The Superhero Phenomenon

I believe everyone has seen The Dark Knight trilogy by director Christopher Nolan. It is considered one of his best works and the movies went on to inspire lots of remakes and original superhero movies. It was the turning point in western cinema and ushered in what is now referred to as the Age of Superheroes. We saw reboots of many major franchises like Superman, Avengers and the birth of heroes like Iron Man , Wonder Woman , Green Lantern and all. An entire generation of teens and kids are growing up idolising these entities of righteousness and justice. But have we ever really thought about what we learn from these superheroes?

Let’s look at Batman for example, we all know that he lost his parents as a kid in a street robbery gone wrong. Then this kid trains and takes up the role of this vigilante of justice who roams around the city at night dealing punishments to the wicked and saving the righteous. His brand of justice is to beat up the criminals but no killing and no use of firearms. I agree it is a noble sentiment to not kill anybody but unfortunately this same sentiment is what causes him trouble. The joker for example by not killing the joker he dooms the life of the person he cares about and also causes the downfall of Harvey Dent an upright and righteous officer. I feel that the real hero in the Dark Knight movie is actually the Joker. You will notice that throughout the movie the joker is constantly testing batman’s ideals, he’s trying to show him that his ideals about society are flawed. He’s trying to show him the real face of humanity after all the joker was a product of the society himself. But you will note batman’s stubborn refusal to admit the facts even when he sees Harvey Dent’s fall. This is where I believe the flaw in him resides. We see him as this infallible figure of justice that refuses to go astray. However if you study it carefully you realise he isn’t that at all. He’s a man who has refused to confront his childhood fears which caused him to be emotionally stunted which is seen in his inability to form meaningful relationships with the people he loves ( like Rachel ). His remorse for his parent’s death is what causes him to project his fears in the form of his disdain for killing which causes the deaths of a multitude of people. His ideals are born from his disillusion of this Utopian society which he believes exists around him. So in the end he is just an immature child who effuses to grow up and confront his fears.

The same can be applied to the other superheroes too. Superman for example has the same disillusioned ideals of society and he too has a problem forming relationships. Wonder woman is a girl who rebelled from home and ran away. The Green lantern is a war veteran who has PTSD . Iron man is an egomaniacal, workaholic, immature child who thinks the world revolves around him.

So if we look carefully all our heroes are basically men who have fallen from grace, they are not these perfect ideals. But sadly that is what everyone misses out on, none of the movies show this because showing them as normal humans having normal problems is unglorified, it is not heroic because people don’t want to know that they are normal. They want to be amazed, they want to be dazzled by these idols of perfect humans. They don’t want normal, normal is boring.

Which is why most of our movies are these monochromatic stories about the triumph of good over evil, our heroes are these white knights fighting against the black forces of evil. But the moment we acknowledge the presence of greys we are screwed because than we will have to question our morality and the moral fibre of society ,which scares us. So we conveniently live this lie because to acknowledge that there is a demon inside each of us is scary. So we shut that door and throw away the key. But unless we confront the fact that our heroes are not gods but fallen angels we cannot progress further. And nothing puts it better than this quote from Charles Darwin

We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realised they were inside us.