Why Are Superheroes so Important to Us?

            Superheroes create this escape from reality just to connect us back to reality.  For example, Spiderman is a superhero that resides in New York City.  The Spiderman films and comics allow the viewers and readers to escape their current situations and watch other people go through traumatic events and realize that their current life is not as bad as it could be (that was an extremely long sentence, I apologize).  And then, BAM, Spiderman comes in and saves the day.  Like Spiderman, Captain America “saves America”, making us feel safe, even though he does not actually exist. For us, it’s knowing that we have these superheroes to look back to in hopes they may be able to protect us.  That’s when they push us back into reality.  For example, after 9/11, there was a comic released of Spiderman witnessing the traumatic event, and people asking why Spiderman did not stop the attack from happening.

 But then, we have to remember that unfortunately Spiderman is a fictional character and cannot solve everything, yet we continue to use superheroes to fall back on.  Hence, why superheroes are so important to us—culturally and emotionally.  Culturally because heroes like Captain America make us as a Country feel safe, knowing that “he is here to protect us”.   Emotionally because superheroes can be used to make us feel better about our current lives knowing these fictional characters in the movies have it worse than we do. 

I’m not sure if my point was made extremely clear …I tried to word my thoughts to try to make sense, but I think the general gist is clear:  Superheroes are important to us because they make us feel better about our current lives, they pull us out of reality, and they make us feel safe.  

Thanks,

Sydney