Or: why no one is waiting for The Avengers to save the
day
If one positive is to come out of the current Covid-19
crisis, at least from an entertainment perspective, then let it be a total and
utter disillusionment with the prevailing "superhero" cinema that has
dominated the cultural discourse for the past twenty years.
At a time when real heroes are stepping forward to
keep our societies from grinding to a halt or descending into outright anarchy,
how are we meant to thrill at the adventures of a bunch of rubber-clad cartoon
characters who routinely save the planet by destroying large chunks of it?
Characters like Batman and Iron Man – intellectually
gifted billionaires with questionable politics who respectively fight crime and
extraterrestrial threat, but have no inner-lives, at least nothing that is in any
way human or believable – or characters like Superman and Wonder Woman – who
aren't even human, and as such teach us nothing about the sacrifices and
hardships that real heroes face every day.
These caricatures, lionized in contemporary art and
entertainment, would be completely ineffectual against the current issues
facing humanity.
Marvel's The Avengers (Avengers Assemble) [Joss Whedon,
2012]:
In movies, when "The Avengers" or "The
Justice League" save the world from some mad warmonger, or quell an
extraterrestrial invasion by firing a blue beam of light into the sky, they
routinely leave cities destroyed, businesses lost, and lives disrupted and
upturned. Because these films, and by extension the comic books that inspire them, are devoid of reality and depth, we never see the cost of this
destruction.
We don't see the businesses that failed because employees
were unable to go to work. We don't see the resultant economic recession that
hangs over our lives for the next two decades like a black cloud. We don't see
the medical staff and emergency services stretched to capacity and having to
deal with the fallout from these "superheroes" and their collateral
damage. We don't see the death, the grief, the public mourning. We don't see
the aftereffects of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. We
don't see the low paid but undoubtedly "key workers" that must risk
their health and wellbeing to go to work each day, while the end of the world
spectacle rages all around them.
What we get instead is hero worship directed towards
the rich and privileged. Fictional characters who can only save the world
against contrived and unnatural disasters that will literally never happen.
The real heroes aren't Iron Man or The Incredible
Hulk, they're not Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel, and they're certainly not the
Hollywood phonies that get paid $20 million a movie to stand in front of a
greenscreen and play pretend. These people aren't saving the planet. They're
self-isolating in their mansions, consoled by their wealth and celebrity, happy
to sit this one out while the people that will never make half a million
dollars in their entire lifetime risk life and limb to support us.
Behind the Scenes - Avengers: Infinity War [Joe & Anthony
Russo, 2018]:
Photo credit: @Russo_Brothers
The next time you see a movie about some alien Übermensch,
billionaire vigilante or genetically modified super soldier, ask yourself why
we're not seeing our key workers depicted in the same manner. Why do we hold
these ridiculous characters to a higher cultural esteem than any of the
following?
All hospital staff, from doctors and nurses, surgeons
and ward clerks, to cleaners, porters, security teams, IT operators, catering
staff and more. Every one of them is vital to keeping our hospitals and
emergency services running. Bus drivers, train drivers, delivery drivers, ambulance
crews, police officers, firefighters, shelf stackers, checkout workers,
cleaning operatives, funeral arrangers, coroners, childcare workers, farm
workers, fruit and veg pickers, pharmacists... these are some of the lowest paid
and denigrated jobs in society, and yet they're the absolute lifeblood of our
society.
Absolute nobodies, like Josh Brolin, Robert Downey Jr.
and Gal Gadot, or any other Hollywood celebrity playacting for a living, can
accumulate a collective net worth of anywhere up to $100 million, while those
who work for our emergency services get paid around 14-15k a year, and our
cleaners and supermarket workers draw a minimum wage, if that! It's disgusting.
Yes, these films provide escapism, which is a
necessary opiate from the oft-crushing realities that we face, however, this
particular sub-genre of films has been allowed to proliferate to the detriment
of stories about real heroes and the real challenges that we, as a global society, have encountered.
