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Comments
I think that one's better left to Malk. At a guess, I'd say it would have something to do with the mechanisation of warfare and the death of the Romantic period, but this is far, far away from any area of expertise I have.
You watch Extra Credits, right? I assume it's similar to their explanation of why the FPS developed here.
Yeah, I saw that episode.
But I forgot everything that wasn't to do with swords.
It had to do with the country's origins as a revolution and the notion of the everyman soldier/hero.
I dunno, superheroes are pretty popular in Japan too if shonen stuff and toku are anything to go by.
I just came to express offense at this:
For it implies Australians can even think of the magnificent cockfights we stage in Colombia
You may carry on with your delusions about swords being cool.
I think there's a significant difference between American superheroes and shonen protagonists. In America, the superhero is almost always a result of science gone wrong or right. In Japan, supernatural abilities are a part of mastery in the martial arts or internal energy. A superhero, almost inherently, is lucky or unlucky. Shonen protagonists go through a growth process wherein they slowly become empowered through their training and conditioning as a part of general human potential. I guess that's why the term "superhero" is only ever applied to American characters, because most American superheroes work from the idea that this individual exceeds the potential of a regular human. In Japan, a character with the same set of powers wasn't given them, but unlocked them.
I don't think it's quite fair to say that superheroes are only or more popular here than in any other country. Rather, I think it's more to do with the grasp over the world's entertainment America has. Japan has a thriving superhero market (in some places stronger than America's) and the British Comics Invasion happened for a reason. A lot of American comics didn't make it onto European shores due to communists fearmongering about the violence and evil in them (the same stuff Fredric Wertham used to create the Comics Code Authority) and appealing to nationalism to not want their own culture be overtaken by Americans. A good part of this was Communists not wanting to see the big dog capitalist escapist fantasy to win. As a result, the comics landscape of countries like France and Germany are very different. (Many French comics got republished in America in a magazine some might know as Heavy Metal)
It's kind of ironic, since I feel a big deal of the birth of superhero comics comes from growing socialist sentiment during the depression. Superman himself seems to be a combination of socialist ideas packaged in an American ideal. Those with the power to do so helping those with no power of their own. It's no coincidence that Superman showed up around the same time as FDR's New Deal did. The ethos is the same in both of those things; one applied to fantasy, another to reality. Hell, it continues throughout superhero mythology, no matter how flawed superheroes become. 'With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility' after all.
I think it comes to American exceptionalism to extent, though I don't think that explains everything. However what does Superhero mean? a hero, except moreso. The thing is, ideally a superhero can be anything. We've had superheroes that have been patriots, shamans, Robin Hood, knights, ninjas, detectives, and almost anything under the sun. There are some unfortunate realities of Cultural appropriation there, but it comes to the fact that America has no concrete mythology, but rather an entire tapestry of mythologies to drag from. Comics were long drawing on eastern mythology for inspiration before the ninja craze hit film and there were a good deal of well-intentioned but misguided African and Native American superheroes.
And I think there's an ideal, if unfortunately not a reality, that anyone can become a an American, or a superhero. There's an existential trait to superheroes that being kryptonian, mutant, or obscenely rich doesn't define your goodness or badness but how you use what is at your disposal.
It's part of why I dislike the Superman=Jesus analogy. Jesus came to redeem us and was always separate (provided you believe in Christianity of course) Superman is here to inspire us and doesn't consider himself better than any of us.
"Do good to your fellow man and any man can be a Superman." Superman said in the Silver Age, and that's what I think is at the heart, and it's why a rich kid with deductive ability and kung fu skills and a dude with a bow and arrow can also be superheroes.
^You're forgetting about things like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai which are explicitly called superheroes.
That said, I don't think the level of progression denies someone from becoming a superhero. This was all what Spider-man was during the early days, not to mention Blue Beetle and The Last American Superhero who are all about learning and 'upping their power level'.
Hell, power upgrades happen all the time in superhero comics. The extremis armor, Spider-man learning Spider-fu, Batman getting a new gadget...
It doesn't have the inherent spiritual martial arts bent as often, but that is rather a cultural difference.
Oh god I'm turning into Alex.
It's interesting that you bring up socialism. I might be biased, but I see the seeds of socialism in chivalric tales and Catholicism, despite socialism's aversion to class and reverence for both secularism and enlightenment. This really comes as a small surprise, since Jesus himself might be considered a socialist philosopher. Likewise, despite its missteps, Catholicism played a big part in charity and the redistribution of wealth as evidenced by the way finances were altered after the establishment of Protestant Christianity, which had an emphasise on saving wealth. In chivalric tales, we were given the concept of the "knight errant" -- he who serves kings, lords and commoners alike. If there's a better historical analogue of state power acting as a protectorate of the people, I'm not sure what it is.
I think the big difference between the knight and its cousins, the superhero and shonen protagonist, is faith in external forces. The superhero is empowered by science, and the shonen protagonist is empowered by training. A knight, on the other hand, places faith above all other virtues. Despite the unfortunate reality of selfish, cruel knights, and the more common reality of young men who were trying to get by with the position they had been given, we've arrived at a cultural point where the common understanding of a knight involves servitude -- and faith -- in a cause. That might be Christianity or God, but I think those figures can essentially be placeholders -- faith in anything external is sufficient, because it's the belief in something bigger than oneself.
I'm on the level with the "everyone can be Superman" point of view as well. At the same time, it's difficult to disregard the fact that while other heroes are defined by extensions of mundane existence, most superheroes are defined by scientific intervention. There's always some particular condition that needs to be met before they're given their powers. Even Batman and Hawkeye, who aren't technically "super", have their particular technologies because science was an enabler. Personally, I don't think this damages the concept that anyone can live up to superhero virtue, but it's an interesting difference.
I think the use of science is a sign of American sensibilities at the time that science would improve our lives and make things more efficient. It can also be seen in stuff like the Jetsons and Star Trek.
In the late seventies-eighties this kind of thought process turned sour around which might have something to do with comics becoming darker.
Of course it's also come full circle back to pro-science writers like Ellis and Vaughn.
I can't speak for super sentai, but Kamen Rider is big on the whole science going horribly wrong/right thing. Hell most of the riders have their transformation belts powered by some form of nonsense science and for none of them it was inherent. Every time they were either the right person or the only person at the time who could pick up the belt and use it to fight monsters.
Also, don't forget characters like Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Wildcat, Huntress, or Lady Shiva.
Or for an even more mystical bend, take the Swamp thing. And then there are instances where science and magic mash up like Doctor Doom or Magick from the X-men.
I was gonna mention the magical characters like Zatanna and Klarion, but I thought what Alex meant was not necessarily that the American superheroes used science so much as their philosophy wasn't self improvement of their skill unless necessary, whereas the shonen hero's all about improvement as a warrior.
But that still shows up from time to time. Characters learning new powers or skills. Or just stuff like the X-men running danger room sessions to train themselves.
*shrug* It's what I took away from what he said. For what is worth, I think that in the case of the X-Men, who tend to have powers that can risk society as a whole without control, self-improvement as warriors is nothing short of necessary.
^^Think of it as a general trend more than an absolute.
That's more or less it. A superhero is largely static in powerset, because the virtue exists separately to their exceptionalness; a shonen protagonist's power is driven internally by their virtue. One interesting thing about this is that a villain in a shonen series will invariably have a similar or superior skillset to the hero earned under similar conditions, although whether that's an example of implicit cultural compassion or self-loathing is best left up to better minds. Then you have the knight, whose virtue is power without any sequence of translation, because getting young, cocksure men with nasty weapons not to be assholes was presumably a pretty big deal.
Andrzej Sapkowski once remarked that when you compare American fantasy to European, you begin to see the underlying cultural differences. Take Conan and The Lord of the Rings, your typical barbarian hero and your typical epic fantasy, and the big guys of the two sides of Pacific.
Strong and independent, a barbarian is uncorrupted by the decadence of old and established civilisations. He may believe in gods, deeply even, but achieves by his own labour. If he becomes a king, it's by his own hand, not by claims of royal lineage.
Somebody already mentioned classism in The Lord of the Rings; that's the first thing, there are social classes and nowhere it's shown as evil or decadent. And then you get mythological references and a descendant of the royal line on the quest to regain throne.
You know what just came to me, by the way? It could be fun to compare SF&F of other peoples, not just the Anglo-Saxons to each other.
That it would, although I'm very ignorant of sci-fi and fantasy not produced by white people or Asians.
Latin American Science Fiction is non-existent, practically, except for maybe (Emphasis cannot be stretched enough) Borges and underground movements in the New Granada area like Medellin. Latin American fantasy is mostly magic realism (well, we created the genre, might as well do something with it.) which everyone knows all about.
...right?
I had to study it for Literature recently actually.
Last I checked, you're not everyone!
;_; Fuck you man I know you don't have to rub it on my face
I gotta say, whenever I hear magical realism, I wanna stab somebody.
Why?
Because he enjoys bloodshed, presumably.
Because it's a made-up thing where you don't want to admit your story has fantasy elements because obviously fantasy is just dragon and elves.
I don't agree. You can't call a story "fantasy" because magic happens once or twice but it's otherwise set on perfectly normal modern earth.
It's still magic. It's not fucking 'magical realism'. Magic exists in the world. It's a magical world.
Not to mention most of the things with it I've read that have been ridiculously blatant (Zorro's vision quest in the Isabelle Allende novel) or ridiculously stupid -and- blatant (having such great sex the house catches on fire in Like Water For Chocolate)