I am always a little surprised when I find out that others actually read my long posts about superheroes. Obviously, I hope they will be read, but I understand why people would shy away from them. Some people have told me that they just skim the long posts or skip them altogether. And, to be honest, I don't blame them. I mostly write these posts as a way to crystallize my thoughts for the book and just get everything I'm thinking on "paper." I send them out into the ether without any expectation that anyone else will ever read more than the first couple of sentences, if that. So it always is a pleasant surprise when I find out that someone has actually read it all the way through. And I'm thrilled when I learn that someone actually got something out of it or when they ask a question because it leads me to the next post. Like this one.
After
my post on Enchanted a couple of days ago, my sister, Katie, asked me the million dollar question: why are superheroes getting darker? That question is the entire focus of my book! So I am excited for the chance to answer it (yes, Kates, I
was just waiting for someone to ask).
There are a lot of ways to answer that question. The short answer is that our world is darker--or, at least, it is perceived to be that way--so our heroes are naturally darker. As I pointed out in the post on Enchanted, hero stories reflect the culture that produced them, so a less optimistic society leads to less optimistic heroes.
Just think of everything that has happened in the last decade: Y2K, Enron, 9/11, 2 wars, 2 recessions, a tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and more! That is a lot for 10 years. Poll after poll has confirmed that people are feeling more stress and less optimism than ever before. It is a pretty dark world these days, and our heroes spring from that.
I personally believe 9/11 was the tipping point. It was a defining event that transformed American history like few others have. We already refer to the pre- and post-9/11 world. How many other events have that kind of impact?
Few people outside of comic book fandom know that superheroes have been getting darker since the mid-80s, starting with the release of
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and
Watchmen by Alan Moore (read my post on
The Dark Knight Returns). Both of these graphic novels are products of their time. They are loaded with the cynicism of the '80s that was, itself, a backlash against the '60s and '70s. The whole point of
Watchmen, which deconstructs the superhero genre, is that the power of leaders must be constantly checked.
The Dark Knight Returns, which featured a disturbing caricature of Ronald Reagan, had a similar message.
The darker comic book characters began to show up in the mainstream media (meaning movies) in the late '80s and early '90s. The first indication of the change was Tim Burton's Batman. Throughout its production, Burton was said to walk from department to department carrying a copy of The Dark Knight Returns and constantly referring to it whenever a question arose. As a result, the look of the movie is very similar to the book. It is dark with little distinction between day and night. Other films quickly followed suit: Blade, Spawn, etc. All of the films released during that period featured dark, often morally ambiguous heroes.
With that background, the natural question is: are superheroes really getting darker or do we just see them that way? That is a valid question. I would argue that they are.
In the comics, superheroes have recently crossed lines they would never have crossed in the pre-9/11 world. Spider-man naively revealed himself to the public and had to sacrifice his marriage to save his aunt after she was shot by a sniper. Iron Man helped the American government hunt down superheroes and strip away their rights while starting a global war with Atlantis. Superman became a dictator and nearly wiped out half of humanity. Wonder Woman took the law into her own hands and executed a villain on live television. Batman, created a robot army and super computer to act as an overlord of the whole earth, was driven insane by a new foe rumored to be Satan himself, and was apparently killed in a helicopter explosion. And Captain America turned against the U.S. government, consorted with known criminals (specifically, Frank Castle, a.k.a. The Punisher), and was assassinated while on his way to trial.
Captain America’s death is, perhaps, the most telling of all these changes because he symbolized an earlier generation—an America that was—which cannot exist in the post-9/11 world. It is no small coincidence that, just months before the Cap’s assassination, DC Comics (Captain America is a Marvel title) featured the apparent death of Uncle Sam, their own representation of the American Spirit (Uncle Sam didn't die, though how he escaped was never made clear. After the battle, he was left lying face down in a pool of water). It is also noteworthy that Captain America’s mantle and shield were later assumed by Bucky Barnes—the Cap’s former teenage sidekick now grown into a somewhat mentally unstable assassin that has worked both sides of the fence.
And that's just the comics!
The change has also occurred in the movies, culminating in The Dark Knight, which is, arguably, the darkest superhero film of all time (incidentally, The Dark Knight was not based on The Dark Knight Returns. The primary influence of the movie was The Long Halloween which featured the rise and fall of Harvey Dent and The Killing Joke which established the darker, more evil side character of The Joker).
The change has even been noticed by the mainstream media. Not long after the release of
The Dark Knight,
CNN ran an article answering the question: "What's with Batman's Voice in
The Dark Knight?" (for those who haven't seen the movie or
Batman Begins, its predecessor, Batman speaks with a deep, rasping voice that is markedly different from his Bruce Wayne voice--this is one of the biggest complaints people have about the movie). In the article, CNN tracked the history of Batman's voice, showing that it grew deeper as the character grew darker. It also observed that it really can't go much deeper than in
The Dark Knight.
So the characters are darker. What is fascinating about the change, however, is how they grew darker.
Beyond the darker world inhabited by its characters, Tim Burton's Batman was darker largely through its villains. Nicholson's Joker was one of the first comic book villains to actually kill people on the screen. Not only did he kill people, he killed a lot of people, often in gruesome ways (e.g. burning a man to death and poisoning people with Smilex, his personal toxin). His body count would be the envy of Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or any other slasher film monster.
The Dark Knight, however, made things darker by making them more realistic. The superhero films of the '80s and the '90s were extremely stylized. Burton's Batman, for example, was filmed entirely on a sound stage using models. Even the fighting in the movie was stylized to the point of being fantastic. By comparison, The Dark Knight was filmed almost entirely on location (specifically, it was filmed in Chicago with a little sound stage work done in London) because director Christopher Nolan wanted it to be "realistic and gritty." He wanted the audience to be able to picture themselves living there and most would argue that he achieved that. No one could picture themselves living in Burton's Gotham.
One of the best illustrations of how The Dark Knight was more realistic than Burton's Batman was the scene that showed Bruce Wayne stitching himself up after a fight. He was wounded--by a dog, no less! When he turned his back, the audience saw that it was covered with scars. The only scar Burton's Batman had (besides the obvious, psychological ones, that is) was given to him by Catwoman in Batman Returns. Unlike Burton's Batman, Nolan's Batman can actually be wounded.
The realism has also been amped up in other superhero movies as well. It was the whole point of Hancock (the movie lost its way towards the end but the script actually kept up the "realistic superhero" bit all the way through). And it was the original basis of the Heroes TV show. In fact, one of the biggest concerns of comic book fans is that some of their favorite characters, such as Thor, won't do well in this new, more realistic world--they fear that audiences won't accept a living god in the same world inhabited by the latest incarnation of Iron Man (this is, arguably, one reason why the new Hulk movie didn't do as well as others).
It isn't just superhero movies, either. The "realism" factor has infiltrated just about every aspect of popular culture. Cloverfield was a "realistic" take on the mega-monster story (there is a fun 9/11 allegory that goes along with Cloverfield but that will have to wait for another time). And look at the new James Bond. In his latest incarnations, Q, the most unrealistic part of the series, is noticeably absent as are the gadgets that made Bond famous. And in the TV show Lost, there are no good guys or bad guys. They are just human.
An interesting study in the "more realistic fantasy" of modern movies can be found in the latest version of Beowulf that came out a couple of years ago (the motion-capture one). In the original poem, Beowulf is portrayed as perfect. Again and again, the poet extols his virtues and frequently makes comments like "this is why Beowulf was a great king" and so on. The movie, however, spun the story in a very different direction.
Instead of the paragon of strength and virtue that is described in the poem, the new Beowulf is arrogant, greedy, and deeply flawed. As Hrothgar, the king before him, did, Beowulf succumbs to temptation that eventually leads to his downfall. And, at the end, the viewer is left with the question of whether Beowulf's heir apparent will fall into the same trap.
As Beowulf prepares to go to fight the dragon that is his own offspring, he says something very interesting to his queen. "Keep a memory of me, not as a king or a hero, but as a man: fallible and flawed" (that is where I got the title of my book). More and more, that is how our heroes are being portrayed.
So, now the question is, "why?" And this brings us back to 9/11.
9/11 changed the American perspective of what makes a hero. In fact, over the past seven years, the question of what makes a post-9/11 hero has been a big focus of the media, both mainstream and popular. It has showed up in news and talk shows, in popular movies and television, in politics and celebrity life, in documentaries and cartoons, in high literature and comic books. It even showed up in
Disney's Bolt! The consensus is that even the most fallible and flawed character can be a hero if they selflessly give of themselves for others.
In his book,
Heroes & Villains, Mike Alsford defines it this way: "The hero confronts the otherness of the world and seeks to overcome it, often via a willingness to set aside their unique powers thus rendering themselves vulnerable" (pg. 39 - read my earlier post on
Heroes & Villains). The idea is that heroes, real heroes, put themselves in harms way for others.
The definition is not new. The post-9/11 twist is that heroes no longer have to be golden gods. They can be imperfect--even villainous, at times--and yet, still be considered heroes because, when the time comes, they give up all their selfishness and inhumanity for the greater good.
If you think about it, it makes sense how 9/11 would bring about this change. Think about 9/11. What do you remember? There are the images of the towers. The people falling to their deaths. The smoke and the fear. And then there is the image of the smoking field where United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. And there are the firefighters and police officers racing towards the inferno. And there are volunteers, lined up around the nation to give blood. And there are the politicians, coming together for, perhaps the first time in memorable history, to find common ground. And there are the soldiers, going off to war.
9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror were filled with images of heroes. But they weren't clothed in costumes and they weren't masked, and they often made mistakes--the fact that 9/11 occurred at all being the first. They were human. They were fallible and flawed.
It is the haunting images of those heroes that ground modern superheroes in reality and make them darker than ever before.
