Superhero mercy

[G13]

I don't mean to say the Joker wasn't devious in his own right, but a lot of that stuff he pulled was more daring than anything else. The fat guy was complaining about his stomach pains and the guards chose to ignore him. Had they chose to help their fate would have been much different, I'm sure. The boat bombs were also pretty daring in that he left ample time for someone to out think him rather than just do it.

I like the word you used though, elaborate. That's what it all boils down to for the Joker. Do something people will notice. It wasn't a guarantee that any of his plans would work, there was certainly a chance that someone would have found the cell phone bomb before he had time to activate it. He only did it to see if he could get away with it, this stuff is fun for him. The Joker's insane, it makes more sense to incarcerate him because there's always that chance he could be saved. Ra's was set in his ways, and even threatened to keep coming back until the job's done. That's not out of your mind battit crazy, that's determined, and I think the admission to having some small part in Bruce's parent's murders probably fueled the choice to let him die.

It all goes back to story though. Joker v Batman has been a feud for the ages. It's a dance, Batman catches Joker, Joker escapes, rinse, repeat. Ra's is immortal, as a legacy in the movie, literally in the comics. His death was meaningful to the story as a whole, whereas the Joker's wouldn't have been.

But this isn't the topic and I'm just falling further away from my original point, which I still don't remember. :/ Heroes are just... meant to be held to a higher standard. To kill for a greater good is good and all, I guess, but they wouldn't be any kind of role model that way. How can you fight for justice if you're a vigilante?

[Jiro]

It's a combination of teaching kids a good lesson, not having to create extra villains, and the whole symbolic good thing. The heroes are so smurfing good that they will save the bad guys. The collateral damage isn't really factored in; most superhero stories will probably try and downplay death entirely. You'll see destruction, but there's no "oh no all these people are dead" because death isn't cool.

[Shorty]

I have to combat the theories here that mercy and the need to censor death is for the sake of the children. It's true that comic books were more than likely created for kids, but I think that the need to be so good comes from something deeper that the writers sought for the sake of humanity instead and doing the best for your neighbor that you could, even if you're at odds with them. Also, they had to find a way to separate the heroes from the villians. What is something a villian would never do? Go out of his way to save a hero from dying.

Vivi summed up my thoughts pretty well.

[Slothy]

I have to combat the theories here that mercy and the need to censor death is for the sake of the children.

I disagree with that notion as well. There's some blanket statements being made about how comic books are for kids. But the reality is that while there are comics for kids, and while I fully admit that kids used to be the main audience for super hero comics, I don't believe for one second that that's still true. Honestly, I find most super hero comics these days seem to be written for adults like myself who grew up on them. It's still the characters we grew up with, but the stories and situations they're put in aren't as campy and silly as they used to be, and they can get pretty dark and mature at times.

But as far as Del's question of why someone like Batman would save the Joker if given the chance, I think I have to let my original argument stand. Choosing not to act if the villain does something to endanger their life, or is perhaps dying for some other reason, is as much choosing to kill them as if Batman tossed him of a building. Again, many of these heroes choose not to kill because they are after justice and they don't believe that they alone have any right to decide who lives and who dies. It's not a power they trust themselves to use objectively or responsibly, so they choose to leave that up to the system of justice their country/city/whatever has in place. Sadly, the problem is frequently that the justice system is inadequate to handle these super powered criminals and killers.

I almost have to wonder if it's an intentional statement on how ineffective the real world justice system can be as well. Probably not though.

[Mercen-X]

The original intended audience for these superhero titles were likely teenagers, however, children quickly began to look at these comics too because kids mimic the habits of the older generation. When parents realized the violence of older comics their children were reading, they complained loudly rather than prohibit their children from reading the comics. Well, that's my experience with modern parenting at least: blame everyone but the child and let the kid do as he pleases. This is why animated versions of the superheroes shows were kidded down.

[Shorty]

Somehow I doubt that that's actually true, though. There's a lot of violence in comic books - the one thing they seem to (usually) omit is death. I think it's a preference of the writers, not because parents in the 50's rose up and banded together to shield their children from mortality.

I almost have to wonder if it's an intentional statement on how ineffective the real world justice system can be as well. Probably not though.

These were my thoughts as well. I think you may be correct.

[Slothy]

I may be getting some of my facts mixed up here, but there was some public outcry about the idea of comics corrupting youth and being dirty commie propaganda that the government ran with in the past which led to the comics code and decades of stupid censorship. Mind you, this was all some 50-60 years ago. Even back in the 80's or so the comics code had lost some of it's power. The fact that something like Watchmen exists is kind of a testament to that.

Companies were publishing comics without its approval all over the place, and even the bigger guys like Marvel occasionally told them to go smurf themselves. Perhaps the more famous example being when Stan Lee was asked by (I want to say) Nancy Reagan (or some government anti-drug initiative she was playing public figure head for) to write a comic about the dangers of drug use. This led to a Spider-Man issue dealing with some guy taking an unnamed fictional drug and almost getting himself killed. The comics code told him he couldn't run it since it depicted drug use, despite it carrying an anti-drug abuse message which the first lady had requested he do to begin with and he basically told them to buzz off and printed the issue without their seal of approval anyway.

These days the comics code is fully dead, publishers basically do what they want and decide what they feel is appropriate which is why these days, even in super hero books, you can find varying levels of violence, gore, sex, etc. depending on who the book is intended for.

Animated series are something completely different though. Simply by virtue of being animated the producers are typically trying to make them somewhat kid friendly even if they are still made to appeal to older demographics, which is why they're occasionally toned down. Doesn't mean the actual comics are fully intended for kids though. I certainly wouldn't hand a seven year old copies of the recent X-Force and Uncanny X-Force runs to read for example given the entire premise is basically Wolverine forming his own personal hit squad to assassinate threats to mutants before they become a problem. You can imagine how violent a book that has Wolverine being given carte blanche to kill whoever he feels needs to die would be.

Point being, comics aren't just for kids, and despite decades of attempted censorship, they haven't been for a very long time.

[Tigmafuzz]

Case in point: Superhero vs. Alter Ego

Like krissy said, there is a difference between the superhero persona and the person underneath. And like G13 said, heroes are held to a higher standard. Not everyone would approve of "killing people to stop the killing of other people."

The point of stories is to influence people. That's what they've always been. The writers may think they're doing it because they love to entertain and like to create their own universe, but that's all secondary. It's really meant as a way to express their own views on the way things should be, even if they themselves don't realize it.

Long winded explanation incoming

Why do we go watch superhero movies? After all, variations of these stories about brave, superhuman heroes predate recorded history. We used to tell them around campfires before written language even existed. They were created as a way to teach you how to behave.

Thousands of years ago, when your ancestors were living in tribes and hunting gazelles for food, nobody knew how to read. Even if they could, paper wasn't a thing, parchment was rare and precious. They had no written historical records, they had no educational system that could devote years to teaching history to the kids.

This was a problem. Once humans started forming civilizations, the guys in charge didn't just need the next generation of children to know how to fish and hunt, they needed citizens who would fall in line and fight for the tribe. That meant the kids needed to understand the big picture: why preserving the tribe is important, why we hate the tribe across the river, why our tribe is better than that tribe, why it's important to go off and fight in the next war no matter how scared you are.

Now, to do this, they could either A) bore the kids to death with a years-long recounting of the history of the tribe, which nobody has probably written down anyway or B) tell them a cool story. They could tell the thrilling tale of Kolgor the Valiant who, when the evil neighboring tribe came to slay all of the women and children, stood alone and fought bravely through the night, with four arrows in his chest, until the enemy retreated in terror. You want to be like Kolgor, don't you, little one? Otherwise, he will have died in vain.

Clearly "B" is the one that is going to stick in the kid's brain. It doesn't matter that the story is either fiction or grossly exaggerated -- it gets the job done, it makes the kid conform to be the kind of citizen the tribe needs him to be. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- your tribe may very well be better than the one across the river, your real history is probably full of real heroes whose sacrifices were just as important as, if less romantic than, Kolgor the Valiant's. The tribe didn't go with the fictional version because they were liars, they went with it because it was the only way for the "truth" to survive.

So while we use the word "myth" these days to mean "a lie that needs to be debunked," often the myths were simply more efficient versions of the truth. They're easier to remember, they don't take as long to tell and they eliminate a lot of the messy ambiguities that can confuse the point. Also, they won't bore the listener to tears.

The point is, this is why stories were invented -- to shape your brain in a certain way. A guy named Joseph Campbell wrote whole books about it, you should read them. These basic stories, these myths of the hero overcoming the odds, the great man who sacrifices himself for the greater good -- they're what make civilization go. In a society, the people and the buildings and the roads are the hardware, mythology is the software.

And while your ancestors had their heroes that they heard about around the campfire, you have Batman, and Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter. And yes, the movies you watched this summer serve the same purpose as those ancient myths. Sometimes this is super obvious (clearly Rocky IV and The Day After Tomorrow are trying to cram a message into your brain with the subtlety of a sweatpants erection). But what's the message behind James Bond? Or Iron Man?

"There isn't one!"

That literally isn't possible.

Quiz Time: What do these hugely popular hero characters all have in common?
Batman
Spider-Man
Superman
Luke Skywalker
Frodo from The Lord of the Rings
Harry Potter
Finn from Adventure Time

Got it yet? They're all orphans.

That's kind of weird, right? Do you think that's a random choice? Do you think the writer just flipped a coin? Or do you thinkthere's an emotional button that is being pushed there, the writer reaching around the logical part of your brain and triggering something inside you without you knowing it?


That sounds devious, but those little subconscious tricks are Fiction Writing 101 (we covered a bunch of them here). It's a scary power to entrust someone with, if you think about it. Especially if you, as the audience, don't pay close attention to what they're doing. You leave the theater a different person than you were when you came in. It's a difference in millimeters, sure, but you're going to watch a thousand hours of the stuff in the course of a year. It builds up.


"What, so you're trying to tell me there's some hidden agenda behind the Transformers movies? It's freaking robots punching each other!"


No, there is no intentional hidden agenda (well, maybe a little), but there is certainly a set of assumptions that the filmmakers are passing on to you. In the case of Transformers, the assumption is that combat is beautiful and exciting, that military hardware is sexy, that destruction is gorgeous and fun and completely free of consequence. And, most importantly, that the solution to all conflict is to be more masculine, powerful, aggressive, confident and destructive than the bad guys.


"But the people already think that! These movies are just giving us what we want!"


Right, but why do you want that? You think you came out of the womb thinking that military hardware was cool? If you grew up in a real war zone, and didn't have movies and TV, would you have the same opinion?


I'm not saying Michael Bay is a secret tool of the military industrial complex trying to brainwash you into supporting the next war, no more than the makers of Jaws were trying to wipe out the sharks -- they were just trying to make a scary movie, and Michael Bay is just a dude who likes explosions. It doesn't matter why the message is there -- it soaks into your brain either way. This is what everyone misses when debating this stuff -- one side says, "Hollywood is trying to brainwash you!" and the other side says, "Michael Bay isn't smart enough to brainwash an armadillo!" and they're both missing the point.


This is why, when some people point out how racist the Lord of the Rings stories are (i.e., orcs are evil by virtue of being born orcs, dwarfs are greedy because they are dwarfs, Aragorn is heroic due to his "blood"), it's both correct and unfair. It's correct because, yes, that is the way Tolkien's universe is set up -- nobody in the stories hesitates to make sweeping generalizations about a race, and they're always proven right when they do. Frodo's magical sword didn't glow in the presence of enemies, it glowed in the presence of a certain race (orcs). Go write a movie about a hero with a gun that glows in the presence of Arabs. See what happens.


But it's also unfair, because Tolkien clearly didn't sit down and think, "I'm going to increase the net weight of racism in the world in order to firmly establish white dominance! And I'll do it with elves!" He was just writing what he knew. Of course a guy born in 1892 assumed that Nordic races were evolved and graceful, that certain other races were born savages and that midgets love axes. Hell, he could have been the least racist person he knew, and he'd still be the equivalent of a Klansman today. Whether or not the agenda was intentional is utterly irrelevant.

I can't emphasize this enough -- there is no conspiracy. Yeah, you'll occasionally have a movie like Act of Valor that is transparently intended to boost military recruitment, but 99 percent of the time, the movie's "agenda" is nothing more than a lot of creative people passing along their own psychological hang-ups, prejudices, superstitions, ignorance and fetishes, either intentionally or unintentionally. But they are still passed on to you, because that's what stories are designed to do. Michael Bay feels a certain way about women, and about the role of women in the world, and you will leave his movie agreeing with him just a little bit more than when you came in.

We need merciful heroes. As Susan Cain said in her TED talk (completely unrelated to the topic, but somewhat relevant), the beginning of the twentieth century marked the transition of the public's admiration from the man of contemplation to the man of action. You want the hero to just dispose of the bad guys, but would that really solve anything? There'd be another bad guy the next day. The crime level would never decrease. Sure, as soon as Batman goes apetit on some random burglar and decapitates him because it's his third strike, the crime level will go down a bit when word gets out that the dark knight ain't smurfin' around anymore. But pretty soon people will just start robbing and killing again. Nothing will change in the long run aside from the hero becoming a vigilante. And wouldn't you rather have your kids look up to a man who treats even his enemies with a certain level of decency? A man who gives second chances and upholds his own moral standards when dealing with those kinds of people?

But then there's the distinction between the costume and the person underneath. The man in the mask isn't the same as the man who goes to work for a living and takes pictures or writes articles for the Daily Planet. Peter Parker has no reservations about killing a man who threatens his aunt's safety, while Spiderman would never do such a thing, because Spiderman doesn't have personal affairs. Spiderman has business.

And that business is justice.

and then you have deadpool

[Jiro]

Yeah so I mentioned kids earlier and that was kind of misleading because I do mean that the lessons are meant for everyone and morality isn't just for kids but yeah you guys know what's going on now

[Miriel]

If a superhero saves a villain who has demonstrated a history and desire to hurt people, and that villain then goes on to kill and destroy and cause mayhem, is the superhero at fault too?

I mean, of course there are practical reasons for keeping around villains rather than constantly killing them off, but a lot of those reasons have more to do with audiences and such, rather than internal character motivations.

I think as far as the character's rationale goes, most superhereos have some serious psychological issues going on. A least a dash of megalomania, sadism and masochism. I'm assuming that a part of them needs to have an opponent to have a purpose. So they keep saving their beloved villains. Plus, I think a lot of people LIKE having enemies. Look at J. Edgar Hoover. That guys loved to collect enemies.

[Quindiana Jones]

Megamind, too. Gotta love a nemesis!

[Mercen-X]

There aren't enough superheroes in any universe who use effective brainwashing to stem criminal activity. We've got a lot of hypnotists, telepaths, and sorcerers who would be capable of such things, but they don't use these talents often enough.

[Roogle]

There are cases of superheroes killing villains in comics, occasionally. I recall one instance where Wonder Woman killed a villain because it was the only way to stop him. Here is an excerpt of that story from the Wikipedia article about Maxwell Lord:

Lord also uses his powers to influence Superman's mind, causing him to brutally beat Batman in the belief that he is Brainiac. Lord subsequently sends Superman to attack Wonder Woman after making him believe that she is his old enemy Doomsday trying to find Lois Lane to kill her. Lord justifies the resulting destruction as proof of his argument about the dangers of superhumans, pointing out the devastation that Wonder Woman and Superman could cause if they fought in a crowded area and with the fact that Superman can be brought under another's control as evidence that they cannot be relied upon. In the midst of her battle with Superman, Diana realizes that even if she defeats him, he would still remain under Lord's absolute mental control. She creates a diversion lasting long enough for her to race back to Lord's location and demand that he tell her how to free Superman from his control. Bound by her lasso of truth, Lord replies, "Kill me." Wonder Woman then snaps his neck (The OMAC Project, 2005). In response, Brother Eye broadcasts the footage of Wonder Woman killing Lord all over the world, destroying her reputation and her friendship with Batman and Superman who reject her despite the fact that she saved their lives.

[Depression Moon]

And that's why Wonder Woman is my bitch!