Movies and superheroes

I've always been a big fan of comics and superheroes. There is something magical about seeing a crusader standing up for the weak, and triumphing over not just evil people, but evil itself. Someone with the power to change the world, and someone who uses it. A person bigger than life itself.

There's a simple charm to such tales. It's much easier to see black and white separately in such stories rather than the muddled grey we usually see. Yet the people behind the heroes are very human themselves, they're usually shy, honest and truthful. They stand behind curtains looking at the ones they love, the ones they would like to be with, the ones they may never have. It's something I guess every geeky and nerdy guy, and comic fan would relate to. But oddly so, I think others do too. People are inherently nervous, in times where they feel powerless to prevent harm to what they hold dear, they tend to look to higher powers for help and guidance. Ample proof is provided by the thousands of miracle stories just about any recently devout person will tell you, how the lord helped them overcome great misery and problems. I feel that little scared kid never quite dies in anyone, he or she is the core of anyone's persona, and in times of peril, we tend to recede to that very persona. Every scared kid needs someone to hold their hand and tell them it's gonna be ok. Though this might sound like an extremely twisted proof to such a claim, an interesting "research" was published in the media some time back. The reason research is in quotes is that the authors were from the (in)famous Playboy magazine. They simply correlated the centrefolds' vital statistics to the times when people were under duress, for e.g. economic downturns etc. What they found was extremely interesting. Men (well , people is a useless generalization here) chose more curvaceous women in times of economic upturn, or when things were going well. In times of depression, they chose women who looked more liked they could take care of them.

Well you may ask what does this have to do with movies exactly? That's simple, try to find the biggest hits of the past 7 years or so, and they'll mostly be fantasy tales about superheroes and the like. 7 is kind of the pivotal number here, cause I'm making a reference to 9/11 here. It seems a lot of the american public hasn't quite emerged from the shock of that time. They still feel that the wrongdoers have not been punished, and they are still at risk. Movies have also adopted a very politically active role, making snide references here and there to the ongoing events.

One might ask, why do things take so much time to heal as we grow older. Well, a major part of the answer is in the question itself, we grow older, more rigid. Another big part is probably that as an adult you are expected to take care of others, and generally hide your fears. Our problems tend to accumulate inside us and we have no one to turn to for answers. And no one to put our problems in perspective, we're pretty likely to get excessively tense about trivial things.

I sometimes wonder if it would be better if there was someone who had all the answers, or atleast someone who could point us in the right direction. Someone who knew exactly what to say, when we're lost for words. Someone who could prevent bad things from happening and people we care about go away. Someone who could be our very own ... superhero.