Thus, comics, films, and TV series deal with the search for divinity in human beings and, above all, the search for humanity in divine beings. Superheroes embody our projection of an improved humanity and are sometimes even the result of the evolution of divine figures (either our own or those of others). They were born in comic strip form as an antidote to the social and political crises of the last century and turned into a synthesis of our concept of modernity thanks to their TV and cinema translations. Superheroes are the clearest and most valid manifestation of this model. The collection of divinities of Greek mythology and the long list of heroes looking for their approval have adopted countless faces and have now become the pop culture mould for a new way of narrating. The legacy of mythology is palpable in both classical literature and the production of audiovisual fiction throughout the 20th century ( Arnaudo, 2013 Reynolds, 1992 Unceta Gómez, 2007). In other words, heroes who comfort us because they are not the superhumans they would like to be.
EPHEMERAL STORIES FULL
Mass culture is full of these sorts of representations of never ending searches in which most characters are the children of what Umberto Eco called the ideology of consolation ( Eco, 1964). They also share a common search for moral or emotional refuge, a compass to guide us towards our destiny and our own selves. They all share many features, two of which are quite obvious: the fight against time (i.e., our ephemeral and finite condition) and our desire to be recognised by a higher entity that can sanction the meaning of our journey. The former were expressed as stories of redemption, of assumption of the punishments of existence and the Stations of the Cross that the characters must face to overcome their heavy consciences and unconfessed sins the second group chronicles common individuals who are actually destined to reign and the glory of great feats that would have otherwise been out of their reach and the third group manifests worlds populated by hyperbolic heroes who represent our collective aspiration for eternity. It is not at all outlandish to state that much of modern Western fiction can be articulated mainly from three distinct legacies: biblical texts, Greek mythology, and Arthurian legends. Countless authors and titles fall into this group, which can be subdivided following three axes to understand their relevance along the history of popular culture: mythology, evolution, and technology. That is the reason why the idea of a future with improved humans involves an in-depth study of the persistence of pain, resignation, and sacrifice as the driving forces behind the transformation. Most of these stories talk about what we would like to be as a metaphor for what we really are, and they often start from a contradiction: their protagonists are our salvation while also being the ultimate expression of our doubts, as well as our lights and shadows. The novel 1984 ( Orwell, 1949/ 2010) is one of the most influential examples of this. It is a reflection of our drive for survival in a world that condemns us to disappear, or maybe of our fear of being absorbed by the machine or by the misuse of technological advances. The representation of any future, be it utopian or dystopian, captures the present and with it, our desire or hope to become a different thing. This is because, in the end, we cannot conceive a future (or the humans who will live in it) without assuming that all these narratives are a parable for our awareness of that which we may never be able to become. Since the beginning of time, we have imagined realities in which we transcend our limitations and overcome old weaknesses, but nonetheless they still end up being an inseparable part of our stories. We are aware of our ephemeral condition, and fiction creates heroes and antiheroes to embody the eternal battle for eternity. The discourse surrounding the concept of posthumans, or the vision of a world in which we are better and more advanced and have managed to challenge our expiry dates, always stems from our realisation of our own fragility. These moments were separated by several centuries in fact, the former became the canon in the light of which the latter was created but nonetheless, both share the same essence. The other one is issue 61 of Superman’s adventures, when the hero realises that kryptonite, a mineral from his home planet, could dim his powers and make him as vulnerable as any other human being ( Siegel & Schuster, 1949). One of them is the fateful moment when the warrior Achilles saw Paris’s arrow pierce his heel – his only weak point – according to the legend started by the poet Statius.
Let us pick two very specific moments in which beings reinterpreted and sublimated in fiction were faced with evidence of their own fragility.
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