© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 37
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia for those of you who don’t read comics: Superman was beaten to death by an ugly looking character called Doomsday, sometime in the first half of the Nineties. Here’s another interesting item. At about the same time, Batman was reconstructed (or deconstructed depending on your semantic choice) as an aging neurotic. But we all knew he was a bit odd in the first place, didn’t we. Something to do with the early death of parents and the obscure costume, perhaps?
Notwithstanding the current crop of breathlessly excited, if dramatically challenged movies, comic book writers have gone places where mainstream authors fear to tread. In killing their characters or exposing them to the cold, hard light of the truth, they have not just attacked their own characters, but also challenged the subconscious desires of at least a few generations.
Although Superman was resurrected by awesome technology, and although Batman still lurks in the sordid neighbourhoods and alleys of Gotham City, we know they are no longer invincible, immortal or unassailable. The realization is refreshing in a strange way.
It’s not just Martin Luther King or vigilante lunatics who have dreams. I’m on the far side of thirty, and still intend to become a rock star and famous author when I grow up. Others I know want their glory in the form of movie stardom, lives of heroic adventure or the sort of money that buys Lear Jets and small tropical islands (count me in there as well). Find me someone who doesn’t have some kind of secretly nurtured fantasy and I’ll show you the ultimate loser.
The problem is, reaching too hard for an unrealistic dream can leave you with little more than a sore neck, or doing anywhere between five and twenty-five on a robbery rap, depending on how you try to finance your fantasy, and how dumb you are. Today’s gonzo advice from Auntie Offbeat is to take your dreams out the back and kick the hell out of them from time to time. It may seem cruel, but it’s one way of releasing the pressure.
Sometimes it’s cool not to want to be a guy who leaps buildings in a single bound, Bill Gates or Mother Theresa. In the latter case, it’s all the more cool, because she is dead and you should, theoretically, want to be alive. In the case of the superhero type, pick up a comic book, take a long, hard look at the knocks he or she takes in the course of a day’s work and you will know why the character has to leap buildings in a single bound. As for Bill Gates, I suspect that none of the fabulous money buys him any more quality time than the rest of us lesser mortals.
In other words slack off and enjoy the fruits of indolence occasionally. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and leads to reduced productivity and burn-out, etcetera.
Overblown ambition has the habit of making beggars of us all. We measure ourselves not by what we have achieved, rather by the places we are still desperate to go. It’s anything but a healthy situation.
So what becomes of dreams in this scenario? Psychologists have coined the amazing term ‘fictional finalism’, to describe my desire to become a rock star or someone else’s desire to be a saint or superhero. Chances are it won’t happen: it’s just not realistic. But this sort of dream influences behaviour. Recognising the unrealistic nature of the fantasy is a way of influencing behaviour as well. In my case, I might be able to reduce the embarrassing incidences of finding myself miming Tom Waits in front of people I didn’t know were there.
Superman deserved to get the kryptonite beaten out of him if only for being such an insufferably superior being. Hats off to the guys who recognized the fact and used it to sell an incredible number of comics in a very short space of time.
And if this all seems a bit gloomy, remember that the Man of Steel was resurrected: you just can’t keep a really good bit of fictional finalism down. But at least you will have had a bit of a break. Now hit the couch and switch off.
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