Superman Does Not Blog

Once upon a time, America revered the Lone Hero archetype. The Man With No Name was a clever twist on the myth. Bruce Willis as Bruce McClane, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” in Die Hard is another one. Really, there is a vast universe filled with Lone Heros. These are simply two of my favorite examples. In many ways, the Lone Hero is America’s most recognizable, profitable, and educational archetype. The man or woman who’d risk their own physical, emotional and spiritual lives to save those of another. Newscasts, when they get around to accentuating the positive, love Hero stories. The Lone Hero. It’s woven into our individual and collective unconscious.

No one embodies this myth better than Superman. He is the Lone Hero Titan and America’s greatest and most popular super-hero. But Superman’s fallen on some hard times lately, if I judge his box office numbers correctly. Why is this so? Why did Superman, the greatest Lone Hero of his time, and his new movie fall flat?

As with most questions, there’s no singular answer. Jeopardy and other games shows are partly to blame for spoiling our appreciation for and recognition of the nuances of Life. Answers are concrete and singular in Jeopardy, rarely are they so in Life. Finding, or creating as studio executives and spin doctors do, a singular reason why something happened is often a exercise in futility (or creativity in the case of the executive and spin doctor). The right answer often is not the correct answer. In so far as it’s often one of many right answers or wrong answers depending on your approach. This is because things rarely, if ever, happen because of one singular reason. Multiple and competing narratives and motivations contribute to causes and effects. We may give one reason for ending a romantic relationship but the truth is almost always more fractious and complicated.

So the reason why Superman didn’t live up to box office expectations is multi-faceted. There’s not a single, correct answer why. There’s a lot of them. I’m of the opinion that one of the reasons, albeit a subtle one, is that Superman is a Lone Hero and our society is evolving away from the lessons of the Lone Hero. We don’t require them like we once did. We’re moving into the era of the Collective Hero. In my own personal language it’s, Superman don’t Blog. He don’t use Digg and he don’t know what a tag is. Let me explain the long way round, via my process.

I was a bit surprised by Superman Returns box office take. I’m no pro when it comes to reading box office tea leaves, but the figures look small to me, around $105 million for the first seven days. About $52 million for the weekend and if you add the extended July Fourth holiday, Monday and Tuesday, the total becomes $74 million. (( All figures from Box Office Mojo.))

I consider Superman America’s most popular super-hero, all things considered. It’d put Batman at second, Spider Man third and the X-Men somewhere nearby. It could be argued but I think this is a fair assessment. Superman appears to have done better at the box office than the reinvented Batman of last year. To be expected if we were to go solely by my top super-hero list. However, compared to Spider Man, Superman doesn’t look so hot. Spider Man, released over the Memorial Day weekend in 2002, I believe, made $125 million its first four days in the theaters. This is about $50 million more than Superman or the Man of Steel’s weekend total.

Now, I wasn’t expecting Superman to make more than Spider Man but I was expecting bigger numbers. I was thinking $75-$85 million for the weekend, not $52. As it now stands Ice Age 2 released in March, hardly a prime time movie watching month, made more its opening weekend than Superman did. The power of little children perhaps.

In any event, numbers kinda bore me to be honest but they can tell a story if you pull back your perspective. There’s probably a lot of reasons Superman Returns didn’t meet expectations. I’d offer the opinion that comic book movies aren’t fresh anymore. It’s a “been there, done that” experience and the cycle is stale. I’d imagine, though I’m not sure, that this is one popular reason bandied about.

The first Batman movie, the Burton Batman, was something new. A comic book movie hadn’t been done in awhile. It felt fresh. It felt different. It filled a geeky need. After Burton Batman there was a small lull in time before Spider Man busted down the gates. After Spider Man the bandwagon got rolling. Now any second tier super hero can have their day immortalized in celluloid. But movies like Electra, Daredevil and The Punisher tend to water down the genre. (( I view Hulk as a brave attempt at making a comic book into an art movie. While it didn’t work on many levels I wish directors would take the comic book out of the movie. It worked the first few times. Now it’s getting silly.)) It doesn’t have the excitement it did when Spider Man opened. It feels conventional.

So one reason for Superman’s unmeet expectations is the genre. It doesn’t have the pulled it once did. Other reasons may be the usual suspects, not the right story, not enough buzz, poor marketing, wrong actors, or the current two/three year box office doldrums playing kryptonite to Superman’s clout. These all probably played a role. Some to a lesser extent than others.

As for myself, I believe a reason Superman limped home, given the expectations, is because the days of the Lone Hero have passed. As a society we no longer blindly honor the Lone Hero. We’re surely not going to dump down twenty buck or more to see the flick. (( I based the number on my own compulsion. I can’t watch a movie in the theatre without buying popcorn. I start fidgeting like a crack addict and lustily eyeing other people’s bulging bags of buttery corn if forced to watch a popcorn-less movie.)) The story of the hero toiling in personal isolation trying to solve communal problems is one many can recite rote. We simply don’t put as much weight in the Lone Hero narrative anymore.

This isn’t to say individual heros are not important. They’ll always be important. Lone Heros teach us personal values and serve as exemplars of how to properly live among others. The problem for the Lone Hero is we know these lessons now. We get it. We get that it’s noble and good to forfeit our own needs for those of our fellow man. We get that it’s bold and brave to cast aside our wants and goals to benefit someone in need of help or assistance. We get that it’s courageous to sacrifice one’s individual life for anothers. We get these lessons. We don’t need Lone Heros to teach them to us anymore. The Lone Hero has served its function. He and She have done their job.

Society is beginning to place a different kind of hero as first in its heart. We now honor The Collective Hero. We honor heros. The plural is important. We honor those who work collectively to change things for the good. Those who work in concert with each other to solve problems and fight evil. We honor groups who put their needs on par with the needs of the community. A comic book example of this ethos would be the X-Men, which incidentally beat expectations and did very well at the box office.

I think an obvious reason for our move away from Lone Hero worship to honoring The Collective Hero is 9/11 and the bravery of all who participated in saving lives that day. We tend to honor “the firefighters” or “the co-workers” or Flight 93. We don’t atomize and single out individuals as much as we used to. 9/11 was a collective experience for the nation and we have since bestowed our mantel of The Hero to groups of people, not single persons.

Another reason for the shift from Lone Hero to Collective Hero may be technology. Fax machines, cell phones, email, broadband, the list goes on and on, technology is condensing the world. It has shaped what were once isolated, obscure communities into public, popular entities. It has broken down walls that once separated us. We don’t often want those walls broken down but they’re crumbling nonetheless despite what we want. Technology and its rapid ascent has focused the world and is binding communities in ways that weren’t possible twenty years ago. It has connected us to each other and, for better or worse, we’ve become an enmeshed society.

We all feel this to the extent that we now realize the individual is actually a collective, that “I” is actually a plural word. It is difficult to do anything by yourself these days. We all need help getting done what we want done and moving to where we want to go. We all become what we are through the efforts of others. We do not grow and learn in a petrie dish. We find some of this support in communities big and small. Some we call family. Others are social outlets. Each one is woven into the individual. The community becomes a reflection of the “I”. The “I” a reflection of the community. We are a mosaic of other individuals and groups.

We can see an evolution towards collective wisdom and power happening on the Internet. The web is becoming a more social, community oriented place. One need look no further than blogging, Digg or del.icio.us. (( Of course, there are problems inherent in the evolution towards collective living, group think being an obvious one. I see the world evolving and in any birth their will be painful symptoms.)) The social web allows space for communities to grow almost overnight. It allows an individual to join a community easily and often without the baggage associated with dusty social conventions. The workplace is also becoming more democratized, unless you work for Wal-Mart. As a society we’re growing. We’re beginning to realize our individual growth is impacted by our collective growth. We’re beginning to realize that if the community doesn’t grow we, as individuals, may not either.

Superman isn’t a part of our new story. He lives in an old world. He doesn’t blog. He doesn’t use Digg to get his news either. He works at a traditional media outlet for God sake’s. He may in fact stick his nose up at a citizen blogger. It’s hard to imagine he knows what a tag is and it’s easy to assume he’d think Flickr is a villain recently escaped from the Phantom Zone. (( I’m being partly facetious to make a point so please spare me the the logical arguments contrary to the previous sentences.)) In other words, Superman is apparently immune to evolution as well. He’s a Lone Hero and the Lone Hero narrative is a story of a society were evolving from. It’s lessons have been learned.

In many ways the Lone Hero is an affront to our new understandings. The Lone Hero archetype puts the hero apart from his or her community. Sure they save it and protect it, a welcome and appreciated service no doubt, but almost always from a distance or they’re here and then they’re gone. The Lone Hero lives apart from the world. He or she appears only when needed and disappears soon after. In this way, the Lone Hero feels untruthful. Superman may be super but he’s nothing without the support and nurturing of his community, of his family, of his work environment, of his friends, his country and his planet. Clark Kent is an individual without a community, a super man without a cord to a collective great than himself.

Collective change is where we stand. It is the direction our society is evolving towards. Gone are the days of individual leaders standing above the din of group. The Lone Hero have passed us by. We learned what we needed from them. Important things no doubt, but their message is tired now. We have incorporated them and are in the process of trying to transcend them.

The new story is of the Collective Hero. The Heros who join forces to battle fear and bigotry and Wal-Mart. The new narrative is a plural one. It tells the tale of community power and group action and teaches the values of unity and the strength of many . We now all relate to The Collective Hero because it’s the world we now all live in.

So there’s a lot of reasons why Superman didn’t do so hot at the box office. That we have outgrown the Lone Hero myth is one of them. It’s not the primary reason, probably not even a secondary one, but it’s part of the story, at least I think it is.

My advice to Superman? He needs to get himself a blog. He needs to quit the office gig and create a web start-up. He needs to Digg a few stories, flash his Flickr badge, and bookmark till his fingers hurt. But more than anything else, more than tagging, or blogging or Digging, in order to move from Lone Hero to Collective Hero Superman needs to join a team. It’ll improve his image. I’m thinking the X-Men might have an opening.

postscript: to all you geeks out there, i realize the man of steel was a part of the JLA. suppose if i wanted to use this fact to buttress my point, i’d point out how much more relatable, if not cooler, he is when he is a part of the team.

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