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| Sunday, 14 November 2004 |
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Superhero syndrome The heroes who shaped early 20th Century American thought were mostly men of great strength, if very little subtlety - a tradition that continued with their comic heroes. TIMERI N. MURARI comments on America's super heroes.
They were in jeans, casual, but the clip somehow evoked memories of those old westerns, 'High Noon', 'My Darling Clementine' of men facing odds on a lonely street. I'm certain those film clips stirred in the minds of those three men too. They are of the age whose cinema-going diet - and I'm sure as kids they would have gone to the movies - would have been the westerns that dominated their era. Sheriff Kane, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, did not possess magical powers - apart from the fast draw - but they did solve lawless problems by gunning down the villains. The gun was the quickest solution to the problem. It was Pauline Kael, the New Yorker's famous film critic, who wrote that films were fracturing the American mind. She was discussing Hollywood films in her essay. She believed that films no longer nourished the American intellect and found this a dangerous trend. Today, blockbusters are the movie junk food on which Americans (and the rest of the world) gorge on. Popular entertainment Films now, more than books, settle like sediment into our subconscious. They are shaping how we act and react to the world around us. In another era, Michael Moore would have written a book, not made a film. Films make distant places that we may never visit, familiar as our own backyard. We all knew New York City long before we landed there to walk along those familiar avenues and streets. We identify with the characters we see up there on the big screen, even if it's escapist adventure. These blockbuster stories arise from the American mind, and not from other cultures, though we feed on their imaginings. The heroes on the big screen belong only to the American culture and not to any other either. We're usually the villains. For well over a century, the U.S. has been shaping itself on these heroic men (not women so much), first through comic books and later the film when it overtook the comic book as the popular medium of entertainment. These heroes who shaped early 20th Century American thought were not philosophers or thinkers, (despite Thoreau), they were men of great strength, if very little subtlety. They won their battles against the bad guys by unleashing their physical strength or using sophisticated gadgetry that gave them superhuman powers. Superman came from another planet and, like any earthling migrant, landed up in the U.S. He was the 'man of steel', as described in comic books, and invincible. Neither bullets nor bombs could kill him and he had been granted eternal life and eternal youth because of his powers. He wasn't flawed as a Rama or an Agamemnon, an Achilles or a Hercules. He had no doubts; no philosophical questions about his existence and whether he committed right or wrong, the concept of painful duty. But Superman wasn't enough for the American imagination. He was followed by Batman, Captain Marvel, the Hulk, Spiderman, Captain America and many other super heroes. You'll also notice in films that when alien civilisations attack the earth, they hit on the U.S. Americans honed science fiction into great entertainment, although they didn't quite invent this genre. That was done by European writers, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. And it's the Americans, with their superior military capabilities, who defeat these out-of-space creatures. I guess, being the only super power, any alien force would need to attack them first as other nations wouldn't give them a good fight. Even the new Ice Age begins first in the U.S., according to a recent movie. I think often now of Pauline Kael's comment when confronted with our new imperial masters. Is the new American empire intellectually structured on such fragile fantasies, I have to wonder? Americans don't have too firm a grasp on history, either their own and certainly not other nations', as they always look to a future horizon. In a poll of high school students in an affluent white-collar suburb, 50 per cent believed the Germans had fought alongside the Americans in World War II. They are new to imperialism and colonialism, discounting the Philippines, and their efforts to colonise Iraq are based on strength - missiles, fighter jets, attack helicopters, M-16 rifles, night sights, satellite images - rather than subtle and patient coercion. Their tactics in dealing with the insurgents - bomb 'em - worried the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, enough to force him to comment and suggest restraint to the Americans in a recent television interview. American abrasion has taken over 10,000 Iraqi lives. No wonder they're calling for the Brits to step into the hot spots and hopefully deal more humanely with the situation. Of course, they hadn't had much luck back in holding Iraq back in the 1920s and Indian soldiers paid the price. Superior intentions? In the movies, the action and conquest are over in two hours, and then the lights come on. We are all aware that Americans have a short attention span; they invented surfing, the remote, which can zap off anything, that bores them. A strange evangelism plays a major role in the U.S.'s excursion outside its borders - in Vietnam it was to combat the domino theory of communism, in Iraq to bring democracy to the feudal Arab lands. Okay, we know it's the oil, stupid, but it is camouflaged with these superior intentions. The U.S., we know, is self-sufficient. It does not need us, not even needs a UN sanction for an invasion. If tomorrow a sci-fi phenomenon, say a gigantic tidal wave or an alien force, wiped out Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, Middle America would not even be aware of our calamitous exit from earth. Europe's colonialism of Asia and Africa were built through infiltration deceit and guile as the main tactic, backed up when needed with red-coated soldiers, muskets and cannons. They had a long history of imperial expansions and contractions - Greeks, Roman, Hungarian, Russian - to name a few in their chaotic and cluttered past. Of course, they lived in a different age and they based their beliefs on ancient kings and conquerors, ranging from Charlemagne through to the Crusaders. These were men (apart from Bodicea and Joan of Arc) like Alexander, a Caesar and King Richard, with no mystical and superhuman powers; they trudged along the earth, along with their cavalries and foot soldiers. They were grounded men who later inspired their descendants. They were said to be wise too though I doubt that, soldiers seldom are, but those children who followed their heroic exploits granted them such wisdom. So in that old future, they were keenly aware of a hard and realistic past, a knowledge that the future could not happen in an instant. Inspiration for colonialism But these men were the inspiration for what came later - colonialism. They came to Asia and Africa, sniffing the black pepper off India, caressing the silks of China. They wanted to capture those market luxuries for their home. They came to trade and empires fell into their laps. It wasn't their original intent but they saw the crumbling despots and grabbed their opportunities. Conversions of any kind - religious or political - were very far from their mercantile minds. All this came later on, evangelists of both kinds followed the trade and the flag, once they had captured their markets. Of course, the Europeans believed implicitly in their cultural superiority over us natives, we were the white man's burden. He was leading us to the Promised Land by the hand, and it certainly wasn't another Europe. They didn't have that American certainty that the Promised Land should look, feel, behave and act like another America. They sprinkled their intellectual ideas, philosophical and political, on the colonised earth and in some nations they took root, in others they did not. And in unexpected nations when they did take root - India for instance - it surprised them and they expected the roots to soon wither away and old feudalism would reclaim the edifices they had left behind. A few years ago I attended a conference with our army chief of staff. There was an American delegate and Pakistan came up. He asked the general: "Why don't you invade Pakistan and capture it?" The general looked at him scornfully. "We could certainly invade, and probably win the war. But we will not be able to hold it. I don't want that to happen to my army." If only President Bush and his two sidekicks had heard the general, they would know that they have little chance of holding a country that does not want to be held. Easy victories of that kind only happen in the movies. - Courtesy The Hindu |
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| Produced by Lake House |
There was an interesting clip shown on television recently. It had the
President, flanked by his Vice President and Secretary of Defence, walking
side-by-side towards the camera on the Crawford ranch in Texas. The walk
defined them on screen and in their own minds. The president had remarked
about his strut saying "that's the way we walk in Texas".
