that are out of ideas.

For as long as people have told stories, those stories have involved the feats of great and

powerful characters--

--Gilgamesh, Athena, Moses, Beowulf, Paul Bunyan, Dolly Parton--

but only since the early 20th century have we had SUPERHEROES.

In just a short time, they've become an inextricable part of the cultural landscape, especially

in Hollywood.

Superman, Thor, Captain America, Spiderman, Batman--if you don't draw a distinction between

Highly Trained Masked Vigilante and Superhero, which, who knows, maybe you do-- they are,

ready?, "HUGE", seemingly permanent features of modern media.

And here we'll pause to repeat a major sentiment from our Ms. Marvel video, which is that WHOA

THE WORLD OF SUPERHEROES IS FULL OF WHITE DUDES. Yes, there ARE female superheroes,

and superheroes of color--

--Blade, Captain Marvel, Falcon, The Invisible Woman, Luke Cage, Miss America, Ms. Marvel,

Spawn, Simon Baz, Wonder Woman, Storm, and War Machine, just to name a few, if mutant-ness

and a giant metal suit don't also exclude superheroism, which for you, maybe they do--

--but you could very fairly argue I think, that of the above, only Wonder Woman is anywhere

near as prevalent as the other most well-known superheroes and SHE. doesn't even have her

own MOVIE. Yet. So. I Just. Didn't want to leave this point unmade. That the popular

construction of both history and superheroes in the West... lots of white dudes. And that's

probably not a coincidence.

And now anyone who wants to accuse me of being a social justice warrior can spend the rest

of the video formulating their petulant comment. Just trying to make your lives easier!

Here for you!

ANYWAY! It's no wonder that people love superheroes: here are these great people, awarded with

incredible abilities, able to take matters into their own hands.

Fighting the good fight, dealing with power and responsibility as we all do, making sacrifices,

trying to do the right thing and succeeding occasionally on a grand scale.

They sometimes struggle with their authority, but ultimately--in our most popular conceptions

and expressions--they have it and do amazing things with it.

As Noah Berlatsky wrote for the Atlantic, by reading comic books and going to see super

hero movies we get "to see an authority put everything in order."

This, incidentally, is also one way to view the progression of HISTORY: authority figures

putting everything in order.

In keeping with the dude-centric nature of so many things, it's called The Great Man

Theory of History.

In "On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History", Thomas Carlyle describes this

idea, saying that it's only through the actions of great men--people like Napolean, William

the Conquerer, or Alexander the Great--that progress is ever achieved. He calls these

people ... "Heroes".

Carlyle was quickly challenged, because his idea is complete rubbish: Herbert Spencer

rightly pointed out that HEROES are the PRODUCTS of so many things--race, class, labor, gender,

social and political standing, LUCK--that it is ridiculous to give them all of the credit

for progress.

And, just on a personal note, a lot of the people that history has deemed heroic were

deemed so only because of the number of people that they killed or countries that they invaded

so that, also... a troubling rubric for heroism.

The main idea being that history makes people just as much as people make history.

But! That doesn't mean that Carlyle's Great Man Theory, or great person theory, suddenly

lost all of its meaning.

Our collective love of narrative and our tendency to view history through its lens means that

we also tend to privilege the accomplishments of "characters", or, "powerful leaders."

It's easy to view history as a Parade of Characters, reconfiguring the world using the power that

they've been granted, cultivated, or fought for:

Steve Jobs, Joan of Arc, Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Elvis, Marie Curie, Maya Angelou,

they all left their own indelible marks on the world.

These people changed the world. But that they could change the world means that the world

was in need of, and able to, change.

Great People change history but their presence, indicates that Science, Technology, Art, Politics,

Economics,--are all capable of and have, IN FACT, changed.

And often, as I think all of these people would admit, with the hard work and equal

sacrifice of countless people alongside them. Einstein did not *singlehandedly* change science

nor Elvis music. Batman will never singlehandedly change Gotham, nor Superman Metropolis.

Which, and maybe this goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, means that locally

concentrated groups of great figures throughout history--

--Greece in ancient times, Florence in the Renaissance, Paris in the 20s, New York basically

whenever..

AAYYYYEEEEEE--

(We're in New York)

--indicates a pre-existing willing- or readi-ness for change at that time, in those places,

marked by the attitudes of not just one person, but many.

And maybe we ask, with a knowing wink and nod, if the same is not true for the growing

concentration of superheroes?

Since X-Men in 2000 there've been an average of 6 super-hero films every year. Ricky Anderson

ran the numbers and let me know there've been 64 major American Superhero films in the last

ten years.

Thats more superhero films than the 26 years PREVIOUS to THAT. So. An uptick, you could

say. Or you could just look at this infographic Doug Dooling sent me. It's pretty ace.

Now, it's easy to see all of this as some kind of Adventure in Late Capitalism: movie

studios are lazy, out of ideas or both and so they recycle all of the stuff that already

has a following and hope that it doesn't tank TOO HARD.

And maybe that's exactly right! But maybe, like all great figures, and concentrations

of great figures, this says something about our moment in history. A culture's myths always

indicate what they hope and fear and if superheroes aren't our myths... I don't know what is.

Maybe Bill Murray?

For instance, in the Studies in Comics journal, Chris Murray writes about how our superheroes

reflect changing attitudes about LIBERTY.

First, Murray describes the difference between positive and negative liberty, first developed

by political theorist Isaiah Berlin.

In "Two Concepts of Liberty", Berlin describes negative liberty as "the area within which

the subject ... is left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference

by other persons."

Positive liberty is "the source of control or interference that can determine someone

to do, or be, this rather than that." It "comes to light if we try to answer the question...'By

whom am I ruled?'"

Murray writes that superheroes used to be "champions of the oppressed". They were expressions

of "positive liberty". They were all of the good parts of Carlyle's GREAT MEN. But after

the start of World War II, they started to change.

"The superhero," he writes "...went from being an icon of positive liberty, reflecting the

frontier myth and rebellious spirit that marked American political thinking, to a policeman

for negative liberty, suspicious of difference or change, and fundamentally invested in the

maintenance of the status quo."

Where their powers once meant superheroes were free from societal conventions, and could

act as revolutionaries--their powers would eventually be used to reinforce those conventions,

especially as they were written during American war times.

Our blockbuster superheroes seem to exhibit both liberties: they are authorities, but

they also question the effectiveness of authority. Sometimes they question the effectiveness

of THEIR OWN authority.

They sometimes fight the status quo in their world--like in V for Vendetta, Batman Begins,

or Days of Future Past *if* you consider those characters "superheroes"-- and they sometimes

fight the status quo in OUR OWN world, as is the case with Michael B Jordan being cast

as The Human Torch.

But mostly, they seem content to maintain or simply ignore it: swooping in to eradicate

some sudden, external threat and then returning to their superhero perches until they're needed

again, or are themselves threatened.

What all this says about us, and OUR TIME... probably a lot. And maybe some day we'll REALLY

upset the status quo... and make a GOOD HULK MOVIE?

We can only hope.

What do you guys think? What does the current resurgence of superhero films say about our

moment in history, related to liberty or otherwise?

Let us know in the comments and I'm sorry, but it would be SUPER... if you subscribed.

Uh... let's see what you guys had to say about E-K-AH? I don't know, it just sounds so weird

to me. E-K-AH. Let's also see what you had to say about IKEA.

First and of course foremost, I had an amazing time last week at the Phoenix Comicon thanks

to everybody who came up and said hi who I met, who came to the panels that I sat on,

it was awesome to meet you, I had a great time at my first Comicon.

Ya'll are so nice! Everybody was just so nice and Phoenix was cool. I had a great time.

The end.

Maymaylingling says that Marx would have loved the episode because IKEA furniture allows

people to work on something from start to finish, something that industrialization took

away from the worker and, I don't know, that means you have to look at "Start" as picking

something off the shelf and "finish" as building it in your living room, but I will see he

probably would appreciate the creativity of IKEA. He said that Capitalism is a very creative

system, and IKEA has effectively figured out how to make its customers work for them so,

very creative. Good problem solving, IKEA...E-K-AH.

InMaTeofDeath and a bunch of other people asked about my pronouncement that you must

respect all ideas, even the ones that are stupid and dangerous and challenged it, and

rightfully so. Thank you for challenging.

MiRobin22 actually writes something remarkably close to how I feel, that the respect of an

idea has to be independent of your agreement or emotional reaction to it, and that getting

those ideas to change, especially the ones that you don't like, respect is the first

step towards changing them. You respect some ideas the way that you respect your parents,

but you respect other ideas the way that you respect weapons. They are dangerous things

that are deserving of your respect because of the danger and the harm that they can do.

So applying this to things that Ian Petrie brings up, these are things that are wrong

but I think disregarding them can be just as dangerous as allowing them to happen and

I think that that is what I mean by respect. I will agree that maybe my use of 'dogmatism'

was un-nuanced,or unsubstantiated so...fair. Fair criticism there.

And that being said, Thomas Staalesen writes a really good, kind of meditation on the idea

of dogmatism. You should check it out. Thanks for writing this, Thomas.

David Salazar brings up the famous example of the one egg you need to add to Betty Crocker

cake mix to make people feel as though they have a competence. This is one of my favorite

things. You know, they could make the Betty Crocker cake mix so that you didn't have to

add an egg, but it didn't sell as well, I think is the story? Because people felt like

it was too easy? I only say that anecdotally. I've never actually looked that up but, I'm

gonna keep telling that story because I like it.

Jkebab1 applies theories of alienation and social stratification to the IKEA instruction

manuals that come with your furniture. It's very funny.

Nice work Jkebab1.

Jennyburger07 has some stern words of criticism for the IKEA Effect paper and says that the

overall human condition is affected by IKEA's constant suggestion that we just need more

IKEA. More IKEA...

Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I need more IKEA...

E-K-Ah.

Logical Phallacies provides a breakdown of all of the ways that the human condition is

sated in IKEA using Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This is a very good comment. A link

to this and all of the others in the doobly-doo.

And finally, this is a thing that happened!...

This week's episode was brought to you by the hard work of these caped crusaders. We

have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit, links in the doobly-doo. And the Tweet of

the Week comes from Jonathan Ore, who points out that the character select music in Street

Fighter 3 Alpha is called, "Who'll Be Your Double?"

And for this week's record swap we will be replacing Arcade Fire with Wendy Carlos's

Sonic Seasonings.

Alright, so adios Arcade Fire, and welcome, Wendy Carlos.