Do bad childhoods serve as a premise for villainy?
According to a study Boing-Boing took a look at, they see no correlations between one or the other:
On the other hand, can childhood traumas be a workable premise for heroes? Well of course, and if memory serves, Alpha Flight's Aurora had her origin built on something like that in 1984. But that depends on whether writers and publishers are willing to consider it as a valid form of storytelling, and today, with scriptwriting reduced to a joke, there's no telling if they'd handle it well in mainstream, that's for sure.
A study of Marvel and DC comic book characters found no correlation between adverse childhood experiences and heroism or villainy. While the subject may seem unserious on its face, the authors point out that these characters can have real-world impacts on readers, especially children. Previous studies have shown that "The complex depictions of superheroes' trauma responses have the potential to influence the perceptions of children who are also experiencing trauma."Seriously, if all they could bring themselves to study was the movies, then what good does it do to study them at all? Even past history matters, and can make for vital research, if these studies matter. I don't think these researchers take their job very seriously, but then, that's surely par for the course in an era where cheapness reigns supreme.
The researchers limited the heroes and villains in the study to characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Expanded Universe because the comics offer "different and inconsistent iterations and origin stories." They also noted, "No superheroes or villains were involved in this research study. If anyone could connect us with them, we would be happy to conduct a follow up study to overcome this limitation."
The study sought to answer three questions: Are adverse childhood experiences associated with villains? Are there differences between MCU and DCEU outcomes? Are there differences between female and male characters?On this, I'll have to note that it's absurd and unwise for writers to make childhood traumas, or anything like that, the sole premise of villainy, and Geoff Johns, if anyone, sure didn't help matters when he was writing the Flash in the early 2000s (the character he created as a new Reverse-Flash, had a premise that was similar to what's spoken of in this study, and there were a few more). Bad education for villains in their youth makes a far more challenging premise, but we're way past the point where you could expect modern writers and publishers to prove they have what it takes to explore all that. Why, who knows if they'd be willing to develop premises where the villains were raised on violent movies and TV shows? If they didn't do so before, because they didn't want to get on Hollywood's bad side, there's little chance they'd be willing to do so now. It may not be surprising, but it's still very appalling.
They concluded that the answer to the first question was no. Black Widow is mentioned as an example of a character who suffered extreme childhood trauma but ultimately rejected villainy and became an Avenger. They found no significant difference between MCU versus DCEU or between male and female characters, although the small number of female characters complicates the latter conclusion.
On the other hand, can childhood traumas be a workable premise for heroes? Well of course, and if memory serves, Alpha Flight's Aurora had her origin built on something like that in 1984. But that depends on whether writers and publishers are willing to consider it as a valid form of storytelling, and today, with scriptwriting reduced to a joke, there's no telling if they'd handle it well in mainstream, that's for sure.
Labels: dc comics, golden calf of villainy, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, women of marvel
