Notion of myths and heroes

Mythe et héros

I am going to talk about the notion of myths and heroes. A myth can be defined as a fictional story about gods or heroes, it can be a popular belief or a tradition. A hero can be a mythological figure, an unusual person or a superhero. The fascination for heroes is old. However, a new generation of heroes was born in the 20th century: superheroes. Everybody knows about Spiderman and has seen at least one of the X-Men movies, but do you know about the real history behind the creation of the most well-known?

To explore this notion, the subject of my presentation will be to explain the link between superheroes and the history of America.

The question that can be raised is what superheroes tell us about history of America.

My presentation will be divided in 3 parts.  Each part will feature a superhero. For each of them, I will first try to identify the fears related to the context that led to the creation of these superheroes. Then, I'll show what role these superheroes play for the American nation.

The first superheroe studied is Captain America.  We studied a poster and listened to a short audio clip explaining who it was. This fictional character first appeared in Marvel Comics and his story was adapted several times in films, such as Captain America: First Avenger in 2011.

The poster draws attention to the central character. He looks big and strong. The idea put forward in this paper is that America is invincible. The audio clip explains Captain America was created during World War II.  

Indeed, the authors were inspired by the historical context of this period.

The Americans were scared by the conflict in Europe against the Nazi regime. This fear of the ideology and of tyranny led to the creation of the superhero. The superhero represented the American values compared to the Nazi ideology during World War II.

The colours of his costume were directly inspired by the design of the American flag.

In my opinion, Captain America embodied American values like the fight for freedom. Captain America embodies American patriotism.

Then, the second superheroe studied is Iron Man. We analized a comic book cover of Iron Man entitled The Invincible Iron Man – Back in the USSR.

Iron Man is a superhero from Marvel who was created in 1963. Iron Man tells the story of American industrialist who suffers from a chest injury and designs an armor to protect his heart.

We can see Iron Man destroying a vessel. His enemy is the USSR. This document illustrates the power of the Americans against the Russians

I am convinced that it refers to the USSR because of the context of the Cold War.The Cold War refers to an ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lasted from 1947 to 1990. Their relations are very tense but there are no wars.

To my mind, Americans were particulary wary and scared of the communist ideology. This context and the fear of the communist regime led to the creation of Iron Man.

In 2008, an American blockbuster called Iron Man was released in cinemas.

Finally, the third superheroe studied is Wolverine, a character of X-Men. We worked on a movie poster and a text from a website. The poster shows a lot of characters because the X-Men are a team of superheroes appeared in Marvel Comics in 1963.

The story of these mutants was directly inspired by the fear of genetic manipulations.

The most famous member of the X-men is Wolverine. His enemy is Magneto, a scientist who does genetic manipulations. The text explains that mutants want to exterminate humans.

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