Superheroes Today

With literature, film and TV all exploring and building on issues we face today, there are three issues that I gave noticed cropping up recently.  The first is the importance of individual, the ability for anyone, whatever their background, to achieve their own dream. Secondly, there is the issue of normality. What does normal mean?  What is difference? How long can so many people be different before they became normal? Do we even want to be normal?  And finally, the dizzying advances in technology. Only three themes of many but I have chosen to look at them in relation to the modern superhero, as, with a superhero being the culmination of what we aspire to be, it is only natural that it embodies the major issues that we face.  Note that my knowledge of superheroes comes mostly from film adaptations of comic books; I make no claim to be an avid comic book fan and thus cannot say if these films are true to form.

Beginning with the ordinary individual, fiction is not what it was in the medieval times, for instance, where only those of noble birth and all that malarkey could go on worldly adventures and such like.  Today’s obsession is with the self made man or woman, a continuation of the American dream, who can do and be anything they want, regardless of background.  Despite this being a bit too idealistic in the real world, superheroes today nonetheless base themselves around the infinite possibility of the individual.  So, for example, we have Spiderman; an average teenage boy, going through a fairly standard childhood when BOOM he’s bitten by a spider and is turned into New York’s favourite crime busting hero.  Although not self-made man in the respect that the spider bites him by chance, the important point here is the possibility that the spider could have bitten anyone.  And although these individuals often tend to be, how shall we say, geekier than your average Joe, with many of their stories revolving around mishaps with science, they nonetheless show the hero’s beginnings as an average citizen, not as anyone spectacular.  Superheroes thus tend to be relatable to any individual reading the stories; they are shown to be quite ‘normal’…

The question of normality arises frequently with superheroes as a problem; by accepting their powers and acknowledging their difference, a life of normality ceases to exist.  The TV show Heroes aptly shows this battle between normality and abnormality, a decision most characters have to face.  We also have the fantastic four’s “thing’, a superhero who wants to be treated as normal, regardless of his looks.  And we have the whole cast of X-Men grappling with the concept of incorporating their difference with society, reflecting many of today’s issues of race, gender and class, to name but a few. Should they, as mutants, follow natural evolution and bring down the humans, or work peacefully with them, despite many of the population reacting to what isn’t normal. Furthermore, despite it being a fantasy rather than a superhero film, the recent twilight instalment, Eclipse (sorry to bring the tone down) sees Bella uttering the sickening line ‘ I’ve never been normal’.  Yet, who is ‘normal’? It is almost a cliché to be not normal these days.  This is perfectly satirised by Robert Downey Jr.’s character in Tropic Thunder (a film I thoroughly recommend), in which he makes fun of countless movie stars who claim they were never ‘normal’.  This sidetracks the superhero topic but it points to the fact that there is not a definition of normal; any defiance of normality becomes so clichéd it becomes normal.  Thus, many superheroes’ battle with this concept of normality, yet whatever ‘normal’ is, it is subject to time, place and context, and devoid of any substantial meaning. Ultimately, these difficulties with respect to change and difference is a reaction to progress…

While technology naturally reflects change and progress in today’s fast paced world, it also links to the first point of the individual; technology shows superheroes in the range of the possible. Many superheroes are no longer mystical beings from another planet; they are manipulators of the time and context in which they are in, with Batman and Iron Man being prime examples. Their power resides in their suits and gadgets and consequently in man made artefacts.  Technology thus can represent in the superhero, ironically, their humanity.

I am aware of course that I have left out many important elements in the superhero genre, like sidekicks and villains for instance, and have instead just focused on the heroes themselves.  But these are perhaps topics for another day.  For now I leave you with the importance and potential of the individual, the insubstantial concepts and perceptions of ‘normal’ that are craved for, and the ironic representation of humanity through technology.  I hope that shall suffice.

Roisin O’Brien