Superheroes were different when I was a kid. They mostly lived in comic books. Superman later became a TV show, but the special effects were so hokey you could practically see the strings propeling him in flight around the stage. We didn’t mind. We were kids. It was understood that childhood imagination, pretending, was part of the deal.
Adults were indulgent of superheroes and comics — it was understood that this was a phase, like dolls for girls. One grew out of it like boys grew out of short pants. Adults worried about adult stuff, like the space race or whether the lengths of The Beatles’ bangs were corrupting the youth of America.
Batman was a TV show after Superman, but adults were mostly involved for the satiric factor. Pow! Biff! Splat! “It’s so bad it’s good,” my old man would chortle.
It was a big deal when Superman came out in 1978 with the latest technology for special effects — it was no longer so hokey. Christopher Reeve didn’t seem ferried about by pullies, he was Superman grown up.
And then the whole genre “matured,” in a sense. Quite naturally, I suppose, those kids grew up and now they wax enthusiastic with their own kids about Batman, Superman, The Fantastic Four and all the rest of the super-endowed do-gooder role models of the third quarter of the 20th century, roughly from World War Two until the Carter administration. (Good and bad were clearly demarcated; moral content was once big, especially in the 1950s.)
What strikes me is the enthusiasm adults now have for superheroes. Their faces light up — they look forward to the movies as much as the kids do, if not more. Maybe I’m wrong, but when I was small, had any adult gotten that worked up over Batman, it would have led to snickers, arched eyebrows, and perhaps half-muttered jokes between adults when they thought we kids couldn’t hear.
Which brings me to neoteny.
A couple decades ago the Sunday paper had this wonderful article about neoteny. A science journalist wrote about separate projects in different parts of the world that were coming up with surprising results. Ferrinstance, one was in Siberia, where Russian researchers were trying to breed foxes to be more tame. They selected subordinate pups and bred successive generations; interestingly, the subsequent foxes retained juvenile characteristics longer, maturity was inhibited. They also began wagging their tails, became increasingly friendly with humans, and began barking, paralleling the changes from wolves to dogs.
Neoteny has evolutionary advantages, in that the mental elasticity of youth is retained longer into adulthood. The article applied the findings to primates, too, pointing out the quicker physical maturation of other great apes, including facial features, and how humans mature more slowly. We can learn new things later into adulthood, and our facial features generally mature more slowly than other primates, too.
When I worked at CNet, back at the turn of the millenium, almost all of my coworkers adorned their cubicles with hosts of figurines, dolls, and wind-up toys. Some of them had whole armies decked out — one had to be careful with the actual work getting in the way of their displays. (“Look out! That binder might tip over T. Rex!”) I’d see my friends from earlier jobs, they’d ask what my workplace was like, and I’d say that it was sort of romper room, kind of grown up.
As kids prefer action to preaching, we aren’t as caught up now in moral content and delivering an upright message as we once were, either. Give us action! And I do prefer the greater moral ambivalence of movies these days, where the white and black hats are not always so uniformly obvious.
Sometimes, when I see all the excitement over blockbuster movies made for comic book heroes (appealing to “kids of all ages!” as toys get slylymarketed) it makes me smile. I wonder if it’s a minor instance of human neoteny, like those silver foxes wagging their tails and barking like puppy dogs.
Or maybe not. A cultural phenomenon isn’t exactly a behavior, right? Even if, as I age, young adults do seem to look younger and younger …
Besides, when I was a boy the adults were very nostalgic about the radio programs of their own youths. They felt radio was superior to TV as it left more to the imagination, and waxed just as enthusiastic over The Green Lantern, Dick Tracy and others as people do now over this crop of superheroes.
Who knows what childhood lurks in the hearts of men? Maybe only The Shadow knows, after all.
OmbudsBen 
Very good read. I’ll be checking this blog out on the regular.
Oh yea, please help my friends and I settle our differences once and for all at:
http://thetossup.wordpress.com/
I’d really appreciate it.
Have you read “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon? I think you might enjoy it.
I have to say, it has often struck me that our adult preoccupation with removing hair from our faces and bodies – both women and men – is a sign of neoteny.
Finally something interesting to read about superheroes!
I’m not sure if the appreciation of superheroes by adults is a sign of neoteny (which sounds more like a euphemism for immaturity) as it is a sign of acceptance.
Maybe it’s more acceptable now for (young) adults to gravitate towards interests they had in the past, a way of relating to themselves rather than deeming superheroes “kids’ stuff” and turning their backs on them.
Or maybe it’s easier to accept superheroes in popular culture because superheroes have been ubiquitous in media since the batman logo became cool just before the release of the hyped-up first Batman movie by Tim Burton.
Another aspect of superhero movies that now make them cool have been the special effects (read believability). In the Sixties and Seventies, actors playing superheroes were no match for what superheroes did in animation … until (as you referenced) Superman was released in 1978 and then it got a little interesting.
And let’s not forget kids. They’re now discovering superheroes at a pre-comicbook reading age. My 6-year old son has liked superheroes for a few years now…not because his daddy introduced him to each one. It’s because he sees them: on backpacks, t-shirts, swimming trunks, posters, baseball caps, sippy cups, etc. And as a dad, what’s cooler than having your son walk in the shoes you wore at his age and happen to like the same stuff you did?
Kevin, thanks for the kudos. Trucie, I’ll check out the book, thanks. And about the hair — I’d never thought of that.
Derek, it is a euphemism for immaturity in the sense adulthood is delayed. But neoteny has a more positive connotation; immaturity is often responsibility delayed or denied.
Derek, I’ve read your comment through a couple times now, considering it, and appreciate your writing. I think we’re approaching the same phenomenon from separate angles.
They have certainly become more acceptable now; we’re both seeing how ubiquitous superheroes are.
I do think superhero plots simplify life in a way that makes the stories easier for kids to process. Good and bad are easily discernable. That’s not always so easy in real life — both for kids and adults.
Also, superheroes have powers beyond those of regular people — which parallels the experience of small children, if you think about it.
We’re all born helpless. These immense beings, our parents and other adults, are all powerful. Scary things happen, good things happen, all perpetrated by these giants, and as we grow and learn we dream, we fantasize of the day we might have adult powers, too.
Superhero movies are thus easy for kids to identify with, as they empowered, and the storyline doesn’t throw a lot of real life ambivalence in our way.
That’s one of the ways that superhero movies seem to me to extend a juvenile equation into adult life.
The equation is made more complex by our culture’s increased media sophistication. King Kong was state of the art special effects in 1933. Our culture and cinema have evolved together so that we expect more sophisticated plots than moviegoers did in 1925, 1945, or 1965.
Superhero movies seem, to me, to offer us an escape from life’s complexities (who among us really want to spend our free time studying all the factors and complexities of the mortgage / credit crisis?) and that’s fine.
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On a parallel track, I have a hard time with the Lord of the Ring movies. Good is always so good and bad so bad. I keep wishing an orc would develop a conscience or a hobbit would philander or something; conversely, much as Harry Potter is also as black and white, my favorite part in one of the movies is where the Alan Rickman character *seems* bad at first but is redeemed later, by helping Harry & cohorts.
Achieving that ambivalence, believably, in an interesting plot, is the sign of a good movie for me.
I wonder if it isn’t the ambivalence you mention in your last response to your last comment that makes superhero movies more appealing to adults. It’s as if the superheroes (or the genre) grew up, in a sense.
Interesting read. 🙂
Thanks for this. It was interesting.