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fpb1) Is it only my impression that Moffat and RTD only know how to write heroes who look exactly like public schoolboys from the seventies? I guess it's right for a modern incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, who was an Oxford man after all, and a Victorian one; but both Sherlock and the Eleventh Doctor look exactly like people I might have met at King's Canterbury in 1977 or so, just a few years older. I am not a pusher of diversity for its own sake, but I find their similarities a bit troubling.
2) Much more important is the drift of the heroic image away from a man in his thirties-forties towards a teen-ager. The heroes of the past tended to be men of some experience and with a past, projecting the image of a young father even when convention did not allow them to be (like Pat Ryan in TERRY AND THE PIRATES or even Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, they would have wards or nephews); today the general idea is to cast someone barely old enough to vote as the hero. I don't mean just Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl, where the fantasy element is at least obvious. To me, the most blatant and disturbing instance has been the rejuvenation of Superman. Superman is your dad, the dad we always wanted to have; he is the person who looks over you, who makes sure you are safe, who gets the kitten out of the tree - the reason you feel safe in your bed at night. The fifties Superman was clearly a man in his forties; Wayne Boring's had a recognizable receding hairline. But since the seventies he has been getting younger and younger. Dean Cain's Superman, in particular, looked like he'd just got out of high school; and it's not a coincidence that since then TV has focused on Superboy. To me, this is positively unsettling, as if one watched one's parents devolving into adolescents - like a real-life version of Buffy's Band Candy episode.
2) Much more important is the drift of the heroic image away from a man in his thirties-forties towards a teen-ager. The heroes of the past tended to be men of some experience and with a past, projecting the image of a young father even when convention did not allow them to be (like Pat Ryan in TERRY AND THE PIRATES or even Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, they would have wards or nephews); today the general idea is to cast someone barely old enough to vote as the hero. I don't mean just Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl, where the fantasy element is at least obvious. To me, the most blatant and disturbing instance has been the rejuvenation of Superman. Superman is your dad, the dad we always wanted to have; he is the person who looks over you, who makes sure you are safe, who gets the kitten out of the tree - the reason you feel safe in your bed at night. The fifties Superman was clearly a man in his forties; Wayne Boring's had a recognizable receding hairline. But since the seventies he has been getting younger and younger. Dean Cain's Superman, in particular, looked like he'd just got out of high school; and it's not a coincidence that since then TV has focused on Superboy. To me, this is positively unsettling, as if one watched one's parents devolving into adolescents - like a real-life version of Buffy's Band Candy episode.
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Date: 2011-09-17 06:04 pm (UTC)