I just watched Watchmen (Not a bad movie as long as you remember that if it had all of the subplots and asides of the graphic novel, would be 5 1/2 hours instead of 2 1/2), and I realized that although the real everyman and the closest thing to a "hero" character is Nite Owl II. A nice guy, eventually gets the girl and has the closest thing to a happy ending that any of the characters in the book have. But the real fan favorite is Rorschach by a mile. The uncompromising anti-hero with Jack Bauer-esque theories on how to get information and an uncanny ability to use household items to adapt to a situation seems to captivate more than the guy who works on mechanical wonders naked at 3:00 in the morning.
But I digress. Despite the impressive blood trail Rorshach leaves behind and his questionable morals and ethical values, he is still considered one of the coolest characters in the book. But why do we all like the total badass who goes out of his way to create the most collateral damage possible?
I also recalled the public's fondness of guns and high crime when I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie Public Enemies. The movie is about the biggest, baddest bank robbers of the 1920's, with guns ablazin' and innocents a dyin', they nonetheless invoked the image of a sort of fol hero. Even Al Capone and other notorious gangsters known for just ******** everyone up got wide acclaim from the masses. The public loved the idea of these gangsters as underdogs fighting (with Tommy Submachine Guns) the big bad government (forced by law to use non-auto weapons, at least until the gang wars hit their peak).
But why support murderers and criminals? Because they represent the American dream. No, I'm not saying that everyone's dream is to go slaughter some guys against a wall on Valentine's Day, I mean the idea of freedom. The gangsters, in their constant evasion of the law, embodied the human desire to be truly free of societal and legal restraints. I sure as hell don't want to work in a crappy cubicle for the rest of my life.
If you saw the movie Wanted, you would also know how much the life-or-death decisions appeal to people who have spent the peak years of their life laving on a third daily status report on a project already cancelled in favor of one being sponsored by a hot chick from over in marketing (We're not sure what she does there exactly, she's never in her office, but she's getting more money every year than her entire department combined. This may not worry you until you learn that she's a temp). Fast cars? Gun fights? Hot women (If 24 has taught me anything, it's that torture works, and that an extreme majority of assassins are attractive)? Sign me up.
It's the idea of freedom from all responsibility, the power to do whatever the ******** you want, whenever the ******** you want. While this may not appeal to all you religious folk out there who believe that we are judged by the acts we commit during life, we atheists believe that our legacy will be the only thing that survives us. And being "Ted, the guy from accounting" is a pretty ******** way to be remembered. And driving through a bank, guns blazing, is a pretty good way to go in terms of legacy.
The public loves the idea of the action hero who doesn't play by the rules even more now that we are slowly becoming a nation of bloggers. Have a beef with AIG? Blog about it. Hate the war in the middle east? Blog. Think massive changes need to be made to the nation's capitalist system before it eats away what little liberty we still have left? Blogblogblog. Don't worry about the fact that no one will ever read it. Just vent. And that is my personal theory about how our nation is bending at the knees to whoever yells the loudest. If there's one thing about the 60's I miss, it's the protests. LBJ definitely gave a second thought about bombing the s**t out of the VietKong and forcing a draft when National Guardsmen gunned down 4 kids at Kent State (Nixon didn't care, however). Where is the anger? There are no marches, no signs, we all just stew in our own anger, we want to do something, but we're too scared of the consequences to actually do it. That's why we turn to escapism.
Video games, TV, movies, they all play to our desire for something more than this dreary existence. TV lets you see the day-to-day lives of action heroes. Movies let you see the big budget, explosion-filled, babe-packed adventures of the rugged action hero.
And video games, in a new level of escapism yet to be surpassed, actually let you BE the action hero, blazing away at countless faceless enemies with near-infinite health and ammo. Die while defending earth from the evil aliens? Restart. Run out of ammo when you finally get to the end boss? Restart. Perhaps it is our awareness of the lack of a Restart button that makes us so afraid to try something new.
Of all human emotions, fear is one of the most common and most potent. As we sit paralyzed by worries of negative consequences of just standing up to the d**k who spits on your donuts during the Monday Morning Meetings, we crawl back to our little computers and TVs and fantasize about fast cars, beautiful women, and being able to shoot that little ******** right in the goddamn face. Could you actually take your life into your own hands? Of course not, you'll be labeled a sociopath and put in an asylum. That's why they call it escapism.
Wow, quite the wall of text, let me go and at least give some paragraph breaks... <span id="test26778619">. . .</span><br/><div id="post26778619" style="display:none; margin-right:75px;"></div>
megadinoguy Community Member 
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