I don’t know if I count as a super hero hipster or not. I just had a funny thought about those among us who “liked super heroes before they were cool.”
Certainly super heroes and comic characters in general have been in popular culture for many decades now, and it’s not like they have only just entered the mainstream media in recent years. As I referenced in my last post, there have been movies and TV shows–even popular, well-received ones like Christopher Reeves’ Superman–for quite a while. But the level of mainstream-ness seems to have increased exponentially in recent years, after what I see as some fits and starts in the late 80’s (Burton’s Batman) and 90’s (the Batman movies that we will not speak of, TMNT, Dick Tracy, etc.).
But it seems that Raimi’s Spider-Man, Singer’s X-Men, and Nolan’s Batman mark the points where super heroes really started getting some traction, leading to Iron Man, Captain America and the other facets of the soon-to-be Marvel MovieVerse, and ultimately to what I see as a crucial mainstream breakthrough with Whedon’s Avengers.
As great as Nolan’s gritty, realistic Batman movies were, Whedon’s Avengers was–to me–the first truly successful “pure” super hero movie. Nolan went almost too far in selling Batman as “realistic” (I know, I know, but it’s all relative, right?). But The Avengers made no apologies in presenting bigger-than-life, over-the-top SUPER heroes that managed to please honest-to-god comic fans and mainstream audiences alike.
But way before any of that, it wasn’t so “cool” to like super heroes. In fact, geekery in general has weaseled its way into the mainstream. It’s not entirely due to the success of movies and shows, I don’t think. I feel like the new generation is more accepting of others’ interests in general, as well, having moved beyond a lot of the old definitions of “cool.”
There was a sort of theme in the movie “21 Jumpstreet,” where the adult undercover cops are sent to pose as high schoolers to uncover a drug ring. One of the two characters was a dork in his actual high school years, and the other was a cool jock. But the jock is dismayed to discover that what was cool when he was a teenager has become uncool, and the dork is pleased to discover that he is now in a position to be one of the cool kids!
This is, of course, exaggerated for laughs, but there is a lot of truth to it. Muscle cars are not so cool now amid widespread climate change concerns, and making fun of others for their differences is becoming less acceptable. That includes the difference of geekery.
I’m not saying extreme cosplay and LARPing and D&D are all being practiced in harmony by jocks and dorks together in some kind of Geektopia, but I do see a huge difference from how things were when I was a kid.
Anyway…this was going to be about why I like comic super heroes… I don’t have time to elaborate on these points below in this post, but this is at least a rough outline that I will expand upon next time…
1) Real people heroes are fallible and–well, real
2) Moral Lessons–that are not as simple as one might presume
3) Ever-changing culture time capsule
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