the concept of the hero

[Coola Yagami]

Y'know, I wouldn't call myself 100% moral, nor am I saint by any means, by I do try to be a good guy whenever I can. While times have changed and people are more cynical and mistrusting nowadays, yeah, back in younger times I would help old ladies cross the street or help someone pick up things when they've dropped a mess of papers or groceries. To this day I still hold the door open to everyone, not just women, but old folks, or people I notice are a few feet away but headed for the same door I am.

While a lot of my morals come from my parents upbringing and church and stuff, a big part of it also comes from superheroes. Back then my heroes were Spider-Man, Batman and the Ninja Turtles. I only heard of Captain America and hadn't bought the comics til a bit later but I could tell he was a symbol of righteousness. A lot of my actions were determined by 'what would Batman/Spider-Man do?' I never wanted to do something that would disappoint them, nor would I ever have wanted to end up 'on the wrong side of the law' and turn out to be the same kind of scumbag that my heroes would be beating up on. I remember in school when teachers wanted a volunteer and no one would do it, I would eventually raise my hand cause I felt I was 'saving' the class (hey I was in grade school, ok?)

The point is, what hope do any kids have nowadays with these woke versions of Marvel and DC heroes that feel more like activists and violent extremists? Just recently they had this X-Men book about this girl, I believe is named Nature Girl. She's a mutant but other than her horns/antlers/something on her head, I don't know if she has any powers. She found a turtle choking on some trash and found the bag to belong to some store. She found the store, asked for the manager and stabbed the guy in the neck with a fork. And it was done in a way that we're supposed to cheer and be like 'yeah go girl!'.

More people die, and the X-Men send Wolverine after her, not because killing is wrong or because she's killing innocent people, but because her actions were making mutants look bad and could ruin human/mutant relations. She gets nothing more than a time out for committing mass murder, and on top of that she's confronted by illusions/ghosts(???) something of her victims where the store owner comes back and reminds her for all she knew he could have been a father and she now left that family without one and she was still like 'I don't care, you deserved to die and I'd do it again'. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

The stupid thing is, it's not like the ****ing store manager went into the lake and purposely put the bag in there in himself, that could have been any random customer. He has no control what anyone does after they leave the store, even with a sign that says 'don't litter with out products' or whatever, it's not like they're not gonna. What kind of retarded logic is this that the reader is supposed to emphasize with and root for???

Another thing that came to mind is that this mutant is, apparently, supposed to hate all humans, and yet her victim was a straight white male. I somehow get the nagging the feeling she wouldn't have been so quick to go stabby-stabby if when she called for the manager a black lesbian woman showed up instead.

I have noticed a trend of 'straight white males' always being jerks and assholes, and I don't mean the supervillains but random people, just so the reader doesn't feel too bad when they get killed, but still... it's a mutant girl and her friends going around killing people that did nothing wrong and are just doing their jobs. Like those kid (both the readers and the characters themselves) will never understand that someday they might be doing some job that might have their own Nature Girl walk up to them to kill them, and they're just trying to feed their family.

That is the most recent example but for a while now there's been heroes doing all sorts of whacked out ****, that when you stop and think about it would put them in the wrong and make them just as bad or worse than the people they fight, but hey, their name is on the book so.... heroes? There was even a comic with Miss Marvel and other newbs confronting a person being robbed and they actually stopped to discussed among themselves about the implications if they intervene, based on race, money status and whatever other nonsense while the person is still being robbed. Sheesh.

What kind of morals and lessons are being taught to kids nowadays. What are they to do if the heroes they're supposed to look up to are no longer virtuous and righteous. If anything we're lucky the good guys are still good guys in the MCU.

[IMJ]

Kids aren't taught to strive or be heroic nowadays. They are taught that heroism is onboarding. And the singular defining element of the "everybody gets a trophy" generation is about "anyone can be a hero! You are all heroes!".

Think about it.

Power Rangers encapsulated it for a generation.
It's overrunning superhero books - there isn't a Spider-Man anymore. Instead there are Spider-MEN and it's like that across most I.P.s now.

The concept of striving to be singularly great has been supplanted completely for a generation of drones made to feel the best way to be is all the same, but of course everyone is heroic so it's okay to be all the same. Everyone got a trophy and now in adulthood they are all Power Rangers but there is no Superman.

[Leo656]

As unpopular as the movies are in the mainstream sense, one of my favorite things about the Snyder DC movies is how strongly the idea is put forth of "What makes one truly 'heroic' isn't how they act when things are Good and Easy, but how they endure when things are Bad."

Not shockingly, those movies were dismissed as "too dour" by mainstream audiences specifically BECAUSE they pushed that point rather than trying to just be fun romps, but regardless, it's a point that needed to be made and they did a great job with it, in my opinion.

They're great to me because they explore what a guy like Superman would REALLY be forced to endure and how tough that would be to manage. Having to pick and choose when to get involved and when not to, knowing that every time you make a choice, someone dies. And all the while, people telling you that maybe it would be better if you just stayed home... except your nature makes that impossible, because your nature says, "Do What's Right"... even when people try and complicate that, or dissuade you from it. And in the end, that innate nobility, that drive to do what he knows is right, is what always wins out despite any moments of frustration or all the people telling him to his face to just stop being Superman. He endures, because it's not about making it easy or doing it for the parades. It's JUST about doing right BECAUSE it's right and because you have the power to do so, the end. I found that INCREDIBLY inspiring, because realistically, it's how one acts when things are going bad that defines their "heroism" or "nobility". The comics have explored the same themes to great effect many times, but movies and TV shows rarely have because it's "too heavy" for casual audiences.

I get that, but isn't that the message we SHOULD be teaching kids? That it's not about the parades, and that sometimes being a hero or even just a "good person" is hard, maybe even thankless and frustrating, but you should do it anyway because it's The Right Thing To Do? We SHOULD be seeing our heroes go through hard times and choose to endure, and it should go deeper than "I can't take MJ to the prom because I have to go fight Doc Ock, oh boy." Ideally, it would go a bit deeper than that. Some people thought the whole "...Do the nightmares ever stop?" bit was too heavy-handed in BvS, but c'mon. Superman absolutely WOULD be tormented by the fact that he can't save everyone, and it absolutely would affect him, and occasionally he definitely would feel like he wasn't doing enough, or doing too much, depending. That doesn't make that interpretation of the character "dark", it means he has a f*cking conscience and a human soul. And did he quit, in the end? No. And again, those are lessons I feel need to be taught. That was the entire point of that scene with Pa on top of the mountain and the story about the horses drowning in the flood: That all actions have consequences, "doing good" is hard, sometimes when we think we're doing a good thing we're actually causing a problem for someone else, and that there are no easy answers... BUT that none of that means you just don't try, or give up. It just means that you accept the natural and real consequences that come with the role of being "a hero", and take the good with the bad, but in the end you find a way to endure.

The way Batman was portrayed in that movie ended up telling the same moral, but through a different lens, and we really saw more of it come out in Snyder's Justice League after the fact. But even at his worst, Bruce was still doing things for the right reasons (mostly) even after he'd lost himself. But in the end, he did find his way back, because he never really lost the heroic and noble part of himself, he'd merely misplaced it. He didn't have the same strength of character that Superman had to persevere and hold onto his "true self", and so he became corrupted by the world around him, but in the end he was still TRYING, in his misguided way, to be "heroic". He really did think that "saving the world from Superman" was for the best, since for all he knew Superman and Zod were no different. And in the end, poetically, it was Superman who reminded Bruce who he was and what he was supposed to represent, and that was Bruce's entire arc of the movie(s), getting back to who he was before all the tragedy in his life twisted him.

Again, much of it was lost on general audiences, but if you asked me to summarize BvS in one sentence, I'd say "It's a fable about how the world we live in tries to corrupt and tear down its heroes, and how the true nature of heroism comes from how we fight back against the darkness to keep being the best version of ourselves, even when it's hard or seems impossible." That is 100% what that movie (and MoS and Snyder's Justice League, by extension) is about. And while I'm not shocked so many people missed that point, given where society is at right now, I'm saddened that they missed that point, because it's a point worth telling and re-telling.

Sadly, the messages we REALLY send kids nowadays are a lot more cynical in nature. Who are they "supposed" to look up to and idealize? Sports stars, generally. And what lessons do they learn from their "heroes", who take performance-enhancing drugs and get caught cheating repeatedly to no consequences? "By any means necessary". Cheating in the gym, cheating on the field, cheating on their wives/partners... "Whatever it takes, just don't get caught." Horrible. I honestly don't see it ever changing, though. "True" heroism and selflessness isn't fashionable anymore in the Instant Gratification/"I Want, Therefore I Deserve" society we live in now. I really think we've gone too far to ever turn back.