After some videos introducing what is modernism and postmodernism, i researched further trying to get deeper about the idea of what is modernism and postmodernism? So from what i get is that modernism is a phase where human is trying to forget the past and they start to questioning and wondering why things are happen like this, how does this happen, and so on. Science and technology became the answer of those question as they developed. Some philosopher then came out with a big and phenomenal theories, one of them is Charles Darwin with his "Theory of Evolution" that leads the faith of Religion to a danger in that period, trying to decline the existent of God.
"Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations. She can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps." - Charles Darwin
"The theory of evolution propounded by Darwin in his "The Origin of Species" (1859) is seen as the next significant step in the formation of modernist mindset. Darwinian evolution and subsequently social Darwinism, observes the writer, "embodied the assault on traditional beliefs concerning God". Notions of evolution, progress and reform, led to an urgent fascination for their apparent opposites — regression, decline and degeneration. Modernism becomes a discourse both of progress and decline, emancipation and exploitation. Darwin’s theories precipitated a kind of agnosticism in an otherwise relatively linear European society unsettling their faith in Church or religion as such." (Kumar, 2001)
So in this post want to talk about this theory of "Evolution" and relate it with the superheroes movies that exist. Yes, some of the superheroes show how they get their power from the human evolution. X-men as mutant, they get their power from the natural selection of dna evolution that mutated. Some superheroes such as spiderman, hulk, daredevil, captain america, some of their enemies such as sand man, abomination, and electro, they get their powers from some science process (some technology as well). Some superheroes as well take the modernism aspect, the growth of technology as their superpower, such as ironman, batman, Dr. Octopus (spiderman's enemy) as their source of power.The believing that they could design a better society using technology.
Recently i watched Man of Steel, and i found something interesting about how they portray the Superman in the movie. They tried to portray Superman as "God", or maybe the "Son of God" in the movie. There is a dialog when Jor El (Superman's father) talking with his wife when they want to send Kal El (Superman's real name) to earth, Jor El said like this, "How? He'll be a god to them" (roughly). And there is a scene in the church where Kal El is talking to a priest that he is confuse and afraid before "become" Superman and fights, it reminds me about the scene when the night before Jesus being executed, he was frighten and pray to His Father (you can watch "The Passion of The Christ" movie as reference). After that in the church there is a close up scene of Kal El with a background of stained glass church window with a Jesus picture. It really shows that Kal El/ Superman is being compared with Jesus. The relation with Darwin theory, this movie doesn't show the "Evolution Theory", but somehow it decline the existent of God as well. Another thing is that in the past modernism, the traditional view from the bible said that "Man made in the image and likeness of God" showing that why Superman as an "Alien" does not looks like strange alien like E.T or MIB alien. So this shows that Jesus or God is really being compared with the Superman. This is somehow answer the other question of mine along the movies where the Superman is not really care about the damage that he made during fighting in the movie. If God destroyed something for the good of the rest, would human protest? As the story of Noah when God sent a big flood, you can watch Evan Almighty (2007).
Bibliography
Evan Almighty. 2007. film. Directed by Tom Shadyac. USA: Universal Pictures.
FFreeThinker. 2008. Charles Darwin vs Adam & Eve [online]. Available at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHlQgetztBw> [Accesed 6 July 2013]
Jack Somerset. 2011. What is Modernism/ Postmodernism? [online]. Available at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ehh1b6kNWA> [Accesed 6 July 2013]
Kumar, A. 2001. The Icons of Modernism With Euroamerican Bias. [online] Available at: <http://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20011216/spectrum/book1.htm> [Accesed 6 July 2013].
Man of Steel. 2013. film. Directed by Zack Snyder. USA: Warner Bros.
X-men: First Class. 2011. film. Directed by Matthew Vaughn. USA: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
Annotation
In this post i used Charles Darwin's theory as one of the philosopher during Modernism and try to compare to some superheroes movies, how they apply his theory as part of Superheroes film.
