Superheroes Versus Writers

 I’ve read a number of tweets and news stories complaining about the dramatic increase in superhero movies and television shows. It isn’t surprising since Disney is still counting the money they made from countless movies of this genre. Get ready for Avengers 7: “Smurfs to the Rescue.”

Politicians and human resource departments make us all wish we could indiscriminately punch people. But that’s not really what its about. It’s what it isn’t about – something that The Incredibles got so right.

When Captain Marvel catches a jet or something, she doesn’t have to think about the person who will sue her for whiplash by failing to pass an OSHA training course. She gets a secret identity and can fly off to some other part of the universe. The reason it’s appealing is the simplicity: that the story isn’t about the little things. It isn’t about the dozens of bruises and indignities a normal person endures in a week. That’s the true superpower: not caring about the little stuff. 

I imagine that this is how we picture successful writers, too: not worried about the small stuff. Like rent, or rejections, or being groped on the bus, or having nothing to make for dinner. We know it isn’t true but we like to imagine there is a state of being we can achieve where those concerns are no longer important.

Perhaps that’s why I enjoy breaking the fourth wall so much. When the author or show or movie takes a moment to recognize the people in the crowd – the plebians and sub-plebians – it creates a connection which makes grown adults act like squealing little kids. The stairs leading to the stage are suddenly brought into focus and we salivate over the idea of crossing over, the ultimate transcendence -- if only the septuagenarian usher with a cane wasn’t there to stop me. 

It doesn’t work both ways, though. In some performances, the actors descend into the crowd, like this perfomance of “Cats” I saw. It was bad, and what made it worse was that the characters came prancing down in their skin-tight suits, dripping with confidence among the polite audience sitting in our deisgnated seats. “Ahh! Get away! Someone shake a box of cat food!”

I don’t like the actors coming and mingling around me. The juxtaposition of the super-endowed reflects poorly on the meek and self-conscious, but also on them. We see their flaws, their human-ness. They speak in the wrong accent and make children and Missourians cry. We prefer to visit their world, the zoo exhibit that is the simple places they occupy and which we have created for them.

We create these “people”, and these places without want or complexity of morals so we can imagine ourselves there, too. Creating them is probably just as much of a hedonism as enjoying them. Since I greatly enjoy creating worlds that are “slightly off” with villainous mushrooms or whatever, one assumes it is huge fun to make a place where a solar-powered man can alter the rotation of the earth in order to turn back time and save the co-worker he has a crush on. 

I don’t think he even got laid for that, just touched her butt when he pulled her from the car. That's a pretty lame fantasy. But perhaps we’re all just third-graders at heart.