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"Now grown ups ... can go and watch this comic-superhero rewrites on the big screen and talk about how great the acting, story and everything else was, as if it was serious art that they had seen."

How is this any different from e.g. Kyrgyz nomads listening to a bard recite the Manas, in which the eponymous hero shows veritably superheroic strength in battle? Indeed, if you are an ordinary man barely making ends meet and the politics of the world are rough, the make-believe of an epic tale where your people are depicted as great and once capable of great deeds, can be a great consolation.

Now, the reason that the Manas and similar folk epics have been acclaimed as masterpieces of intangible culture is that the bard is expected to improvise much of it, and Western superhero stories might not show that particular kind of skill. But in terms of the subject matter, the contemporary superhero obsession isn’t all that different from previous genres worldwide.

Could it be because the kids who these stories were initially aimed at, grew up and became adults, DC/Marvel realised they could “adultify” the plots and appeal to the same audience now 20-30 years older to expand their demographic leveraging nostalgia and thus make more money?

I'd argue that the vast majority of superhero movies are engineered through focus-group testing to be as palatable to as many people as possible that they become bland.

Logan was the only genre movie in recent memory that eschewed this formula and confronted the messy topic of the senescence of the age of the superhero.

Which is an interesting counter-point to Alan Moore: just because a (sizable) portion of superhero movies aren't thrusting culture forward, doesn't mean that they have to be.

Having familiar characters in a known environment can certainly help pick the audience up to get them to a point where more complex topics become palatable. The fact that these characters are "superheroes" is incidental, and not terribly important to the overall plot of the movie.

That's a fair analysis. They are blockbusters first, and superhero movies second. I do hope that the genre will evolve towards more interesting topics beyond Good vs. Evil. The Dark Knight showed a nuanced view of how one cannot exist without the other, even within one hero's mythos itself. Unfortunately movies like The Dark Knight and Logan that are willing and capable of tackling nuance and complexity in a feature film aren't common for the genre.

Yep. It is quite apparent in the latest Batman vs Superman movie.

> Now grown ups with no children of their own or signs of learning disabilities can go and watch this comic-superhero rewrites on the big screen and talk about how great the acting, story and everything else was, as if it was serious art that they had seen.

As opposed to any given non-comic-derived action, comedy, romance, or horror movie? I didn't know that something has to be "serious art" to comment about the acting or the story. Moreover, given box office results, it's rare that any movie considered to be art is all that popular.

> it has been much too easy to hide away and watch these comic super-hero movies than endure what has been going on in the world.

The same could be said of literally any fantasy fiction. We love it precisely because it is an escape from reality.

And sometimes also because it can cut away reality, help people see the crux of a situation or debate and take that perspective back into the real world.

> talk about how great the acting, story and everything else was, as if it was serious art that they had seen.

IMHO Luke Cage and Jessica Jones by Marvel on Netflix are very well done on every level and compare well to other high quality drama series.

I think you're overselling Luke Cage, but I guess most of the dramas cranked out these days are pretty cheesy. Luke Cage did have its moments and good aspects, but the second half of the season was a huge mess.

Bread and circuses.

Think about who can partake in Fandom. What an elevated position they're in, globally. What a luxury such indulgence is.

I agree with your points. Our modern society is so complex that for a lot of people it is easier to use escapism as a form of relief.

While I agree that all people should be learning and growing I would have to argue that if someone is truly motivated by hiding away I say let them.

The people who do this do not have the capacity to expose themselves to reality IMO. Being forced to do it is just like when you were forced to do something you didn't want to as a child (fitting that we're talking about super heroes).

Later on they might look up and decide to change. I know I did. Until then you just have to let them make their own decisions.

It's complex but also nonsensical. Lots of young adults report scam jobs as reason why they don't work (not slacker kind of avoidance).

It's a bit a cancerous era IMO. Too many uncertainties, too many technical possibilities, not enough social tissue.

> not enough social tissue

Bang on. I think technology (not just the internet kind) has advanced so quickly that none of our social conventions have been able to keep up to help people.

I believe both the democrats and republicans have lost their way a bit - they'll both be spending their time playing big-data social media games to get in power rather than actually trying to give things people want and need.

> scam jobs

While I do believe that this is true, I wonder how much of this is caused because after college is the first time these kids are exposed to the "real world". They've been so insulated their entire life that the older adults see that they can easily manipulate them.

It's a plausible factor. I know I'm not adjusted to the mess of the real world. But the documentary I watched talked about actively toying on elders fears and limits to sell them anything; with malevolent manager pressure.

> as if it was serious art

When you start talking about whether things are "serious" or "real" art or not, you've lost sight of what art really is.

What absolute nonsense.

It's pretty easy to identify serious vs. non-serious art, and we'd been doing it for thousands of years. Great epics in music and poetry, literature and painting are great because they are serious. What's happened now is that if you level the critique the parent did, we get your reaction - a subtle insistence that we must consider all art serious, no matter how lazy it is.

> Great epics in music and poetry, literature and painting are great because they are serious.

That is a difficult claim to back up if you look at the literature from Greece and Rome that was thought worth preserving over the centuries. A lot of plays by Plautus, for example, are pretty low comedy comparable to our low comedy today, but they nonetheless entered the canon of “great art”.