For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise.
So. Avengers obsession. It's a thing, and it's a thing I'm falling deeply in love with. Because (1) eye candy and (2) Tony Stark and Natasha are kind of designed to hit all of my love-this-character-now buttons. Also because some people (cough http://archiveofourown.org/users/scifigrl47 go read her stuff now, it's amazing cough) write brilliant fic. But it got me thinking about what our culture thinks of as heroes.
So this particular train of though starts with Star Trek. Now I don't know a lot about the Original Star Trek (any more than I know about the original Avengers), so everything I'm about to say could be kind of total nonsense. However, based on the 2009 Star Trek movie and just general pop culture, I get the idea that original!Kirk was a sort of crazy, genius, good-with-people kind of guy. He was, in fact, the kind of guy who if you met in real life nowadays, you might very well hate, because he's so good at everything. That's my pop culture-based view of normal Captain America, too. And original!Kirk, as far as I can tell, had parents who loved him. Captain America's mother, though dead, also comes across as loving. In short these very traditional heroes, in their original settings, have challenges that come from the outside. They don't have psychological problems, they don't have troubled childhoods. All their problems come from the outside. I don't want to make light of these heroes; I think they're plenty heroic and I have a lot of love in me for idealized hero figure.
But I also have a sense of humor and am a modern American girl: I like my self-made heroes even better. Reboot!Kirk and Tony Stark aren't heroes because of any sort of innate goodness or obvious moral superiority. Movie!Captain America has legitimate PTSD. All of them have troubled childhoods. (Okay, Steve's childhood problems are still external, but Steve's supposed to be an all-around good guy, so it totally works.) But reboot!Kirk has Daddy issues and Tony Stark in all incarnations seems to be a walking ball of Daddy issues. And not even Tony claims that Tony Stark is in a psychologically healthy place. I guess I just get a different feeling from the various incarnations of the characters. It's like modern society, as exemplified by it's mainstream almost anti-artsy films, has accepted that we live in a world where parental figures aren't necessarily all that great (and does anyone remember the divorce statics for our parents generation off the top of their head?) and heroes are the people who save the world *even* *though* they probably ought to be seeing therapists. They have a sense of humor about themselves, about the world around them, and aren't above saying 'How cool was that?!' occasionally.
In short, I like over-thinking shallow media. I'm going to go make butter tarts now. :-P
So this particular train of though starts with Star Trek. Now I don't know a lot about the Original Star Trek (any more than I know about the original Avengers), so everything I'm about to say could be kind of total nonsense. However, based on the 2009 Star Trek movie and just general pop culture, I get the idea that original!Kirk was a sort of crazy, genius, good-with-people kind of guy. He was, in fact, the kind of guy who if you met in real life nowadays, you might very well hate, because he's so good at everything. That's my pop culture-based view of normal Captain America, too. And original!Kirk, as far as I can tell, had parents who loved him. Captain America's mother, though dead, also comes across as loving. In short these very traditional heroes, in their original settings, have challenges that come from the outside. They don't have psychological problems, they don't have troubled childhoods. All their problems come from the outside. I don't want to make light of these heroes; I think they're plenty heroic and I have a lot of love in me for idealized hero figure.
But I also have a sense of humor and am a modern American girl: I like my self-made heroes even better. Reboot!Kirk and Tony Stark aren't heroes because of any sort of innate goodness or obvious moral superiority. Movie!Captain America has legitimate PTSD. All of them have troubled childhoods. (Okay, Steve's childhood problems are still external, but Steve's supposed to be an all-around good guy, so it totally works.) But reboot!Kirk has Daddy issues and Tony Stark in all incarnations seems to be a walking ball of Daddy issues. And not even Tony claims that Tony Stark is in a psychologically healthy place. I guess I just get a different feeling from the various incarnations of the characters. It's like modern society, as exemplified by it's mainstream almost anti-artsy films, has accepted that we live in a world where parental figures aren't necessarily all that great (and does anyone remember the divorce statics for our parents generation off the top of their head?) and heroes are the people who save the world *even* *though* they probably ought to be seeing therapists. They have a sense of humor about themselves, about the world around them, and aren't above saying 'How cool was that?!' occasionally.
In short, I like over-thinking shallow media. I'm going to go make butter tarts now. :-P