Still wanna be a Superhero

Hopefully this does not turn into a movie review/fangirling because I got super inspired after watching Captain Marvel to do amazing things and I thought to myself: if a movie can still make me want to be a Superhero at *this age*, then surely it must be doing something right. So here I am writing about that fleeting moment of endless possibilities, hopefully capturing it before I am incapable of feeling this sense of wonder again.

Also, I think that in this photoshoot I look like a supervillain and you cannot have heroes without villains so it’s all perfectly in line.

The first thing that struck me was how empowering it felt to be a woman. Actually, this point sounds like a terrible point to start with because then everybody is going to shut off like “nah it’s another one of those feminist things”. No, it’s not. I just feel that I had never seen a woman who embodies everything so … Superhero-like. I aspire to be like that. Something about being able to glow like a frickin volcano while floating in space and sending an entire fleet of Star Wars-esque space platoon running away with just the pure energy you emit with a test punch. I realise that is overly specific but that does the job in encapsulating that momentary feeling of empowerment.

This feeling of empowerment stood out to me this much because it is juxtaposed to the recent movies/books. I feel that stories nowadays are too self-conscious of being moral: “Oh no we have to prove that females do not just have to be physically strong to prove her worth”, or “Superheroes have to be relatable too so let’s show them disagreeing among themselves and sucking at cooperation”. The value of Superheroes of late has decreased because we are trying to prove some kind of *point* and the paradox is that the harder we try to empower people the less pure (? Don’t come for me for this word choice) the feeling it gives. Ha, makes me think of a potential GP question: Should Superheroes be exempt from our judgement and placed on a pedestal? Only upon watching Captain Marvel did I realise how much I missed that shining invincibility and simplicity in a story.

“Not all heroes wear cape”, or “don’t be a hero” are voices constantly trying to rationalize with us and undo the hero-complex these feel-good films perhaps developed in us, which I understand. Whether it is to prevent people from being a spectator in a crisis, or to avoid undermining the legitimacy of legal institutions, movies are pulling this thing where “the superhero does the superhero things but a bystander (like a normal human or a police) saves a child or something and the superhero gives them a look and smiles and nods once in affirmation”. It seems extremely extra to me and feels like it the message was thrown in as an afterthought. “Oh shit we forgot to make everybody seem like they can play their part. Let’s just chuck in this one scene.” There’s a time and place for that and a Superhero film is not one of those times.

The next thing I realised in the midst of watching the movie was the power of fluff and feel-good media. Listen, I have a conspiracy theory that the governments actually know about superior extraterrestrial beings who might attack us and all these superhero films are designed to be propaganda to strengthen our psychological defense in case of an attack. In those times we have nothing else to hold onto besides that feeble hope that we will survive. The thing about admitting our weaknesses as humans and the “I’m strong because I’m weak” paradox is really palatable. In fact, it is so palatable I sometimes secretly fear that this kind of mindset is going to be our downfall in the unlikely event of an actual alien entanglement.

But that is all in my mind and way too hypothetical. How does this play out in real life? It got me thinking about the power of movies in affecting how we as a species react to crisis. A couple of weeks back a military officer came in to give us a talk about total defence and his biggest concern with terror attacks was the day after. How would we as Singaporeans react after the crisis broke out? I don’t think it is a good sign that many of us think about the complains and online persecutions. And in the larger picture, the lack of faith in how Singapore would hold up against fault lines in our social fabric (ie. race and class) is dismal. Saying that soft power and movies and culture is sufficient in defending our nation is ridiculous, but perhaps we are underestimating their powers a little too much in Singapore.

Honestly, these superheroes feel good movies do a good job in inspiring hope. While I do not have statistics backing me up on this, I think that in the event of an alien attack we would all be able to, by pure recall, retain some optimism of the outcome based on the last superhero movie we watched. I am surprised no films in Singapore have explored how we can realistically cope with a crisis and the day after.

After watching Captain Marvel, I realise that movies ruin us because they give us a greater capacity for hope. Some call it escapism but films can do a whole load of good things be it providing social commentary or otherwise. By otherwise I mean that some films can offer the ideal for us to look towards in the current reality of depressing news. This might seem an extravagant waste of prose for something trivial but I like to rant about random things. In conclusion though, I discovered that I still wanna be a Superhero.

Also, I realise that this blog post just ended up like a response I would have written for the film and television series question in the GP essay paper. Yikes.