One thing I have written in my notes that I find to be true for all of the readings we've done so far is: 'Perspective skews judgement.' I think this is something that I tend to forget when watching an action movie. I often find myself questioning why the police is always so hellbent on catching the protagonist. They're doing your job for you, how will chasing after them help anyone? Slowing down the hero isn't going to help anything.
Well I think putting things into perspective has changed that view. In "Easier Than Typing," it's pointed out that though we see Batman on screen as a superhero who has good morals and has little flaws, if these movies weren't created and Batman was running around Champaign, I would be a bit wary of his motives. A normal person can only appear to be perfect for so long. I think I would recognize the good aspects of Batman, but at the same time I would expect his perfection to fade as he gained prestige. If he can inspire fear in criminals, he could inspire fear in the public as a vigilante. We wouldn't assume he's perfect because we would see him as a person dressed like a bat. With more power, his morality could shift and be a threat to anyone, not just criminals. I so often associate heroism with perfection that it almost surprises me that a person can be both a hero or a villain
Perspective definitely played a role in "Victory Lap," but in a different way. If I heard about things that Batman did, I would be inclined to think of him as a hero, but if I heard anything about Kyle Boot similar to the descriptions that Alison gave, hero is the last thing that would come to mind. Even as I was reading, I was trying to figure out how he would fit into the story. If I knew Kyle as just another Uni student, I probably wouldn't think anything was particularly off about him. But like I mentioned in class, when Saunders gives us insight on his thought processes, I went from thinking about him like just another person to almost worrying about him. He has so much emotion built up inside of him that at any time he could crack at any point in time, and if he were a classmate I would be worried that he would crack at something I said (and if his reaction would be anything like what he did to the kidnapper, I would definitely be terrified). It happens to occur at a more convenient time and it is this aspect of him that turns him into a hero.
So I guess something I'll keep in mind throughout this class is that perspective skews judgement.
I had the opposite reaction in your third paragraph. If I heard of a disguised stranger randomly attacking criminals, I probably wouldn't think of a hero. He isn't saving anyone. He's just beating up people who have hurt others (kind of like the eye for an eye saying), but not overcoming anything inside him. On the other hand, if I heard of a boy who attacked a stranger kidnapping his neighbor, I would think of him as a hero.His action required overcoming internal struggles and then putting his safety on the line to save someone in imminent danger.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to note that Kyle's "cracking" is initially inspired by the deeply felt sense that what's happening to Allison is *wrong* and he needs to do something to stop it from happening. This heroic impulse clashes with all his father's crazy "directives," and so it taps into the ongoing psychodrama in Kyle's head, and he contends with his father's voice literally censoring his thoughts as they happen. He encounters a situation where his father's guidelines clearly are insufficient, and he decides to do the right thing. The *form* it takes is of a total breakdown of order--he's "out of control," dangerously so, as Allison points out.
ReplyDeleteHe does become a hero by defying these voices in his head, the inadequate moral strictures his parents have drilled into him. At times maybe he does seem a little mentally unstable, but Saunders depicts this "voices in the head" phenomenon as common among all three characters--it becomes in Kyle's case a form of *conscience*, an internal debate as to what is "the right thing" in a given situation.
I have to agree with Ansel. Reading about "Batman" in "Easier Than Typing" showed me that it would be hard to think of these scary and strange "heroes" as truly heroic without knowing their true motives. I thought about that a lot as I was reading it, and actually had a cool conversation with my dad about heroism and such. I think you did a really cool job of noting a theme that has been reoccurring in our notes and discussions. What about the Odyssey?
ReplyDeleteI think Kyle's emotional state is actually pretty stable. He doesn't seem to hate following most of the directives, and many of the directives probably make sense. The clashing really only happens when he wants to help Allison but the directives are preventing him from helping. To reiterate Mr. Mitchell's comment, Kyle has to break the directives to become a hero, but he doesn't seem very mentally unstable. Rather he is just debating whether what he is doing is right or wrong.
ReplyDeleteI actually never was that interested in the superheroes that live in our world such as Batman because it always kind of freaked me out to have these random heroes and villains running around the city that I live in. I also feel like most of us have a lack of faith in humanity, so we would have little faith that Batman or whoever he is actually will continue to act solely for the good of the community, because it is hard to trust anyone who is outside of the law and can attack/kill whoever they think needs attacking or killing. So like you said in your second paragraph, I think it would be natural for us to be wary of the "Batman" character.
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