Last summer while attending one of KJAZ’s fabulous and free outdoor concerts at the Hollywood-Highland complex here in Los Angeles, something happened that put in perspective for me exactly why we need heroes in our popular entertainment—whether super or just extremely competent in fast cars. My wife and I were listening to the fine music of the Downtown Jazz Project when four young women sitting directly behind us began to talk loud enough for us to have joined in the joy of one anticipating her upcoming wedding, and commensurate with another about the vicious politics at her office. Despite this being an outdoor concert where people may feel freer to chit and chat than they would if they were in a concert hall, I found the women to be exceedingly rude and discourteous.
I turned around and—as nicely as I could, but probably not as nicely as I should have—asked them to either stop talking or leave. The leader of the pack was righteously offended, and made me feel as if I had committed the faux pas. Somewhat intimidated, I turned back and tried to concentrate on the music, but their backbeat of inanities was never-ending.
A fantasy of herohood, to coin a word, began to sprout in my head.
If only I was Superman, I thought, my understated authority, not to mention the most famous costume in creation, might well have shut them up — after humble apologies for having annoyed me. Although even the Man of Steel might have found these women’s rudeness as toxic as kryptonite My only option then would have been to fly off around the world at super speed gathering up raw materials and using them to construct a hermetically sealed, lead-lined soundproof room—with oxygen provided—fly it back to Hollywood-Highland, grab the four up in my super arms, put them in it, shut and seal the door, and then go back to the concert. A harmless fantasy that put a smile on my face and made the situation a little easier to endure. The women kept talking, though, even louder than before, and I became angry enough to conjure up more fantasies. What would the Batman have done? Taken the batrope, perhaps, tied the four women up and hung them off the head of one of the giant lions at the Hollywood-Highland? That would have been fun, but their screaming to be let down would have disturbed the music just as much as their energetic yadda-yaddas. Had I been Spiderman I could have gagged them with four accurate shots of web, or, taking a cue from one of Nature’s other insects, I could have cocooned them and really shut them up. Then I thought of the Thing from the Fantastic Four. Yes, I definitely would have enjoyed some “clobbering time” despite the accusations of being a sexist-fascist pig that inevitably would have followed. As a counterbalance I saw no reason why I should not have a cross-gender fantasy, imagining myself as Wonder Woman really upset over the bad name these four were giving my gender, so hog-tying them with my golden lasso, putting them in my invisible plane, flying them off to Paradise Island and letting my mother deal with them.
Wonder Woman’s costume probably would have pinched, though.
As to the non-super yet extremely competent with fast cars heroes, as James Bond, having a license to do so, I could have just put one shot each into the center of their foreheads with my Walther P.P.K. Neat, simple, clean in its way, yet it may have disturbed the other concert goers and then I would have been the rude one. Although as Michael Weston from Burn Notice, or, indeed, my own hero, the Fixxer, from my novels Blood is Pretty and Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army I could have conned them into leaving by making them believe that I was a producer holding auditions “right now” next door at the Kodak Theater for a new Reality TV series, The Really Rude Women of Hollywood, and that I thought they had a very good shot at it, and they should rush to get in line.
No sweat—and no bloodshed. Not that I didn’t dwell on some darker fantasies as well, fantasies involving Wolverine and his lovely slicing and dicing blades, the Hulk and his crushing personality, Aquaman and the inability of humans to breathe underwater, and even Dexter, who I don’t really consider to be a hero—but he is extremely competent.
No real person could do any of this, of course, without being willing to commit an illegal act or being declared a sociopath, but is this not exactly how we wish we could act when we are crossed, hurt, or have our lives nearly destroyed by other people, or even institutions? Who would not want to send a Wall Street banker into the Phantom Zone; who would not want to take certain BP executives and deliver them to the Arkham Asylum?
It’s simple: Heroes in popular fiction, comics, TV and movies are our surrogates, they do it for us, through them we vicariously find Justice and/or live the revenge—and we love it. It is not a new idea, Aristotle called it catharsis, but it is an ever potent one.
Which brings up the question of evil. For you cannot have heroes without evil. As the heroes in popular fiction, though, are all larger than life in both spirit and action, the evil in popular fiction is often more pure, deeper and darker than in reality. Especially in superhero fiction where the bad guys often know they are evil and, indeed, take great delight in being so. Reality is different—in reality I do not think anyone ever considers themselves evil, unless, of course, they are clinically insane, and even then they often do what they do because of some authoritative “voice.” In reality there is the great possibility that the only real evil in the world is believing there is evil in the world. It was not so much that Hitler was evil as that he believed that the Jews and other non-Aryans were evil; it was not so much that the terrorists of 9/11 were evil as that they believed Western Civilization was evil.
Even if there is no tangible force of evil, a force as real and effective as gravity, actions that are evil are undeniable. If we define evil as a person, persons or institutions bringing harm to one or few or many while in pursuit of their own goals and desires, then we can see that evil permeates the world, and that it has gradations, from the slight evil of the rude women behind me in Hollywood to the massive evil of genocide in Africa, with much in-between that causes at best annoyance and irritation; at worst injustice and tragedy. Often in our lives we feel powerless to do anything about this multifaceted evil, and there is not quite a worse feeling in the world than powerlessness in the face of evil, wrongdoing, injustice, and even rudeness.
Heroes battling evil in our popular fiction give us a theater in which to act out our desire to have the power to vanquish evil and the ability to correct injustice. Without these heroes—super in colorful costumes; competent in fast cars; struggling mightily despite the odds—the lives of many would be filled with more angst, drained of some joy, and generally be poorer than what they are today.
What is often considered frivolous entertainment, then, is anything but, it is, indeed, a necessary respite from reality in order, ironically, to better deal with reality.
And that’s just super.
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