Are Superheroes a Psyop?

James Lafond mentioned how the invention of superheroes destroyed the primordial concept of the hero. This is interesting to consider. Is the superhero another psyop in the war on men? Or were superheroes a product of their environments?

Superman showed up on the scene in 1938. About a generation after the Great War. Perhaps, his creation was in response to the devastation of modern war? The greatness, power, and glory the men of WWI thought they were marching off for wasn’t there. Many were to be the thirteenth charge against an entrenched enemy position to only pick up a few more yards. And they would be mowed down just like the twelve charges before them.

There was glory to be found, Ernst Junger was an example of this, but for most men who thought they were about to show their manhood and heroism, the war was sobering. Superman being what he is seems to be a response to modern warfare.

It is known that communists were at Franklin D Roosevelt’s ear as early as 1933 and that Hollywood is not a form of entertainment, but propaganda. Superheroes could very well be a psyop designed to demoralize men into some realization that they could never be a hero because they didn’t get the super soldier serum or weren’t born on Krypton.

The men who came before had different a different concept of the heroic. Their heroes were not a web slinging spider man or a guy who builds an super iron suit for himself. They didn’t imagine their heroes as being many times stronger than normal men.

The superhero vs the Primordial Hero

Jonathan Bowden believed superheroes were a form of psyop against men, but perhaps not in the same way Lafond sees them as a psyop. What Bowden saw in superheroes were men who possessed everything a fascist surfer bodybuilder would want.

Superheroes possessed the same values of authoritarian knuckle draggers, but they were always made to fight for liberal causes. They were first made to look like the men they wanted to influence: white Americans. But these superheroes would fight for ideals that undermined the people who read and enjoyed them.

This brings me to primordial heroism. The primordial hero wasn’t meant to be something unattainable by the Everyman. He was meant to inspire men toward greatness, power, and glory as well as teach us about human nature.

Primordial heroes were mortal men, though many through being descendants of the gods were stronger than normal men. They weren’t however, invulnerable like Superman. Primordial heroes were consumed by the righteous thumos to fight monsters in order to protect or champion their people.

Herakles took on chthonic beasts to make the world safe for mankind. Achilles took on the Trojans and defeated Hector to avenge the death of Patroclus in the name of immortal glory. Both of these heroes were mighty and powerful, but also suffered from being men. They had their vices whereas modern superheroes are made to be morally perfect.

Whatever the case, the superhero is corrupted if not before, then now.

There is no mistaking how far gone superheroes have become. When and where it happened or if they were always meant to be subversive is up to debate. By all means, be a superhero movie enjoyer, but don’t use the superhero as the basis of your manly framework.

I can’t get into superhero movies anymore or most movies for that matter. The social conditioning, the pathetic virtue signaling, trying to create females who are as strong as males is all tiresome, boring, and unbelievable. It is quite the turn around that I now find powerful value in the heroic epics.

This is a challenge to the uninitiated.

Watch your most recent superhero movie. The one that makes sure to have a woman superhero with some bipoclgbt character make their virtue signals to forward their social justice programs and then, revisit a heroic epic.

The contrasts are stark. If you read Apollodorus on Herakles, you find that he isn’t anything like his boring Disney counterpart. The Iliad is more exciting than any action movie you can watch today.

The short stories about Conan the Barbarian by Robert E Howard carry the spirit of the heroic epics. They too, should be read.

Recently, I started reading Beowulf. A man who’s grip is as strong as thirty men, tears the arm off the monster Grendel. He does combat with the monster unarmed, as the monster is unarmed. Man to man. There’s belief this poem is blood memory from another time when men did battle with Neanderthals.

Neanderthal were said to be covered in fur. Their strength was four times that of men and they could see in the dark. The monster Grendel would only attack at night. What if the Neanderthals represented the orc of the primordial world, the Norse jotun?

The primordial hero offers man the path to greatness, power, and glory. The superhero seeks to disarm and disprivilege. The primordial hero is a piece of human nature and his epic both gives courage to men and teaches us about the world. Manhood and heroism go hand in hand because it is men who fight monsters. What makes for a strong man, opens the possibility for heroism.

Make no mistake, there are still monsters to be vanquished.