Really great post. Consider it bookmarked.
My only tiny regret is I would have lengthened the list of present perils in the name of measure and proportion, but it’s a small quibble easily set aside.
It’s a mark of respect for your audience that you don’t come out with bludgeons blazing (hero-like) but trust it to grasp the gaps and fill in accordingly.
By way of example, I’m thinking of the price of oil re vehicles, power generation, and raw material for all manner of essential products; the desperate US dependency on foreign capital and the consequent vulnerability to destabilization; the weakening of the military encouraging wrong-headed desperate choices in bluster-and-blunder fashion; the impending necessity of radical ‘life-style’ change; and the whole house-of-cards framework of the financial-wealth system.
So there. Like that.
Thanks again much for putting things together as you have.
He spoke all the right Hollywood lines about wanting Osama dead or alive.
For a non-popcorn movie line, I always liked this, from 9/14/01:
FIREFIGHTER: “I can’t hear you."
PRESIDENT [into bullhorn]: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
Little did we know it was his career high point, the one good moment of subtlety from a movie that you can't defend to any of your friends.
There are no heroes coming to save us.
That's it in a nutshell. People are afraid. "Superhero" Bush is more and more being exposed as a danger and not a savior, the economy is tanking, and there's a sinking feeling our supremacy isn't so supreme any more.
We needs us a superhero to fix it all
and make us feel strong. Diplomacy and sacrifice is too much work. We need more WEAPONS!
(messing with your head?)
just a word or two about the character Tony Stark. the movie sort of glosses over some of the elements from the comic book -- he's an alcoholic, spoiled rich brat living large on daddy's company, but once he is captured by terrorists/troops, he gets the epiphany of accepting responsibility for making weapons used to wage war.
he is a rather brilliant inventor, so yes, he makes a mega suit and starts battling for "justice" (and if i recall correctly his suit cameras were designed to distinguish people as dangerous or not depending on if they are carrying weapons).
still, throughout the Marvel comics, Stark is a very problematic character - he is arrogant, aloof and seems to cause more problems than he solves. he's a rather complex embodiment of a complex issue, and was notable as being that dividing line between gung-ho World War 2 heroics and a Vietnam-era perspective on warfare.
hollywood of course distills all that and just makes an 'action movie', without a doubt.
but i still saw some nicely subversive moments in the movie - he has far more conversations with the robots in his lab than with his would-be girlfriend Pepper Potts, and his main character flaw is that his aloof nature is truly harmful.
i tend to agree with much you've written on this topic, but one appeal to me from most Marvel 'superheroics' is that they are tinged with real-world effects and the characters are most doubtful of blind allegiances.
please excuse my comic-tainted nerdishness, but i just wanted to add these ideas into the mix.
also i liked the line in the movie Serenity, where a character says "You know what a hero is? A hero is someone who gets people killed."
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