08.18.10
I’ll Take the Slack
Minor comment on idiot pop psychology news piece announcing, exaggeratedly, that some are concerned superhero imagery is bad for young boys.
It reads:
When not in superhero costume, these men, like Iron Man, exploit women, flaunt bling, and convey their manhood with high-powered guns.
Well — not precisely. It’s repulsors and fists. At least in the comic book that was my favorite, now decades past.
Tony Stark was a pretty good man. And Marvel gave him a drinking problem.
He was a standard good guy, fighting bad guys — many of them ludicrous — like the Mandarin.
And there was a departure into Cold War rivalry, Iron Man in an extended story battling the Titanium Man, the Soviet Union’s much bigger, stronger, clumsier and more stupid fellow in an armor suit.
Stark constantly battled tragedy in his personal and business life, like most Marvel heroes. But he was always left with hope and he always had a heart.
Robert Downey did a fairly good job, along with the movie scripts, in getting at least half the essence of that. He plays Stark as more self-centered and narcissistic than he was in the early comic book. But he still throws himself into harm’s way for his friends and people on the street without a moment of hesitation.
Worse, it is said:
Boys are told, ‘if you can’t be a superhero, you can always be a slacker.’ Slackers are funny, but slackers are not what boys should strive to be; slackers don’t like school and they shirk responsibility. We wonder if the messages boys get about saving face through glorified slacking could be affecting their performance in school.
Given what everyone sees they’re facing as a future in this country, being slack is a natural, even logical, response. We can’t all be Elon Musk. And, face it, there are already way too many Elons for the maintenance of good national mental health.
So, good heavens, don’t shirk responsibility. Be a young lickspittle now. Put your nose to the grindstone in school and march resolutely and with great vigor toward your multiple minimum wage job future. You may not even be able to afford a decent comic book.