THINGS TO CLICK

Seduction of the Innocent, redux

Superheroes bad for growing minds and bodies: From sciencedaily.com, published August 15, 2010:

"There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday," said psychologist Sharon Lamb, PhD, distinguished professor of mental health at University of Massachusetts-Boston. "Today's superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he's aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity."

Some of this may be right, but it surely misunderstands the foundations of the superhero comics of past and present. Any simple reading of the first Superman, Batman, et al., comic books extol quite a bit of the very things being condemned presently by Sharon Lamb.

"Researcher Carlos Santos, PhD, of Arizona State University, examined 426 middle school boys' ability to resist being emotionally stoic, autonomous and physically tough -- stereotyped images of masculinity -- in their relationships. He also looked at how this would affect their psychological adjustment."

I suspect a lot of the psychological gnashing of teeth about superheroes is manufactured by targeting certain cultural images that possess popularity (and bankability), and then working backwards from that as a tool to explain male behavior. The link seems arbitrary and based more upon the high profile of a popular image.

But, accepting the link as real, by simply revising the keywords used as negative characteristics by these researchers changes the actual value basis for superheroes (as defined by the psychological experts in this article, what bonafides they possess beyond doing polling is not explained). To whit: "emotionally stoic" is probably a positive obverse compared to whining; "autonomous" can be self-sufficiency versus "clingy" chronic co-dependency; and "physically tough" surely beats out "physically abused," that is, if victimhood can be defined as a negative (and in modern culture, that's debatable).

But clearly my list of alternatives is as knee-jerk as these researchers. Defining male behavior through the hyper-relief cartoon textures of superhero comics is a dead-end, because the superhero books, whether they exactly resemble the descriptions of these researchers, or are radically different, isstill simply not normal behavior in the real world.

My question is this: If superheroes influence the creation of the negatives the psychologists have in their grocery list, why don't the armies of comic book store customers possess those characteristics? Even a nominal study of the fanbase of superhero comics would show the reverse: a preponderance toward the whining, clingy, co-dependent victimhood behaviors versus the emotionally restrictive stoicism, let alone the pro-active energy typical in a comic book superhero. Perhaps these researchers should be seizing upon why males might hold to an ideal as defined by that group of cultural emblems, versus believing in passive coarsion from those emblems.

But their main target is the superhero movie, easy to condemn for violence (always considered a wrong within the emotionally contained chambers of psychology, where will power is claimed to dominate not only reasoning but reality itself). The rest of the article seemed to also contain a simple attack upon paternalism, which makes sense since fatherhood is deeply aligned with superhero themes, where a missing father accounts for any number of missions of help/rescue/revenge.

Seeking to tinker with the mechanics of 'manliness,' I think these attitudes presented by these psychologists suggests an inability to see beyond the fun-house mirror distortions of the basic American superhero comic. They should have more insight than what they pitifully have got if they're going to suggest reforms for a population of superhero-loving males.

Written September 2010, revised Dec 1, 2010