More than Human

I've been talking about artificial intelligence a lot for this Halloween Countdown, because I have a lot to say about it. But, I get that it could get a bit much... after all, in my experience, everyone is talking about A.I. right now, it's all over news, media, art and culture right now. So, okay, today I'm going to talk about something else.
How about Superheroes? (ha, ain't I a stinker?)
Fine, maybe they're talked about perhaps even more than A.I., but when I was considering the theme of "inhuman", to discuss robots and A.I., "superhumans" was one of the first things that came to mind, and I have a lot to say about it and inhumanity.

Superheroes are really cool, and one of the reasons they're so popular is because they are wish fulfillment. It's a fantasy, to be strong, powerful and beautiful. Male superheroes are usually muscular, young and handsome and always get the girl, and female superheroes are usually powerful, young and sexy and wear revealing outfits - according to TV Tropes, the Most Common Superpower is having big breasts.
Unfortunately, a lot of this is heterosexual, male wish fulfilment; not all girls want to have a thin waist, and a slinky spine that can show off their bum and boobs at the same time, and not all men are straight and care about getting any girl, let alone a hyperfeminine model in a skintight catsuit.

But, besides the whole sexist legacy of superheroes that still affects comics to this day one of the issues with these being wish fulfilment fantasies is that they're unachievable.
We're meant to aspire to superheroes, and in fact a lot of people have spoken about superhero characters as mythological - they're meant to be a symbol of morals, of truth, of justice or even just of kindness. But, superhumans aren't just really great humans... they're "above humans" that's what the prefix super- means, something above, greater than, more than.
Often, superheroes are an allegory for some kind of injustice, some philosophy which the hero is standing for, but if you're presenting the iconic hero as someone who has power greater than any human can achieve, with inhuman strength, speed, ability, intelligence or morals... how can we possibly achieve that? I worry that superheroes, by being so much more able than humans, actually make their morals seem unachievable.

Now, that's a little pessimistic. After all, in these movies often the villains too are also superhuman. Sure, you need a Captain Planet to clean up the oil spill from a supervillain like Hogs Greedly, or to protect the animals from a Looten Plunder; but when facing earthly problems, even a kid like you can be an earthly hero - the power is yours!

That's what Captain Planet wanted to teach us anyway, and that's fair. But, I still can't help but notice that a lot of modern superheroes solve their problems with violence. Yes, we should be willing to fight for what we believe in... but often that fight is more metaphorical, but I can't think of a single Marvel Superhero in the MCU that hasn't thrown a punch. Seriously, can you name a single Marvel superhero who has never tried to punch their problems away?
This problem is twofold, because not only does it normalize violence, but it also reduces problems to ones that are purely physical. If you can't represent a problem with something that has a face which you can punch, then it's not a problem that a superhero can solve. But not all problems are physical...
Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, Capitalism, Corruption, Tyranny, Inequality. Systemic problems, all, but a superhero can't fight them unless there's one big, bad Keystone villain behind it, whose death kills it.
I won't spoil anything explicitly, but In movies like Black Panther; Black Widow & Captain America, heroes face issues of racism, sexism & nazism; in series like Daredevil; Falcon and the Winter Soldier & Loki, heroes fight corruption, injustice & tyranny...
But in every case, they stop these systemic issues by finding the one person responsible, usually a supervillain, and punching them in the face - or the equivalent, using arrows, magic, lasers or whatever their gimmick is. I'm not dismissing these movies, I like these movies, but you can't deny that they boil problems and conflicts down to the actions of "the people that do the bad thing", and then solve it by removing them from the equation.

That's not just inhuman, that's alien. If you think the way to stop inequality is "find the person who caused inequality, do a backflip and snap his neck", then I don't think you know what inequality is.

But, okay, these tend to be action movies... and some of this is to be expected. Stories are meant to be entertaining after all, and many stories pay lip-service to these ideas, whilst still being interesting. After all, whilst Captain Planet destroyed robots and stopped forest firest with his super-breath, he didn't exactly stop to pick up trash every day. There's a reason he left that crap to the pre-credits "educational segment", because otherwise the show would be boring. Unfortunately, in the real world, solving systemic problems takes education; political activism and protests, most of which aren't necessarily "boring", but it's sure as hell not what I want in my sci-fi action movies. It's meant to be thematic, that's fine...

But, what's not fine is that when you look at movies thematically, solving systemic problems is not only "not heroic", it's downright villainous.
Almost half of the villains in the MCU want to change the world. Sometimes, sure, it's because they're selfish, greedy or evil - Iron Monger wants money and power; Abomination wanted military might; Whiplash wanted revenge; Red Skull wants Nazis to rule the world; Loki wants royalty and power & Malekith wanted to destroy life and light to empower dark elves... do y'all remember Malekith? the "Thor: The Dark World" villain...
Anyway, my point is, they want to destroy for their own ends, to get their own power. But, that's not the only change supervillains aspire to.
Ultron's ultimate goal was world peace; Iron Man first fought Captain America for the sake of transparency and accountability (prior to revenge); The Vulture's goal was economic freedom for an oppressed lower class; Killmonger's goal was social freedom for an oppressed ethnic minority & Thanos's goal was to prevent societal collapse, on a cosmic scale.
You could even argue that Ego's goal in Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2 was ultimately family and community, but that might be pushing it... either way, these supervillains are fighting for change, and sometimes they're even fighting for good change. Obviously, if your goals are greedy or selfish at the cost of others, that's wrong... but what of the ones fighting for good? Well, they usually do that by, say, killing dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions, billions of people - hell, I don't even know what "-illion" of people Thanos killed, but I'm pretty sure it was half a zillion.

Their goals are worthy, but their methods often aren't. But, this is worrying because the more and more that superhero movies become mainstream, the more we start to absorb their tropes.
Consider this, even if you don't know who the villain will be in a story - let's say it's either kept a secret, or you just avoided all marketing - unless they're covered in blood and screaming like a maniac, the obvious giveaway will often be that it's someone confident and charismatic who wants to change the world.
And yes, some confident charismatic people who want to change the world are bad... I'm just going to say the word "Hitler", we will acknowledge Godwin's law, and the fact that Nazis suck, but then we're going to move past it and look at more examples: Susan B. Anthony; Martin Luther King; Nelson Mandela; Harvey Milk; Sylvia Rivera; Greta Thunberg.
These people look at the problems, speak out, and have changed the world for the better.

Superheroes are reactionary, which takes away a lot of their agency, but more importantly, their goals are often to stop people changing the world. No, I don't want people to die, and I don't want some greedy villain to get more power, money or meaningless revenge... but, if all superhero fiction had an overarching theme, it appears to be: "true heroes sacrifice everything to keep things the way they are"... which is a depressingly regressive point of view.
The only way to improve the world is to change it, and sometimes, yes, that does mean we have to destroy what we once had. Change is scary, especially if you don't trust the person doing the changing, but I just want to ask one thing...
Rather than React to supervillains changing the world for the worse, when will a superhero Act to change the world for the better?

I'm not saying superhero movies are bad, or that you shouldn't enjoy them. I'm just saying that if there's one thing that superhero movies are missing, right now, it's change. I will keep watching them, I am a geek after all, but I won't truly be happy until I see a superhero change the world.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I think this was an apt post. All this talk about how A.I. is dangerous might make people think that I don't want change, but I do - admittedly I prefer it when it's slow and manageable, but I do like progress.
Until Next Time, remember that just because you like progress, that doesn't make you a supervillain... it's the killing and hurting of innocent people in the process that sends superman flying after you.