Sensible Erection | The Hero with a Thousand Masks

Monday, 30 March 2009

quote [ "However, it's hard for such a person to be accessible unless they're also extremely effed up. Because only a seriously disturbed individual would want to be a hero." ]

The abundance of heroes and villains in modern narratives, and their increasingly conflicted natures. Thesis and arguments seem a bit weak, but still food for thought, if what you're interested in is a quick snack.

[literature] [by Janus@1:56pmGMT] [+2]

Comments

ComposerNate said @ 2:32pm GMT on 30th Mar [Score:5 Funny]

Janus said @ 4:41pm GMT on 30th Mar
Oh yeah, wrist deep … yeah …

themanwhoeatslettus said @ 4:42pm GMT on 30th Mar
beat ANAL i have see in months
is this post work safe ?

Naruki said @ 10:35pm GMT on 30th Mar
Not if your name is Peter Parker.

valen85 said @ 3:15pm GMT on 30th Mar
Fuck, this is why I hate Marvel comics. We have neck bearded virgins trying to write emotion and emotional conflict but they haven't experienced any of that shit themselves. Marvel comics end up looking like a shitty soap opera and the heroes don't seem so heroic in the end.

utah said @ 9:39am GMT on 31st Mar
Fuck, this is why I hate Marvel comics.

'Cos they're not Chinese?

yardflamingo said @ 4:04pm GMT on 30th Mar
Article misses the obvious. The major shift towards the anti-hero in film came much earlier, and not in "Birth of a nation". I would suggest it was Humphrey Bogart in the gumshoe detective, and several of his other films. True, he is not comic book hero, but the pulp detective novel was certainly an incredibly strong influence into the later comic super hero

benjamander said @ 4:18pm GMT on 30th Mar
wat?

Janus said @ 4:34pm GMT on 30th Mar
Birth of a Nation was in 1915. Humphrey Bogart's first role, according to IMDB, was in 1930, in Broadway's Like That.

That said, I agree there's a lot of holes with the thesis, as there's bound to be with such an overarching one. Still, you do see that in today's films and TV shows, there's a greater demand for larger-than-life heroes and villains, whose characters, at the same time, are more conflicted than that of their predecessors.

FifthSpango said @ 6:43pm GMT on 30th Mar
"Case in point: Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling's seven-book saga took us deep inside the boy wizard's trial-and-error transformation from a world-wounded young boy to a young man who saves the world without compromising himself or his values. We believed it, because Rowling-and Harry-did the hard work of proving it."

This actually really bugged me about HP.

Essentially; Harry is born to be good, Voldermort evil. Both have similar formative experiences, both have the same offer of redemption at Hogwarts, one takes it, the other doesn't. I think Dumbeldore legitimizes it by saying the difference is "love" or something equally nebulous, but it doesn't seem to be something learned or earned, but rather innate. There can't really be any doubt as to their respective ancestry, and the ultimate conclusion is that some are born to good and some bad.

And I think that's a wee bit fucked up as a message.

Bob LLama said @ 7:18pm GMT on 30th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
Well isn't this the fundamentally boring aspect of fatalist tales? If you're DESTINED to do something and everyone is always talking about the prophecy that says that blah blah blah, then in the end there's really no fucking conflict. You're just going through the motions.

FifthSpango said @ 10:27pm GMT on 30th Mar
Ohh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?

swiggy said @ 2:43am GMT on 31st Mar
choosing not to choose is still a choice.

Janus said @ 7:55pm GMT on 30th Mar
Naruto Uzumaki >> Harry Potter, the legacy student

Mr. Langosta said @ 8:18pm GMT on 30th Mar
That's like bothering to state that Burger King's fries are better than McDonald's. Why bother with that shite? Go bake a potato.

Janus said @ 10:19pm GMT on 30th Mar
I disagree. McDonald's are better than Burger King's. And also, I'd say the "Naruto":"Harry" relationship is closer to "In-N-Out burger":"White Castle slider."

wyckedfae said @ 11:36pm GMT on 30th Mar
McDonald's fries are sodium delivery devices, not fries.

Also, the Naruto:Harry relationship is probably closer to something like... erm... Well, something East versus West, anyway.

Unfortunately, as soon as the name "Naruto" comes up in any discussion I have an immediate gag response, followed by an irrepressible desire to maim someone.

Janus said @ 8:45am GMT on 31st Mar
Really?

NARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTONARUTO

Naruki said @ 9:26am GMT on 31st Mar
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Dammit all! Why did you do that just when he was walking past me? Sonuvabitch!

hellboy said @ 6:42am GMT on 31st Mar
That's actually addressed in the books (Dumbledore doesn't consider the prophecy to be destiny). It's Voldemort's choices that make the "prophecy" play out the way it does - for instance, SPOILER could easily have been the "Chosen One" if V. had gone after them instead, Harry has special advantages as a result of things that V. does, and none of it would have happened if V. had just ignored the prophecy altogether, or decided not to be such an evil shit. Harry loves because he has been loved; Voldemort never really was.

I was put off by the whole chosen one thing too, but it's actually handled pretty well.

monkeytooth said @ 12:22am GMT on 31st Mar
superman isn't fantasy, by the logic of the article. The yellow sun of the earth gives him super-powers, not magic. So it's science fiction.

Nostrildamus said @ 5:21am GMT on 31st Mar
No, still fantasy. If the use of pseudo-scientific motifs is under explained or just as irrational as use of magic, then it is still fantasy.

The scientific reasons why the type of sun Sol is gives Superman his powers have not been coherently or consistently explained, and there is no real scientific theory to back it up. So it is fantasy.

This is why Star Wars, despite all the trappings of science fiction, is still fantasy.

anagramophone said @ 5:31am GMT on 31st Mar

arctan said @ 11:10pm GMT on 31st Mar
By that logic the only science fiction that's "really" science fiction is what we call "hard" science fiction, and not even all of that (quite a lot of hard SF is having some never-explained unobtainium magic trick, like "hyperdrive", and then just trying to explain the ramifications of that tech existing as realistically as it can).

Really, genre is only a matter of trappings and superficial impressions. It's pointless to try to define it in any sort of objective way.

Naruki said @ 3:14am GMT on 1st Apr
Midi fucking chlorians, dude. That's science up in that mutha.

drzapato said @ 6:33am GMT on 31st Mar
there is plenty of magic in superman comics though. in fact one of his weaknesses is magic

utah said @ 9:28am GMT on 31st Mar
"We want heroes to know the difference between good and bad, and we want them to be strong," says Lost exec producer Damon Lindelof. "However, it's hard for such a person to be accessible unless they're also extremely effed up.because only a seriously disturbed individual would want to be a hero."

I think that says far, far more about Mr Lindelof - and possibly the things he had to do to get to his position - than human nature.

utah said @ 9:36am GMT on 31st Mar
I dunno about heroes "increasingly conflicted natures" either. Hamlet was fucked up to the point of suicide*, back in 1600 AD.

*That's what his "To be or not to be" speech is about; whether to stick around and put up with this shit, or just kill yourself and get death over with.

arctan said @ 9:34pm GMT on 31st Mar
Anyone who thinks "fucked-up heroes" is some kind of new thing needs to go back and actually read the Iliad, or the Epic of Gilgamesh.