"It's not easy to be me ... "

[The Lone Ranger]

Do you ever find yourself obsessed with a song? I do that occasionally; I'll listen to a single song over and over and over again, until I eventually get tired of it. My current obsession is "Superman" ("It's Not Easy") by Five for Fighting.

[youtube]nTT6KICXk2U[/youtube]


There's something about the singer's haunting voice. (His song "100 years" is similarly haunting, I think.)

More than that, something about the lyrics really speaks to me. It's a common-enough feeling, of course -- the desire to make yourself a better person, but realizing that you'll never really completely live up to your self-imposed goals. But it's important to never give up -- to keep trying to reach that unreachable star.


I think that's one reason I've always been drawn to superheroes like Superman, say, or Batman -- or, for that matter, The Lone Ranger.

More than anything, I want to be a good person, a worthy person -- someone who's worthy of being thought of as a decent and respectable person. I desperately want to believe that the world has been a better place for me having been in it. So, I keep trying to make myself a better person.


That's one reason why I'm not especially happy about the modern trend of "deconstructing" and "demystifying" heroes. I've never much cared for antiheroes. I want my heroes to be truly admirable people, people you can look up to -- even if some of them (not all of them, though) are fictitious. I don't want to read stories about how Superman is actually a pervert who uses his x-ray vision to spy on people, or about how Batman is actually a psychotic who beats up criminals for fun.

One of my favorite Batman stories, something I read years ago, featured a criminal injecting Batman with a drug that would cause him excruciating pain every time the pleasure centers of his brain were activated. The criminal mastermind then sicced his thugs on Batman, thinking that Bats surely enjoyed beating people up, and so would be rendered helpless by the drug. Instead, Bats beat the bad guys handily then captured the mastermind. When the criminal complained that his drug should have rendered Bats helpless, he replied, "You don't understand; I don't do this because I enjoy it; I do it because I believe it's necessary."


That's not to say that characters like, say, Wolverine aren't quite admirable, of course. He's all the more admirable because being decent doesn't necessarily come "naturally" to him, and he must constantly repress his baser nature. That I can appreciate and admire. But I'm not enamoured of the supposedly "mature" view that heroes all have feet of clay which they more or less successfully manage to hide -- and that the chief distinction between a "hero" and a "villian" is that the former channels his baser instincts into socially-acceptable venues while the latter does not.



Well, speaking of fighting the good fight -- I'd best back to grading these papers ...

'Night!

Michael


[Obviously, I have to work on figuring out how to embed YouTube videos ... ]

[godfry n. glad]

I think those kinds of "set-ups" are fodder for cynicism.

This is based upon the understanding that cynics are naught but idealists who have been disillusioned.

Me? I've been disillusioned about the "promises" of "freedom" and "democracy" ever since I found out that, by and large, what matters is how much money you have and who you know, rather than how decent you are or how skilled you are at whatever you do. We live in a klepto-plutocracy where you can say what you want, as long as it is not during work hours, on your employers property, or offends someone of wealth and importance. Oh, and "manners" and "etiquette" are means of enforcing silence upon those who would tell us uncomfortable truths.

My take on superheroes is that that are all fictional. Nothing anywhere near the concern for others shown by these fictional characters actually exists in the real world. They are empty dreams, nothing more.

[The Lone Ranger]

I have often wondered if someone like Superman or even Batman could actually exist. (It certainly would help to be independently wealthy.)


If Superman existed, many people would be insanely jealous of him, others would be extremely distrustful of someone with such power at his disposal and suspect that he really had ulterior motives (and not entirely without reason -- who wouldn't be tempted to mis-use such power?). Many would try to abuse his good nature and demand that he fix their every little problem.


It's nice to dream though, sometimes ...

Cheers,

Michael

[ms_ann_thrope]

I can't get enough of "Peanut Butter Jelly Time." That probably says something really disturbing about me...

[Ymir's blood]

I like heroes (and villains) a lot as well. A black and white world is great for escapism.

Antiheroes are ok in their place but tend to grate on me when stuck in otherwise traditional super-heroic settings. I tend to think that the Nineties antihero trend had more to do with a few characters done well spawning a hoard of imitators who tended to miss the mark on what made the originals work.

Rogues on the other hand are generally pretty cool.

I tend to obsess over songs frequently, though often because of a few isolated lyrics or else because of the music itself.

[D. Scarlatti]

I feel the same way about Do Ya Think I'm Sexy.

Plus I sing along in an outrageous Glaswegian accent.

[viscousmemories]

I like that song too, TLR. I've never paid attention to the lyrics though.

I've never much cared for superheroes myself, but I think I've evolved beyond my fascination with antiheroes.

[pescifish]

I do think it's possible to strive for ideals without being delusional, stupid or unrealistic. In that regard, I think heroes can be examples for an ideal that is likely impossible to attain 100%, but worthwhile nonetheless for those instances when we are capable.

I'd say my own experience with heroism has been in the real world, not fantasy. It may not be possible for a real person to be a hero in every action and every situation, but life is lived as a series of singular moments.

There's no reason not to try to be a hero at any given moment. So we hit it some times and not all; it's still worth a shot.

[Dragar]

I generally like super-heroes, and anti-heroes too. I think it's a good medium for interesting story-telling. But sometimes it's hard to identify with them.

My favourite heroes are probably the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings. In almost any fantasy book, before or since, it would be Aragorn or Gandalf or Legolas or Gimli that was the hero. They had all the years of combat training, magical spells and magical equipment. They could do all the epic feats. They were the 'superheroes' of that world.

But Tolkein didn't do that. In the end, it all pretty much came down to the bravery and strength of will of four little Hobbits, who all just really wanted to go back home to the Shire and get on with everyday life. It's much easier to identify with those characters, because they're just like you. That's why their trials were so much more impressive to me than anything Superman or Batman has ever done.

[erimir]

I always hated that song.

"There's something about the singer's haunting voice."

I find his voice quite annoying, which is why I don't care for the song.

Maybe if it was rearranged and sung by someone who was not so high-pitched and whiny sounding...