Material Culture: The Hollywood Sign

The rise of the heroes who do not "do good"  

We live in a modern world, where no one believes in fairytales anymore. However, as human beings determined that we cannot change our lives, we tend to believe in heroes and heroines, giving us hope for the better. Unfortunately, not even heroes are what they used to be.

Not so long ago, our heroes illustrated perfect picture of morality and braveness, they were strong, smart and they fought or the good of humanity. Superman was once an ideal hero, and yet he became overrated. The main stage was taken over by heroes such as Joker, Venom and Deadpool – characters with a slightly broken moral compass that keep making errors of judgment, mistakes, inappropriate jokes and etc. Even though some of these characters originally represent villains, more recently they won the hearts of many people as they presented their stories on the big screen.

Deadpool, for instance, is an antihero from the Marvel Comics Universe. When he first appeared, he acted as a villain of the New Mutants and X-Force, before becoming a more heroic figure later on. Through the first movie about Wade Wilson, a.k.a. Deadpool, we see how he became the character he is – he was tricked, experimented on and tortured. Everybody deals with trauma in their own way, and Wade came out of his as mercenary with a warped sense of humor. The one thing that gained sympathy of the audience the most must have been his life story – we got a reason behind his actions, which is all we need actually.

As a society, we grew a certain kind of group thinking that if the reason and the story is good it justifies the actions. Alongside this way of thinking, we have one more reason why Americans today tend to like superheroes that do not “do good” – down to earth stories. As we try to find hope in the superheroes, the ideal ones are those who are close to us: the one who make bad decisions, immoral choices and act human. Because as long as heroes can act this way, it means that so can we.