On Superheroes

I'm not a fan of superheroes.

Superheroes are very popular at the moment. I suppose it was inevitable once film production technology advanced to the point where superheroes could be represented realistically in film. Some attempts were made in the 70s, 80s and 90s to bring superheroes, until then represented only in comics, to film and television screens. But with the technology of the day they weren't particularly successful, except perhaps in animated form.

Enter the CGI revolution. With cost-effective photorealistic CGI, all sorts of previously-impossible visuals could be brought to the live-action screen. And superhero movies, if you will pardon the expression, took off.

I have always had something of an aversion to the things that everybody else likes. I'm not entirely sure where that came from, but for all my life that I can remember, I have avoided many of those things that are extremely popular. I never listened to the same music as my peers. I never hung out with the popular people in school. I didn't play sport. I have never even been particularly interested in following sport. It has always seemed to me that the extremely popular was synonymous with the trashy, the lowest-common-denominator, the mass-market. I felt myself above all that.

When the big-budget, live-action superhero movies hit popular culture, this natural aversion kicked in. They were popular, therefore I wasn't interested in them. That being said…

Did you ever notice that the entire superhero genre is based on the idea that some people are just inherently better than other people? A superhero, by definition, can perform feats that other people just aren't capable of. Superman can fly. Spiderman is ridiculously agile. Batman is…

Ah. Now we come to Batman, who is by far my least favourite superhero of them all. Batman's superpower is that he is rich. He is usually described as one of the wealthiest businessmen on the planet. Yet he is able to take time from his busy schedule overseeing Wayne Industries (running a multibillion dollar business doesn't tend to give normal people much leisure time) to extrajudicially beat up bad guys at night with gadgets that he can afford because he has more money than anyone else.

Anyway. The superhero genre is inherently classist. Those people who either are born with, or who somehow acquire through chance or accident (never by their own efforts), special powers are a cut above the huddled masses, and are either afflicted with megalomania or self-sacrificing altruism. The battles between the former and the latter make up the large part of the stories of the genre.

Now, I know that the genre is somewhat self-aware. One of the superhero franchises that I actually like a little bit is the X-Men, and one of the reasons that I like it is that it has addressed the class division between ordinary humans and Homo Superior. It has gone directly into the social, political and financial consequences of having a whole new class of people with special abilities running around the planet wreaking havoc. Similarly, Spiderman gets into trouble with the law fairly regularly and he is not well-regarded by the authorities. There are probably other superheroes similarly affected but I've never got into them so I don't really know.

I still have a plan to watch Deadpool at some point, because I understand it to be about the most self-aware superhero movie of them all, to the point of absurdity. That appeals to me, kind of. It isn't high on my list of priorities of things to do, but I'll watch it at some point.

Someone once quipped that I don't like superhero movies except for the ones I've seen. I have to admit, there is a certain amount of truth in that. Modern superhero movies (the good ones, at least) are generally well-made and well-written. They're good movies. My personal dislike of the genre does not mean that the movies are objectively bad. I just have an opinion that differs from what is apparently a large number of moviegoers.

Superhero movies aren't going away. I don't watch a lot of movies anyway, so this is no-one's problem but my own, and I don't consider it to be much of a problem, really. I mean, no-one's forcing me to watch them, are they?

The Skinny Rebellious Woman

I was attending what might have been a Star Wars premiere. I was wandering the site looking for someone I knew. One of my friends wanted to get a look at what was being stored in the green vans that were onsite - presumably props or sets or something. I was sitting on a tall chair, but my friend had to climb on the van to see in the window.

He was seen by one of the employees of the event - a young, skinny looking woman with short hair. She threw him off the van onto the ground and kicked him in the ribs. I found this kind of conduct unacceptable and confronted her.

I wasn't getting anywhere talking to her about the incident, so I asked her to take me to see her supervisor. I could tell from her rebellious demeanour that she would try to avoid taking responsibility for her violent action in front of her supervisor, so I made sure to maintain a firm grip on her arm as we left the event.

She led me on a long and rambling walk through what might have been a university campus. Her supervisor was clearly not on site at the event, although it did occur to me that it was possible that she was not honestly leading me directly to them. At one point she transformed into a bird and escaped my grip, but she couldn't help but gloat and I recognised her voice and was able to recapture her.

Eventually we arrived at what seemed to be a gallery or artistic community. Her supervisor was there - an older woman - but there were a lot of other staff about at the time. I asked if we could discuss the matter privately. By the time I was able to have a conversation with the supervisor, the rebellious young woman had disappeared, and I realised that I hadn't even learned her name.

Blast from the past

Woah! I have a blot!

Quite a bit of water has gone under the bridge since the last time I wrote in this blot. My circumstances have changed rather a lot. I've just read through my old entries and I noticed that one of the reasons I started this blot was to practice my writing skills. Well, that worked out. I'm two-thirds of the way through a fantasy novel, and have done a couple of other writing projects as well. Most of what I've written is on the blogger platform, but none of this is in this particular blot.

So instead of talking about anything important, I'll talk about why I call this site my "blot" and not my "blog".

First, because I think it's a little bit funny. The word appeals to me, especially since it's a normal word that I'm using for a completely different purpose, and that appeals to my sense of humour.

Second, I think the word "blog" is overused and I don't like it.

Well, that's about it. Sorry it wasn't very interesting. Instead I might introduce you to a couple of new words that I've coined in the past. Both of them are portmanteaus.

The first is obsane. This is a combination of obscene and insane. Trump got elected President? That's obsane!

The second is shuff. This is a combination of stuff and another word. Dude, you moved into your new place weeks ago. It's time to start getting your shuff out of my garage.