We talk about the history of superheroes, American exceptionalism, why we should bring back dueling, the importance of Penny Dreadfuls, the disintegration of heroism, the title of the Patriarch's hypothetical biopic, Dr. Strange director Scott Derrickson, and human beings' desire for a righteous king.
Penny Dreadfuls (mid-19th Century) are the English equivalent of the American Dime Novel. Both were designed to fill the need for affordable reading material for the working class that was created by universal public education and its accompanying literacy. Hardcover books were generally out of reach, price-wise, for anyone but the upper classes. In England, the Half-penny Marvel help kill Dreadfuls. God Bless Capitalism. Marvels and the later story magazines, like Union Jack, tried to provide stories of a higher moral character than the Dreadfuls, that some people accused of glorifying outlaws and scoundrels. One can also say that regular newspapers serializing stories (like Sherlock Holmes) helped contribute to the decline of the Dreadful.
ReplyDeleteHollywood and the comic book industry preaches because they are part of the Left and they are producing disguised propaganda within a commercially viable product. You can see Whedon's leanings with that Fox News joke in the finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Left in the US will stop criticizing/demonizing government when they eliminate all political opposition. When a Democrat is in the White House, you are supposed to believe the Republican Congress is behind the evil, with the President unaware. When they controlled all of Congress, too, you were supposed to think it was the military leadership controlled by the Republicans and rich. Whedon is a useful idiot rather than an ideologue. Ironically, his value system is in tune with "The American Way." That's why the Right generally likes the stuff he does. He learns how much the Left opposes those values when he gets grief from them--like he did for the last season of Buffy. That whole season of writing and all the passionate monologues provided a better case for war in Iraq/fighting terrorism than the Bush Administration had put forward. So many Lefties attacked him that he had to make a bunch of anti-Conservative statements to keep some of his cred with the Leftist mainstream.
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