the world needs saving

(inspired by the talk at faeriemaiden's livejournal about superheros)

I've been thinking about why superheros. Not just in general, but for my generation, why have superheros suddenly become popular again? There's been lot's of recent movies about superheros: Batman Begins, The Incredibles, Sky High, that new Superman movie, and the Spiderman movies, to name a few. I think I know why we want superheros.

We believe the world needs saving.

It wasn't always that way. We used to think that the world was mostly good, but there were bad people in it. We thought that the government needed change, that global warming was a major issue, and that we ought to recycle. But it never really hit us.

Not till September 11th.

Then it all came crashing down. We found that the world needed saving. We learned that life isn't fair, that good people die for no apparent reason. Oh, we'd always known it, in a strictly academic, distanced sense. But now we know. We know it in the marrow of our bones, it has slipped into the fiber of our souls, and permeated our heart. It's burned on our brains, with those images. With the image of the second plane hitting that second tower. It still doesn't feel real. We still don't want to believe it. I still can't write about it. There are no images for that image, because it is too huge, too horrible, too real. My teacher wanted us to write about it. But I couldn't, and I can't, and I don't need to. I'll remember.

We'll remember. We won't forget.

We want superheros, not because it would make it better, but because it would make it bearable. It is an evil that doesn't even seem logical. It seems to be the work of a supervillain, and so we want our superheros. And we have a desire, that we may not even admit to ourselves, that we want justice. Life isn't fair. Good people die. Innocent people die. But, there is still justice. We want superheros to remind us of this. We want living, breathing, caring superheros, who can find the villain and bring him to justice. We identify, to, with the superheros.

Before, we felt like America was a great superhero, trying to bring justice to the world, often failing, but never giving up. But then they killed our little sister, who was innocent, who didn't even know. She just wanted a normal life, and now she's dead, and our cape is gone, our mask is gone, and we feel like we only ever pretended to be a superhero. And we want, we desperately want, there to be more. There has to be more to life than this.

There has to be more to the story. Justice exists. This can't be the end.