Superman: Consolation mechanism; (Jan. 19, 2010)
Gramsci stated: “We may confirm that much of Nietzsche superman concept originated not from Zarathustra but from the hero of Alexander Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo. Superman replaces or enhances the imagination of little people: a real waking up dream. Imagination is thus dependent on social inferiority complex that determines in our lengthy dreams ideas of vengeance, punishment of the guilty for inflicted harms done to us”
Many superman heroes preceded the Count of Monte Cristo; there are Athos in “The three musketeers”, Joseph Balzamo and Vaudrin in Balzac novels, and most influential of all maybe Rodolphe de Gerolstein by Eugene Sue in “The mysteries of Paris”, first published as a serial novel. All these heroes were well off financially, they had received extensive educations, they had power to exercise and influence people. All these supermen had no qualm exerting extreme vengeance and extricate justice outside the laws of the land; their law is founded in super moral world that they believed applied to all mankind.
Superman has this knack to be transformed from God the father to an ordinary worker, or to an ordinary citizen
Serial novels that dug up the miseries of little people and recounted their daily hardship affected and encouraged people to read and asking other to read to them about stories they associated with their experiences. Successful serial novels have characteristic attributes; first, select an everyday reality that is not sufficiently considered and where tensions were not resolved. Second, posit an element of resolution that contrasts with the previous reality; this draft resolution must be simple and naïve to impress with its quick results; the result must thus console immediately the little people. Otherwise, a fantastic resolution can be as expeditive and efficacious since it works without going through limiting mediations of concrete events.
The story in serial novel is a succession of repeated cycles of tension-relaxation; thus, it should not obey the classical structure of accumulating tensions up to the last chapter for tensions to be released. Repetition of describing miseries in the real world has the benefit of attracting attention and permitting focus on a particular misery that coincides closest to your condition. Repetition of miseries is meant to exasperate the sensibility of little people. Surprises have to be many and varied. Redundancy is an excellent technique is serial novels: the reader has to identify with the initial characters (reality) and the resolution characters; it is kind of becoming totally familiar with repeated surprises.
Sudden revolts were never initiated by high caliber critical thinkers; they were the results of long period of gestations by little people reading about the varied miseries and possibility of quick revenge. Little people comprehended that the characters in the serial novel never changed even if they experienced some surprised transformations by an unexpected benevolent superman: the good character remains good and the bad character reverted after transformation. In all the story, events and resolutions are within the social structure of classes and thus, society never changes by all these surprised transformation. It is this realization that infuriates little people in the long run even if they don’t feel the energy or determination to change: they want quick sort of change even for a brief moment.
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