Why we tell and retell superhero stories
We tell stories about super-heroes because we are dreamers. The stories are myths that remind us of our morality in a world swarming with temptation to commit evil. Super-hero stories force us to carefully look deep within ourselves and uproot any hatred, envy and greed from our minds. When we do this, we remember our dreams. Ultimately, we dream about super-heroes because we need hope. This inspires real people towards heroism and asks all of us to challenge our unchecked darkness. The idea of super-heroes calms us down and allows us to become better people. The light of our fictional heroes helps us overcome our own darkness, anxiety, and fear.
I think of Batman as a man who battles his own darkness. Taming this darkness, which comes in the metaphorical form of bats, allows Bruce to transcend simple manhood and become a super-hero. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns speaks about Bruce’s war with himself. The text says, “eyes gleaming, untouched by love or joy or sorrow...breath hot with the taste of fallen foes...the stench of dead things, damned things, surely the fiercest survivor – the purest warrior – glaring, hating, claiming me as his own” (Miller, page 12). Bruce contemplates that bats are a representation of his own inner demons, but does not succumb to this darkness. I interpret this idea as a real demon existing inside of Bruce. To make Bruce a believable hero, Miller also discusses Bruce’s good side when writing “the rain on my chest is a baptism, I’m born again” (Miller, page 12). Because of this, Bruce fights not just to protect Gotham, but for his own redemption.
When Batman’s story moves from comic books to films, we see Bruce become a hero willing to sacrifice anything to protect Gotham City. Perhaps we continue retelling the story of Batman because of the corruption and crime that exist in the real world. Telling super-hero stories is a way of creating myths that allow us to respond to crime with strength and grace. In Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet, a revolution challenges the power of the technologically advanced Wakanda. Coates writes, “once when I was tree, African sun woke me up green at dawn...Now flesh comes with metal teeth, with chopping sticks and fire launches. And flesh cuts me down and enslaves my limbs” (Coates, page 52). This is an example of greed destroying the planet, and is relevant because this telling of hero myths inspires me to safeguard the planet. A king cannot force people to honor the health of the planet, but lessons from fictional heroes can. This comic book also discusses themes of overcoming slavery along with how to know when a revolution is necessary to make a country great again.
Coates tells an allegory about Oronde’s race with a cheetah, reminding us that any seed of doubt within us can cause us to lose our battles. “Some part of Oronde really believed that he could never beat the Cheetah, that he really was a mere village boy – and so he ran like one” (Coates, page 62). Super-hero stories help us uproot our doubts about our capability to be good. They also remind us to correct our misdeeds. In book 3 of A Nation Under our Feet, the earth says, “Tell me a story, little one. For in the end, it is only the story that matters” (Coates, page 20). The stories we tell remind us that it is the story that matters – the story we tell about ourselves. In Norse Mythology, Gaiman suggests that “history and religion and myth combine, and we wonder, and we imagine, and we guess, like detectives reconstructing the details of a long-forgotten crime” (Gaiman, page 13). It is our choice to tell our own stories with the lenses of greed and corruption, or with the lenses of compassion and love.
Do we tell these stories just to feel better about ourselves, or can these myths allow us to think about the parallels between evil existing in the world and seeds of evil hidden within ourselves? Gaiman writes “in some of the tales the Norse gods are described as men or as kings or heroes of old, so the stories could be told in a Christian world” (Gaiman, page 14). We tell super-hero stories because our current world is heavily restricted by traditional Christian thought. Talking about fictional bat men or wonder women allows us to communicate ideas that we couldn’t if we merely tried to talk about the history of paganism and how pagan gods and goddesses were heroes. With comics, along with films adapted based on comics, we can freely talk about radical ideas.
In the Wonder Woman film and the related comics, Diana leaves her utopian world and does her part to fight the villains of World War 1. The story gives Diana an incredible amount of power that usually would not be given to a woman – at least, not in story. In a Christian world view, a woman could never be like Diana, whose people understood, “we are not only stronger and wiser than men – but our weapons are better” (Marston, page 10). Feminine intuition and magic are weapons that can be yielded to make the world a better place. Feminism is one of the results of hero stories, because in fantasy realms, anything is possible – even women having more power than men. The cinematography of the film – lighting and shadows – allows female heroes to be uniquely represented in the story. For instance, lighting highlights female beauty.
When the storytellers change, the stories ultimately change as well. Black Panther was a story told by an African American director – the villain Killmonger says “bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, because they know death was better than bondage” (Coogler). This film forces us to question racism and classism and attempts to teach us how to recognize when these evils are instilled within each of us. Although Killmonger was a super-villain, his ideas weren’t wrong. He wondered why Wakanda ignored the suffering of African Americans in less advanced parts of the world. The change in narrators results in a change in the questions the story asks. T’Challa is both a hero and a king, and I believe Coogler told T’Challa’s story to make all our world’s leaders more conscious of the results of their actions.
In today’s age, we are obsessed with super-hero stories because we desperately need them. They offer us inspiration and hope in an era where war and crime are rampant. They add to our civil rights movements, reminding us that every person is unique and good. They challenge us to recognize our own gifts and use them to provide aid to those who are in need. We can all become heroes. Mythology can inspire us to recognize when we have a God-given gift – from our own magic to the courage to speak up against hatred. The narrator of super-hero stories always tells the story at a slightly different angle than other narrators, allowing us to see a gem of knowledge that the specific storyteller alone had to offer us. In a traditional Christian world, heroes are larger than life, and they jump off the page just like Jesus jumps off the pages of the Bible – which is, in its own way, a super-hero story itself.
Finally, in “The Mead of Poets”, Gaiman comments on how we got our super-hero stories. Gaiman recollects: “Do you ever ask yourself how it is some people can dream great, wise, beautiful dreams and pass those dreams on as poetry to the world?” (Gaiman, page 127). In this section of the novel, Frey and Freya create Kvasir. When Kvasir was killed, his blood became Norse Mythology’s inspirational mead of poetry. To me, this suggests that our super-hero stories actually come from somewhere, in the same way Norse and Greek mythology speak of events which may have happened, in the real world, a long time ago. These stories – retelling the reasons for life itself – offer wisdom along with a special morality to use as a guide through life. In other words, the myths are alive – they offer far more than story. They offer faith, connection to spirituality, and a pathway to genuine morality.
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Black Panther, A Nation Under Our Feet, books one through three. Marvel comics. Published in 2016.
Coogler, Ryan, director. Black Panther. Screenplay by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole, performance by Chadwick Boseman, Marvel Studios, 2018. Disney+, https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/marvel-studios-black-panther/1GuXuYPj99Ke.
Gaiman, Neil. Norse Mythology. W.W. Norton & Company. Published in 2017.
Jenkins, Patty. Wonder Woman. Warner Bros., 2017.
Marston, William Moulton. Wonder Woman: The Golden Age Volume One. DC Comics. Published in 2017.
Miller, Frank. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. 30th Anniversary Edition. DC Comics. Published in 2016.
Nolan, Christopher. The Dark Knight. Warner Bros., 2008.
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