Sunday, March 15, 2009

My Inner Super Hero


I Visited DK Read yesterday and found she has become a Super Hero. Border Explorer gave her the link to The Hero Factory.

I always looked down my literary nose at the notion of the Super Hero as literature or any genre writing, for that matter. I read Literature with a capitol L. I hope I write literature. Yes, on this I am a bit of a snob. Despite the previous post, I am a very well read woman. And the comic book has never been on my reading agenda. I saw Barbarella in Italy. I went with Nino Cerruti. He liked it. I didn't. But I liked him, and so I was disingenuous about my feelings for the film, my thoughts about it as "art."

And yet I have always had fantasies of myself as a tough cookie. A broad not to be messed with. A woman with no fear. Honest to a fault, thus strong. I see the error in this. Often kindness works better at achieving ones goals than brutal honesty, but brutality has a place in my life and I did learn much from my brutal mother. It is very hard to escape the things we were taught very early and for a real long time. So when recently confronted with a bully, I found myself afraid and horrified that I reacted in fear. The fantasies of buying a shotgun and scaring some imagined intruder took hold in my mind. But now I'm more inclined to visit the extraordinary Germaine Gregorias and purchase a lovely pink Glock.

30 comments:

Amos said...

You are indeed a Super Hero.

Utah Savage said...

From your mouth to my inner cowering little girl.

Commander Zaius said...

Went walking around a bookstore last night before I went to a movie. I had finally finished Randal's meme and needed to get out the house. Wanted to puke with all the movie and television tie-ins that populated the book shelves. Various novels about superheros abounded along with "Murder She Wrote" and "Monk" novels in the mystery section.
Its like no one can write anything original but has to be based on some movie or television show.

Utah Savage said...

Beach, That's exactly it. Go look at Liberality's sidebar. She lists a new Cormac McCarthy book.

Unknown said...

I love your 'tough cookie' reference...as a single mom of 3 under the age of 5, once upon a time ago...we had our own 'Tough Cookie Club" which we refer to often, even today!
You are a super hero in my book!
~AM

The Young Swell said...

To the degree that novelizations of motion pictures and serial adventures of cinematic heroes persuade people – especially children – to get involved in some kind of reading, I will allow them room in a bookstore. For anyone already exposed to the pleasure of reading, such books have little to offer.

As for the super hero, himself, (it usually is a himself). Although I seldom sneer at cinematic representations of super heroes; as a child, I could never develop much interest in their comic book origins. I found it far too incongruous that a supposedly superior creature would run all over town fighting injustice and crime in their Doctor Dentons.

Utah Savage said...

Cape wearing guys in red tights who could fly, not so much. "Peter Pan" and "Peter and the Wolf", hell yes! The books The "Lord of the Rings," yes, the movie no. And so on. I was a sucker for a good novel about a kid and an animal. "Old Yeller" and "The Yearling," both book and film nearly killed me as a kid. I cried buckets of tears. I'm a sucker for the critter and human bond.

Dusty has been talking about the cats that find their way to her. I'm a little jealous. I lost my old cat about a year ago. This is the longest I've goon without a cat in thirty years. Even when I lived in an apartment I always had a visiting cat.

Utah Savage said...

AM, I'm so glad to be a tough cookie and hero in your book. It's my fiction you know. It's a part I play with relish, but it's all an act.

Ghost Dansing said...

here's my weapon of choice.....

darkblack said...

Secret identity? Check.

Developed sense of right and wrong? Check.

Ability to kill a foe at twenty paces with a blow from your tongue? Check.

There, you're a superhero. Report to Wardrobe for your costume fitting.

;>)

Utah Savage said...

Holy Crap Ghost!

Darkblack, don't you think my little old lady in her jammies all day outfit gives me the perfect disguise and makes me invisible?

D.K. Raed said...

I had a feeling you would go all out for the guns, one in hand and one on leg! Overt and Covert, that's you! Now where is the hidden knife ... I know you must have one ...

Utah Savage said...

Acxording to Darkblack it's my lethal tongue.

Utah Savage said...

It sure isn't my great typing.

Linda-Sama said...

hey, sistah, you can check mine out....

jazzolog said...

Super hero's a relatively new term, like graphic novel. I loved comic books as a kid. While I preferred Batman, Mom didn't like me going much past Mickey Mouse. "Super hero" has cheapened the medium, just as superstore has turned shopping into crap. I didn't yearn to be the big guy in the saddle, but the kid sidekick was a fantasy. Dick Grayson, who became Robin the Boy Wonder when Batman had to head to the Cave, even had a name a little like mine. Secret identity was cool...and somehow not as weird as it's gotten on the Internet.

MRMacrum said...

Maybe it was that I liked forming my own opinion about how a story, a character, a scene should look that caused me to favor books without pictures. I never liked th eidea of letting someone else tell me how to imagine it. I had my comic books, but they never special. Do I have any now form 45 years ago? No. Do I still have the books I read then? Yes, a good portion of them are still in the attic.

Although I wish I still had my "Cheech Wizard" anthology. That was some sick comic book.

Paul said...

I could relate to parts of this. I too have had fantasies of myself as a REAL "tough cookie" (nearly always while on a bi-polar manic high when I can have little or no insight etc). It is fantasy in my head but has had some disastrous real life consequences. In my fantasies/manic delusions I have never been a cartoon character......I have HONESTLY seen myself more as Al Pacino/ "Tony Montana" out of "Scar-Face".......who was really like a cartoon character from the little I've seen of REAL crime. Thank God, if She exists, that I am only at my bi-polar worst less than 10% of the time!

I will not keep raving.

Thanks for your blog, Utah; believe me, I know you have a small but loyal fan club here in Australia.

splord said...

Okay, I played along.

Also, I used to be a big comic book geek, but it all just sort of fell by the wayside over the years.

Paul said...

I first saw "Barbarella" (sp?) as a kid and loved it for the obvious reasons.

I would not mind seeing it again now but I seriously doubt if it would have the same appeal.

Sherry Pasquarello said...

i'm "damp bat!!!" cool!

Utah Savage said...

You're all heros to me.

Comrade Kevin said...

I like tough broads, honestly, but nice girls seem find me more appealing.

Tough broads normally don't give me the time of day.

jazzolog said...

Tough broads don't have to care what time of day it is. Be grateful, Comrade Kevin, nice girls are attracted to you. I've never been able to interest them in me. My relationships inevitably are with women who have tons of unresolved issues with their fathers. Now there's work for a super hero!

Utah Savage said...

Jazzolog, you must be my kind of man. I fit that description to a tee--unresolved issues with the absent and abusive daddies.

Billie Greenwood said...

Utah, you are so lovable. [And I am not lesbian, so don't take it that way ;) .]

El Vox said...

To each their own, but I find it odd that some still think of comics as juvenile, granted some are (most, maybe--particularly super hero). At any rate, comics are an original American art form (like jazz) & I think some reach outside the medium. Comics were not meant to compete with literature or prose, they are their own medium much as movies, TV shows, poems, etc. It is meant to be a combination of ART and text. Check out these:

Maus: Art Spiegelman (about the a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Auschwitz)

Barefoot Gen: Keiji Nakazawa (about the bombing of Hiroshima)

Stuck Rubber Baby: Howard Cruse (conflicts of sexual identity)

Daddy's Girl: Debbie Drechsler (child abuse)

Our Cancer Year and American Splendor: Harvy Pekar & Joyce Brabner (real life stories of different issues)

there are others, but I'd recommend these.

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