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Post By
HH
In Reply To
CrazySugarFreakBoy!

Member Since: Sun Jan 04, 2004
Posts: 1,235
Subj: On Secret Identities
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 03:17:19 pm EDT (Viewed 2 times)
Reply Subj: Tropes that won't survive the next generation: Secret identities
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 at 08:49:46 pm EDT (Viewed 546 times)

Previous Post

I haven't even started this essay yet, and I'm already going to allow myself to get distracted by a seemingly unrelated tangent, but trust me, it'll make sense in the end (I hope).

I'm going to make a bold prediction:

Somewhere out there, in America, there is a young woman, in her teens or 20s, who will make history when she runs for president, somewhere between a quarter-century to a half-century from now.

However, she probably won't make history by being the first female presidential candidate to receive her political party's nomination, and she might not even make history by being the first female presidential candidate to get elected to the office (since, by that time, we might have already had our first female president).

Rather, this woman will make history in much the same way that Bill Clinton did, by being the first presidential candidate to survive a specific type of scandal.

On that score, Clinton actually made history twice, by being the first presidential candidate to survive credible allegations of marital infidelity and recreational drug use, but it's really the latter type of scandal that will be most comparable to that of our future female presidential candidate.

Because, you see, my prediction is that our future female presidential candidate will be caught up in scandal when it's discovered that, when she was younger, she posted pornographic pictures of herself on the Internet.

As when Clinton was revealed to have partaken of marijuana in his college years, this "youthful indiscretion" will initially outrage a certain segment of the electorate, and expose (heh) our future female presidential candidate to ridicule by the rest, especially when she will no doubt attempt to talk her way out of it ("I didn't inhale" will sound practically Shakespearean in retrospect, compared to whatever lame excuse is offered by the candidate or her staff).

However, as with Clinton, these criticisms will soon generate a backlash of support for our future female presidential candidate, as more and more citizens and politicians assert, either privately or publicly, that "everyone has done this," and whether that's true or not, there will be enough verifiable anecdotes of other members of the candidate's generation engaging in similar behavior that, eventually, even moderate voters will decide that it's true that "everybody's done it," and thus, the scandal will be largely nullified.

And I just told you all of that so that I can tell you this, and (hopefully) ensure that the weight of it will sink in; I'm 33 years old, and the generations who are younger than me will one day be running the world, and they have almost no direct memories of the world as it existed before the advent of the Internet or "reality" television, which means that they have almost no concept of privacy, at least in the sense that I and a lot of people who are my age and older understand it.

And I'm not even necessarily saying that as a criticism, but I am pointing out that this changes a lot about the ability of certain genres' tropes to continue to exist into the future, because when you have an entire generation for whom "private" means that you're only telling your "friends list" of dozens, or even hundreds, of online acquaintances about it, then guess what? That wangsty emo character who never tells anyone about his or her most special secret ever? Well, that character's going to be a lot tougher to sell to that audience.

We're already seeing it in modern media reinterpretations of what "secret identities" actually mean, because from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the Singer-and-Ratner X-Men and Nolan-and-Bale Batman movies, even the "loners who don't work well with others" are surrounded by entire teams who are in on their most well-kept secrets. Hell, Sam Raimi has claimed that Peter Parker should never be married, and yet, even he couldn't resist letting Mary Jane in on his secret, and paving the way for their shared future happiness, at the end of Spider-Man II (which only served to make Superman Returns seem even more inexcusable by comparison, because it ended with Lois and Clark both knowing that her son's father was Superman, and yet, she still didn't know Superman's secret identity).

And the reason why storytellers in those genres should care is because, once certain genres become so wedded to certain tropes that they're rendered irreconcilable with the realities in which successive generations of audiences live, then they're reduced to "historical genres." It's the same reason why the vast majority of stories about undiscovered islands or continents now tend to be set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, or those about Martians or other pulp-style sci-fi are now rarely set after the 1950s. Granted, in those cases, it's because actual science has conclusively disproven the "science" behind those "science fiction" premises, but the principle remains the same; once you reach a point where the fundamental underpinnings of a premise can no longer withstand the skepticism of modern scrutiny, then the only hope for such a premise is to set it in an era when the premise was still considered remotely credible. In short, if you really do want to keep everything the same about your favorite genre or premise, forever, then you're essentially ghettoizing it to the status of nostalgia.

Which, actually, is why I think the best way to adapt Captain Marvel/The Power of Shazam! to other media, without losing all of the impossibly silly traits that make the concept so appealing and distinctive in the first place, would be to do it as a 1930s/1940s period piece, but I digress yet again.

Because there's nothing inherently wrong with nostalgia, as long as you own up to it and are willing to enter into it all the way. George Lucas didn't channel his nerd-love of 1940s action-adventure serials, set in unexplored jungles and outer space, by setting the Indiana Jones or Star Wars movies in the modern day, and if you really do feel that strongly about preserving all of your favorite tropes from a certain genre or premise, then neither should you. Yeah, it might suck that you can't show Superman or Spider-Man chatting on cell phones or surfing the Internet, but if you want to set their stories in worlds in which the audience might actually buy off on those two being able to keep their secret identities hidden indefinitely from Lois or Mary Jane, then that's the price you must pay.

I think there's some merit to your asserions, but here's the devil's advocate counterpoint.

I don't believe we've seen the end of secret identities, either in literature generally or comics in particular. Some of the motivations they tap into are too deep.

For comics, the secret identity theme touches on all kinds of reader identification issues, especially for younger and less secure audiences:

1. I know something you don't - Remember all those old comics where Superman winks at the reader in the last panel and reader and Supes are united in sharing a secret that dopey old Lois doesn't know? We identify with the main character because we share an insight into his life that those around him don't.

2. If only people knew who I really am - The Lee/Ditko Spidey distilled this down: "If only the kids at school knew it was me who saved them they'd treat me differently. They think I'm just weak nerdy Peter Parker. Imagine if they knew that I am really... Spider-Man!" It's the dream of the misunderstood outsider, to be respected and admired if people "really knew" what they're truly like.

3. I carry an impossible burden others do not have - All the times the hero gets into trouble because they've had to choose between doing the right thing and doing the socially acceptable thing, missing the date to save the world, and the angst that comes with it, touches on the lifestyle choices and evolving social awarenesses of younger readers; everyone feels like they're a special case for reasons nobody else can know.

4. I'm smart and you're dumb because I can keep a secret from you - Every time Flash Thompson rags on Parker for being useless then goes to his Forest Hills Spidey Fan Club meeting we're laughing at Flash and cheering for Peter; one up for the brainy nerd over the dumb jock. And yes, it's the same with the mysogenistic 50s Clark and Lois dynamic, where Lois plays the part of snoopy big-sister killjoy.

5. There's things about me and things I do that I don't want people to know - All the others in this list are about wish-fulfillment and wanting to be like the hero. This one's a phobia, about mom finding the mags hidden under the bed or the kids at school finding out about the tap dancing lessons. It's the dramatic tension of the threat of discovery and the subsequent damage that would cause.

Movies have to compress story arcs in ways that serial comics don't and can't, so of course they cover the meaty seat-filling stuff like identity discovery. Serial comics exist for the main part on illusion of change rather than change itself, so more often than not the reset button gets used.

Since we have the remarkable situation nowadays of comics characters with publishing histories twice as long or more than the average reader age we've got many heroes who have already gone through their natural story development cycle and some or on their third or fourth time around. Hence, where a story might appropriately end with the hero laying aside his mask, marrying the girl, and settling down after a job well done we instead have to have the story of the murder of the bride and our hero taking up his mask to fight on after the tragedy. Again.

Now to the romantic-specific stuff. A good half of romantic plot developments are along the lines of "I can never tell him/her, but..." followed by some revelation about a former lover, a dark secret, a fatal illness or whatever other cliche you care to insert. Secret identities fit exactly into this pattern, and are actually slightly less icky than some of the alternative complications.

We still live with storytelling expectations fed by ancient literature and compounded by a contemporary media concentration on a young single audience. Naturally this means the focus is on the hero's journey, that intense period of cheracter development through struggle which often includes meeting and finally winning a partner and lifemate. That journey naturally ends with "winning the kingdom" and settling down with the queen. Very few adventure stories feature the drama and excitement of raising a family or living in a stable monogamous relationship.

And that's why so few comics romances last, or else become protracted out in holding patterns past the endurance of long-term readers. It's not that somebody couldn't write about a long-term stable married couple and their adventures (FF comes nearest in mainstream comics, being in effect a family team drama), but such a series is contrary to reader expectations and therefore a harder sell.

Therefore in the lexicon of reasons romances remain in a holding pattern, secret identity, with the added "she's safer not knowing" excuse, is one of the primary tools. Revealing or discovering secret identity is a major step forward in depicting a genuine developing relationship, but that in itself works against the interests of an ongoing serial.




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