Meaningful Returns

Here’s a link to the Wikipedia page which shows the list of live-action films that have come out of the Marvel Comics universe. From 1944 to 2001, there were seven films. From 2002 through this year there have been THIRTY-NINE. Another nine are already planned through 2019.

There’s nothing wrong with Marvel Comics or the number of movies that have come from the comics. I like a good superhero as much as the next person, on average. But you know, in concert with the explosion in these movies has been an explosion in a sort of cultural superhero complex, and I think that can be really dangerous for us.

I saw an article last week at Bloomberg that was looking at the newest of the Marvel films, Dr. Strange, which features Benedict Cumberbatch and, apparently, a $237,250 Lamborghini Huracán LP610-4. The article is all about why Lamborghini, which makes only about 3,500 cars annually, would let Marvel use six of them and completely destroy at least one of them in the making of the film. If the overwhelming majority of people seeing this movie have no chance at all at buying the car, does that product placement make sense? The piece goes on to explain that the ultra-wealthy target of Lamborghini love superhero movies too, and that they subconsciously project their image onto the big screen, looking for ways to align their current reality with the Hollywood archetype. If they see Dr. Strange driving the Huracán, they might just buy one, too. Here’s the money quote from the piece:

When we escape into the stories of movies, we look for versions of our ‘Ideal Self.’ Although it doesn’t usually happen at a conscious level, we often compare our self-perception to that of our ideal self. The gaps that emerge, we try to fill with things that can help us obtain the ideal. A vehicle often fills that gap. So while I may not be a superhero, when I drive my Audi, I can be Tony Stark. In essence, these vehicles are more than a sidekick, but something that completes the hero.

Now, it can be really easy to read all this and immediately dismiss the ultra-wealthy. I mean, I certainly dismissed them when I read it. Like, Newsflash, you actually CAN’T be Tony Stark, dummies. 

But we all do this, don’t we? It’s only the degree that varies, and I suspect it wouldn’t vary all that much if we had as much money as the people driving Lambos. And we all do this, because we have been conditioned to think of “ordinary” as a negative adjective.

What if it isn’t?