I had an incorrect intuition about the apparent ubiquity of super hero movies these days. Based on the proliferation of titles and the inescapability of them among the choices in online catalogs and streaming services, I was convinced that their "popularity" was the inevitable consequence of their being the only kind of movie getting produced. I was wrong. While I could not find data for a “superhero genre” on the sites that concern themselves with movie numbers, I learned that while the action and adventure categories of which they are a sub-genre constitute together approximately only 15% of the total number of movies made annually by genre -- number 1 being run-of-the-mill Oscar fodder dramas-- they earn nearly 50% of the box office. I found it hard to get a handle on how much is spent on movie production budgets by genre but one study has shown that action and adventure have among the lowest returns on investment of any, which could be a reflection of the size of their budgets. (The category with the greatest return by far: Documentary!)
What this tells me is that contrary to my intuition, superhero movies are not what the public is being force-fed. It's what they want. The hype surrounding them is merely a consequence of the size of their budgets.
My intuition was of course based on my own tastes about them, which puts super hero movies near the bottom of the list when it comes to choosing entertainment. It isn't that I consider them childish and shallow. On the contrary, I lost interest in them when they became dark, deep and novelistic in the netherlands of the 70s. My consciousness of them was formed in the golden age of the previous decade when the earth looked like a Rand McNally globe from outer space, the sun had squiggly lines surrounding it and henchmen still wore black masks and Kangol caps; a time when supermen were supermen and supervillains were supervillains. None of this psychological and human superhero melodrama for me. I like my superheroes like I like my presidents -- vapid and innocuous. Sure it made no sense that someone who could make time go backward by reversing the rotation of the planet would once an episode find himself helplessly bound by a common thug, but there had to be some dramatic tension. But I suspect part of the reason for their popularity continues to be the opportunity they afford for vicarious experience of what, in a world in which it's easy to feel helpless, it would be like to experience power over the forces of evil.
In fact, I've been thinking about super heroes and super hero movies because I finally have an answer to the party game inspired by them of naming the secret power you'd want to have if you could choose only one. It has to be limited to one because what superpower would you not want to have if your choices were unlimited? Imperviousness to bullets, knives and nooses would be an immediate reducer of anxiety. The strength of a volcano would come in handy in so many situations -- jar opening, subway door prying, getting out of bed. The ability to fly like lightning, to shrink to the size of an atom or grow to the size of a building, to stretch like rubber, breathe underwater, see through walls... who wouldn't want these? But the game stipulates only one selection.
The answer came to me one day watching some annoying thing on tv-- the news, corporate PR, one of those dishonest PSAs from an undisclosed PAC, a true crime show... I don't remember which, but it was the sort of thing that raises my temperature and forces a flood of clear and concise invective to form in my mind. It occurred to me that the power I would most like to have is laserlike eloquence. Not merely a talent for words but a superior ability to use them to penetrate the mind of my foe with incontrovertible truth and defeat the evil that motivates them by persuading them to come to the light. Under cover of night he enters the chambers of his adversaries and whispers Truth to them in their sleep to make them dream of redemption. No evil mastermind is too great to be tamed by his words -- not the murderer for jealousy or insurance money, not the billionaire would-be conqueror of outer space, not the head of the apartheid state nor his enablers, not the Corporate CEO, not the evil funder of think tanks and foundations. How useful would that be? I could use it right now for instance.
It might not make for a blockbuster movie. But I'm looking for power, not for entertainment. On the other hand, if a Bizarro Superman movie gets produced I'll be first in line for tickets.
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