Why Superhuman?

This weekend I am in North Carolina for a film festival.  Thankfully, it is storming and making me much happier about being stuck inside cinemas for hours on end in 70-degree weather. Not so thankfully, power tends to go out when tornadoes hit nearby state capitals.*

One of the films that showed here pertained to one Bobby Fischer, eccentric chess champion that died after a perplexing career of obsessive goal-seeking followed by purposeless meandering.  This film prompted, outside of the small cohort of diehards that watched for the chess component, a discussion about excellence.  What does it take to be excellent?  Does excellence inevitably require the sort of [unhealthy] single-minded devotion that Bobby Fischer initially showed his craft?  Or is the Bobby Fischer variant a form of superhumanity, a devotion that transcends the normal, healthy human and proceeds into something less able to be achieved?

The discussion itself could be continued for weeks, and in some sense I think it should be.  Excellence is one of those things that communist-leaning liberals struggle habitually with and market-leaning conservatives regularly ignore the costs of.  The liberals want all people to be as equal as possible (why is a mystery I have yet to hear sensibly articulated).  Conservatives expect all people to rationally be deciding to take on the costs of their actions (ignoring the glaring lack of information and, indeed, perfect rationality).

But rather than going somewhere that interests only myself, I thought that I would think of an audience (for once) and bring up the relationship between excellence and our projection of excellence through superheroes.  Call it pandering if you want, but I think that our ideas about excellence have been evinced in our treatment of these people that transcend normal human ability.

The film treated Bobby Fischer as though he were a tragic hero: absolutely brilliant at chess, but at the cost of mental stability, social interaction, and much of anything that wasn’t chess.  This view of superhumanity seems to have taken strong hold in superhero circles as well.  We started off with Captain America and Superman, who both had remarkably few faults, and none of those especially dehabilitating, and proceed into more of an Iron Man motif.  We made this transition pretty hard too.  We killed both Captain America and Superman in the past two decades, proceeding to make zombie Superman afterward with none of the charisma of predead superman.

I put my stake in the undead superman’s heart pretty hard: I like fucked up heroes.  I do not appreciate the Supermans or Cyclops with perfect lives, perfect charisma, and mostly perfect leadership skills.  I find those characters bland, boring, and “nice.”**  If my hero doesn’t have enough dehabilitating qualities to make him or her struggle with life, then I am uninterested in reading.  Simple fact based in the simple concept that I hate simple characters.

Now don’t read me wrong: I do not hate these perfect superheroes with the undying passion of a thousand angry rottweilers.  In some hypothetical universe, there might be some purpose for superheroes of the Superman variety that presently escapes me.  But I am not inspired by seeing perfection.  I am inspired by seeing struggle.

*Goddammit James.  I told you to cut it the fuck out with the tornadoes.  I got the point already.

** Nice, like interesting, is a word best used to describe an object or person that you do not wish to overtly criticize, but that you feel no strong feelings toward.  I use “nice” in this context to describe a person who exudes a blanket, insincere kindness toward all people possible.