Rob Dean On Friday, August 19, 2011 at 5:00PM Rob Dean On Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 12:45PM 
Sometimes it's easiest to tell the most personal stories - the ones that really lay bare your feelings - by disguising it behind something truly bizarre. If something is seen as weird or ridiculous, then it's easy to dismiss and thus easy for the storyteller to not be hurt by the criticisms. By dressing an intimate truth in the costume of the outrageous, it offers some shelter to the fragile psyche of the creator. After all, critics will go after the garish or surreal before addressing anything deeper or more profound in a work. It's easier, for critics, to deal with the superficial and the shallow, to tackle the obvious and overt, than it is to peer deeper into a work. To be fair to critics, deeper readings of films usually reveal a lack of depth and not a hidden profundity. Sometimes a tentacle is just a tentacle, or a headshot is just a headshot.
And so the time honored tradition of Trojan Horsing other layers in populist work. Take whatever is popular in mainstream entertainment and hit all the same notes, adhere to the formulas, while subtly slipping in breadcrumbs of your ulterior motive. Sometimes this technique is used for political purposes, other times it's a deconstruction of the entire genre. But, occasionally, it's a way for the artist to reveal something that would leave him ultimately vulnerable, except that it's done in a way that's easy to disavow. "I'm just telling a story of a guy fighting a three-headed alien - I don't see where you get all this 'father issue' stuff!"
Today's film, Super, told a very universal story with immensely personal elements all wrapped up in a genre fare that could be dismissed by naysayers as ultraviolent or "just another superhero flick." Super is a fun flick that has some great scenes of action, lots of WTF moments and great comedy. But, as I was watching it, I couldn't help but sense that something else was going on - there was another layer to this whole story that seemed to be occurring just beneath the surface. The movie ended and I took to the interwebs and found Devin Faraci's excellent review. It was well written and the only one that I could see that openly dealt with what I thought this movie was about: dealing with a devastating break-up.
Rob Dean On Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 12:30PM
What I want to bring back to superheroes with this project is a sense of play. Things have gotten so dreary. The heroes have gotten so ugly that even their muscles have muscles.
- Frank Miller
Ignorance is bliss. Sure, it's "better" to know the truth - but it's not always a good feeling. Here's an example: you know the song "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison? It's a sweet summer song of days gone by, right? It's about anal sex. Just listen to the lyrics: "Behind the stadium...down in the hollow...playing a new game..." Clearly it's about that special bond between a man and the first girl who lets him do it in the butt.
Or maybe it's not. This is a brilliant and hilarious thought exercise put forth by Shannon Wheeler in Too Much Coffee Man: now that you've just been exposed to this piece of information - you will always associate "Brown Eyed Girl" with butt sex. Even though things may not be true, certain bits of knowledge can never be unlearned.
Today's movie isn't about butt sex (not that I noticed, anyways) but it is about the fallacy of nostalgia. It centers on that lie put forth by regressives that, at one point in the past, there were "golden days." Don't get me wrong - there were definitely years for America that were objectively better than this current age of horrible new diseases, rampant pollution, erratic natural disasters, catastrophic economic woes. But to say that "times were better" is to imply a giant asterisk: yes, times were better if you were a white American man above a certain level of wealth. The Post-World War II era was a prosperous one for the US - but mainly due to the fact that every other country had been utterly decimated by war, bombing campaigns and more war. And sure, maybe the truthiness of growing up in the 50s was that everything felt better - but that's because people weren't informed about all the various levels of corruption in politics, pollution in the environment, exploitation of other countries, carcinogens in household items, etc.
Times were better - because most people didn't know any better. The deluge of information brought along the weariness of cynicism - but also the responsibility of knowledge. Armed with knowing as many facts about a situation as possible, the hope is that people can make informed decisions that are based on rational deliberation and not ignorance or fear. Of course, that doesn't always pan out, but the theory is sound.
But what does this all have to do with an Australian superhero parody from 1984? The Return of Captain Invincible is about an American, patriotic costumed do-gooder who went from being the beloved hero of a nation to becoming a forgotten footnote delegated to the alleyways of Australia. Alan Arkin plays the recovering alcoholic Captain Invincible, a man formerly ensconced in the flag but now lying in a puddle of his own filth. Oh...and it's a musical.
Rob Dean On Monday, June 6, 2011 at 5:00PM 
