Flash forward to now. Many popular mythologies have been largely debunked in the West. Old people in strongly old world neighborhoods continue to pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Pentecostals still rant about the apocalypse and its avenging angels. Mormons do their Mormon thing. Certainly Islam is on the rise and Orthodox Jews continue their death grip on their rituals. But most of us are beyond that.
Or are we? (Let me interject here and claim some insight. I've taught courses in motion pictures for 35 years at the college level and have written extensively about the art, industry and technical aspects of the medium). Hasn't the Entertainment Media filled the void and created another series of colossal mythologies that make the older ones pale in comparison? For sheer power of imagery, Hollywood outstrips anything the Catholics, Baptists, Hindus, or Buddhists could ever impose on the wide-eyed young. The Superheroes of my traditional religion were people like St. Christopher who carried babies across streams, St Francis of Assisi who gave away all his money, wore rags and loved birds, St Michael the Archangel who had a sword and wings but mostly wandered around looking slightly gay (God's army was the first with a Don ask/Don't Tell policy). The Virgin Mary was always in her clean royal blue cape and fixed bewildered gaze. And of course Jesus who said things love your enemies and like turn the other cheek ended up on a cross.
How can these people match up with the Superheroes of the Hollywood media factories? Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man and all those like them still to come " these guys Rule! They do it with enormous power, brutality and efficiency, terrifyingly performed by the world's most talented and highly paid actors, shot in brilliant color and with seamless special effects, wrapped with a feverish music score and booming sound design, edited for max hyper-beat and visual mind blast. The fantasies are written by teams of industrious 30 year-olds in Burbank with deep understating of the comic book mentality, touching into that underground steam of consciousness that runs through the brains of young boys. These movies bring the most talented artisans in the industry into their camp and with budgets topping 100 million a picture. The net result is over-the-top mind numbing experiences, kinetic mega-trips.
Sam Raimi, the director/writer of the three Spider-Man films is now back making straight horror flicks again with "Drag Me To Hell , He recently philosophized. "What I wanted a this time was a real audience thrill machine. I wanted to give them an out-of-control ride and I wanted to get them out of their seats screaming. I love it when at a horror movie you can sense the audience bonding together. It's a communal experience . Something like the First Church of Franchised Nightmares.
New, enlightened values replacing the worn-out ones? Well it's a very blue black world in Gotham. The stories told are usually in the near future, invariably set in an enclosed urban world where something awful and the never-before-seen lurks down every alleyway, We know from the trailers that anything is possible. The unlimited art of digital special effects is able to convincingly bend reality into any shape imaginable. We go wherever the filmmakers deem to take us. But you can bet that it's either a pretty bleak or a truly scary place. There ain't much sweetness and light in Gotham, and certainly no joy. Good vs. bad, black vs. white are presented in spades. There's Lex Luthor, Octavious, Green Goblin, Oliver Stain and Two-Face, all with enormous abilities to crate chaos, with the facility to transform themselves into every shade of evil in the next cut.
I wouldn't even address the issues of video game violence and it's consumption on computers by kids in their bedrooms. I can't speak with experience about Dynasty Warriors or BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger but I've watched over the shoulder of young people playing the games for hours and it's not hard to get the mind-set they produce.
It might seem that the values of Superheroes would stand out as inspiring, but one is never sure what those values really are. Usually it has something to do with simple revenge for a personal affront. But of course there is always the job of saving the world from utter destruction " again and again. That's a given. And while Batman may be mildly interesting, The Joker has all the good lines, the best makeup, and is by far the most engaging character in the movie. His message is the most nihilistic of all, as we are forced to follow the demented logic of Heath Ledger's Joker, falling deliciously from his tongued lips. A great moment in film we're told, Oscar-winning actually. The stuff of movie myth " watch the clips on all future award shows. It's the end product of a valueless value system. The old Superheroes of religion were, in retrospect, pretty wimpy, a little too out-of-focus. Hare Krishna!
I was talking to my friend Gene Youngblood the other day about mass media. He has written books about it. I was lamenting how much media, especially television and the Internet, influence our lives, and he corrected me. "The media are not just in our lives, mass media is the new reality -- and we are all encased in it. His words brought home my concerns. The marketing, for example, of the Superheroes, with the costumes, artwork, toys, comic books, cartoon spin-offs, and the wide rivers of revenue flowing from them, have created the reality that kids breathe. Toy plastic figures are carried like talismans to ward off any evil surprise attacks. The world of the young becomes entirely a self-referential network of multi-layered and ultimately meaningless mythologies. It's a short sideways leap to the equally intense and sophisticated world of doom played out as video games of the older kids (of all ages).
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