Comment on Hijacking the American mythos. The superhero. by saarnok

Parent Post: Hijacking the American mythos. The superhero. · In Reply To

saarnok · 10/10/2026, 7:19:12 PM · permalink

Ah! Not talking about "real heroes". It's a purely mythic concept.  
  
And, it speaks to the problem with fictive "superheroes" in the first place.  
  
A "superhero" doesn't inhabit the same mindspace of a "hero".  
  
A person who tries to emulate Thomas Edison may or may not have a realistic perception of how Edison managed to achieve what they achieved. A person who fantasizes being Spider-Man has no realistic aspect of the "Super-Hero" to emulate, at least as relates to that which makes Spider-Man efficacious.  
  
At least conceptually, this has an effect of relegating effective change to the realm of fantasy.  
  
And it also has potentially the effect of relegating those who should be heroes to the status of villains.  
  
This is even explicitly mocked in works such as "Brave New World" by using the phrase "Year of Our Ford" to imply that Ford was a god figure in the American mythos and that acheivment of that sort should also be consigned to fantasy.  
  
It's also explicitly mocked in the utterances of figures such as Obama in his "You didn't build that!" declaration relating to people who not only did in fact "build that", but should be held up as exemplars to be emulated.  
  
Tesla is a distinctive character to be sure. Definitely a hero. But no less so, Edison.  
  
Real people have real flaws and heroes are real people.  
  
Heroes. Actual heroes; posses "sine qua non" the quality without which the event does not happen.  
  
Someone would eventually have developed the clean well lighted factory producing foods of systematized purity at true national scale. But, "someone" didn't do it. Henry Heinz did.  
  
Others did similar things. But, they didn't also successfully promote the standard of producing food items in this way to ultimately completely change the way literally everyone thought of food products.  
  
Henry Ford changed the standard of level of wealth required to own a car. Forever. That's a hero.  
  
The superheroes of the ancient world were literally mystical figures of the past who supposedly achieved the impossible. Characters such as Romulus. Figures to inspire.  
  
Modern "superheroes" are fantasy elements of the world we live in and inspire fantasies and therefore contribute to maintaining the infantalized mindsets of what aught to be functional adults.

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