Have you ever desired the rescuing by a super hero, or ever read or watched in awe of a super villain? To deconstruct the human need for super heros and the human awe of the super villian, you have to decide its cultural origin. If you were born in the western world super heros have been part of our culture, whether it be D.C. comics or Marvel we have lived in a world of super constructs. The constructs of a super hero are culturaly western in belief, and in the 21st century influenced by juedo-christian ethics.
No matter what religion you adopted or where born into, the ethics and super structure of western world lays in the cultural ethics Christiandom; due to the Holy Roman Empire and the conquest of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The view of our super constructs is based off of celestial inspirtation off of the cardinal sins and the blessed virtues, post 590 A.D. after Pope Gregory I ascended papacy. Comonly these sins and virtues are know as the seven deadly sins and the seven virtues. Our heroes and villains are created with the excess of these attributes which make them itriguing to western humanity.
The cardinal sins, post 590 A.D., are: Greed, Lust, Sloth, Wrath, Gluttony, Pride, and Envy. Western culture takes these seven ideas and makes them into cultural tabboos, creating a decadent need for them. Very often these are our vices, our naughty pleasures which we often partake in silence or in small groupings, due to there very nature. Our villains on the other hand thak them into excess, making them very decadent and very intriguing. Examples would be Lex Luther for the D.C. Universe whose conquest is to take over the world and obvious picture of greed; and another example would be Magneto from the Marvel Universe who is so confident in his mutanthood that he damns humanity to destruction, an example of excess pride. The construct of all supper villains falls under these vices, Jabba the Hut with Gluttony, Sloth, and Greed, to Harley Quinn with Lust and Wrath. It is their unrelenting and unremorseful use of these vices that intrigues the human spirit, often with repulsion but also a human need to watch and quitely route for them.
Our heroes posses celestail attributes which are ingrained in western humanity, these seven virtues are Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, and Humility. These are the virtues that bring us close to the divine as pictured by western cluture. These virtues are found in excess in our Super Heroes, so culturaly we view them with divine attributes which inately make them "good guys". Most Super Heroes posses multiple attributes, bringing them closer to western celestial perfection. Superman we never see him copulate with Miss Lane, and he is very temperate with all manners of his life. Superman is diligent in his actions taking care of all problems, and often giving back to society as an act of charity. He is patient not willing to jump the gun and just act against Lex Luther, or kill him showing his kindness. Finaly humility Superman never flaunts being Superman after the deed is done, he goes back to being the mild mannered Clark Kent. The Marvel Universe tends to leave out all of the seven virtues to give more of a human feeling and appeal, but still will have an excess of one ore more of the virtues. Example would be Tony Stark with the moniker of Iron Man, yes he is a rich playboy, which removes chastity and humility; but he posses an excess of diligence, charity and kindness. It is an anti-capitalist thought to take a multi-billion dollar industry, and stop its manufacturing of armaments to save humanity.
Since super heroes have the ability to do some aweful things this brings to light the "God Clause". Since they are closer to being celestial in action, they then have God charecteristics. Many super heroes have the ability to see the "complete picture" and henceforth do things that one may consider rash or un-virtuious. They, like the divine, set on a different scale of time; as humans can only see the momement, super heroes see the big picture. This God Clause gives us the "ta-da moment", when we realize that the action was broader then our human visual timeline could percieve, such as we see and expect from our divine.
What draws us to these charecters is that they perform their actions with rebroach, the do it with out provication just because it is the right thing to do. This is often times the antithesis of the the human charecter but the archetypal paradigm found within all western super hero constructs. Humanity according to Christiandom is made in the "Likeness of God", and within Ancient Greek Mythos, man is created by the fire of the Gods. With both this being said and the theory of divinty, the divine posses all seven vices and all seven virtues; but humanity just has a peice of divinty within them. This gives humanity certain God characteristics, without giving them the excess that we find in our fictional super heroes and villains. This Fire of the Gods and Likeness of the Gods gives birth to morality and aspects perdetermined in our culture of the constructs of good and evil, and our comics play out to inprint the understanding of these western values.
In 590 A.D. a cardinal sin was removed from the catholic canon by Pope Gregory I, and that was the cardinal sin of Sorrow. The practical reason was that this was the beginging of the plagues that ravaged Europe, and the previous papal ruler had sucome to the illness. Europe was not only plagued by great illness, but also by great sorrow. I look at sorrow as the virtue that was left in the catholic Pandora's box. Sorrow was something left to humanity and within sorrow we often look for hope. Which allows us to look to the skies again for a celstial being to fly down and save the day.
How do we end this cycle of good verses evil, it seems that with attribute of sorrow we have created humanity in a cycular pattern without escape? We have created a co-dependance of divine through our need for salvation and in some times vindicatation, giving up on human will and relying on human faith. Many western ideas look at a catastrophic end or a celestial battle between the forces of good and evil, but what is a world without Superman?
I didn't know that sorrow used to be a sin...that is interesting. Makes you think about how rampant depression is. I also think it is interesting that more people are aware of the sins than of the virtues. There is such a focus on what we shouldn't do that sometimes people forget that it's not always about not being bad but about how to be good. Perhaps that is what separates people: some look to the sky for a hero to fly in to save them from their life, and some look within for the hero they can be that will let them help others.
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