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Comment by cgio | Hacker News Reader

And the villain quote along the lines of “if we are all superheroes then no one is a superhero”.

It's an accessible entrance into things like entropy, or to think about subjects like eugenics (if we're remove genetic diversity there will be no racism) or wrongthink (if nobody has these bad ideas we would all live in harmony).

DISCLAIMER: this is not an invitation to start debating these subjects, these are just crudely picked examples.

Well.. if you post on an internet forum it kind of IS an invitation to debate. I have a crazy relative who likes to make controversial speeches and then yell "you don't have to reply!" as if it insulates him from feedback.

I'm sure most are aware but your description about eugenics is a bit off. It seems like you are putting a positive slant on it or suggesting thats the goal, whether intentional or not. Eugenics is about denying a class of humans (however you classify that class) from the ability to reproduce. This is highly unethical and given our tendency to classify on race, usually associated with racist agendas (such as the Nazis). I had to look up Wrongthink but it seems to be a term the Alt-Right is introducing... possible a play on thoughtcrime and newspeak (both Orwell) to defend their controversial opinions [0].

0: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/alt-right-has-a-word-for-...

I recall "Wrongthink" having been in use for decades to decry ideas you dislike, whatever the cause or position on the political spectrum. It saw a remarkable uptick in usage after the 2001 movie "minority report", at least in my perception.

"When everyone is super... no one will be."

The incredible (heh) thing about this is that My Hero Academia answers it. In the world of MHA, nearly everyone has a superpower, or Quirk, of some sort; but superheroes are still a distinct class of professionals who have honed their quirks through training and, in general, developed courage, self-sacrifice, and inner resolve way beyond even the average superhuman. The greatest heroes distinguish themselves by exemplifying these values the most (though having powerful awesome Quirks helps). It was the perfect thing to come along at a point of maximum capeshit saturation.

Syndrome being the villain always kind of struck me as the film trying to defend social hierarchies in a sense. You have a hereditary caste of pretty volatile magical beings upon whom the defence of humanity depends and the person trying to remove that dependency in a way that's accessible to anyone regardless of what they're born as is the bad guy? We can debate capitalism until the cows come home but anyone being able to buy powers is still a step up from either being born into them or not.

He's a total arse don't get me wrong, but baseline humanity using nothing but its wits and hard work to make 'heroes' who inherited their powers obsolete is a sentiment I don't imagine is too alien to the readers of HN.

> Syndrome being the villain [is a bit of] trying to defend social hierarchies

He's a villain because he's trying to replace the hereditary caste by violence, and by consuming them. The tension is there outside of him -- and Mr. Incredible is a bit of an arse to Billy at first -- but it's his means, not his ends, that are the problem.

The movie brings this up by Dash making the same point when he’s in the car with his mom in the first part of the movie.

In Syndrome's defence, the displacement of feudalism wasn't always a peaceful affair either but it's a change we can all agree was necessary. Violence doesn't change its inherent nature just because one puts a respectable face on it, the hereditary category of 'hero' can only exist at all in an otherwise democratic society because of the implied threat of 'I'm going to use my magical powers to take down anyone who opposes my interests', which is unacceptable because they don't have a legitimate claim to the use of force stemming from democratic consent of the people in the way say the military of a modern Western country does.

We see this at the start of the film where Mr Incredible and his friend get tangled up in a rescue operation in a burning building despite having been pretty firmly rejected by baseline humans they're attempting to help, if I remember right one of them literally gets frozen alive by Mr Incredible's friend as they escape which is rather violent. We also see it when he throws his insufferable boss through several walls in a fit of anger, which is a display of his ingrained violent nature and lack of control over his superhuman powers which presents a threat to innocent bystanders. It's might-makes-right with a veneer of heroic respectability over the top, their true nature is very different from the nature they present to the public.

Either that or I'm reading way too much into a film that's mostly aimed at kids!

Marvel touched on this a bit with the recent falcon series, with a main part of the plot being that superheroes are just conceptually bad because it leads to supremacists. I think this is good, and its important to do this with a nuance beyond people just going stupid evil because they can't be stopped.

The anime Mob Psycho 100 goes into this idea heavily and its really great.

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