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killer shrike
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Subj: Call it a difference in the willingness to suspend disbelief, then.Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:22:49 am EDT (Viewed 448 times)
| Reply Subj: Re: Except that many members of the target age group I'm talking about disagree with your disagreement. :)
Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:04:19 am EDT |
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Previous Post
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> When my mom has let me answer her students' questions about superheroes (they know me as "Mrs. Boxleitner's son, who scammed a ton of free comics for his ship after 9/11, and who always donates his used comics to our class"), two things I've been asked, with increasing frequency, are a) how superheroes can manage to keep their identities secret, in this age of all-pervasive seeing-eye media, and b) why they would even choose to do so.
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We used to ask the same questions when we were kids, and that was well before the all pervasive internet. Does "How can people not realize Clark Kent and Superman are the same person?" sound familiar? Only if you've been following comics for the past fifty years!
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Because, from where I stand, even though kids are more than willing to suspend their disbelief for stupid tropes that THEY like, they have ZERO tolerance for tropes that they're even so much as lukewarm about, especially if those tropes are seen as older than their own generation.
And as for Superman's secret identity, I would point out that, as Batman pointed out to him in a recent DC comic, the last time anyone cared about him was when he was dead. Superman II ended with Superman date-raping erasing Lois' memory. Spider-Man II ended with Mary Jane pointing out that it was total bullshit for Peter to live "half a life" by keeping his secret from her. Superman Returns maintained Lois' ignorance of Superman's secret identity, and as much as film critics loved it, that was one of the many reasons why almost every single person I knew under the age of 30 thought it was unforgivably dumb.
If narrative traditions don't work, they simply need to be dumped. And the best thing I can say about secret identies is that some kids will tolerate them, if they have to. Again, I don't hear anyone under the age of 30 arguing that they should be preserved.
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