Apparently, the trailers and some other market communication, for the upcoming movie “Wanted”, have to be withdrawn, since they glamorise the use of guns and violence. I started thinking that, maybe, the core of the comics romanticising, which has been really widespread for some time now, is not the violence, but something else. Of course, the easy, quick references to attractive 50's design, cool one-liners and lack of boundaries have something to do with it. But where does really it come from, this superhero trend?
Trends evolve when people experience strong (not necessarily violent) currents of needs. These needs do not have to be very tangible – trends actually benefit in strength the more implicit they are. The keyword is emotion. Just like everything else in nature, we sapient little apes function the best when we are in balance. To much chaos makes us wish for harmony; an overdose of isolation and we start longing for information and company. So, which collective emotion are we lacking today? Hope, trust and responsibility are emotions that have not been overly abundant lately. We see mass consumption as if there were no tomorrow, and constant wars and the stressing feeling of us humans growing out of our own nature. This must be counterbalanced with something!
The greater part of the “generation batch” of people that have grown up with, and enjoyed, the aesthetics and escapism of comics have become part of the labour force. They (and I) were young when the Soviet threat was very real, the movies were about titanic clashes between worlds and the music was about vast spaces. Now, they have sort of brought their childhood fears, dreams and impressions with them into adulthood. With that in the luggage, it is easy to draw parallels between world crises and Frank Miller’s dark dimensions. The hero symbolises our hope and deeply inherent belief in humanity’s ability to reap goodness out of an ocean of evil. The comic superhero, as well as the villain, is very convenient, because it is so easy to project what should be said and done on a fictive character, rather than getting ones own hands dirty.
The aesthetics of comics is also a satisfying channel, through which to let out the different personas that constitute ones individual. Most healthy people carry within them more or less distinct personalities that often collide: the artist and the accountant; the lazy and the ambitious, the lover and the supportive friend… many of them have to be quelled for us to function in society. To avoid harm from this form of self-denial, the arts offer a refuge and an outlet for the fire burning! Especially comics are very accessible, since every character is a unique person, where the extreme form of caricature makes the satisfaction much greater (though perhaps not as refined) than of other forms of literature that make claims of realism and reason. Reversely, it is not likely that Marv, Ironman or Modesty Blaise would make it in our stern world.
Maybe is it once again the propensity to take shortcuts that looms – the concept of confirming the constituents of ones person by relating to the works of others, rather than allowing ones own imagination flow freely. “Because it takes fucking long time”.
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