Heroes

For those of you who don't know, I watched Avengers on Tuesday night.

It was incredible.

The cinematography. The plot/action. The character development. The lines/script. The acting. Scarlett... wait, NO, what am I saying?

The humor. The sentimentality. The anti-sentimentality. The pathos.

Anyhow, now we've gotten that needless congratulatory praise out of the way, lemme perhaps exfoliate some interesting philosophical themes from Avengers. People who are bored can stop reading this blog now.

Thesis: Heroes are important.



Remember when we were all growing up? Watching cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls (ew, who actually watched that), Pokemon, Yugioh, Digimon, Doug (oldie but goodie), Dragonball Z... (name your favorite cartoon I missed in the comments section below)...?

Weren't they awesome? Wasn't Superman kicka**? How about Batman? The thesis of the Dark Knight, it seems to me, was "You either die a hero or live long enough for them to call you a villain." What about Goku? How about Captain America?

Watch Avengers, and find a moment in the film in which Captain America kills. He does not kill a single human intentionally, save for the scene in which he throws a bad SHIELD operative/soldier out of the ship. But I thought that soldier might have had a parachute, so that might not count as a kill.

Captain America does not kill unless it's out of self-defense or to save others. That's why he has no weapon. That's why all he has is a shield. That's why he is a Kantian—he acts according to the categorical imperative of do not kill unless it is absolutely necessary.

But Captain America is the leader of the Avengers. Why? He's quite cheesy/uninformed—he has no idea how transistors work (the electricity scene?) or who Stephen Hawking is.

But he is Agent Coulson's hero. He admires Captain America. He almost worships him. He puts Captain America on an unrealistic and unworthy pedestal. But who is the true hero of Avengers? Coulson. Coulson is the hero of the story, because he dies fighting a seemingly-unstoppable force. He is the hero because his death brings the Avengers together.

Of course, there is evil. There are Lokis in the world (if you want to think in a Manichean way). But there are also normal people capable of heroic acts. And this has nothing to do with egoism or Rand's Objectivism.

Colson acts because to do nothing in the face of evil/Loki is to accept Loki's power over him.

Heroes. We can believe in them.