What Happened to the Silver Age?
Apr. 5th, 2016 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastFirst, a disclaimer. I am not big into comic books. I just don't have the money for it. My main interaction with the Silver Age is with such shows as The Superfriends and similar Saturday Morning Cartoons of the 80s. Feel free to correct me on what I get wrong.
In my Scene I'd Like to See: The Incredibles*, Gehayi had a good comment. When talking about how the world had to work, in the twenty years after lawsuits drove superheroes into hiding, apparently I had described the Silver Age. The Silver Age respected normal people in a number of ways.
Batman worked with the police and even at Commissioner Gordon's request. Superman would ask the authorities if they needed help before going to work. And, ordinary people were the important matter when superheroes went to work, saving lives and property. More importantly, the openly praised people who weren't superheroes and didn't have superpowers. They were still heroes.
That and other bits of the Silver Age seem to have fallen out of favor. Again, I don't know comic books all that well, but I do know a bit about more recent comicbook movies, such as Man of Steel and Batman-v-Superman. There's also such characters as The Punisher and Wolverine and other people who do dark deeds for the greater good, the rise of the anti-hero.
There's a natural question to ask as not only comic books, but fictions in general find themselves going more and more into the Dark Age, why are we abandoning the Silver Age Values?
I actually think there's a good reason for growing past the Silver Age. Not all of the values should be rejected just for being Silver Age. I still think that The Punisher does far more harm than good even ignoring the immediate morality of murder.
But, let's look at how the Silver Age would answer the questions the Punisherm might ask. Why doesn't Superman kill Lex Luthor? Why doesn't Batman kill the Joker? Why doesn't He-Man even just let Skeletor fall to his death?
The answers I've usually gotten from the Silver Age, usually dealing with the latter scenario of letting someone die rather than save them, is that that makes the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. Good guys save lives, bad guys are willing to kill or let someone die. That answer does not satisfy me.
Let's take a look at The Joker. Ignoring the Adam West series and The Super Friends, the Joker will kill. That is inevitable. The Joker will kill and the only thing that will stop the Joker from killing is killing the Joker. How many lives is being a good guy worth? How many of other people's lives is being the good guy worth?
Faced with that, such answers as "that's what makes the good guy a good guy", "it's against the rules", and "it's just wrong" all fail to satisfy. The Silver Age cannot defend its own morality against such questions because it refuses even to acknowledge them as legitimate questions. Without those satisfying answers, a refusal to do dark deeds can seem like weakness.
So, we have to answer those questions. With that in mind, I intend my next two Cases to be in large part about answering those questions, looking into the lives and origins not of Superman and Batman, but of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne.
* http://wingedbeast.dreamwidth.org/53513.html
In my Scene I'd Like to See: The Incredibles*, Gehayi had a good comment. When talking about how the world had to work, in the twenty years after lawsuits drove superheroes into hiding, apparently I had described the Silver Age. The Silver Age respected normal people in a number of ways.
Batman worked with the police and even at Commissioner Gordon's request. Superman would ask the authorities if they needed help before going to work. And, ordinary people were the important matter when superheroes went to work, saving lives and property. More importantly, the openly praised people who weren't superheroes and didn't have superpowers. They were still heroes.
That and other bits of the Silver Age seem to have fallen out of favor. Again, I don't know comic books all that well, but I do know a bit about more recent comicbook movies, such as Man of Steel and Batman-v-Superman. There's also such characters as The Punisher and Wolverine and other people who do dark deeds for the greater good, the rise of the anti-hero.
There's a natural question to ask as not only comic books, but fictions in general find themselves going more and more into the Dark Age, why are we abandoning the Silver Age Values?
I actually think there's a good reason for growing past the Silver Age. Not all of the values should be rejected just for being Silver Age. I still think that The Punisher does far more harm than good even ignoring the immediate morality of murder.
But, let's look at how the Silver Age would answer the questions the Punisherm might ask. Why doesn't Superman kill Lex Luthor? Why doesn't Batman kill the Joker? Why doesn't He-Man even just let Skeletor fall to his death?
The answers I've usually gotten from the Silver Age, usually dealing with the latter scenario of letting someone die rather than save them, is that that makes the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. Good guys save lives, bad guys are willing to kill or let someone die. That answer does not satisfy me.
Let's take a look at The Joker. Ignoring the Adam West series and The Super Friends, the Joker will kill. That is inevitable. The Joker will kill and the only thing that will stop the Joker from killing is killing the Joker. How many lives is being a good guy worth? How many of other people's lives is being the good guy worth?
Faced with that, such answers as "that's what makes the good guy a good guy", "it's against the rules", and "it's just wrong" all fail to satisfy. The Silver Age cannot defend its own morality against such questions because it refuses even to acknowledge them as legitimate questions. Without those satisfying answers, a refusal to do dark deeds can seem like weakness.
So, we have to answer those questions. With that in mind, I intend my next two Cases to be in large part about answering those questions, looking into the lives and origins not of Superman and Batman, but of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne.
* http://wingedbeast.dreamwidth.org/53513.html
no subject
Date: 2016-04-07 02:58 am (UTC)Linkara (Atop the Fourth Wall) addressed this in (I think) his recent group review of Batman vs Superman by asking why the Joker isn't executed. And going on to talk about how pushing the responsibility of the Joker - and his endless escapes and murders - off on Batman is a dodge. Both in the sense that the legal system of Gotham is equally to blame and in the sense that there would be serious problems with a world that did let superheroes decide the fate of people that the legal system didn't want to decide the fate of.
I think that's actually a pretty good point. Most superheroes are acting as vigilantes, but with in the bounds of bringing people to justice - they make citizens arrest and let the existing laws take care of the rest. Stepping beyond that changes a lot of things. (And would probably lead to supers either ruling the world or being killed, themselves.)
Even when the superheroes are more part of the establishment, having them be judge, jury, and executioner is a problem. We've decided ordinary people can't be - that's why the police are supposed to arrest people, not shoot them full of holes and call it a day. Why would we want to give more power to super people?
no subject
Date: 2016-04-13 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-15 02:26 am (UTC)http://atopthefourthwall.com/vlog-3-27-16-batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice/
no subject
Date: 2016-04-15 02:45 am (UTC)