“Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and prosaic. It’s a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye, and the imagination, a literate celebration of unbridled creativity, coupled with a touch of rebellion and an insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon.” – Stan Lee. Stan believed his creations helped young boys around the country with finding a model to look up to and grow into. I believe in them also. Superheroes are something we all need but with every superhero comes a slacker because our world, as described by Sameer Pandya in his essay The Picture for Men: Superhero or Slacker, is hero versus zero, and the civilians are caught in the crossfire. However bad that sounds, it creates a delicate balance that we shouldn’t tamper with.
I have friends who guarantee they don’t care for superheroes, envisioning huge men in peculiar outfits battling villainous people with names like Doctor (insert evil word here) and making little ‘SMACK!’ signs when they attack. Those same companions end up liking James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, or another imaginary character doing things real people can’t do—superheroes in civvies. Each society has stories like this; our predecessors tell tales around fires or fabulous corridors for partying, these days we read them in comic books.
By the end of the century comic books had developed with their groups of readers, with stories like Sandman and Watchmen gaining writing awards going up against ordinary fiction. Moving to the cinema, however, demonstrated a troublesome business: do it well and you distill many years of character growth into several hours; do it gravely and you get a cash pit of embellishments. To see the two outcomes in real life, you can see this current spring’s two contending blockbusters, Captain America: Civil War and Superman versus Batman: Dawn of Justice.
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The movies share much for all intents and purpose. Each set two heroes against one another, and even the heroes themselves are comparative: a devotedly shaded patriot (Superman, Captain America) and a virtuoso playboy tycoon who designs a techno-suit while in a cave (Batman, Iron Man). More essentially, the two movies bring up keen issues: if superheroes employ grand power and reply to no one, how would they speak to opportunity and popular government? Or on the other hand would it be advisable for them to reply to governments that we don’t confide in ourselves? Americans, all things considered, have blended sentiments regarding customary, non-super-powered police, who don’t fire lasers from their eyes.
Like a Greek tragedy it sets up a contention between loyalties, amid which reasonable people double-cross one promise to keep another and live with the consequences. Inside the bounds of a fun summer activity motion picture, it demonstrates its heroes as individuals—imperfect, difficult, and clashed, yet basically good-hearted, assuming liability for their activities and endeavoring to become better. This sort of story is the thing that superheroes were for at first.
Once more, all human civilizations have had superhuman stories, from Gilgamesh and Odysseus to Robin Hood and Zorro. At the point when societies are taking care of business, they form the gallant beliefs to which they endeavor to be, as Sophocles did of Ajax or as Vergil did of Aeneas. Amid the Great Depression and WW II, the U. S’s. pinnacle of intensity and strife, it started making superheroes, an image of what we may wish to be.
At the point when societies forsake that courageous persona, when they gain the ‘philosophic indifference’ of Gibbon’s present Romans, the way of life is in a bad position. As our nation slipped a long way from the post-war shine into a time of heightening gratification, its relinquished superheroes spare as pablum for children. However, Generation X-ers and Millennials, relatives of the counterculture, grasped them even into adulthood, maybe frantic for the legends their society never again gave. In this century, as the country develops perpetually agitated, we are swinging back to stories that give us heroes to have confidence in—a sign that there is promise for us.
As I commend the Great American Hero, I really want to ponder: Whatever happened to the Great American Slacker? It was not very far in the past that good-for-nothings led the earth. Alright, perhaps led is somewhat preposterous on the grounds that loafers, by definition, did not by any means lead— or make a decent attempt at assuming full liability. Be that as it may, they beyond any doubt were ever-present there for some time. ‘Slackers truly did not have any desire to do anything much,’ says Elayne Rapping, professor emerita of American studies at the University at Buffalo. ‘They celebrated not having to work at much.’ They slumped around on lounge chairs and cited the slogan ‘Work sucks’ from the 1999 film Office Space. They sang alongside the Ben Folds Five bum song of devotion Battle of Who Could Care Less: ‘I know it’s cool to be so bored.’ For over 10 years, the do-nothing disposition of good-for-nothings slaked a national thirst, an unconcerned remedy to American drive and assurance.
When I think about a loafer, I promptly go to one of Seth Rogen’s numerous characters. Although he got his start on the widely loved (and immediately dropped) ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ Rogen rose to fame playing adorable, congested man-child in movies like ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ and ‘Knocked Up.’ He was an ideal counterpart for author/executive Judd Apatow’s compelling, improvisational style, equipped for riffing with any semblance of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd alongside infusing mankind and sweetness into his graceless discourse. The effect Apatow’s movies have had on satire can’t be exaggerated – essentially every advanced clever individual has an association with or was specifically roused by this team.
You can thank (or fault) these folks for each enormous hearted R-appraised satire to hit performance centers inside the previous decade. They set a shiny new standard, and everyone hurried to duplicate it. This is the slacker image and I think that every slacker has at least one character from a slacker film that resonates with them. We need those slackers though. They provide comedy, a warning, a definition of rock bottom, and we need them to be those McDonald’s workers or else you have overqualified people working the lowest of low jobs. All in all, slackers are just important as heroes because we all have low points and without them, we would not have others who share our pain in those trying times.
These two dynamic personas are important for society to function and I think the best way to explain why is with the Yin-Yang symbol. The symbol, which most people have seen in a variety of contexts, pares things down to one clear and elegant image. As far as symbols go, it just doesn’t get more basic than Yin-Yang. Like Einstein’s celebrated equation, E = mc², the Yin-Yang symbol describes something very elemental and incredibly complex. What Yin-Yang points to and represents is so immense it encompasses everything within the Universe.
In the Chinese Yin-Yang model, Yin (the black) encompasses a seed of Yang (in the form of a white spot). There is Yin, but fascinatingly, Yin is also Yang because it includes some Yang. The truth is Yin will rework into Yang underneath bound conditions. It will do this as a result of Yang being present in Yin. So, there is balance, but the connection goes beyond balance to one of harmonization. When two things become balanced, they are equal but still separate. In a relationship of harmony, the two energies mix into one seamless whole, as perfectly embodied by the whirling Yin-Yang symbol.
This means there’s a dynamic flow happening that immediately and unceasingly balances and rebalances these energies. In the world as we know it this development is seen within the changing of the seasons: the cold of winter yields to the heat of spring and summer heat, and then gradually turns cool in fall to become winter all over again. You can additionally see this perpetual reconciliation at work in a shorter timeframe once a violent storm clears the air of a bizarrely hot and humid summer day.
In terms of your personal health, if you think of how you feel when you feel well, you might realize you don’t think of wellness at all! Everything in your life simply flows and moves seamlessly—in harmony. Your body, mind, emotions, and spirit will change and readjust to the circumstances in your life. I know all that Yin and Yang stuff was probably confusing but if you go back and replace Yin with heroes and Yang with zeroes, I think it will make more sense for this is precisely the state heroes and zeros create; that of balance.
So, when all is said and done the world needs both heroes and zeros. We need the heroes to set an example, something to strive for, but we also need a zero to have something to turn to when hero is just out of our reach. It will all work out in the end so do what you want to do be the hero that field needs, but do not fret when being a zero is just as important.
