DISCLAIMER: It was a very sad day when I learned that science fiction author Michael Chrichton passed away a few years ago. He filled my high school years with wonder and fantasy. And while I poke a little fun at some of his stories in this post, I mean no disrespect to him or his work. What terrible thing happened in Michael Chrichton's childhood to make him hate amusement parks? One park or another feature as the "real" bad guy of at least 3 of his stories (4 if you count The Lost World as separate fromJurassic Park). It's like he thinks that the worst evils of the world are manifest in those parks. Recently, Jenna and I watched Chrichton's first volley against amusement parks: Westworld. In that movie, rich people attend a theme park designed to look and feel just like the old west, medieval times, or Roman times. In the theme park, they interact with (and kill or have sex with) robots designed to look and act human. One of the robots, played by Yul Brynner (yes, THAT Yul Brynner—from The King and I) is a gunslinger who is constantly after one of the primary guests. Of course, he is programmed to always lose ... at least until some kind of computer virus glitches all of the machines and they turn against the park's guests. Then Brynner's character becomes dangerous and goes on a long, protracted hunt after the main character. Futureworld, the Chrichton-less sequel to Westworld, continued on the same theme, though borrowed a bit from Asimov's I, Robot at the same time. And, while it did feature some of the theme park ideas in it, it focused more behind the scenes, so the fun of the parks was lost. Of course, you can't talk about Chrichton and theme parks without talking about Jurassic Park. That is probably the epitome of a theme park run amok. I still think of the Weird Al song about that book/movie:

Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark All the animals are running wild! Someone shut the fence off in the rain. Now they scare me and alarm me, 'Cause they sure don't act like Barney, And I'm not sure I'll get home again. Oh no!

Lost World, the infinitely inferior Jurassic Park sequel, also focused on the theme park idea, though to a lesser extent. The movie pushed it much further than the book did, with InGen trying to bring the animals to the mainland for some kind of zoo, which ended in one of the lamest sequences in Hollywood history: the T-Rex loose in San Diego, except he doesn't do much except eat a dog. LAME! Chrichton's last volley against theme parks came in a book that, at first glance, seems a bit out of place in this list: Timeline. In that book, a mega-corporation discovered a way to essentially fax yourself back in time (no, I'm not kidding). What would they plan for this exciting new technology? Why, build a time-based theme park of course! The theme park idea was so shoehorned into the story that it was completely excised for the film version. And, quite frankly, the film benefited from its removal. So my question is, what did theme parks do the Chrichton to make him so adamantly opposed to them. Did Mickey Mouse bite him as a child? Did he see the characters unmasking and lost all sense of wonder? What? Actually, I think that he returned to the theme park idea so often because he was able to use it to magnify the problems of society. In Westworld, the uber-rich do whatever they please. They have sex, they kill, they brawl, whatever with no consequences—all for $1,000 a day (which was a lot more back in the '70s). They lower themselves to the lowest possible levels human beings can achieve. The Jurassic Park stories aren't much better. In those stories, man plays God to the amusement, once again, to the uber-rich. The move corrected this problem by making Hammond, the park's owner, a kindly old soul who just wants to bring real wonder to children around the globe, but the book's version of Hammond is much harsher. He is a prick, to say the least, and plans on charging an arm and a leg for anyone to have the chance to glimpse his creations. He shows no respect for what he has made and thinks he can control nature. In the end of the book, he is eaten by dung-eating rodent-like dinosaurs and no one really seems to care. Timeline is a bit different than the others. It is all about highlighting real history against the legends and ideas that have built up over time. In one memorable sequence of the book, the evil corporate leader is watching some video of George Washington crossing he Potomac. The leader is upset that Washington—THE ACTUAL GEORGE WASHINGTON—is not perched out on the bow of his boat, sword drawn, ready to face the enemy. Instead, Washington is huddled in the back of the boat under a blanket, trying in vain to keep warm against the freezing temperatures. In another part of the book, a college student sent back in time watches 2 knights fight and is shocked at how agile they are in their armor, because no one could possibly be that mobile wearing close to 100 lbs of steal, right? And that is the genius of Chrichton's war against theme parks. He uses them to illustrate modern humanity's ignorance, decadence, and greed. Theme parks are all about enlarging one aspect of life or another, so they work perfectly for Chrichton's purposes. And they once again remind us of the value of popular culture as a mirror in which we can see ourselves laid bare. Now, who wants to go to Disneyland?

I don't like Stephen King. I have known this for a while but it was brought back to the forefront last week when I attempted (and failed) to read Under the Dome, King's latest best seller. To be clear, I have nothing against him personally and I actually think he is a very talented writer--I often quote his essays on writing in my classes. And I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys reading his books. No, I just don't care for his stories themselves ... or, perhaps more accurately, I don't care for his worldview. No matter your opinion of King's stories, it is hard to argue that he has a pretty dismal worldview. If King is to be trusted:

• Pretty much everyone is twisted and psychotic in one way or another--even the good guys.
• People in desperate situations are more likely to turn on each other than try to resolve the situation.
• Most people are more infatuated with power than doing good--especially people who are in positions to do good.
• People who aren't infatuated with power are not only rare, they are also beat down and isolated by those who are.
• Religious people are fanatics and extremists who, deep down, believe in blood sacrifice first and doing good last.
• The government is both inept and always knee-deep in dark, horrifying conspiracies.
• Psychos are common.
• Maine is mostly populated with said psychos.
• Good guys are almost always former covert ops or ex-military.
• Anyone named "Randall" is big trouble.

All in all, King's world is a pretty depressing place. Take Under the Dome, King's most recent novel. It is about a town that mysteriously becomes trapped in some kind of transparent energy field. Almost immediately, the psychos in the town gain power and people start to turn on each other. Things just go from bad to worse and then keep getting worse. It was so depressing I only made it about a third of the way (I have never made it past the half-way mark of any King book, despite my many attempts). And that is pretty much how I feel about King's stories. The thing is, I do enjoy horror stories. In the past few years, I have become a pretty big Dean Koontz fan and I have read several of his books. But, despite using similar material in their stories and having the same first initial in their last name (a coincidence I always found a bit amusing), there is a world of difference between Koontz and King novels. For one thing, while psychos do exist in almost every Koontz book, they are the exception, not the rule. Most people in Koontz' stories are good, decent folks who are just trying to do what is right. And while Koontz' good guys share some similarities with King's (many of them also seem to have some sort of military background and they often harbor dark secrets in their past), they are people who you can trust and rally behind. And, perhaps most important, the good guys overcome incredible odds to become the good guys that they are. For example, I recently finished reading the first three of Koontz' Odd Thomas series. The books, which I highly recommend, are about Odd Thomas, a young man who can see (but not talk to) ghosts. The ghosts come to him seeking help to resolve whatever wrong is keeping them on the terrestrial plane. Odd (who really is named "Odd") helps them. There isn't anything in it for Odd. In fact, there are many reasons why he shouldn't help people, the main ones being that it often gets him in trouble and brings pain (or death) to those he loves. But he does it anyway, just because it is right. Like most of Koontz' characters, Odd comes from a dark past. His mother is fairly psychotic and his father is a jerk beyond words. Odd had a very unhappy childhood and ran away at a young age to fend for himself. Add to that the dark, sinister things the ghosts show him, and Odd could--and probably should--be a maladjusted freak who sees nothing but darkness and evil. But he isn't. Instead, Odd sees the world as one filled with light and beauty. Even at his darkest he finds moments of happiness and tranquility.  And rather than shun humanity, he embraces it and finds nothing but good (minus the occasional psycho who crosses his path). The people that surround him are an eclectic bunch with dark histories of their own, but they have almost universally overcome those pasts to become truly good people: Little Ozzie has overcome weight issues and the judgement of the world to become a famous novelist. Stormy, Odd's one true love, has overcome abuse to become a happy, well-adjusted person. Brother Knuckles overcame his life as a mob hitman to become a monk. And on and on. And that is one of the things I like the most about Koontz' stories: the characters overcome the world, no matter how bad and horrifying. In King's world, things just seem to remain dark and horrifying, even after the good guys have "won." I think the thing that attracts me to Koontz' stories over King's is that Koontz' vision of the world is much closer to my own. I believe that most people, regardless of their religious or political ideology, are good, decent people who are just trying to do what they think is right. I believe that there are good guys out there who do what is right just because it is right, no matter the cost to them. And while I do believe that psychos and monsters do exist, I believe that they are the exception. And, most important, I believe that no matter the darkness people have experienced in their lives, they can always overcome it. I didn't always believe this. As a kid I was very paranoid about the world--especially the world outside of St. Johns. I saw it as a terrible and terrifying place filled with evil just waiting to devour the few righteous ones. I blame this on two things: Hollywood and the isolation of St. Johns. Because the town is far removed from the "real world," my opinions of what that world was like largely came from movies and television. Is it any wonder that I thought everything beyond St. Johns' borders was nearing the Ninth Circle of Hell? But all of that changed when I served a two-week religious mission to Phoenix the summer before my senior year of high school. On the mission, I was required to meet and talk with several people--all of them strangers. Before leaving, I was terrified. I secretly worried that one of them would kill or, at the very least, hurt me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not one of those strangers was a psycho and that, almost without exception, they were good, decent people just trying to do what they felt was right Later, my father asked me what I learned from the mission. After a brief moment of reflection, I told him simply: "That most people are good, honest people." I believe that to this day. So, to return to my original point, I don't like Stephen King. I believe in humanity more than that and, no matter how bad things are, I am optimistic for the future of mankind. In the words of William Faulkner:

I decline to accept the end of man. ... I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

So I'll avoid Stephen King from now on because I don't believe in his world. His world is filled with darkness. And while the world I believe in may often be dark and gloomy, there is always color and light and joy. And rather than be filled with egotistical maniacs and psychos, it is filled with good, decent people who overcome incredible odds to do what is right, for no other reason than that it is right. Naive? Perhaps. But which world would you rather live in?

In this post I discuss Watchmen at length. I include several spoilers for both the book and the movie. If you do not want them spoiled, you might want to skip it.

On Saturday, I went to see Watchmen. My purpose in going was research. The last chapter of Fallible and Flawed is going to be about Watchmen, the graphic novel, so it was important for me to see the movie. I'm glad I did, because they made some significant changes that speak directly to my thesis. But more on that later.

Honestly, I was expecting to dislike the movie, largely because I have never actually decided whether I like the book or not. I fully respect what Alan Moore and David Gibbons succeeded in doing with the book, but the whole thing made me feel very uncomfortable. The story is extremely dark and very violent. To top that off, it has a very low opinion of humanity and, more than anything else, that really got under my skin. So I was surprised that I actually enjoyed the film.

That being said, I don't really recommend it. It is kind of like The Passion of the Christ. Both of them are very good movies. They are exceptionally well made and have the ability to reach their audience in profound ways. However, they are both extremely difficult to watch. The violence in Watchmen is over-the-top (it is so gut wrenching in a few places that I actually gasped), the sex and nudity are as explicit as they can be without getting an NC17 rating, and the story is a real downer. It isn't really a fun experience.

So you may be wondering why I enjoyed it if is was so bad. I think that the only answer to that is that I knew what I was getting into and, even more than that, I knew what the story was trying to say. I have no idea what someone without any background in the novel or the philosophical debates around it would think of the movie. My guess is that they wouldn't get it and, as a result, would hate it. But that is just a guess.

The story is a perfect example of post-modernism. It is an incredible example of deconstruction focused on what really lies beneath the mask of a superhero. Alan Moore said that he wrote the book as a statement against hero worship. He said that he couldn't believe that anyone would trust their lives or their salvation to some of these "heroes" and he set out to show that heroes aren't all they're cracked up to be (incidentally, this dovetails nicely with my recent post about flawed heroes ). And so the book is an examination of what it would be like if superheroes existed in the real world.

The story, which takes place in an alternate 1980s universe where America won Vietnam and Nixon has been elected to a fifth term (he asked Dr. Manhattan to intervene in Vietnam which won the war within a week and, as a result, became so popular that he got the term limits repealed), focuses on a group of masked "heroes:" the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, the Silk Specter, Ozymandias, and Rorschach (for the uber-fans out there, yes, I do know that it is actually "Nite Owl II" and "Silk Specter II"). Of them, only Dr. Manhattan, who was created in an accident in a nuclear physics laboratory has any super powers. And, due to the Keane Act passed by Congress years earlier, only Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian, and Rorschach are still active - Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian because they are government sponsored, and Rorschach because he refuses to give up.

The heroes are amalgams of popular superheroes. Both Rorschach and Nite Owl are parts of Batman. Dr. Manhattan is a take on Superman. And the Comedian is something like Captain America in that he goes to war for the country and has the government's backing. But the most important aspects of these characters are their problems. That is what it is all about, and to miss that is to miss the entire crux of the story.

Dr. Manhattan (the blue one) is a perfect example. After the accident, he becomes, essentially, a god. What would happen to someone who was given limitless power? Would they be able to maintain their humanity? Would they have any connection to Earth at all? As Dr. Manhattan says "In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon." As the story progresses, he moves further and further away from humanity. Visually, this is shown by him losing more and more of his clothing until he wears nothing at all.

Rorschach, on the other hand, is mentally deranged but morally exact. He enacts retribution on the guilty in the most violent manner possible, typically ending in their death. But he is certain in his morality and never wrong. When he attacks someone, you can be sure that they are, indeed, guilty. In the same way that, when Batman takes down a criminal, you know they deserved it. The difference is Batman's "one rule" to not kill, which Rorschach abandons after he tracks down a kidnapped child and finds that her kidnapper raped her, cut her into pieces, and fed her to his dogs. After that, there is no mercy for him, only justice.

The Comedian is, as Dr. Manhattan says, "the most amoral man" you have ever met. He believes that humanity is one big joke and relishes in retribution and anarchy. In the course of the movie he rapes two different women and, when one becomes pregnant, he murders her in cold blood. And yet, his actions are fully sanctioned by the government.

Ozymandias, the world's strongest/smartest man, on the other hand, is a megalomaniac that only wants to make the world a better place. This is actually brought out more in the film than in the book. In the book, he is just a very successful businessman who capitalized on his alter ego. In the movie, he working with Dr. Manhattan to find clean, renewable energy. He wants to make the world a better place but is willing to pay any price for it. In this way, Ozymandias is the most like a comic book villain. He is like Lex Luthor if Luthor's intentions were noble instead of selfish.

Nite Owl and the Silk Specter are the normal of the group, but even they have their issues. The Silk Specter has mommy issues (and daddy issues when it turns out that the Comedian, who raped her mother, is her father) and Nite Owl has adequacy issues which he compensates for with the costumes and violence.

All in all, not the nicest bunch of people. And they're the "Watchmen," those set up to protect humanity.

And, in the end, they do - sort of. To prevent nuclear war and the complete elimination of mankind, Ozymandias orchestrates a scheme that wipes out millions of people but unites the world against a common - albeit, imaginary - enemy. This was the one place where the movie differed dramatically from the book. In the book, the plot involved a giant squid and a supposed invasion from outer space. The movie, it involved framing Dr. Manhattan.

This change - which fans will no doubt debate for all time - was very interesting. It was definitely a statement, though an obscure one. It is almost a philosophic statement about religion in that Dr. Manhattan is set up as a god who is "up there watching them" and who punishes the wicked. It suggests that belief in God is just as risky as trusting these heroes - that mankind must look to itself for salvation. Very interesting given the political climate today.

As I said, this isn't a fun story, and anyone who heads to the theater thinking that it is going to be just another superhero flick is going to be seriously put out. Instead, it is an examination of what makes people heroic, what makes people villainous, and what makes people human. Like the superhero stories it deconstructs, it uses archetypes - amplified examples - to prove its point. The only difference is that these archetypes are not the nice kind.

But the most fascinating part of the movie came towards the end. In the beginning, Laurie (the Silk Specter) goes to see her mother (the original Silk Specter) about the murder of the Comedian. Her mother, who had been one of the women raped by the Comedian is unable to condemn him and actually speaks affectionately of him. At the end of the movie, after discovering that the Comedian was her father, Laurie's mother asks. "How could I condemn him when he gave me you?" Earlier, Dr. Manhattan is awed by what he calls miracles, including the fact that even someone as amoral and "evil" as the Comedian could produce someone like Laurie. Those two moments struck me as being more redemptive for humanity than the book was for me. They spoke to our ability to forgive, repent, and move past our mistakes. They speak of our ability to improve life, no matter how bad or how bleak.

So, in the end, I think I enjoyed it for what it was: an examination of humanity and heroism with all its warts and dark little secrets laid bare. It isn't an easy film to watch, but I think that, despite its flaws, it was a worthwhile experience. Just know what you are getting into before watching it.

Zombie stories don't usually do much for me. I'm just not that interested in the living dead, although I will admit that I thoroughly enjoyed Shaun of the Dead. But, when I heard that Max Brooks, the son of Mel Brooks, had written a documentary-type book about a fictional war with zombies, I was intrigued enough to put it on my list. I'm glad that I did.

I just finished reading Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006). The book, which is written as a series of first-person accounts that had been supposedly collectedbythe fictional author (an unnamed U.N. employee)nearly a decade after the war was fought and won, was, quite frankly, exceptional. The stories were horrific enough to keep you at the edge of your seat, yet so grounded in reality that you really believed that, if the world were ever attacked by the living dead, this is exactly what would happen. The amount of detail in the book--from the names and layouts of cities around the globe, to local customs, to how the zombies moved and attacked, to the problems and solutions of the military--was completely engrossing. But the two most fascinating aspects of the book were how it described the incompetency of modern governments and the remarkable faith it showed in the human race.

The book goes through several different phases of the war, from "Early Warning Signs" to "The Great Panic" (the worldwide retreat away from the zombies), to "The American Front," to "Total War." It details early responses to the zombies, which mostly involved denial and blaming others, to the first disastrous attempts by the military to repel the zombies--mostly because their equipment wasn't designed to destroy the brain, which is required to "kill" a zombie--to the reconstruction efforts. While the book did have an entire chapter devoted to America, most of the book was focused in other countries, including Cuba, which, through a quirk of fate (it was easy to defend), became the most powerful economy in the world.

Interestingly, the book never attempts to define where the zombies come from. It gives no explanation, either scientific of fantastic, for the origins of the creaturs. It just accepts the facts that they showed up one day. The only real detail as to their origin is that they came from China--rural China, to be specific. That being said, the book does give a lot of details about them. You have to be killed by a zombie (which just takes one bite) in order to "reanimate." Theyonlydiewhen their brains are destroyed. They use far less liquid in their bodies than normal humans. They can "survive" underwater--even at crush depth (which means that they can, literally, walk across the ocean). And they are attracted to sound (the U.S. military draws them to battle by playing Heavy Metal music).

But, as I said, it was really its portrayal of modern governments and humanity that drew me in.

There are very few stories that critique modern society more than zombie stories. This started with George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), which attacked consumerism and the greed of corporate America. But the tradition has continued until today. Even the more recentShaun of the (2004), a hilarious send-up of zombie movies (while still a very good zombie movie on its own) was filled with biting social commentary (it attacked the drudgery of the service industry--essentially, people were zombies long before they became the living dead). World War Z is no exception. It is filled with spot on critiques of modern politics, consumerism, and the survival instincts of mankind.

For example, when the zombies first start appearing in isolated cases across China, the Chinese government's first thought is--not to eradicate the zombies, who they don't consider to be a big enough threat--but to squash any rumors of it so they don't look weak to the rest of the world. As a result of the crackdowns, which include imprisoning and/or killing people for having information about the zombies, many people escape as refugees, some taking infected family along for the ride.

Other parts of the world have their own difficulties. When Iran tries to seal its borders against the possibility of invasion, Pakistan objects. It leads to nuclear attacks that devastate both countries.

Israel, on the other hand, implements a voluntary quarantine, open to anyone who has ties to the area, including Palestinians. At first, they seem to be the best hope for survival, but they soon fall prey to civil war within their own, self-imposed walls.

In America, the first response is to send out covert teams around the world to take care of the problem surreptitiously. Then to appease the fears of the populace--and to appear like they are on top of things--Congress rushes a new, completely bogusrabies vaccine (theinfection was originally called "African Rabies")through the FDA and dispenses it to the people. Thus, they left their people completely unprepared when the real attack came.

When the zombies finally attacked America in force, the military organized a battle in Yonkers, New York, to demonstrate the might of the military. Missiles, rockets, mines, video uplinks, and countless reporters, were on hand. And all of them were completely useless. The battle was a disaster, and led to "The Great Panic," which drove many Americans to the far north (zombies freeze in the cold and have to wait for the next thaw to reanimate). But they left so unprepared that they soon fall prey to the cold and to cannibalism.

In other parts of the world, things were much worse. The Russians couldn't maintain their military discipline and so they "decimated" their own troops (killed one-tenth of them) in order to keep them in line. In China, the generals holed up away from the populace and sent the old and the young to die (and, ironically, to reinforce the other side), until the generals had to be wiped out by their own people. Many headed to the ocean, to die of starvation or thirst on one of the many ships that became stranded in the middle of nowhere.

The whole world retreated to the few secure locations. In the U.S., it was west of the Rockies, which presented natural barrier. In other places, it was in the mountain tops, in well-defended valleys, or in the far north and south.

Eventually, inspired by the urging of the U.S. President, the nations of the world organized and wenton the offensive. The descriptions of battles over land, in the air, under the sea, and even in the tunnels under Paris, were extremely detailed, horrifyingly realistic, and breathtakingly inspirational.

In the end, the book is about so many of today's problems: our willingness to blame others rather than take responsibility, our lack of truly useful skills, our life of so many distractions and so little meaning, and our ability to overcome. The end reinforces the will of humans to survive and to excel at all costs. As much as the first half of the book is about human incompetence, largely brought about by laziness, the second half is about human determination and strength in the face of overwhelming odds.

For example,one part of the book talks abouta blind Japanese waiter and gardener who trains himself to be a "warrior-monk" and, with the help of a former gamer that had no interest in the world beyond his computer, liberates Japan (Japan is evacuated in the early part of the war because it is overrun by zombies walking over from China). Another part, which I wrote about earlier in my post on Zombies, Superheroes, and Our Children, talks about a former movie director that turns to making inspirational films that practically save the American spirit.

One of the best recommendations that I can give to any book is to say that it engrossed me so much that I dreamed about it. Well, for the week it took me to get from the beginning to the end, my nights were filled with zombies.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

My sister, Katie, is a glutton for punishment. She keeps asking excellent questions that inevitably lead to long blog posts. I think it's great because it helps me to firm up my own thoughts and conclusions about what I am researching: it helps me put things into order and make sense of them. I just wonder how the rest of you feel about it.

After my post on why heroes are getting darker (which also stemmed from one of Katie's questions), Katie asked a very good follow up question: how will darker heroes affect our childrens' worlds of pretend and beyond? This question is a lot harder to answer than the first one for a couple of reasons. First, my area of research has been primarily focused on proving that heroes are getting darker and what that says about post-9/11 America. I have not been researching what the changes mean for the future. Second, making those kinds of predictions is extremely difficult because hard evidence is very hard to come by. There aren't any really good studies that show long term impacts of these kinds of changes. That being said, as a father of young children that will grow up in this darker reality, I recognize how important the question is and, since I have come across a few things in my research that may shed a little light on the subject, I'll take a stab at it.

I think it is important to remember that I am not suggesting that darker heroes are making our world darker. For the most part, I believe it is the reverse: our heroes are reflecting the darker, post-9/11 world. At the same time, darker hero stories with little optimism and hope feed our pessimism, making the world seem darker. It is a cyclical thing that feeds on itself.

Over the past few days, I have been reading a very fascinating book called World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006). The book, which was written by Max Brooks, Mel Brooks' son, is a collection of first hand accounts of a long war with zombies wiped out a large percentage of the earth's population 10 years earlier. It is a very fascinating read and I will likely write up a review of it once I've finished reading it (I'm about half-way through).

One of the first hand accounts in the book appears in the chapter titled: "Home Front USA." It is about Roy Elliot, a man who was a movie maker and well-known actor before the war. As the US began the process of retaking and fortifying the country, he was ranked as an F-6, which means he had no useful skills (useful skills are classified as those that could directly help with the war and reconstruction efforts: gardening, metallurgy, weapons training, construction, etc.). But, after a long struggle, he found himself a very important role.

In the story, one of the major problems faced by the Americans (in fact, faced by the whole world) was what they called "ADS," which was Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome or Apocalyptic Despair Syndrome. Essentially, it was people giving up on life. They could be barely wounded or completely healthy when they went to bed but never wake up. In all, it was claiming over 100 people a day. The problem wasn't physiological, it was psychological. Elliot was the one who found the cure.

He went to the battlefield and recorded key victories. He got the army to bring high tech weapons that provided great visuals (specifically, lasers), and recorded them whomping on the undead. The fact that the lasers were highly impractical in real combat, didn't matter. They made for a thrilling show that seemed to "prove" that the Americans were winning. Elliot travelled from camp to camp, screening his movies and scattering copies everywhere possible. The first time one of his movies was shown, ADS dropped by 5%. After a few months, it had been cut in half.

Toward the end of the story (which is written like an interview), Elliot asks the interviewer if he has heard of The Hero City, which was made by a similar filmmaker during the Zombie War (from what I gather, The Hero City was where the Americans finally overturned the zombies, but I haven't got to the specifics, yet). When the interviewer says that he has heard of it, Elliot expounds: "Great film, right? Marty made it over the course of the Siege. Just him, shooting on whatever medium he could get his hands on. What a masterpiece: the courage, the determination, the strength, dignity, kindness, and honor. It really makes you believe in the human race... You should see it."

The interviewer responds that he has seen it, to which Elliot asks: "Which version?" At the interviewer's confusion, Elliot explains: "There were two... Marty made both a wartime and postwar version of The Hero City. The version you saw... Did it show the dark side of the heroes in The Hero City? Did it show the violence and the betrayal, the cruelty, the depravity, the bottomless evil in some of those heroes' hearts? No, of course not. Why would it? That was our reality and it's what drove so many people to get snuggled in bed, blow out their candles, and take their last breath. Marty chose, instead, to show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they're going to be okay. There's a word for that kind of lie. Hope."

While obviously fictional, the preceding section from World War Z brings out an interesting point: the power of pop culture to influence the psyche.

I'm not talking about making people behave in certain ways. Arguments over whether pop culture makes children and adults act one way or another have been going on forever (even Plato got in on this one!). And, no matter how many studies come back with conclusive results one way or the other (many people don't know that studies have proved both sides of the debate, which kind of rules science a moot point), the argument will likely continue far into the future.

No, what I'm talking about is different than controlling people's actions. I am talking about changing or enhancing feelings.

Did you ever come out of a movie feeling better about the world around you than when you went in? Why? Has the reverse ever happened?

In 2006, Metta Spencer, a retired professor from the University of Toronto who studies peace and currently edits Peace Magazine (see Metta Spencer's blog), published a fascinating book titled Two Aspirins and a Comedy. The book examines the impact of television and movies on the human psyche, specifically, their ability to influence negative and positive feelings which can then influence our health. The book describes how movies and television shows draw our emotions to the surface and that, as emotional beings, those emotions can make us either sick or healthy. Essentially, the book demonstrates that, what Roy Elliot's character does in World War Z (make movies that promote hope over despair) actually works in the real world!

So, what does all this have to do with superheroes and our kids? Plenty.

Hero stories are teaching stories and always have been. They reflect (and therefore, teach) the values and highest ideals of the society that created them. Villains, on the other hand, reflect the darkest nightmares of that same society. These reflections are magnified on a large scale to make the lessons obvious. In reality, no one could quite measure up to the pure evil that is the Joker. At the same time, no one could be as morally good as Superman. But, then again, we're not really expected to be. They are archetypes--examples--not models.

Even stories of real life heroes fall into the archetype model. That is what "Marty" in World War Z was doing by omitting all of the bad things done by America's "heroes": he was focusing on the archetypes. Archetypes are not really human, they are what Plato called "shadows" of reality. As a result, they do not have the baggage that humans carry with them. They are neither fallible nor flawed (sorry, just had to throw that out there).

Plato was very worried about Homer and other poets of Ancient Greece bringing their heroes and gods down to the human level. In his Republic, Plato spends a great deal of time slicing and dicing their works to cut out any mention of mistakes or overtly human passions. Heroes and gods, Plato argues, should be perfect so they can be examples to the youth.

The danger Plato most feared was imitation. He worried that bad examples of the gods or heroes would make the youth want to act the same way. What he didn't consider was the impact on emotions and what that would do to society as a whole.

Contrary to popular belief, violence in the media isn't really the problem (I am not saying that it isn't "a" problem) with society. In fact, some types of violence in movies can be very productive as long as it resolves well in the end.

One of the greatest movies I have ever seen is Glory, which is about the first black battalion in the Civil War. The movie is incredibly violent and even difficult to watch, but few things have inspired me more than the courage and character demonstrated by the characters in that movie. Another painful example is Life is Beautiful. That movie is horrific, largely because of the violence it doesn't show, and yet, you walk away from it uplifted and inspired.

Some would argue that those movies are historic (or at least in an historic setting) and, therefore, don't count. But the thing is that our brain doesn't really distinguish between reality and fiction when producing emotions. People can get just as intense emotional thrills watching Star Wars or The Dark Knight as the movies listed above. The sacrifice of a fictional character can be just as moving as those made by characters based on real people.

Okay, so where am I going with all this? It's pretty simple. Because of 9/11 and a dozen other catastrophes that have occurred in the past seven years, our society is becoming far less hopeful and more pessimistic than before. This is being reflected in our heroes, who are becoming darker than ever before. However, as our archetypal heroes in movies, comics, and the rest of popular culture, become darker, they feed the darker mood of the country. Things get darker and darker until all we have left is darkness.

That is, I fear, the great danger of what is happening to our society. The darker our overall mood becomes, the worse off we will be. If Metta Spencer is right, then there will be more sickness, poverty, depression, suicide, and perhaps even crime, all around.

Doesn't sound like fun, does it?

Please remember, that is the extreme. It depends on a lot of people losing all of their hope.

Speaking of hope, that is what heroes, both real and fictional, are all about. They give us hope when, perhaps, we no longer have the right to have any. And, no matter how bad things get, the example of our heroes can always bring us back from the brink.

Of all the superhero movies that have come out since 9/11, I think that The Dark Knight best embodies this idea. After going through everything that they do, the people of Gotham still aren't willing to blow each other up. Even the convicted murderers and all around "bad guys" won't do it. And, when Batman becomes a "villain" (or, at least, is perceived to be one) in the end, he still embodies the selfless sacrifice that so many of our leaders embody. So, even though the movie is arguably one of the hardest superhero movies to watch because of the violence and terror it embodies, it ends with hope.

Hope is a powerful emotion. If there is enough of it, it drives out fear and darkness. It makes life worth living.

Getting back to Katie's question, how will these darker heroes affect our children? If things do not change, I can say with a certain amount of surety that it means that our children will grow up in a world that is much darker than the one we grew up in--or at least perceived to be that way. On the other hand, I think that they will also grow up in a world that is slowly beginning to hope for the future and even believe in the overall goodness of humanity.

In reality, it all comes down to what we teach them. It is impossible for us to shield them from the terrible things in this world, and I personally believe that doing so is a disservice to them. Find those good things. Find those seeds of hope. Teach them to your children and help them grow.

Maybe we can change the world.