A Little Research

I've been doing some research for my Business of Animation module, as this is part of our learning objectives to research working practises and conventions of the area we are working in for our brief. Whilst coming up with character concepts I come across a news article that I mentioned in a previous blog post, the article was comparing more modern super hero creations to the older more "traditional" ones such as superman, spiderman etc. I decided that I would post the article, particularly as I am running out of space in my sketchbook and am trying to save paper but really because I thought it was interesting and had an interesting bearing on my super hero design thoughts.

This article was taking from the Telegraph's website.

The debate about violence in the media has reared its head again, with an American psychologist, Dr Sharon Lamb, claiming that modern-day superheroes such as Iron Man are far worse role models than their 20th-century predecessors.
"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," she says. "When not in superhero costume, these men, like Iron Man, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns." She pines for the "comic book superhero of yesterday", whom boys could look up to because "they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities".
Does media violence encourage the real thing? And are modern superheroes any worse than their ancestors? The first question is difficult to answer, and really one for behavioural scientists, not journalists. A 2008 meta-analysis on the subject in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior, which looked at the results of several earlier studies, found no link, but the findings were uncertain and further studies have said otherwise. It is open for debate.
But Dr Lamb seems to be wrong even on her own terms. For a start, Iron Man is hardly "today's superhero". Certainly, the film only came out in 2008, but Stan Lee developed the character in 1963. Besides, the "bling" lifestyle of Iron Man's alter ego, Tony Stark, a billionaire arms manufacturer, is not so different from that of Batman's Bruce Wayne, created in 1939. You can see why they do it: if your superhero has no actual superpowers, but relies instead on expensive equipment and training, it makes sense to write it so he's rich enough actually to afford them. It's a plot device.
In fact, most of the superheroes Dr Lamb decries are simply movie versions of old comic books. There's plenty to disapprove of – it's derivative, boring and shamelessly trawling for box office receipts – but her fundamental point is flawed. Recent superhero movies have included X-Men (based on characters first created in 1963); Watchmen (1986); Batman Begins (1939); The Incredible Hulk (1962); Fantastic Four (1961); Spider-Man (1962) and Superman Returns (1938). If Dr Lamb really wanted to criticise modern superheroes, she could point out that they don't exist: nobody seems to have thought up a really interesting new one in 25 years. And things don't look like changing – 2011 will see the return of the Green Lantern and the Green Hornet, two more staples of the 1940s. Dr Lamb will at least be pleased to see the former, whom she holds up as a positive role model for having a dull day job.

I thought this was really interesting how superheroes that were originally designed to be exciting real character, with weaknesses and flaws, but ultimately designed to also be positive role models, have supposedly shifted in recent years. It's my belief that the advent of superhero films are largely responsible for this articles claim that they've all become more about violence than being a positive role model. As the article points out towards the end there havent been any new interesting superheroes in the last 25 years, so the characters that are supposedly no longer good role models are the same characters as when they were first created, what has changed? Lots of hollywood films jumping on the superhero bandwagon with many of the films not being a)very good (cough fantastic four) or b)not very true to the original character/story. Over the last year we've seen films made for green hornet, this year thor, and green lantern hitting the big screen, with films for an x-men prequel, third film in the current batman series, and the new spiderman film. This suggests that superhero films wont be going anywhere soon.

I am not suggesting that my very stereotypical superhero side character is new and interesting, but this was a thought that occured to be when designing him. Do I need to be really original? No in fact as a side character I chose to adhere very much to your stereotypical comic character as I did with many of my side characters simple so that audiences of my target age range would know the characters regardless of whether they were regular viewers or not.