Destroying Your Heroes

Since it wasn't apparently enough for Disney to face-plant several times with the "girl-boss" theme in both Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it appears that we are about to be offered subjected to yet another Mary Sue in a new Star Wars series called The Acolyte.

It's likely some of you haven't encountered “Mary Sue” before, but it's also likely you will recognize it from the definition:

A Mary Sue is a character archetype in fiction, usually a young woman, who is often portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, gifted with unique talents or powers, liked or respected by most other characters, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately virtuous, and generally lacking meaningful character flaws. Usually female and almost always the main character, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish fulfillment. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.

If you've seen the third Star Wars Trilogy, you'll instantly recognize Rey as a Mary Sue. If you've watched any of the Captain Marvel iterations, Carol Danvers is a Mary Sue. Fandom and nerd-loyalty being what they are, there are myriad denials and apologetics defending Rey and Danvers and other "girl-boss" characters of the past decade-plus, which just drives the point home. There are many more, but you get the idea.

Thing is, a Mary Sue character by herself isn't such a bad thing. Given that the (original) target audience for comics and other hero stuff is teens and tweens, Mary Sues (and Gary Stus, the male equivalent (see: Superman and more Jack Reacher clones than I can count)) have an appeal and a market.

The trouble lies in a chronic problem with female-empowerment narratives: they default to zero-sum. Modern Mary Sues aren't just innately awesome, they are always better than men, especially at "man stuff" like fighting and other physical activities.

They are also better than their predecessors.

Luke Skywalker trained, and trained, and trained, and suffered setbacks until he finally defeated Darth, but was defeated by the Emperor until his father stepped in to help. Rey didn't need any of that crap - she just needed "I am woman hear me roar" self-confidence.

Kicked Kylo Ren’s ass the first time she picked up a light saber.

Then did it again.

Then defeated the emperor.

Heaven forbid that any Mary Sue be trained up by a man, by the way. That's just the patriarchy, and it must be torn down.

That zero-sum has led Hollywood down the path of destroying our old heroes. Luke Skywalker is a bitter old man at the end of his Star Wars arc. Han Solo got written out in ignominious fashion.

Thor got turned into a drunken slob, and was eventually replaced by Thorina. With CGI muscles.

Superman got turned into a moody morass of self-doubt. Batman had to get shown up by a girl-boss or two.

This goes beyond poor or lazy writing. The near-ubiquity tells us that it's deliberate, as do the whinging about the multiple failures and the finger-pointing at toxic Neanderthals who refuse to heed the message and submit to the lesson. In a classic case of projection, people who call out the crap nature of the product being offered are accused of hidden agendas, misogyny, and other bigotries. This behavior actually has a name: fan-baiting:

a form of marketing used by producers and film studios with the intent of creating fake controversy garnering publicity and explaining the negative reviews of a new movie or tv show

It’s also part of the modern assumption of infallibility. If your product is not well-received, it’s the audience’s fault for not allowing themselves to appreciate what you’re doing for them. In this, it reflects the broader political realignment in society. The Best-and-Brighest, having accreted on the Left, have nothing but contempt for the everyday folks who resent being managed, hectored, inculcated, and beaten on a daily basis with the Wand of Woke.

Kids want and need heroes. They want and need good-character characters to look up to and emulate, even if only in daydreams and fantasies. Stan Lee, one of the founders of Marvel Comics and the creator of over 350 superheroes, built upon this by making his superheroes flawed and human.

Spiderman is a nerdy and awkward kid.

Iron Man is an self-absorbed jackass with a bad heart.

The Hulk is a genius scientist wrestling with his inner monster.

The Fantastic Four "dealt with self-doubt, self-sabotage and the kind of flaws that made them even more relatable to fans."

The X-Men characters suffered hateful bigotry.

The new heroes (I'd type heroines, but that'd invite boring yowls about "patriarchy!") are mostly old heroes that have been re-gendered, stripped of all but the most superficial flaws (other than wooden personalities), and and supercharged. They not only lack originality, they deliberately step on the old heroes, and the old heroes are torn down in the process.

They also offer nothing to young boys. Despite Herculean efforts to eradicate the concept of gender as the rest of the world understands it, the failure of so many "girl-boss" offerings tells us that boys aren't as likely to imagine themselves as Rey or Captain Marvel as they are Luke or Superman.

And why should they? Are the purveyors of all this putrid product suggesting that girls imagined themselves as Luke or Superman? That they didn’t have female heroes to idolize?

Leia was a badass in her own right, with no need to stomp on her male allies (snark aside) to prove it.

So are Diana Prince,

Jean Grey, and Storm,

and others from old-school comicdom.

Even outside the superhero oeuvre, we find old school female heroes, heroes for the girls to look up to.

Ellen Ripley defeated down the xenomorphs with wits and will.

Sarah Connor became a badass, but still had to rely on asymmetric warfare to overcome bigger, stronger bad guys.

Imperator Furiosa… rocked.

Yu Shu Lien coexisted with Li Mu Bai, and didn’t need to show him up to establish her character.

Strong female characters - lead or supporting - in a well-written and well-made movie don’t need to sledgehammer the audience with how strong they are. Nor do they need to be “better” than the male leads or tear down the patriarchy or whatever.

Apparently, that's not good enough. Can't have heroes for boys and heroes for girls. Boys' heroes have to be subordinated, leaving boys no choice but to cheer for the Mary Sues. Who act like (cookie-cutter, stereotypical, and one-dimensional) men.

And, who defy rationality.

We’ve been offered too many iterations of the Waif Girl-Boss to count. Lucy, Hanna, Anna, Red Sparrow, the Atomic Blonde, Salt, Lara Croft, Ava, Lioness, Cataleya, Anna, Amber Midthunder, Anita, Kate, Natasha Romanoff, Alice, Jill Valentine, Lindy and others beat up countless trained fighters twice their size, no matter how improbably.

Although, I do admit a fondness for the two karate sisters who pushed Roger Moore aside in The Man With The Golden Gun…

Larry Fink CEO of the investment company Blackrock, pulled the curtain back a few years ago.

You have to force behaviors. If you don't force behaviors, whether it's gender or race or just any way you want to say the composition of your team, you're going to be impacted. That not just recruiting, it's development. We're gonna have to force change.

Blackrock owns 6.5% of Disney, by the way. And 7.5% of Paramount (see: the rolling mess that is the new sheaf of Star Trek offerings). We might be forgiven for assuming that Fink had some say in the wokeification of Disney, but even if he didn’t, his attitude is widespread in modern Hollywood.

Modern Hollywood is hemorrhaging money.

Pride goeth before the fall.

Get woke, go broke.

We could laugh at the hubris of such as Fink, but for the real damage that arrogance has caused. It's not just billions in wasted money and investor losses, it's the generations of boys and men who have a dearth of quality contemporaneous heroes to idolize and who had their past heroes bulldozed into mush. It’s the generations of girls and women who’ve been taught and continue to hear that the only way to be strong is to act like a man while debasing men.

The COVID lockdowns did irreparable harm to a generation of young people. Hero destruction is doing its own harm to another.