On The Glut of Superhero Movies

"Big We"

If there is one thing the establishment press does not like it is the appearance of helplessness.

Here, I am speaking of a particular helplessness --pabulum preaching helplessness.

The mainstream press has existed, as far back as we can readily know in one post, to do one thing always.

That staple of pressdom is to tell us "everything is fine", and that this is so because the "Big We" did it, and the "Big We" is still doing it.

Yes, that means the exceptional "Big We", which has brought us security, prosperity, freedoms, rights, and all things cultural (On The Origin of Nanny Statesmen).

But while those presstitutes are slaving away in the vast propaganda pabulum trade, they can't handle a problem they can't brush off with quickie McPabulum.

Which is any problem which would require something that takes substance (something beyond sound-bites, beyond jingoism, and beyond bumper-stickers) to forge a solution (Blind Willie McTell News).

They seem to think that even admitting of a real problem, admitting to a real threat to civilization, is tantamount to admitting their own failure.

Possibly it even requires them to admit that they have been super wrong, blinded by their own headlights, while majoring in the minors.

Hence, a plethora of superhero movies injected into the media world to wash away all these blues.

A perceptive fellow, who is a movie director/producer, said what the plastic pabulum presstitutes can't seem to say, or to see:

"Glut of superhero movies is because of 2 things

1. We sense impending eco-catastrophe
2. We seem unable to alter course to save ourselves"

(Twitter Tweet by Peter Webber). It is interesting that Sigmund Freud, and other luminaries, also picked up on this reality long ago:

"Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this --hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension." - Sigmund Freud
...
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
...
“One would say that [man] is destined to exterminate himself after having rendered the globe uninhabitable.” - Lamarck (1817)

(Quotes Tab). These luminaries saw long ago what the establishment press does not want to talk about as mature adults or mature leaders would.

Thus, they do not hold the government to the task or to the purpose of government, which is The Common Good.

So here we are, continuing down Highway 61 toward The Sixth Mass Extinction, a.k.a., the common bad:

Climate scientist James Hansen has said that it is "game over" for the climate if the Keystone XL pipeline is allowed to be built as it would lock us into unsustainable use of the dirty tar sands crude for the foreseeable future. And climate activist and author Bill McKibben has written about Global Warming's Terrifying New Math which states that we must leave the oil industries massive oil reserves in the ground if we are to have a chance at mitigating climate change.

(State Department Corruption - Keystone). What could be more Earth shaking than "game over" for establishment news media to report on?

What could be more difficult to accomplish than "we must leave the oil industries' massive oil reserves in the ground" (see The Peak of The Oil Lies - 6)?

Thus, in this vacuum of journalistic integrity, superhero movies have popped up.

Yes, talking about the death of civilization is psychologically taboo, it is voodoo to McTell News, because if they report that story it will apply to us as individuals, as consumers:

A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult for people to repress thoughts of death, and that they might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival. There is already experimental evidence suggesting that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption. Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of Western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.

(Convergence - Fear of Death Syndrome). That could mean less hot dog sales, so as the President said as one response to 9/11, "go shopping."

Which illustrates the point very well:

If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities.

(MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5). In conclusion, the establishment press does what it sees as its duty, which is to be a sort of Dr. Death, feeding us the pabulum of denial.

They do the denial rap so we don't have to face up to the growing insanity in our civilization (The Peak of Sanity - 3).