Musings on epicness
I just watched the epic trailer of epicness (Smallville's Season 9 trailer from Comic Con, found here) and am listening to the Superman: The Movie soundtrack for the first time in a long while. This music, and the Superman theme at the end of the trailer, just made me fall in love with Reeveverse (and Superman mythology in general) all over again.
There are a lot of people who think Superman is just a cardboard cutout with no personality. That may be in some incarnations, but there's some indefinable quality about his story that draws me to it every time. I think the idea of a man with tremendous powers, who uses them only to help people, never to harm, and is an outsider, a nebbish, and worshipped all in one is an ideal that Western society needs. As I just read somewhere, heroes throughout the world have always been nigh well saturated in blood and violence - see Gilgamesh, Hercules, Beowulf, Arthur, Batman, etc. There are very few heroes we adore who actively shun violence, and most of those are religious rather than secular heroes.
The fact that Superman and his ideals are so different from the norm is perhaps what makes him harder to write. But there's such a wide range of possibilities - you can't give him many physical challenges, so stories providing conflict for Superman have to focus on the psychological aspect. Make him struggle with his relationships, with the crazy behavior of people he encounters: human interactions can be infinitely confusing and frustrating sometimes. I still have the desire to write a series of unconnected fics in which, in every chapter, Superman meets someone new and different.
Anyway. What makes his story epic? I'm going to have to think about this for a while, and do some thinking on the word epic, but I believe it's the hope that Superman brings to people and the wonder and awe we have at his abilities, as well as the long-term potential for change that he brings (in stories, anyway). The combination of those things gives his myth a living, electric quality that goes straight to the heart.
There are a lot of people who think Superman is just a cardboard cutout with no personality. That may be in some incarnations, but there's some indefinable quality about his story that draws me to it every time. I think the idea of a man with tremendous powers, who uses them only to help people, never to harm, and is an outsider, a nebbish, and worshipped all in one is an ideal that Western society needs. As I just read somewhere, heroes throughout the world have always been nigh well saturated in blood and violence - see Gilgamesh, Hercules, Beowulf, Arthur, Batman, etc. There are very few heroes we adore who actively shun violence, and most of those are religious rather than secular heroes.
The fact that Superman and his ideals are so different from the norm is perhaps what makes him harder to write. But there's such a wide range of possibilities - you can't give him many physical challenges, so stories providing conflict for Superman have to focus on the psychological aspect. Make him struggle with his relationships, with the crazy behavior of people he encounters: human interactions can be infinitely confusing and frustrating sometimes. I still have the desire to write a series of unconnected fics in which, in every chapter, Superman meets someone new and different.
Anyway. What makes his story epic? I'm going to have to think about this for a while, and do some thinking on the word epic, but I believe it's the hope that Superman brings to people and the wonder and awe we have at his abilities, as well as the long-term potential for change that he brings (in stories, anyway). The combination of those things gives his myth a living, electric quality that goes straight to the heart.