A while back (probably in June or July...) Yahoo! Answers had a question posted by movie director John Woo. Now, although I was only mildly awed by this fact (because I think the only movies of his I ever saw were
Face/Off and
MI:2. I'm not even certain that those were John Woo movies. That's how unaware I am of who he is besides that I'd heard of him, and knew that he includes doves, and mismatched handguns in all his movies.), I did want to answer his question. It was a great question: "Our fascination with comic superheroes is time-tested. Why do we continue to relate to them?"
I was amazed when it was all over how many people had answered along one of these lines: they didn't think that we are fascinated by them, that we don't relate to them, or that our fascination was not that time-tested. My amazement at this was first that if they disagreed, why did they bother sharing this opinion (other than the free points for answering), and by the time that it was done, 2500 people had posted their opinions on the subject. I think this fact says that, especially to the population that likes superheroes, there's a fairly strong sense of relating to them somehow. I'm rambling along a tangent here, and, in my opinion, that's best done on a long car ride, not on the internet, so to my original purpose:
After it was done, I realized that I had no idea which answer number I was, so I had no idea which page my answer would be found on. And I realized that the post in Yahoo! Answers was the only record of what I felt had been a brilliant impromptu exposition on superheroes and what they mean to us. And I'm ignorrant enough of Yahoo! Answers that if there's a way to find a specific answer wihtin a question, I don't know about it. So, I found myself copying and pasting into Word for the first 10 pages, and then saving the complete web pages for the next 10 (pages 11 -20). I left it for awhile, then today saved pages 21-30, then jumped ahead and saved pages 51-70. I then started at page 51 of my saved page documents, and started looking for my post.
Now look here, if you can't keep from calling me names, you're welcome to leave, now. I know it's a bit (OK, a lot) obsessive, but there were at least a few months between the first phase and today's venture back into the abyss of my insanity.
Ahem - now where was I? OK, so on page 52 (see? I only had to look in 2 pages!) I found it. And I had promised myself that when I finally found it, I would post it here for easy future reference. Unfortunately, my own insanity still has me wanting to eventually get all the answers into one document so that I can read them all eventually. There were some really good ones and some
really bad ones! Now you know that I wasn't just being dramatic when I referred to my insanity as an abyss, huh?
As you read this answer of mine that I thought was so amazing to be worth the headache and annoyance of all that searching and saving, keep in mind that, other than casually thinking about the question for a day or so before I actually answered it, this answer came out extemporaneously, as is. I did not work through it in drafts, or work on it a little at a time over a day, or more. I cranked this out over about an hour or two between tasks at work. With all that being said, here is my original post, as I originally posted it:
"It goes to the basic need we all have for hope, purpose, escape and familiarity.
"We need to be able to hope for something better. Something bigger. We face a world of despair and sorrow, especially if we look in the right (or wrong, if you will) places. Superheroes, the ones who are moral constants, provide an icon of hope for peace, order, idealism, good triumphing over evil. In those worlds, you can always count on a superhero to set things right when the rest of the world has failed to do so. They usually face unimaginable odds, and yet still triumph. There is always hope.
"With hope comes purpose. If we can hope for greatness, then there is an inherent challenge to be the one to meet that challenge and be that hope. Superheroes, with their causes, mantras, senses of duty, etc., provide us with solid examples of people living their lives with a purpose, and fulfilling that purpose, again while facing great odds. By following their lives, and watching them act because of a greater calling, we gain a sense that we, too, can live life with a purpose, with a sense of a calling, and have greater meaning in our own lives for it.
"But sometimes, life is just too much. As I stated earlier, it's full of despair, failure, anger, sorrow, pain, death, some very ugly and nasty things and all other manner of unpleasantness. When we're down, or overwhelmed by it all, it's unspeakably nice to be able to visit, even if only temporarily until our mom calls us to take out the trash, a world that, no matter how many people wish it would, cannot possibly ever exist. These completely fantastical worlds are similar enough to ring familiar, yet exotic, bizarre, just a little bent enough that we can pretend to be there rather than here. And what makes it even more comforting is the presence of old friends, doing amazingly impossible things, that, even long after we've been called back into our real world, we fantasize about what it would be like if we could do them here. I don't think there's a child out there who has enjoyed superhero comics and books, who didn't think about being able to fly, have super strength, be invisible, and how this would help him or her conquer a bully, impress their friends, or just make taking out the trash easier. This escapism also provides great fuel to fire the hope I spoke of earlier.
"But beyond the fantastic and impossible, there is an element of reality and familiarity. If the worlds and characters are too unfamiliar, they can't inspire us. They can't touch us. While we want to hope, need a purpose, desire to escape reality, in all of that, there is an undeniable reality to these characters. They still have weaknesses. They still struggle. This familiarity is founded on a sympathy, an empathy, an emotional bond that comes from understanding how they feel. And those "super-anti-heroes", the ones who are a little more flawed, a bit more fractured, than the rest, offer some a glimpse into a darker world, but one that they can say to themselves "Yeah, I know what you mean. I've been there." They haven't literally wrestled with demons or monsters, but emotionally or psychologically they have. And they can look at this familiar theme, and feel that, through it all, despite it all, they are somehow not completely alone. Even if only fictionally, someone out there knows how they feel.
"And these disparate reasons explain why there are so many superheroes, and why there is such a wide variety and diversity amongst them. Depending on which of these four needs resonates most strongly with us, depending on what reality we live in, we will be drawn to different superheroes that most thoroughly fulfill that need, that most strongly connects to us.
"The imperfection of our world brings about these needs, but it is the genesis that creates the fulfillment of those needs. Strife and struggle may make life suck at times, but it's that 'suckiness' that motivates some to improve, and others to just make it easier to deal with. If we actually lived in a perfect world, we would have no need or desire for these stories of superheroes. How boring would life be if everything went right all the time? And as nice as that world might be, I can't help but feel that I wouldn't want to live there. Not without superheroes."
You're free to leave your comments, thoughts, opinions, etc. Just remember that I have a fragile ego, and too many negative vibes may drive me to suicide. Or worse: to write a Sit-Com!
And I stubbornly maintain that this random posting of a personal opinion and self-serving publication of a piece of my writing only further enforces the fact that this is not a blog.
