What do superhero films teach?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The most expensive paintings today are Hollywood stories based on the comics of the Marvel Universe and DC. The plots of these films are usually quite stereotyped - the main character, as a result of some experiment or emergency, acquires superpowers, and then uses them to defeat another villain who wants to destroy or take over the world. Even the timing of all these Spider-Man, Batman, Avengers and so on is built almost identical: a third of the film is spent on pumping the hero's personal skills or collecting and organizing the activities of a super team, another third of the time is an action game with a gradual clarification of the situation and plans of the enemy, and the final part - it's a continuous kaleidoscope of fights, chases and special effects; the final battle and the triumph of justice with a hint of a sequel before the closing credits. And seemingly good instructive stories that motivate viewers to fight evil. Well done, Americans, that's right, it's strange that our country hasn't thought of something like that. But it's not that simple. We will reveal the reverse side of this scenario in this review.

First, two important, but still secondary points. Firstly, the concept of superheroes who acquire unique abilities by the wave of a magic wand or by virtue of some kind of chosenness, for the majority of young people, who are the main target audience of these films, serves as a kind of demotivator to develop their abilities: instead of systematically engaging in self-education and developing their own personalities, such plots encourage you to just sit and wait when, finally, something happens that will endow you with everything at once. A kind of analogue of the story about the "prince on a white horse", only for boys. And a person brought up on such mythical characters is unlikely to want to spend his energy on changing the world around him, because in his view, in order to fight evil, you need super armor or, at worst, the end of the Batmobile. The second point is that, judging by such new films of 2016 as Deadpool and Suicide Squad, where the main characters are marginalized characters who, in their moral qualities, serve as very bad role models, we will be actively blurring the concepts of good and evil. in stories about superheroes. Of course, now these are, rather, the first signs, and it is too early to talk about a formed trend, but specifically in these films, notorious maniacs and thugs, presented in a favorable light, and the official press, both Russian and foreign, fought on the side of good appreciated these stories. And now the main point. We started by describing the pattern of American superhero films, noting that the many stories of world-saving superpowers are instructive and seemingly useful to a wide audience. But there is one caveat: what methods in films manage to defeat the global conspiracy to take over the world? Here the hero got superpowers, made a suit for himself, gathered a team of friends, found the enemy's lair, burst in there and destroyed everyone. Only in this way, and not otherwise. That is, in all films, villains who want to enslave the world are victorious on the power priority - with the help of fists and weapons. Of course, there is friendship, loyalty, courage, a love line and so on, but the main means of struggle are physical strength, weapons, and, at best, the accompanying military cunning and ingenuity.

Now let's take a look at our real world. Of course, there are military conflicts, and nowhere without a powerful army, but the main wars today are informational - that is, this is a confrontation of ideas, ideologies, worldviews and concepts, both at the level of domestic politics of individual countries, and at the level of international and global politics. Today it is already obvious to everyone that global domination cannot be achieved only by relying on the force of military weapons, the main tools are the mechanisms of economic, technological and cultural expansion.

And hardly anyone will argue that in our real world there are also forces of evil, which, like in the films based on Marvel and DC comics, would like to build a New World Order, and forces of good that stand for the ideals of justice.

However, all these films, on the shooting and promotion of which fabulous budgets are spent, teach millions of viewers that evil can only be defeated by force of arms. Pay attention to how much violence is aestheticized in these blockbusters, how it is "savored", how glamorous it is shown - this is also in order to make this method of solving a problem and saving the world more attractive in the eyes of viewers. People brought up on such stories do not want to engage in long-term systematic work in the development and promotion of ideas; they want to quickly blow up the enemy and win. And at the level of an ordinary person and everyday life, force should be used much less often than other instruments of influence. As a result, mass culture lacks an artistic image or matrix that would tune people to effectively counter destructive ideologies, the actual war of ideas and ideologies is generally taken out of the narrative brackets, as if it did not exist.

In February 2017, the Russian response to Hollywood will be released - the film "The Defenders", which, as you can see from the trailer, is built on the same model: a squad of superheroes by force of arms saves the world from another villain. Of course, I would like to believe that the scriptwriters will be able to bring into the film some deeper meanings than primitive fights and special effects, but more likely, millions of our fellow citizens will rejoice that in Russia they have finally learned how to make a "high-quality" movie, without realizing that in playing by someone else's rules, even patriotic rhetoric can work against the interests of the people.