Observing: Superman (1978) - plot

http://thecomicking.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Superman-The-Movie-1-1152x864.jpg

Superman (1978) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOkb8pxtTfk

• End of Krypton  - orbital shift that causes the destruction of the planet. Back then, the world has more fear in asteroid hitting the earth rather than energy drain. 

• The Counsel - the display the elders are very much Modernism way. Demonstrate civilized (Victorian) character in a negative way. Narrow minded, as enemies of freedom and self-realization

• Colour and material - The use of material for spaceship (in a star shape), minerals and its colour are still very much in nature form. While in the latest Man of Steel film, very little explanation of material and most colour are in black and metalic texture.

• Arrive on Earth - Baby arrive at planet at 3 years old. Martha, believing the child is a gift from God, decides to adopt him. The religion perspective is stronger, inspired by Christianity, in the trailer, it's says, "Jor-El send his only son to earth, to save mankind from their disaster..." while  2013 version did not mention about such perspective at all.

• Super power - The superpowers are demonstrated when Clark is very young. Superpowers are more direct, easily related for audience. Emphasize more on the strength. 

• Jol-El's message (Media) - Back in 70's the father is seen as a spirit kept in the crystal combination connector, in 2013, the father is presented like Siri, a pre-programmed artificial intelligent that possess the human quality of Jol-El. And it can be activated in the ships that is built by Jol-El. 

• Time Travel - The process of telling Clark his real identity as Kal-El is different as well. More father talking to him face to face with eye contact in 70's, travelling back physically with a journey through space and time complete his maturation reflect the tangible experience that is important back then. The simulation of scenes are widely used with high technological display of replay of scenarios while Kal-El staying at the same ship. (today, we can do anything in front of a powerful machine)

• Mission - Clark's mission described in more detective way, very human, crime, investigation style. More mind work and intelligent are featured as a personal character and capability. In Man of Steel (2013), the focus is not in crime happened in the city, but his mission to protect the earth. More of power and strength display, decision of his belonging (Krypton or Earth) and gaining trust from the human are more obviously showed in the film. 

Other compilation video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biS_iYkhyrM

Man of Steel - plot sommary points

Beginning

- Planet Krypton, Kal-El, the first natural born baby after centuries
- Jor-El steals the Growth Codex (the source of the artificially-produced masses of genetically-specialized citizens of Krypton)
- The overdo of harvesting Krypton's energy in the core of the planet cause the planet to explode - Growth Codex was graphed and atomized into Kal-El's red blood cell.
- General Zod wants to stop Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van from sending the baby away.
- They fight and Jor-El died, baby sent to earth and land safely.


* My thoughts: 
The contrast between nature and technology, the fight/debates of a better future generation. Is genetically-specialized citizens better or natural born citizens better? Superstructure in production idea from Marxism? 
The reminder of over-harvest energy of the planet leads to destruction

On Earth

-  main character has grown up into an adult working on a crab boat, witness disaster happen he reveal his superpower while protecting others.
- flaming oil rig explode and push him into the ocean.
- flash back of his 9 year old, shows how he has discovered his Super Hearing and X-Ray Vision
- school bus reminded him about his teenage time saving his friends from the sinking bus (accident). His father Jonathan tell Clark Kent about his spaceship and the command key.
- friends of Clark were afraid of his superpower, some of them challenged him to fight

* The hero journey in narrative started

- On a based station, a research team discover alien ship. Clark is working there.
- Lois Lane, female reporter comes to cover the research work
- At night,  Clark use his X-Ray Vision and found the spaceship. Lois Lane follows him
- Security system of the spaceship cause Lois Lane injured and Clark heal her with his superpower
- After sending Lois Lane off the ship, Clark discover his purpose on earth, found his suits, learning to fly.
- Activated his father's AI and see the information in very high technology way.

* Memory storage, holographic visual, more advanced version of Siri today

* Villain return
- General Zod and his team are searching for the natural born baby and the master control of Krypton's genetic engineer blueprint thinking of bring Krypton back again
- Found the tracking of spaceship on earth, Zod threatened earth to hand Kal-El over to maintain peace on earth
- Clark go through struggles and finally decided to protect mankind on earth.
- Clark surrender himself to Zod. Together with Lois Lane, Zod took them away to the space
- While lock in the same room, Kal pass the command key to Lois.

In Space

- Lois is given a visor to help her breathe while Kal was not.
- Atmosphere in Zod's ship affects Kal's power
- General Zod invite Kal to join him reduild Krypton
- Lois activated the command key in the spaceship. Jor's Ai helps her escape.
- Atmosphere in the ship is changed by Jor's AI. Kal has his last word with Jor and then save Lois back to earth.

Smallville

- Zod plan to rebuild Krypton on earth. He broke his promise and now mankind need a hero.
- The human forces try to attack Zod's attack. At this time, human are not sure whether to trust superman
- Generator tries to harvest energy from the earth. Kal tries his very best to stop it.
- Zod come to harass Kal's mother on earth.
- Kal break Zod's visor and he got all the senses overwhelming him. They fight.
- In the fight, human soldier, Zod's team and superman are in the the fight together.
- Kal saved some of the soldiers in critical moment and it changes human attitude towards him
- in the final fight scene, a gallery, Zod uses his heat vision threaten to kill all the victims stuck in the gallery. Kal is asked why he wants to protect this human and fight against his own kind.
- Kal's struggling and do not know what to answer, but to stop Zod, Kal has to kill him.
- in his grief, Kal cry out loud.

Trust

- Kal starts to gain trust from the US government
- Meeting his mum finally in the peaceful way, Kal flash back his 9 year old memory playing in the garden
- Clark now working in Daily Planet as a reporter

Essay Structure

http://b-i.forbesimg.com/carolpinchefsky/files/2013/04/SupermanSymbol.jpg

Opening

- explaining the birth of Superman era
- modernism, post WWII, capitalism, bio technology influence

Content

- Comic hero
- Superman the first movie
- development of Superman throughout the years

- Man of Steel
- The journey of the hero

- Postmodernism
- simulation, symbols, hyperreality

- How Superman is portrayed in the film and how other character with power but not a hero, was portrayed

Conclusion

- The growth of superhero from modernism to postmodernism
- Simulation in the media that we feed in our hope in this era  

Why do I choose Superman as my Topic

Reasons:

#1 The first famous superhero I've ever know since young

#2 SUPERMAN is believed the most powerful superhero of all

#3 SUPERMAN is one of the superhero that appear on the mass media. Example: Cartoon, Drama Series, Comics, Movies... etc.

#4 SUPERMAN has around 75years of history. I would like to compare the development of Superman character development throughout the years so to reflect the modernism and postmodernism influence throughout the process.

Modernism vs. Postmodernism

Bibliography: Webpages.uidaho.edu. n.d.. Modernism vs Postmodernism. [online] Available at: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258/Lecture%20Notes/modernism_vs_postmodernism.htm [Accessed: 5 Aug 2013].

The term "Postmodern" begins to make sense if you understand what "Modernism" refers to. In this case, "Modernism" usually refers to Neo-Classical, Enlightenment assumptions concerning the role reason, or rationality, or scientific reasoning, play in guiding our understanding of the human condition and, in extreme cases of Postmodern theory, nature itself.  Postmodernism basically challenges those basic assumptions.

Modernism (or Enlightenment Humanism)	Postmodernism
Existence of stable, coherent “self”, independent of culture and society.	The “self” is a myth and largely a composite of one’s social experiences and cultural contexts. The "self" is an Ideology.
Reason and science provide accurate, objective, reliable foundation of “knowledge”	Reason and science are Ideologies in the Marxist sense; myths created by man.
Reason transcends and exists independently of our existential, historical, cultural contexts; it is universal and “true”.	There is no universal, objective means of judging any given concept as “true”; ALL judgments of truth exist within a cultural context (cultural relativism).
Reason and human independence/freedom are inherently linked; just laws conform to the dictates of Reason. We hold these truths to be self evident…	The application of pure Reason (predicated Cartesian Radical Skepticism) disproves the universal nature of a priori  human freedom. Independence/Freedom are Western Ideologies used to colonize foreign cultures (ie Belgian Congo, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan)
Because it is universal, Reason can help us overcome all conflicts.	Reason is no more universal than is any other culture’s definition of “truth”.
Science is the paradigm of all true knowledge.	Science is Ideology.
Language is transparent; a one to one relationship between signifier (word) and signified (thing or concept).	Language is fluid and arbitrary and/or rooted in Power/Knowledge relations. Meaning is fluid and arbitrary. Meaning is “messy”.
Reason will lead to universal truths all cultures will embrace.	“…no eternal truths, no universal human experience, no universal human rights, overriding narrative of human progress” (Faigley, 8).
In sum: Truth exists independent of human consciousness and can be known thru the application of Reason. All Enlightenment conclusions lead from this assumption.	In sum: Truth may exist independent of human consciousness but there is no objective means of nailing it down. All Postmodern conclusions lead from this assumption.
Connotations: The application of Reason leads to a progressive movement toward civilization, democracy, freedom, scientific advancement. The Enlightenment is prescriptive: a means of building a better society.	Connotations:  There is no objective means upon which to predicate morality and right/just governance. Postmodern theory is descriptive of the human condition; it describes an impasse in philosophy and social relations.
Modernist Feminism:  Women are oppressed by patriarchy and can use Reason to achieve both independence and regain their “authentic selves”.	Postmodern Feminism: The categories male/female, masculine/feminine are themselves culturally constructed and/or Ideology. Gender roles are culturally relative in all cultures and contexts.

 Source: Borrowed heavily from Jane Flax, via Lester Faigley's Fragments Of Rationality

Academic Who Reads Comic Books

Bibliography: Prairieschooner.unl.edu. 1926. Post-modern Superheroes | Prairie Schooner. [online] Available at: http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/?q=blog/post-modern-superheroes [Accessed: 1 Aug 2013].

Released as a mini-series by Marvel Comics in 1985, Squadron Supreme pastiches DC’s popular Justice League of America, with “analog” clones of Superman (Hyperion), Wonder Woman (Power Princess), Batman (Nighthawk), and so on, giving readers a familiar iconography while they are confronted with some hard truths of those beloved characters. The plot of the series explored the possibilities of a pantheon of American superheroes that, after a third world war, decide to rid the world of all its deficiencies and impose their utopian regime. They tackle hunger, poverty, war, and crime, although the vast majority of the series concerns itself with the moral ambiguity of a behavior modification machine, which was originally invented to rehabilitate criminals, but inevitably used for the selfish ends of one of the main characters. If these characters like Superman can impose a utopia, then they can also impose a dystopia, and it’s only a small matter of ideology that saves us from one or damns us to the other. Thus, the series is more about the corruption of superheroes failing to be held in check, and as long as superheroes are acting like super humans, their ‘‘human’’ aspects will fail to emerge.

Nighthawk, the Batman-clone, takes exception to the implied fascism to affect such widespread social change, and rallies a resistance group to battle the Squadron’s utopian efforts.

The social problems and philosophical questions make this one of the most deep super-hero comic series ever.

Man-of-Action Heroes: How the American Ideology of Manhood Structures Men's Consumption

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/where-the-wild-things-were-20121025-286jm.html

Holt, Douglas and Thompson, Craig, Man-of-Action Heroes: How the American Ideology of Manhood Structures Men's Consumption (November 2002). HBS Marketing Research Paper No. 03-04. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=386600 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.386600

Abstract:
The compensatory consumption thesis states that men who experience anxieties in living up to American ideals of manhood in their everyday lives as workers and husbands use consumption as a means to escape these pressures.

Masculine consumption, in this view, is a form of rebellion against society's expectations. This thesis of compensatory rebellious consumption has become conventional wisdom in the men's studies literature as a well as in popular culture. We question the basic premises of the thesis by asking: What masculine ideals do men strive for? And how do they use consumption to forge identifications with these ideals? First, we use textual analysis and a synthesis of historical studies to develop a discourse model of what we call American Manhood - the ideology of manhood in the United States. We demonstrate that rebellion is not an escape from ideology, but, rather, an essential component. Respectability and rebellion are dialectically entwined cultural models that together form the foundations of manhood in America. The pinnacle of American manhood is the man-of-action hero who deftly combines the strengths of respectability and rebellion. Then, using field interviews, we show that men creatively appropriate all three aspects of this manhood ideology in their consumption. Rather than daily respectability and weekend rebellions, men create themselves as men-of-action characters in ways that pervade their lives as consumers and workers. The contributions of our analysis are three-fold. We develop an alternative framework that directly challenges the compensatory consumption thesis. Second, we advance prior studies addressing consumers' idiographic tailoring of cultural meanings by demonstrating how these personalizing processes are socially structured. Third, we further understanding of the role of drama in consumption by showing how dramatic consumption is organized by ideology and self-orchestrated by consumers.

Other reading
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=656