Are Superheroes Misleading Role Models For Children?
Superheroes. Those fictional do-gooders that are ready to do battle with evil forces to save us. This seemingly simple concept has been commercialised into extremely lucrative movies that adults and kids alike watch. Superhero movies have truly dominated the box office, with franchises such as The Avengers reigning supreme as the top grossing movie of all time. Superhero movies are watched by tons of young, impressionable children, and the content of those superhero movies have the opportunity to seriously influence those kids. Some people argue that this influence has become a negative one due to the sort of values that Hollywood superheroes today are allegedly promoting.
The Problem With Hollywood Superheroes
The Hollywood superheroes of today are arguably very different to superheroes of the past. The modern Hollywood superheroes in the movies hardly speak about the virtue of doing good for humanity. This is unlike how superheroes in the past were presented, a good of example of this is Superman. Superman was always portrayed as a hero that stood for justice and fairness, these are values that parents all over would want their kids to have. But these values may not be as clear cut in the superhero movies of today, for example The Avengers franchise. The Avengers franchise being as big as it is, has the potential to have a tremendous influence on children. Aside from dressing up like Captain America and trying to imitate action scenes (guilty), the values incorporated into The Avengers may also be adopted by youngsters. This is where the crux of the problem lies. Superheroes such as Tony Stark hardly promote values we would want children to embrace. Tony Stark is depicted as a playboy millionaire that promotes negative behaviours such as womanising and sexism. From this perspective, it’s not difficult to understand why some parents think superheroes are misleading role models.
It becomes all the more difficult for parents to shield their children from such behaviour given that The Avengers franchise, and the superhero franchise more generally, is so large. Psychologist Sharon Lamb and her team at the University of Massachusetts surveyed 674 boys aged 4 – 18 to find out what they read and watched on TV and in films. Her results found that boys within that age range were commonly exposed to two types of superheroes, the aggressive superhero or the slacker who does not even try. Neither are desirable traits that you would want your child to grow up with. But parents may not have that choice anymore, the increasing prevalence of superheroes displaying characteristics such as these means that it may simply be too difficult for parents to protect their children from such these negative values.
To be fair to superhero franchises like The Avengers, they do have superheroes that stand for justice and fairness, for example, Thor. Thor is a do-gooder prince of Asgard that is depicted as being very selfless and fair. However, despite these positive qualities that superheroes like Thor stand for, we have to look at what they are doing in these movies. Thor, whilst being depicted as striving to be just and fair, battles it out against the bad guys with his hammer in high octane fight scenes. It’s these scenes of aggression that some parents may take issue with. A recent study, conducted by Sarah Coyne from Brigham Young University, aimed to understand what preschool aged boys and girls take away from being exposed to superheroes. The study found that these children were only noticing the aggressive themes in these programmes and were failing to take away the more positive attributes that the superheroes did display. The explanation for this is that superhero movies often have a complex story line, that promotes pro-social behaviour in subtle ways that children simply cannot pick up on. However, despite all the alleged damage that superheroes are doing to children, it is clear that the influence of superheroes on children can be beneficial.
It's Not All Bad
Ty Patridge, an associate professor at Wayne State University, indicated that superheroes are an effective way for parents to talk to their kids and encourage the formation of good social behaviour by being able to use a superhero as an example. He also stressed that superheroes alone will not make children have outstanding behaviour, the parents are the ones that really have to engage with their children and lead by example.
Conclusion
Hollywood superheroes possess an immense amount of potential to influence children in the values they choose to uphold. As a result, the womanising and sexist behaviour depicted by superheroes like Tony Stark may not be content that parents want their child to be seeing. But that is why the parenting role becomes all the more important. Parents should be ready and willing to tell and showcase values that are worth upholding and those that are not. It is no doubt a difficult job, and that is why parents are the real superheroes. They face the superhuman task of guiding their children in such a complicated world to ensure that the children grow up the right way.
Shout out to all those hard working moms and dads!
Sources
Image 1: http://sequart.org/magazine/56862/dc-marvel-politics-of-universes/
Image 2: http://www.dumpaday.com/funny-pictures/random-funny-pictures-62-pics/attachment/its-friday-tony-stark-2/
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