Does Superhero Deconstruction Work?

superheroes are one of our favorite topics for deconstruction the classic story is almost repugnant at this point an otherwise ordinary man given power beyond Reckoning who strives to do good to be worthy of this responsibility fake we insist if I got that power I would immediately turn my energies to viciously exploiting the world around me leveraging every tool at my disposal for selfish gain this is a cynical view but it is not without reason that we feel this way after all this kind of behavior is just what we've seen of the world Elites who given power exploit their positions not only benefiting from undeserved Fortune but actively harming everyone else in the process Libertarians and socialists will vehemently disagree on whether it's really capitalism's fault or really the government's fault but one thing is clear the elites we have do not deserve their power and yet they have it worse our Elites today are quick to assure us that they earned their positions that the world contrary to all of our experience is a fundamentally meritocratic place where grit and determination win the day while obviously Hollow especially when you include political Elites whose wealth is made by Connections in good marketing more than any real competence we are expected to treat this pretense as true it is in this milu that television show The Boys was written to saiz the broken Elite of the American Empire it does this by painting Heroes as nothing more than good marketers at best cruel monsters at worst this critique is in some sense fitting because the story of the superhero is fundamentally the story of power our growing skepticism of power can be directly tied to our skepticism of the heroic ideal it's a reasonable supposition that our Elites suck perhaps then it is impossible to exercise power with virtue but of course you need leaders to do anything although those leaders too May grow corrupt is then the most just form of governance in Eternal Revolution where the leaders who arise in one generation are slain in the next except no no that doesn't work because we as people are not willing to endure the horrific violence and bloodshed of a civil war every generation nor frankly should we be however meritocracy in the form we currently have doesn't seem to work either especially in our American two- party system your choice invariably comes down to bad versus worse Everyone by the time they become an electable politician is corrupt inside and out direct democracy is of course an absurd proposition in a population so large nothing could ever get done and even if the will of the people was accurately represented by some dystopian direct democracy system why would that be a good idea you know how the average person acts and behaves so then it seems we have no Solutions tyranny and Chaos are our two extremes and it seems impossible to guard against both at once Where Do We Go From Here it may sound implausible but I think that superheroes have profound lessons for us about the nature of the elite as I explore this possibility I intend also to to give a charitable case for superhero deconstruction although I must ultimately conclude that it is misguided first we should account for the first order popularity of the superhero archetype that is what makes the superhero played straight compelling in the first place we can account for this phenomenon cynically if we so choose some amount of Wishful Thinking is of course present especially in characters like Spider-Man nerdy comic book readers would appreciate the idea of suddenly gaining powers and becoming cool and even in characters like Batman well not quite relatable you see coolness for lack of a better word in a way that is automatically appealing and this coolness is obvious honest we don't seem to have enough honest coolness in most of our media today however this archetype risks lacking Nuance lacking believability while it may be honest about what it's selling awesome wish fulfillment it can incidentally create dishonesty dishonesty about the nature of Human Experience after all the world is not a neat good evil split and on what grounds are we to expect those with power to automatically use it well and so it's only natural to humanize Our Heroes after all we want stories about people not about the abstract idea of power the people not the powers are the core of our story this fact is self-evident as fantasy author Brandon Sanderson quite correctly points out powers are not what make a story compelling but limitations on those Powers Our Heroes then become men of understandable virtue striving to act good but struggling struggling with the same sins that afflict us all after all it would be easy to become vain if the whole world sang your praise it would also be easy to become slothful resenting that you through little choice of your own are tasked with the well-being of an entire city hopefully our hero will eventually do the right thing but sometimes they will struggle as all people must to do what they know they must our heroes are perhaps little better than the Common Man in their intrinsic virtue but they try and they want to be good and is that not enough the natural conclusion of this process paired with our modern skepticism is the possibility of evil heroes superheroes after all are the Elite of society and we all know how our Elites act and so a world of propaganda corruption and well- hidden evil is perfectly plausible it is true that if our Elites were given superpowers many of them would be horrible at best most would be aoral actors playing up their role as Heroes for the sole purpose of personal gain at worst you would see sociopaths not only enjoying the Privileges of status but abusing them virtually any classical superpower in the hands of those who would do evil would be all inspiring in its potential capacity for evil so there you have it laid out neatly the superhero Trope deserves to be deconstructed because our Elites deserve to be outed as a sociopathic madman that they are but is this the whole story is the is there nothing more to the superhero than empty power fantasy escapism at best there's too much time left in the video for the answer to be yes let's take a step back what does the superhero represent read in the context of Elites the hero generally represents a novel Elite status one not earned by corporate maneuvering nor by fortune in the stock market this Elite status is also not the power to excel at mediocrity it is not a result of optimized skill at accounting rather the new Elite by and large is formed in combat on the same Battlefield where old nobility was forged with the superhero gives us is generally not empty power strength and mere competence divorced from anything else the superhero represents the ideal nobleman one who uses his greater ability to help those who cannot help themselves not the Aged Lord who bleeds his subjects dry with tax after tax the Valiant Knight who defends his home from violence from within and from without this is what makes a hero a hero prowess and virtue combined in Noble sacrifice if your Elite cannot truly sacrifice for the good of those they rule then what good are they the hero with a capital H is a reminder that the elite can and should be a benefit to common people that those in power need not viciously squander their wealth but ought instead to use it virtuously that power in itself is neither exaltation nor damnation but that what you do with power will exalt or damn you in my Pokemon essay I faced criticism for presenting the great man theory of history in a positive light with Heroes the great man issue becomes even more Central one might say it is the founding myth of the entire heroic Endeavor if great men cannot profoundly shape history then of what use is heroism allow me to respond in more detail first I want to acknowledge what for some is an elephant in the room this sounds political specifically I hear critique from a leftist perspective some people think that this idea is incompatible with their views however it is possible to assert people shouldn't be bankrupted by catastrophic medical expenses and Noble heroism is good actually at the same time acknowledging the necessity of a good Elite and indeed their inspirational goodness is not incompatible with care for the sick and poor if anything a strong Noble Elite is necessary for this after all we've tried acting like the Rich poor distinction doesn't exist like there is no such thing as entrenched class the result is that we still have an elite now they just feel like they've earned their positions and are entitled to hoard every last scrap of wealth they can get their hands on is this Victory next another question does this negate the need for Ordinary People absolutely not in particular here I must acknowledge a sincere concern of mine it seems sometimes that the superhero Trope prioritizes acting alone above acting as a leader this is a genuine concern the real Great Men throughout history have been leaders of Ordinary People ordinary people without whom nearly nothing could be done however let us not pretend that the importance of ordinary people makes it impossible for anyone to be more important we may want to believe that structural factors and random chance are solely responsible for shaping the world but real history reveals a powerful truth single decisions small changes can have extraordinary impacts perhaps they are not always predictable but the butterfly effect attests to the amazing power of seemingly small changes we do not have Superman someone capable of decimating entire worlds single-handedly perhaps it's good that we don't have him but under the right circumstances a single leader is capable of changing forever the course of history for better and For Worse you cannot wish this truth away and you ignore it at your own Peril I hope I have clarified these issues enough so that any upset commenters can at least complain with greater Precision let us now contemplate a positive Vision what is true heroism It Is Not Mere power the best and the worst that Humanity has to offer have all been powerful heroism too is not in the mere Aesthetics as nice as shiny capes and smiling faces are looks can be deceiving simply pretending to be cool playing hero is not enough imperfect motivations such as Aesthetics can still be important most of us are unable to act as we ought to transform form our lives for the better without a great deal of motivation it's simply too easy to be lazy distractable and unproductive in the modern world worse the easy forms of productivity are so often the least fruitful most of us do need this motivation but we also need to recognize that good feelings are not enough by themselves even life's great Joys are dulled into nothingness if you divorce them from reality heroic Aesthetics are a sign of an underlying reality that of virtuous nobility of the same sacrifice that I discussed before the aesthetic is a natural outgrowth of this truth not an end unto itself so what does this nobility look like in the modern day this nobility almost necessarily stands in contrast to the established Elite we have had wealthy heroes yes but we have not had politician superheroes and for good reason because the embedded Elite of the political class have failed so clearly and so spectacularly it's rather difficult to make any case for reform within the system even if this Reformation ultimately is our real path forward what the superhero represents instead is the idealized emergence of a new nobility virtue and Valor Rising above the ashes of an old corrupt and failed Elite this is not a revolt against the existence of Elites per se but an explicit rejection of the powerful who have failed us the biggest issue I have with superhero deconstruction is that it tends to lack any sense of posit positive Vision instead it focuses on the superhero as a means to complain about Elites a means to vent frustration about the powerful without giving us any kind of alternative do the powerful fear those who are categorically anti-power can you Rebel Without leadership without Direction not only that can you Rebel while explicitly rejecting the possibility of good leadership the pure peasant Revolt is a mythological construction which serves only to prevent real meaningful change and what better way is there to stop Rebellion than to teach people to Rebel wrongly to teach them that accepting leadership being inspired by the naturally inspirational is wrong that the only way to Rebel is to totally shun anything that could possibly be appealing in Rebellion we think we know what controlled opposition is we picture some conspiratorial apparatus that plants fake rebels in key positions and so leads the masses down the wrong road but the problem with such conspiracy theories is that they just aren't all that feasible you would need to convince a great deal of ordinary people to work hard to desperately maintain a very fragile illusion a much better path is to propagandize your opposition and teach them the wrong way to succeed everyone still perpetuates an illusion but this time they don't think that they're lying controlled opposition is much easier vastly more scalable if you control your opposition covertly this talk of conspiracies is of course hypothetical I doubt that most of those deconstructing superheroes are doing so out of conscious ill will but it's worth pointing out how silly some of our implicit modes of thinking are we accept the narrative that our Elites are terrible and not without reason but then we trust the way that we were taught to rebel against them I don't have a list of easy appealing solutions for you but I know for certain that the simple path of mindlessly deconstructing everything that could possibly be inspirational is not enough to affect any kind of positive change we know that the system is broken we must also acknowledge that the way to fix it will be difficult and that what we have tried so far has very clearly not worked all in all remember that superheroes are inspiring for a reason trying to deconstruct this format without properly addressing what makes it appealing in the first place is a losing Endeavor you need to have a positive vision for the world it is far from enough to Simply tear things down after all you cannot build down you can only build up the emergence of an elite is inevitable a world without leaders is a world just waiting for its most conceited member to take charge the heroic aesthetic is amazing for its capacity to tie power directly to True nobility for without this connection we are truly lost

Channel: Lion's Pen

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Id: 3TkXboD30yQ

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024