re watching in the theaters was pretty much inspired by a story line from the 70’s. What’s changed is society as a whole. Things in life and modern day fiction have become (ala Daft Punk) harder, faster, stronger.
Iron Man in particular is a good example of one of the points they’re trying to make—that he’s not a role model for children. Dear God, I said this immediately after seeing the first movie. By the time Iron Man hit theaters, I’d been treading about knee-high through the comic book world. I knew the X-men universe up and down after falling in love with the first two movies and wanting more (that piece of work entitled X3? Might as well not exist in my opinion). I knew very very little about Iron Man going in. But after it, as I did with X-men, I read several comics with Iron Man in them, and that solidified my train of thought: Iron Man is not, and should not be a child’s idol. Anyone with any knowledge of the character knows he is a drunk that likes to stick his nose where it’s not wanted. He tends to be vicious and headstrong, and as the study says he does like to “exploit women, flaunt bling, and convey [his] manhood with high-powered guns.”
The study does have a point. A lot of the “heroes” coming out of comic book films are anti-heroes, Wolverine and Deadpool are two of the most blatant examples I can think of. They kill who they want when and how they choose, more often than not simply for personal gain or to get even. My problem with this study? People, parents of young children/boys in need of heroes, people need to do research. Parents need to be heroes to their children. They should teach their children real values. The trend in the comic world as of late has been to show the characters behind the masks, the demons they face and the consequences of their actions and the toll this takes on their beings.
The bottom line is that Iron Man is still a hero. He is the same character he was years ago, if not more of a political character today. He is an alcoholic who has trouble with women. He, though fictional, is a human being. The general story is that he chose to fight those who took advantage of his technology and have used it for evil. He is cleaning up his own mistakes in an attempt to make good. Unfortunately that isn’t exactly what gets the main focus, what with all the women and the partying around Tony Stark. In the end superhero stories are stories about people, good or bad, rich or poor, unfortunate or not, they are individuals who have made a choice to better their world.
Article can be found at Yahoo. http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-study-superheroes-might-not-be-such-super-role-models.html
No comments:
Post a Comment