Thinking about Jes and Cin's post on Superman tonight

[malymin]

Wayback archive here.

The twins mention how the themes intrinsic to Superman that they wish to highlight and draw out in their fanwork (such as immigrant identity) get ignored and dismissed by Superman's fandom, in favor of highlighting how the fanworks fit into to a wholesome and "not edgy" checklist. The backlash against depictions of Superman as an adolescent reactionary's wet dream of a gritty and realistic Ubermensch have, themselves, become shallow and reactionary, more concerned with scoring internet discourse points than engaging with deeper artistic analysis.

I'm also thinking about a specific conversation in the comments. A user going by Adell says:

One aspect that I've seen talked about this, in regards to classic characters or series, is how they're not "allowed" to grow anymore. I remember someone saying that the first Star Wars movies were based on samurai movies, westerns, and such, but if you make something Star Wars today, it will be based on previous Star Wars. It will need to reference specific alien races, specific plots, specific people. Even something like The Old Republic, which was an attempt to break away from that at some point, has now become the same recursive storytelling.

This applies to other classic creations as well, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Batman, Superman, they all feel like they have to check boxes on the fan's favorite stories, favorite lines, favorite moments, rather than just actually telling a story.

And Jes and Cin respond:

Oh absolutely Superman has been entering his Star Wars self-referential era. I think it's extra depressing when Lucas said Star Wars was originally inspired by the Vietnam War. It's like this process of regurgitating an allegory without understanding its roots inevitably leads to a sanitization of its inherit political themes.

Comments

[stepnix]

This process of "freezing" a character is particularly well-documented for Spider-Man. I'll have to see if some of the other big capes have similar work on how that happened...

[malymin]

May I see this documentation? 👀

[stepnix]

The Re-examining Spider-Man series is a pretty good reference for it! normal spider-man fans refuse to shut up about One More Day, i refuse to shut up about the Clone Saga.

[malymin]

Crazy to think how hard they had to "push" this idea of an unchangingly teenage Spider-man for it to eventually be entrenched as the default... I had no idea that this aspect was so recent... or, quite frankly, so blatantly a matter of a handful of powers that be trying (and, after an uphill battle, eventually succeeding) to force their preferences on the readership.