Because, with that one big exception, DC’s heroes are from a different era. They’re from the era when they were creating gods. And the thing that made Marvel extraordinary was that they created people. Their characters didn’t living in mythical cities, they lived in New York. They absolutely were a part of the world. Peter Parker’s character was a tortured adolescent. DC’s characters, like Wonder Woman and Superman and Green Lantern, were all very much removed from humanity. Batman was the only character they had who was so rooted in pain, that had that same gift that the Marvel characters had, which was that gift of humanity that we can relate to. – Joss Whedon
I’ve been thinking a lot about antiheroes lately, ever since reading Noel Murray’s AV Club post, TV’s Antihero Era Enters Its Second Decade. Murray traces the recent upswing in television antiheroes — flawed characters, some even deeply and irredeemably amoral — to The Sopranos, and he’s actually a little tired of it. Writing of the new Showtime half-hour Nurse Jackie, Murray says:
…I hope the creators don’t feel obliged to make the heroine’s addiction and infidelity the driving dramatic force of the show. I gave up on TNT’s Saving Grace when I realized that no matter how incredible Holly Hunter’s performance may be as a cop on the verge of a breakdown, the show’s combination of rote procedural plots and gratuitous grimness was going to continue to be a turnoff. Complex heroes are fine — appreciated even. But tortured, amoral TV heroes? That’s just about been done to death.
Which is funny, because my one problem with Nurse Jackie, of which I’ve only seen the first two episodes so far, is that it’s maybe not quite tortured enough. It’s a half-hour dramedy, and that format all too often leads it into broad sitcom territory. It’s a problem that recurs to a lesser degree with House, another antihero-driven medical show; no matter how good the writing or acting is — and I think both are usually excellent on both of these shows — things can be a little campy when you too often play an antihero’s transgressions for laughs. (As Stan Lee jokes here, “The world is so crazy that if you present things as they really are, it comes across as broad satire.”)
I’m not a big fan of uncomplicated characters, righteous crusaders who always make the right decisions for the right reasons, characters who are essentially ciphers around which the problem (or monster) of the week happens. As Murray’s fellow AV Club writer Zack Handlen says in his comments to Murray’s post:
We all like watching somebody be impossibly cool and good at his job, but when it comes to the long haul, I’m much more interested in somebody who has to pretend how to be normal.
I like The Mentalist, for instance, but I can easily go weeks or months without seeing an episode, and I often wish they would play up the darker edges of the main character. (As I’ve noted before, they do tend to soft-pedal it at times, and the show gets by mostly on Simon Baker’s charm and a pretty decent supporting cast.) The only sitcom I watch with any regularity is How I Met Your Mother, which, despite its sometimes absurd touches, is firmly grounded in real and honest characters. (In many ways it’s like Friends, if Friends had developed characters instead of just comic types.)
But, like Murray, I don’t need everything dark and gloomy and antihero-y. All I want are stories that are honest and entertaining, characters who are real and reflect the flaws that real human beings actually have. Which is why I prefer antiheroes to superheroes. As another AV Club writer, Todd VanDerWerff, puts it:
All of this just plays up exactly why shows where it seems like it would make just as much sense to make the hero superpowered, like The Mentalist or Psych, choose not to go that route. Any time you give the hero powers, you have to figure out a way to believably limit them, and believable limitations on something like all-encompassing telepathic abilities are hard to come by.
BSG was a parade of the anti-heroes. On the one hand, I like deeply flawed characters. But it does tend to wear on the nerves after a while…too much ‘woe is me/you/us’ is bad for the soul.
In my younger years, back when the world was black and white, I did enjoy those pure, noble, virtuous, always do-the-right thing type of superheroes. I think maybe on some level, people want to believe that there are forces for good out there that are above corruption and that are reliably undefeated. But then when I got older and cynical I did realize those types were boring and you could only watch for so long before you got fed up with the constant morality. The definition of “hero” switched from a superpowered Dudley Doright type (which is unrelatable to the mass majority of imperfect humans) to a more flawed hero who had a particular skill or talent applicable to the situation and was trying his best in spite of hang ups, fears, or life problems. Much easier for Joe Public to relate to, and I think more inspiring as it makes you feel that you, too, might have the potential to do something extraordinary.
(I think that’s why I’ve always been more of a sidekick fan. The sidekicks might have talents and skills of their own, but they usually don’t measure up to the hero and are often more flawed, complex characters to play off the hero’s inherent nobility. I find them infinitely more interesting characters, by and large.)
So in recent years I have been gravitating more toward the.. well, maybe not *quite* anti-heroes but definitely a much more flawed, reluctant hero. But I don’t think, prior to this enlightening debate, that I knew you could overdo the anti-hero every bit as much as the superhero. I feel like I need to start watching myself with that, especially if I ever get around to writing that series of novels…