The Victim/Superhero Triangle
Here’s a curious thing:
On 30th January, 1933, ‘The Lone Ranger’ premiered on United States radio: initially Station WXYZ in Detroit. On that exact same day, Adolph Hitler became the new Chancellor of Germany.
On The Lone Ranger: “Writer Fran Striker and station owner George Trendle created the adventure of the masked man who brought justice to the American West..” [Wikipedia] [my emphasis]
The concept of the Superhero is very American: the rescuer who swoops in and ‘brings justice’ to a situation where struggling powerless victims are being oppressed by some tin-pot oppressor or bully. It has spawned countless characters, comics, TV serials, movies and cultural references, and possible even a market for brightly coloured underwear without a Y-front.
BUT — for anyone familiar with the famous ‘Victim Triangle’, you’ll spot the same disturbing trend I do. The USA, that supposedly great nation, has built its entire mind set (and justice system, foreign policy, hand-gun laws and voting preferences) on that self-same triangle. Why else an obsessive fascination (and need) for superheroes?
Having a national myth involving superheroes makes everyone else ordinary, and thus powerless; in need of rescue. i.e Victims. And everything is seen only from within such a triangle. And if you’ve studied it you’ll know that people keep spinning around the three-cornered wheel. Give the down-trodden a few guns and suddenly they regard themselves as ‘supers’ — out to perform rescues (“interventions” in military newspeak) and ‘bring justice’.
I could point you to a few truly fucked-up wars as good examples.
But self-appointed heroic rescuers can as easily be mistaken for abusers (never by themselves, of course!). According to the whims of The Media and their political masters; ‘Freedom-fighters’ morph into ‘terrorists’ and back again just as smoothly.
Public perceptions, based on this mode of viewing the world, are so easily manipulated. That same public always loves a superhero story featuring the good ol’ USA. They’re a compliant population, taught from childhood to swallow the next installment without question. “Hey: it fits the trope! Send in the marines!”
So the Trope Of The Superhero is projected onto reality at every scale. Sure, it was there before the Lone Ranger, but on that date it grew a little bit stronger, as it did with every new superhero Marvel and DC could contrive.
Does this explain the election of Donald Trump?
Against the solid wall of reality that most of us; watching from beyond the borders of the Good Ol’ USA; we could see millions of Americans — convinced of their victim status (largely assisted by Fox News) — projected Trump as the new superhero who would rescue them from their supposed oppressors (y’know, like gays, Hispanics, women and blacks? Such bullies!) and voted him into power?
It’s a question. I’ll put it to you, but I wont give you my personal answer.
And from here on, of course, the positional-switching will continue. Emboldened, the self-appointed victims will quickly appoint themselves as the new ‘rescuers’ — conducting Trump’s dirty-work with the same smug smile on their lips and the sound of the William Tell Overture beating in their bully-boy hearts.
Oh — and if anyone cares to ask “who was that masked man?” —Why: it was Rupert Murdoch, of course!
[FIRST WRITTEN ON THE 30th JAN; Facebook]
