This video is dumb. It’s making contradictory criticisms while having no alternative of its own to suggest.
The heroes don’t use their powers to radically alter the world because, first and foremost, then it wouldn’t be our world, it would be a very different one. Once you actually apply all the innovations that should be possible, the setting starts looking more like Star Trek, and it becomes a very different story. This is the same reason that Batman will never keep his villains off the street, whether he captures them or kills them. It’s the same reason the Doctor always makes his way back to current year earth somewhere in the UK. The status quo they are maintaining is the one that let’s us continue telling this kind of story.
Second, things like time travel and reality altering magic, things which can fundamentally change our world in an instant have to be kept limited, or we have no more stories. This goes beyond just the status quo of the setting and gets into the basics of storytelling and having tension. Make your heroes too powerful with no limitations, and you can’t maintain a conflict without gigantic plotholes.
Second and a half, fundamentally altering the world with time travel or super science or magic is a concept that should be terrifying in its implications. Maybe time travel could alter the timeline for the better, but who gets to decide what is better, and what trade offs are worth it? Who gets to decide that it’s worth unmaking millions of lives to alter history into something you think might be better? And how many ways can it go wrong? The world is a complicated place, you can’t make sudden drastic changes without inflicting a lot of harm, even if you think the good it does will outweigh the harm. And doing so with forces that we may not fully understand or control is reckless. I mean, fuck, Ultron is the example they give of something to change the world, and would you trust the people making AI today to put that in a self-aware army of iron man robots?
Third, what kind of message would it send if the heroes used some bullshit super science or magic solution that quickly and easily solved environmental issues or social problems? Is that really addressing the issues in a way that’s helpful for us in the real world? Is it setting an example for us to follow when they aren’t faced with any of the real difficulties that come with solving those problems? it seems like that would just be dismissing the problem and implicitly endorsing the kind of vaporware solutions that polluting industries often try to hype up to avoid real change.
Fourth, do you really think the world would end up better if a small group of super powered individuals tried to overthrow governments, destabilize economies, and transform civilization by force? We’re not just talking about intervening in a specific conflict like Ukraine or Palestine here, the video makes that clear. If at the end of the day, they aren’t radically altering society, they are just defending the status quo. But, how do you think that would actually play out, especially in a world where there are other super powered individuals who will oppose them? World domination by benevolent dictators imposing their will on society while tearing the current order down by force is not going to be pretty, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare. And let’s be honest, none of our heroes have shown the capacity for building back the world they would be destroying, which is the much harder part.
Well, actually, no, despite criticizing the heroes for not using their powers to single-handedly institute radical change the video goes on to argue that change would actually require larger movements lead by the public, and condemns the idea of an elite few hogging power (should iron man be flooding the streets with military hardware? And how the fuck is the hulk suppose to share his power?). So, what then is the right thing for them to do? I guess they should engage in peaceful activism and support the people when they aren’t called away to stop some murdering asshole from killing a bunch of innocent people. So, basically what we have now, but with a few more scenes of them making political statements and doing volunteer work that doesn’t actually contribute to the plot.
Fifth, the villains are sometimes given sympathetic motivations because we want some nuance and complexity. The world is complicated and most conflicts are not just black and white. The lesson isn’t that change is bad and evil, it’s that you can’t just view the world in such simplified terms. The alternative of making the villains all bad and the heroes all good is actually far more dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that we can just see the world in simple us vs them terms, with no need to understand other points of view or to question our own.
Sixth, they do fight the status quo, just not the parts that the video wants to address. Daredevil can’t solve all the world’s problems but he can and does fight both organized crime and corruption. Captain America isn’t going to overthrow the government, but he will fight SHIELD when it crosses the line. Iron Man changed his own company to address its role in the world, and uses it to innovate to make the world a better place, that’s just not the focus of the story.
I think you’ve said a lot that is in line with the video, tbh. Most of your points accurately spell out why a superhero movie involving a protagonist who disrupts the status quo wouldn’t work, mostly because we are living in the status quo and the general audience’s main frame of reference – that which they use to understand the story – is that status quo is overall good, that there are inevitable bad parts that must come with the good, and that mass change is inherently bad. You even note this last point yourself.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the superheros are still, for the most part, not proactively trying to recognize reorganize society, but keep it the same and react to its threats, which sometimes have interesting intentions of reorganization, but ultimately all end up doing an irredeemable act in the eyes of the audience so to signal that they are in fact the bad guy.
I don’t think this video is really meant to be taken as “superheros should change the status quo,” but more closely look at Graebers generalization and kinda jostle people out of their “the status quo is ultimately good, despite it’s necessary evils,” worldview. Graeber often said he’s not trying to provide an answer or solution to societal organization outside of hierarchical Nation-states, but just to allow people to break out of the traditional mental framework and ask the question, what else could work?
Stories don’t need to be told, humans need to tell stories. That’s what makes us human, and is how we spread ideas like honor, justice, and even civilization itself.
Hero stories reinforce all of these ideas, and others besides.
Hero stories reinforce that “honour, justice and even civilisation itself” (as a placeholder for vaguely progressive ideas) would need to be installed by powerful individuals aka Great Man theory fiction.
That’s not what I’ve seen. The stories I’m familiar with usually involve defending those things where they already exist, not establishing them. Even in cases where that needs established, as often as not, they’re usually protecting someone else who embodies that ideal.
I’m sure there are stories similar to what you’ve described, but I don’t see that in the stories I’m familiar with.
![Marvel [Tyler Hendrix]](https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/2c9c1796-73ea-4ae0-8325-0809abede939.webp){kind=link}
This video is dumb. It’s making contradictory criticisms while having no alternative of its own to suggest.
The heroes don’t use their powers to radically alter the world because, first and foremost, then it wouldn’t be our world, it would be a very different one. Once you actually apply all the innovations that should be possible, the setting starts looking more like Star Trek, and it becomes a very different story. This is the same reason that Batman will never keep his villains off the street, whether he captures them or kills them. It’s the same reason the Doctor always makes his way back to current year earth somewhere in the UK. The status quo they are maintaining is the one that let’s us continue telling this kind of story.
Second, things like time travel and reality altering magic, things which can fundamentally change our world in an instant have to be kept limited, or we have no more stories. This goes beyond just the status quo of the setting and gets into the basics of storytelling and having tension. Make your heroes too powerful with no limitations, and you can’t maintain a conflict without gigantic plotholes.
Second and a half, fundamentally altering the world with time travel or super science or magic is a concept that should be terrifying in its implications. Maybe time travel could alter the timeline for the better, but who gets to decide what is better, and what trade offs are worth it? Who gets to decide that it’s worth unmaking millions of lives to alter history into something you think might be better? And how many ways can it go wrong? The world is a complicated place, you can’t make sudden drastic changes without inflicting a lot of harm, even if you think the good it does will outweigh the harm. And doing so with forces that we may not fully understand or control is reckless. I mean, fuck, Ultron is the example they give of something to change the world, and would you trust the people making AI today to put that in a self-aware army of iron man robots?
Third, what kind of message would it send if the heroes used some bullshit super science or magic solution that quickly and easily solved environmental issues or social problems? Is that really addressing the issues in a way that’s helpful for us in the real world? Is it setting an example for us to follow when they aren’t faced with any of the real difficulties that come with solving those problems? it seems like that would just be dismissing the problem and implicitly endorsing the kind of vaporware solutions that polluting industries often try to hype up to avoid real change.
Fourth, do you really think the world would end up better if a small group of super powered individuals tried to overthrow governments, destabilize economies, and transform civilization by force? We’re not just talking about intervening in a specific conflict like Ukraine or Palestine here, the video makes that clear. If at the end of the day, they aren’t radically altering society, they are just defending the status quo. But, how do you think that would actually play out, especially in a world where there are other super powered individuals who will oppose them? World domination by benevolent dictators imposing their will on society while tearing the current order down by force is not going to be pretty, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare. And let’s be honest, none of our heroes have shown the capacity for building back the world they would be destroying, which is the much harder part.
Well, actually, no, despite criticizing the heroes for not using their powers to single-handedly institute radical change the video goes on to argue that change would actually require larger movements lead by the public, and condemns the idea of an elite few hogging power (should iron man be flooding the streets with military hardware? And how the fuck is the hulk suppose to share his power?). So, what then is the right thing for them to do? I guess they should engage in peaceful activism and support the people when they aren’t called away to stop some murdering asshole from killing a bunch of innocent people. So, basically what we have now, but with a few more scenes of them making political statements and doing volunteer work that doesn’t actually contribute to the plot.
Fifth, the villains are sometimes given sympathetic motivations because we want some nuance and complexity. The world is complicated and most conflicts are not just black and white. The lesson isn’t that change is bad and evil, it’s that you can’t just view the world in such simplified terms. The alternative of making the villains all bad and the heroes all good is actually far more dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that we can just see the world in simple us vs them terms, with no need to understand other points of view or to question our own.
Sixth, they do fight the status quo, just not the parts that the video wants to address. Daredevil can’t solve all the world’s problems but he can and does fight both organized crime and corruption. Captain America isn’t going to overthrow the government, but he will fight SHIELD when it crosses the line. Iron Man changed his own company to address its role in the world, and uses it to innovate to make the world a better place, that’s just not the focus of the story.
I think you’ve said a lot that is in line with the video, tbh. Most of your points accurately spell out why a superhero movie involving a protagonist who disrupts the status quo wouldn’t work, mostly because we are living in the status quo and the general audience’s main frame of reference – that which they use to understand the story – is that status quo is overall good, that there are inevitable bad parts that must come with the good, and that mass change is inherently bad. You even note this last point yourself.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the superheros are still, for the most part, not proactively trying to
recognizereorganize society, but keep it the same and react to its threats, which sometimes have interesting intentions of reorganization, but ultimately all end up doing an irredeemable act in the eyes of the audience so to signal that they are in fact the bad guy.I don’t think this video is really meant to be taken as “superheros should change the status quo,” but more closely look at Graebers generalization and kinda jostle people out of their “the status quo is ultimately good, despite it’s necessary evils,” worldview. Graeber often said he’s not trying to provide an answer or solution to societal organization outside of hierarchical Nation-states, but just to allow people to break out of the traditional mental framework and ask the question, what else could work?
Why do hero stories need to be told?
Stories don’t need to be told, humans need to tell stories. That’s what makes us human, and is how we spread ideas like honor, justice, and even civilization itself.
Hero stories reinforce all of these ideas, and others besides.
Hero stories reinforce that “honour, justice and even civilisation itself” (as a placeholder for vaguely progressive ideas) would need to be installed by powerful individuals aka Great Man theory fiction.
That’s not what I’ve seen. The stories I’m familiar with usually involve defending those things where they already exist, not establishing them. Even in cases where that needs established, as often as not, they’re usually protecting someone else who embodies that ideal.
I’m sure there are stories similar to what you’ve described, but I don’t see that in the stories I’m familiar with.
No story needs to be told.