literature

On The Dark Side Of Heroes

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I’m watching this documentary on superheroes and comics on the Unbreakable DVD.  They’re talking about how superheroes became sort of dark and grim in the 80’s especially Batman.  Several people mentioned that it really isn’t good to give heroes “clay feet”.  I don’t know what the hell that means but I do know what I like, and that’s heroes who do have a dark side to them.
It’s sort of a double-edged sword deal.  On one hand, they’re heroes whom one idolizes and looks up to.  To find out that they have a dark side, that they aren’t perfect but rather they do have breaking points kind of brings them down in the eyes of their fans.  They become less like the paradigms of what good, kind-hearted people should be and they become normal everyday people with extraordinary double-lives.  It’s like the scene on the el-train in Spider-Man 2.  After the passengers see him unmasked, one of them says “I have a kid not much older than he is!”  They realized that this great crime fighter who has risked his life to protect them all has barely even left his teenage years.

However on the other hand, humanizing heroes makes the fan realize “Hey, this is a guy who saves the world for a living and yet, he faces problems just like I do!  I can relate to him in a way.”  It gives people a way to connect to the hero, they realize that these magnificent figures that they idolize are have to juggle their duties of protecting the innocent along with personal issues much like the ones we face daily.  In a way, that makes them even more magnificent that they can handle the stresses of leading a double life.

Making heroes with dark sides does make them more human like I said before, but that can be a good thing.  One of the key rules of good writing is to get the reader to suspend their disbelief.  To make a superhero that is pure good without any dark side makes them seem too good to be true, they’re too perfect.  Making them more human makes the characters themselves more believable.

You can feed kids fantastic tales with perfect characters to set examples that never feel frightened or never get depressed or angry but then you’re setting unrealistic examples for those kids.  They’ll grow up thinking “I can’t be afraid, I can’t cry, I can’t show weak emotions.”  I don’t really know what point I want to get across here, but I just felt that this needed to be said.
I'm pretty sure this is the best place to put this. It seems more like an essay than an editorial to me.
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