I will add that as far as villains go, I really liked both Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix's Jokers. Can't think of any CGI villains that even come close.
Agreed, both stunning examples of complex bad guys with psychopathology grounded in reality - there's a good reason they grab you by the throat from the screen and shake you to the core.
Great observation about the constant slaughtering of the (semi-)innocent and the "he must have had a bad childhood" sparing of the true villains. Never really thought about this.
I really can't stand super hero movies for quite some time now, even pre-woke. The shallowness is just insufferable. But what to expect from a culture that is now literally chasing balloons LOL. Collingwood was right: we will go under because we stopped believing our culture is worth saving. Sadly, we might even be right.
I think that whether or not this is tragic depends on what we consider to be our culture. Personally, I'm quite happy to let much of the cruft of the last few decades fall away, so long as it means a Renaissance of the deeper traditions.
Great post, love it. I love film and the arts but despair of sharing magic in a world where people have lost touch with the real magic - of life. It is still a great magical journey for those who know. But the knowing must come first. Culture become cultures of death when they choose the wrong wolves.
I guess the Marvel method of dealing with "bad guys," i.e., destroying the rank-and-file but attempting to spare the evil bosses atop the entire enterprise, reflects what happens in real life. The plandemic and vaccine were a criminal scam, but if anyone is held responsible, it will be the folks near the bottom of the totem pole; Fauci and Francis Collins and the like will get off scott free. And that seems to be the pattern with every government-backed criminal enterprise: only the little guys take the fall; the big fish always get away.
Some people have advocated that World War 2 would have been ended if Hitler had been assassinated. Some say the same thing about Putin today. But I don't know about this. From what I know now about these events and these people, I wonder if someone else would have been found to fill in and continue the project.
The role of many villains, it seems, is to test us and weaken us, but not to destroy us. The overtly destructive villain is too obvious in his words or actions; he will be stopped. But not before the economies and lives of millions have been ruined.
They don’t understand heroism because the don’t understand virtue, or have any idea of what a developed personality might look like (tonic masculinity).
You nailed it. This is what happens when "education" is purposely stripped of classical literature, classical music, or anything else that might inspire higher thought. We live in an infantile culture.
So true. "Mainstream culture [and the screenwriters and directors who cast the vision] currently lacks two essential things: an adequate understanding of evil, and an adequate understanding of heroism." But as you so well point out - it's all there in our rich literary history! One need only read.
Oh, sorry, I forgot... all that stuff written by white European folk is somehow racist or whatever.
My young adult children have ditched this cultural flatland and are going back to the classics - there's hope!
When one begins to read the Classics, it becomes very quickly apparent why they were deprecated out of the curriculum. Too much that sheds light on recent shenanigans, and too much that would inspire the virility and virtue necessary to fight back against them.
No small wonder most people reject the modern Marvel and its anti-heroes. Hollywood has been playing the Hokey Pokey Wokey game forever ---normalizing evil as good, and perversion as normal. Tv programming is pure mind poison. I reject it, and refuse to have it in my house.
Excellent essay. I can’t think of anything to add at the moment, other than to lament that we as a culture have forgotten what heroes are, what heroes do, and what heroes are for. Perhaps never in human history have so many had so much time, resources and freedom to create great works yet failed so completely.
Ancient fiction: Odysseus. Ancient history: Julius Caesar. Still thinking about modern, but I like the fictional Ertugrul loosely based on the historical father of Osman.
I am not 100% on Caesar... he had some virtues, but I am not sure they were well applied. Augustus Caesar might be better, but I am leery of politicians in handrail for the roles
I'm in the Caesar > Augustus camp. I think he applied his virtues as well as he could without becoming a butcher, and that's got him killed. But until that point he was the epitome of Roman virtue, at least. Recommend checking out Morstein-Marx's recent book, and Phillip Barlag's book for a less academic but fun take.
And funny enough, what you wrote kind of made me realize that Deadpool is more of a hero (sort of) than most other Marvel characters, or at least written in a more honest way that doesn’t infantilize the audience, and maybe that explains his popularity.
Although personally, my favorite comic book growing up was Savage Sword of Conan. Conan had zero qualms about butchering his enemies. In large numbers.
Aside from serialization, another reason that villains couldn't be killed was the ban on lethal violence in the Comics Code of America, which didn't even allow blood. The CCA basically created the superhero genre, which is why this trope of 'mercifully sparing the villain so he can have a fair trial' goes back to the very beginning.
Which isn't to say it hasn't been morally corrosive, because it absolutely has, and Saxon Cross was bang on to make this observation.
It reminds me of the way Disney bowdlerized the fairy tales. Relentlessly happy endings drain the magic from the story by removing the pathos. Truly magical tales rely on the full emotional palette - tragedy is as necessary as comedy, violence as crucial as romance. A society raised on these artificially restricted myths becomes boring and unfulfilling, because its participants aren't getting everything they need. The game becomes dull and they decide to play a new game.
🗨 our story is a tragedy, not in the modern sense of something that might have been averted if only we’d made better choices, but in the original, ancient Greek meaning of tragedy, in which the hero’s downfall is predestined by his own tragic flaw.
Fairy tales and hero stories for kids and cowering adults. Krishna and the other ancient heroes spilt much blood, and the old fairy tales were full of it, too.
This was fascinating and I don't even know this world. Your point is so well taken. I read it right after Glenn Greenwald on Seymour Hersch and his defamation by those for whom journalism is a day job. The parallels kept occurring to me, both Clark Kent and Superman as company hos. (I think this is the correct use of that term.)
I also love Joaquin Phoenix's Joker and try to do that little dance whenever I'm walking down steps. But was he a villain or a hero? That's not the right word but you know what I mean.
Nice shout-out to tonic masculinity, which gives me the perfect excuse to include this when I get to focus on your writing and evil, where I hope we'll disagree in a most agreeable way ;-)
The best heroes are vigilantes, but for some reason Marvel and DC have gotten this idea of the elite military superhero unit basically doing what some bureaucrat tells them to do. Very odd!
Joker is a great villain because you can see how can pass for a hero.
The superhero teams working for literally powerless mortals trope is a very strange one. Obviously it's related to the American tradition of civilian control of the military. Realistically, though, a team of otherwise-human superhumans would probably just set themselves up as the new aristocracy.
Thank you for writing about the importance of magic. John Michael Greer has been writing about this lately, calling ours a dis-enchanted world, whereas most of the history of humanity we lived in an enchanted world.
Who do you consider to be the modern magicians? The ones I am aware of won't even show themselves in secluded locations, especially if there is a camera around. And the more sinister ones maintain almost total secrecy. It requires someone with some "magic" skills to even detect their presence.
Most of the sinister ones I am aware of work out in the open for media companies and politicians and military/intelligence. Otherwise there are no shortage of folk magicians who are smart enough to practice quietly so as not to draw unwelcome attention. Greer is a leader among them. There are plenty of others.
OK, I see what you're talking about. It's true that many people on Earth could be seen as practicing a lower level of magic. There are a few telepaths here and there, a bunch of psychics, a few people who can remember past lives, and I might even include some channels.
The sinister public actors mostly use propaganda mechanisms as far as I can tell, which are very low order ways to control people.
Those I refer to are the ones who get channeled by the human channels. For every human channel like JZ Knight, how many people are being influenced by "higher beings" who are unaware of that influence or wish to keep it secret? Those beings are reported to have either technologies or native ability to enter people's minds, cause significant physical damage with unusual weapons, and travel outside of the normal laws of physics. They have always been seen as "magicians" in this world, when they bothered to make themselves known.
The Boys on Amazon Prime is a satirical slant on the whole Super Hero ‘business.’ (Pun intended) Really drives home most of the critique above about the genre.
I am not familiar with most of these modern films, so probably should not delve too deeply into this.
I am somewhat familiar, however, with some of the Krishna stories. Krishna was an ancient "superhero" like Odysseus was. But what is special for me about Krishna is that I have seen his story retold through the writing of someone who remembers being there, Dena Merriam. And per her account, Krishna really WAS a superhero. In other words, he had real magical powers.
What I know from other sources is that most of us, if not all of us, used to have such powers. Thus the standard psychology of myth, the psychology of unfulfilled human longing, becomes what is (for me anyway) a more understandable problem of mourning for lost personal abilities. Some of us mourn the loss of our own childhoods for similar reasons. We were simply more able then.
Superhero stories cut into this issue from several angles. On the one hand, they give us ideals to emulate - however unattainable they may be. On another hand, some of them are stories of actual historical events (such are the Mahābhārata) and could be seen as seeking to document those events. Dena actually remembers being at the battlefield depicted in that story. And on the other hand, they can give us an excuse for not acting, because we obviously are not up to the task required. If a superhero did not show up, too bad.
What they do not give us, though inspired stories like Star Wars give us a hint of this, is how to transform ourselves into superheros (if we dare). I believe this is because most of these stories are told to put us into a dependent and defeatist mindset, and not really to inspire.
The few superhero stories I have seen tend to treat the heroes as high school kids, full of emotion and an amount of self-loathing or at least lack of self confidence. Krishna was a serene being, totally confident that he could achieve his desired effect, no matter how challenging. He was sometimes frustrated in his attempts, but never lost his confidence. The modern stories I've seen don't teach that. Krishna was an advanced spiritual being. Modern "heros" are kids with odd genetic mutations. I have seen some Japanese hero stories, though, that meet us half way. The hero is young and not confident, but practices a discipline and is instructed by a master.
If Asia ever comes to rule this planet, it will probably be because they retained a sense of how to develop ability using training and discipline. Freedom is great until you run into someone who is totally able to squash you like a bug.
Collingwood always comes up with interesting definitions, but with solid argumentation. Under "magical arts" he includes: patriotic art, religious art, sports, the ceremonies of social life (funerals, marriage, dancing, the dinner party). E.g. "every religion has its magic, and what is commonly called ‘practising’ a religion is practising its magic."
It is my understanding that the real heroes wielded real magic. They either had advanced energy technologies or advanced spiritual technologies. If you don't believe in the creative abilities of Spirit, you will never understand real magic or real heroes. The last thing they want us to learn about in this modern corporate world is our own spiritual powers.
I will add that as far as villains go, I really liked both Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix's Jokers. Can't think of any CGI villains that even come close.
Agreed, both stunning examples of complex bad guys with psychopathology grounded in reality - there's a good reason they grab you by the throat from the screen and shake you to the core.
Great observation about the constant slaughtering of the (semi-)innocent and the "he must have had a bad childhood" sparing of the true villains. Never really thought about this.
I really can't stand super hero movies for quite some time now, even pre-woke. The shallowness is just insufferable. But what to expect from a culture that is now literally chasing balloons LOL. Collingwood was right: we will go under because we stopped believing our culture is worth saving. Sadly, we might even be right.
Sad thing is that someone could legit make an awesome movie about a balloon-chasing hero. Just requires a little creativity.
On our culture, I could be crazy, but I think it may be worth saving, with the proviso that the things worth saving may be buried very deeply.
Exactly. There is a very great deal that is beyond price, but also much that is worthless. The latter including much of recent vintage.
🗨 Some things can be sold for money, but can't be bought for it.
You might almost use that as a rule of thumb to identify that which is of true importance.
The Red Balloon, 1956.
I think that whether or not this is tragic depends on what we consider to be our culture. Personally, I'm quite happy to let much of the cruft of the last few decades fall away, so long as it means a Renaissance of the deeper traditions.
Great post, love it. I love film and the arts but despair of sharing magic in a world where people have lost touch with the real magic - of life. It is still a great magical journey for those who know. But the knowing must come first. Culture become cultures of death when they choose the wrong wolves.
Balloons in the air, clowns on the ground.
"Balloons in the air, clowns on the ground."
Oh man, that's good.
I guess the Marvel method of dealing with "bad guys," i.e., destroying the rank-and-file but attempting to spare the evil bosses atop the entire enterprise, reflects what happens in real life. The plandemic and vaccine were a criminal scam, but if anyone is held responsible, it will be the folks near the bottom of the totem pole; Fauci and Francis Collins and the like will get off scott free. And that seems to be the pattern with every government-backed criminal enterprise: only the little guys take the fall; the big fish always get away.
Tends to be how wars go, too. I guess they're going for gritty realism. lol
Some people have advocated that World War 2 would have been ended if Hitler had been assassinated. Some say the same thing about Putin today. But I don't know about this. From what I know now about these events and these people, I wonder if someone else would have been found to fill in and continue the project.
The role of many villains, it seems, is to test us and weaken us, but not to destroy us. The overtly destructive villain is too obvious in his words or actions; he will be stopped. But not before the economies and lives of millions have been ruined.
Almost makes you wonder if it's a case of art imitating life, or vice versa.
They don’t understand heroism because the don’t understand virtue, or have any idea of what a developed personality might look like (tonic masculinity).
You nailed it. This is what happens when "education" is purposely stripped of classical literature, classical music, or anything else that might inspire higher thought. We live in an infantile culture.
Critical Drinker's reviews made this abundantly clear for me. Woke characters are whiny teenagers.
So true. "Mainstream culture [and the screenwriters and directors who cast the vision] currently lacks two essential things: an adequate understanding of evil, and an adequate understanding of heroism." But as you so well point out - it's all there in our rich literary history! One need only read.
Oh, sorry, I forgot... all that stuff written by white European folk is somehow racist or whatever.
My young adult children have ditched this cultural flatland and are going back to the classics - there's hope!
When one begins to read the Classics, it becomes very quickly apparent why they were deprecated out of the curriculum. Too much that sheds light on recent shenanigans, and too much that would inspire the virility and virtue necessary to fight back against them.
Not many like Beowulf around.
I have dim memory of reading that story and enjoying it very much.
Hallelujah! The rumours of stale pale male heritage's death seem greatly exaggerated 🤸
No small wonder most people reject the modern Marvel and its anti-heroes. Hollywood has been playing the Hokey Pokey Wokey game forever ---normalizing evil as good, and perversion as normal. Tv programming is pure mind poison. I reject it, and refuse to have it in my house.
Excellent essay. I can’t think of anything to add at the moment, other than to lament that we as a culture have forgotten what heroes are, what heroes do, and what heroes are for. Perhaps never in human history have so many had so much time, resources and freedom to create great works yet failed so completely.
I think we need to create a list of some great heroes, ancient and modern. Then devote days to them. They can be our patron hero-saints.
Whom would you nominate for a modern day hero, and then one from ancient civilization?
Ancient fiction: Odysseus. Ancient history: Julius Caesar. Still thinking about modern, but I like the fictional Ertugrul loosely based on the historical father of Osman.
I am not 100% on Caesar... he had some virtues, but I am not sure they were well applied. Augustus Caesar might be better, but I am leery of politicians in handrail for the roles
I'm in the Caesar > Augustus camp. I think he applied his virtues as well as he could without becoming a butcher, and that's got him killed. But until that point he was the epitome of Roman virtue, at least. Recommend checking out Morstein-Marx's recent book, and Phillip Barlag's book for a less academic but fun take.
Gandhi / Krishna. The skinny lawyer from India is still revered by some, but Krishna has been largely forgotten.
Chesty Puller comes to mind.
The cutural marxism evident today will not help.
*marxcissism 😇
Gone are the days of Aragorn.
And funny enough, what you wrote kind of made me realize that Deadpool is more of a hero (sort of) than most other Marvel characters, or at least written in a more honest way that doesn’t infantilize the audience, and maybe that explains his popularity.
Yes, Deadpool adds a little bit of spice into an otherwise bland dish.
Indeed, at least he's not simply "heroing" about because that's what heroes do.
To say nothing of the Punisher.
Although personally, my favorite comic book growing up was Savage Sword of Conan. Conan had zero qualms about butchering his enemies. In large numbers.
Recurring villains were rare.
Did you watch the Netflix Punisher show?
Oh, and there's Dredd, along similar lines.
Dredd was great.
And yeah, I did, but it was meh.
Hehehe,
I had Conan #1.
Based.
A Frank Frazetta fan too.
My essay today was exclusively illustrated with Frazetta.
Looks good, and bookmarked for a read in the morning after my jiggle juice.
Jiggle juice? Coffee? Aussie slang?
The essay reminded me of this scene, brutally consistent.
https://youtu.be/_fHlHfCl3hw
Aside from serialization, another reason that villains couldn't be killed was the ban on lethal violence in the Comics Code of America, which didn't even allow blood. The CCA basically created the superhero genre, which is why this trope of 'mercifully sparing the villain so he can have a fair trial' goes back to the very beginning.
Which isn't to say it hasn't been morally corrosive, because it absolutely has, and Saxon Cross was bang on to make this observation.
It reminds me of the way Disney bowdlerized the fairy tales. Relentlessly happy endings drain the magic from the story by removing the pathos. Truly magical tales rely on the full emotional palette - tragedy is as necessary as comedy, violence as crucial as romance. A society raised on these artificially restricted myths becomes boring and unfulfilling, because its participants aren't getting everything they need. The game becomes dull and they decide to play a new game.
Which is about where I think we're at now.
Didn't know that about the CCA. Makes sense. Wow.
CCA killed horror and crime comics. Jay and I talked about it in today's Martian Wonderland.
🗨 our story is a tragedy, not in the modern sense of something that might have been averted if only we’d made better choices, but in the original, ancient Greek meaning of tragedy, in which the hero’s downfall is predestined by his own tragic flaw.
Fairy tales and hero stories for kids and cowering adults. Krishna and the other ancient heroes spilt much blood, and the old fairy tales were full of it, too.
This was fascinating and I don't even know this world. Your point is so well taken. I read it right after Glenn Greenwald on Seymour Hersch and his defamation by those for whom journalism is a day job. The parallels kept occurring to me, both Clark Kent and Superman as company hos. (I think this is the correct use of that term.)
I also love Joaquin Phoenix's Joker and try to do that little dance whenever I'm walking down steps. But was he a villain or a hero? That's not the right word but you know what I mean.
Nice shout-out to tonic masculinity, which gives me the perfect excuse to include this when I get to focus on your writing and evil, where I hope we'll disagree in a most agreeable way ;-)
The best heroes are vigilantes, but for some reason Marvel and DC have gotten this idea of the elite military superhero unit basically doing what some bureaucrat tells them to do. Very odd!
Joker is a great villain because you can see how can pass for a hero.
The superhero teams working for literally powerless mortals trope is a very strange one. Obviously it's related to the American tradition of civilian control of the military. Realistically, though, a team of otherwise-human superhumans would probably just set themselves up as the new aristocracy.
Thank you for writing about the importance of magic. John Michael Greer has been writing about this lately, calling ours a dis-enchanted world, whereas most of the history of humanity we lived in an enchanted world.
https://www.ecosophia.net/the-nature-of-enchantment/
The ancient world WAS enchanted, and the modern world still is, though all the real magicians hide from us for fear of being gunned down on sight.
Well. they aren't hiding that dramatically, but do keep a low profile generally.
Who do you consider to be the modern magicians? The ones I am aware of won't even show themselves in secluded locations, especially if there is a camera around. And the more sinister ones maintain almost total secrecy. It requires someone with some "magic" skills to even detect their presence.
Most of the sinister ones I am aware of work out in the open for media companies and politicians and military/intelligence. Otherwise there are no shortage of folk magicians who are smart enough to practice quietly so as not to draw unwelcome attention. Greer is a leader among them. There are plenty of others.
OK, I see what you're talking about. It's true that many people on Earth could be seen as practicing a lower level of magic. There are a few telepaths here and there, a bunch of psychics, a few people who can remember past lives, and I might even include some channels.
The sinister public actors mostly use propaganda mechanisms as far as I can tell, which are very low order ways to control people.
Those I refer to are the ones who get channeled by the human channels. For every human channel like JZ Knight, how many people are being influenced by "higher beings" who are unaware of that influence or wish to keep it secret? Those beings are reported to have either technologies or native ability to enter people's minds, cause significant physical damage with unusual weapons, and travel outside of the normal laws of physics. They have always been seen as "magicians" in this world, when they bothered to make themselves known.
The Boys on Amazon Prime is a satirical slant on the whole Super Hero ‘business.’ (Pun intended) Really drives home most of the critique above about the genre.
I am not familiar with most of these modern films, so probably should not delve too deeply into this.
I am somewhat familiar, however, with some of the Krishna stories. Krishna was an ancient "superhero" like Odysseus was. But what is special for me about Krishna is that I have seen his story retold through the writing of someone who remembers being there, Dena Merriam. And per her account, Krishna really WAS a superhero. In other words, he had real magical powers.
What I know from other sources is that most of us, if not all of us, used to have such powers. Thus the standard psychology of myth, the psychology of unfulfilled human longing, becomes what is (for me anyway) a more understandable problem of mourning for lost personal abilities. Some of us mourn the loss of our own childhoods for similar reasons. We were simply more able then.
Superhero stories cut into this issue from several angles. On the one hand, they give us ideals to emulate - however unattainable they may be. On another hand, some of them are stories of actual historical events (such are the Mahābhārata) and could be seen as seeking to document those events. Dena actually remembers being at the battlefield depicted in that story. And on the other hand, they can give us an excuse for not acting, because we obviously are not up to the task required. If a superhero did not show up, too bad.
What they do not give us, though inspired stories like Star Wars give us a hint of this, is how to transform ourselves into superheros (if we dare). I believe this is because most of these stories are told to put us into a dependent and defeatist mindset, and not really to inspire.
The few superhero stories I have seen tend to treat the heroes as high school kids, full of emotion and an amount of self-loathing or at least lack of self confidence. Krishna was a serene being, totally confident that he could achieve his desired effect, no matter how challenging. He was sometimes frustrated in his attempts, but never lost his confidence. The modern stories I've seen don't teach that. Krishna was an advanced spiritual being. Modern "heros" are kids with odd genetic mutations. I have seen some Japanese hero stories, though, that meet us half way. The hero is young and not confident, but practices a discipline and is instructed by a master.
If Asia ever comes to rule this planet, it will probably be because they retained a sense of how to develop ability using training and discipline. Freedom is great until you run into someone who is totally able to squash you like a bug.
Cool, looking forward to it!
Collingwood always comes up with interesting definitions, but with solid argumentation. Under "magical arts" he includes: patriotic art, religious art, sports, the ceremonies of social life (funerals, marriage, dancing, the dinner party). E.g. "every religion has its magic, and what is commonly called ‘practising’ a religion is practising its magic."
It is my understanding that the real heroes wielded real magic. They either had advanced energy technologies or advanced spiritual technologies. If you don't believe in the creative abilities of Spirit, you will never understand real magic or real heroes. The last thing they want us to learn about in this modern corporate world is our own spiritual powers.
Check out the link in the article to the pdf of the book. You might find it interesting:
IV. ART AS MAGIC
§1. What Magic is not: (i) Pseudo-science . . 57
§2. What Magic is not: (ii) Neurosis . . . 62
§3. What Magic Is . . . . . 65
§4. Magical Art . . . . . . 69