Awhile back while attending one of the fabulous and free outdoor summer jazz concerts at the Hollywood-Highland Center here in Los Angeles,
something happened that put in perspective for me exactly why we need heroes in our popular entertainment—whether super or just extremely competent in fast cars. My wife and I were listening to the fine music of the Downtown Jazz Project
when four young women sitting directly behind us began to talk loud enough for us to have joined in the joy of one anticipating her upcoming wedding, and commensurate with another about the vicious politics at her office. Despite this being an outdoor concert where people may feel freer to chit and chat than they would if they were in a concert hall, I found the women to be exceedingly rude and discourteous.
I turned around and—as nicely as I could, but probably not as nicely as I should have—asked them to either stop talking or leave. The leader of the pack was righteously offended, and made me feel as if I had committed the faux pas. Somewhat intimidated, I turned back around and tried to concentrate on the music—but their backbeat of inanities was never-ending.
A fantasy of herohood, to coin a word, began to sprout in my head.
If only I was Superman,
I thought, my understated authority, not to mention the most famous costume in creation, might well shut them up — after humble apologies for having annoyed me. Although even as the Man of Steel I might have found these women’s rudeness as toxic as kryptonite.
My only super-option then would have been to fly off around the world at super speed gathering up raw materials and using them to construct a hermetically sealed, lead-lined soundproof room—with oxygen provided—fly it back to Hollywood-Highland, grab the four up in my super arms, put them in it, shut and seal the door, and then go back to the concert. A harmless fantasy that put a smile on my face and made the situation a little easier to endure.
But just a little. The women kept talking, even louder than before, and I became angry enough to conjure up more fantasies.
What would the Batman have done?
Taken the batrope, perhaps, tied the four women up and hung them high off the trunk of one of the giant elephants at the Hollywood-Highland?
That would have been fun. But their screaming to be let down would have disturbed the music just as much as their energetic yadda-yaddas. A purpose defeated.
Had I been Spider-man I could have gagged them with four accurate shots of web.
Or, taking a cue from one of Nature’s other insects, I could have cocooned them and really shut them up.
Then I thought of the Thing from the Fantastic Four.
Yes, I definitely would have enjoyed some “clobbering time” despite the accusations of being a sexist-fascist pig that inevitably would have followed.
As a counterbalance I saw no reason why I should not have a cross-gender fantasy, imagining myself as Wonder Woman
really upset over the bad name these four were giving my sex, and so hog-tying them with my golden lasso, putting them in my invisible plane, flying them off to Paradise Island and letting my mother deal with them.Wonder Woman’s costume probably would have pinched, though.
As to the non-super yet extremely-competent-with-fast-cars heroes:
As James Bond,
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| Tribute artwork by Graham Kennedy for the 50th anniversary of the James Bond 007 movie series. |
having a license to do so, I could have just put one shot each into the center of their foreheads with my Walther P.P.K. Neat, simple, clean in its way. Yet it may have disturbed the other concert goers and then I would have been the rude one.
Although as Michael Westen from Burn Notice,
or, indeed, my own hero, the Fixxer, from my novels Blood is Pretty and Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army
I could have conned them into leaving by making them believe that I was a producer holding auditions “right now” next door at the Dolby Theater for a new Reality TV series, The Really Rude Women of Hollywood, and that I thought they had a very good shot at it and they should Go! Now! Quickly!
No sweat—and no bloodshed.
Not that I didn’t dwell on some darker fantasies as well, fantasies involving
Wolverine and his lovely slicing and dicing blades,
the Hulk and his crushing personality,
Aquaman and the inability of humans to breathe underwater,
and even Dexter, who I don’t really consider to be a hero—but he is extremely competent.
No real person could do any of this, of course, without being willing to commit an illegal act or being declared a sociopath. But is this not exactly how we wish we could act when we are crossed, hurt, or have our lives nearly destroyed by other people or faceless institutions? Who would not want to send a Wall Street banker into the Phantom Zone? Who would not want to take certain BP executives and deliver them to the Arkham Asylum? Who would not want to put a pack of climate change deniers onto a recently separated hunk of arctic ice and watch it not-so-slowly melt ?
It’s simple: Heroes in popular fiction, comics, TV and movies are our surrogates. They do it for us, allowing us to vicariously find Justice and/or live the revenge—and we love it. It is not a new idea, Aristotle called it catharsis, but it is an ever potent one.
Which brings up the question of evil.
For you cannot have heroes without evil. As the heroes in popular fiction, though, are all larger than life in both spirit and action, the evil in popular fiction is often more pure, deeper, and darker than in reality. Especially in superhero fiction where the bad guys often know they are evil and, indeed, take great delight in being so.
Reality is different—in reality I do not think anyone ever considers themselves evil, unless, of course, they are clinically insane, and even then they often do what they do because of some authoritative voice—God or a dog or their dead Aunt Millie or the cockroach in the corner. In reality there is the great possibility that the only real evil in the world is believing there is evil in the world.
It was not so much that Hitler—everyone’s poster child of evil—was evil, as it was that he believed that the Jews were evil; it was not so much that the terrorists of 9/11 were evil, as that they believed Western Civilization was evil. And when you believe people, places, or things are evil, you have a tendency to want to eradicate them.
Even if there is no tangible force of evil,
a force as real and effective as gravity,
actions that are evil are undeniable.
If we define evil as a person, persons, or institutions bringing harm to one or few or many while in pursuit of their own goals and desires, then we can see that evil permeates the world. And that it has gradations—from the slight evil of the rude women behind me in Hollywood to the massive evil of genocide in Africa, with much in-between that causes, at best, annoyance and irritation; at worst, injustice and tragedy. Often in our lives we feel powerless to do anything about this multifaceted evil, and there is not quite a worse feeling in the world than powerlessness in the face of evil, wrongdoing, injustice, and even simple rudeness.
Heroes battling evil in our popular fiction give us a theater in which to act out our desire to have the power to vanquish evil and the ability to correct injustice. Without these heroes—super in colorful costumes; competent in fast cars; struggling mightily despite the odds—the lives of many might be filled with more angst and drained of some joy, but, in any case, they would most definitely be poorer than what they are today.
What is often considered frivolous entertainment, then, is anything but, it is, indeed, a necessary respite from reality in order, ironically, to better deal with reality.
And that’s just super.
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