Sometime in 2016, director Zack Snyder’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” hits theaters, with Ben Affleck as Batman (boy, that bit of casting news seriously dented my will to live, after his “Daredevil” fiasco), and Henry Cavill reprising the role of the Man of Steel.
I will always prefer Marvel to DC, for a whole host of reasons — click here to see what I thought of “Marvel’s Daredevil,” NOT with Ben Affleck, on Netflix — but there are equally passionate DC fans, including those willing to take a deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of comic books.
Today and for the next couple of days, I’m at the Digital Hollywood conference in the Los Angeles are — you can watch some of it online here — so expect some posts on coming tech advances in entertainment. But in the meantime, enjoy this thoughtful piece from one of my favs, Crisis Magazine.
In “Superheroes Who Symbolize Rival Academic Visions,” Sean Fitzpatrick writes:
The symbol of Superman vs. Batman emerges as a ham-fisted expression of this disparity. It presents the collision of two worlds: a mysterious being of magnificent, godlike power from another planet, driven by a tragic past to fight crime as an almighty savior strives against a wealthy scientist-detective, driven by a tragic past to fight crime wielding psychology and technology. In their clash, the idyllic vies with the industrial—which connotes a large part of the crisis of education today. Superman is an emblem of the supernatural and the mysterious, while Batman is an all natural, flesh-and-blood vigilante of science and analysis. Why hold with Batman over Superman? Why prize Hector at the expense of Achilles? Applied as an allegory of education, science can only reveal half of the world—the rest belongs to sublimity. And for this reason, poetry and science are not mutually exclusive; though poetry consistently gets the back seat to science. Poetry is not taken seriously anymore, which is precisely why people should take the poor quality of poetry, like Batman and Superman, seriously.
Click here to read the rest.
Image: Courtesy DC Entertainment
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