Why are superhero movies so 'American'?

Maybe it would be beneficial to explain what makes them "American" in your view?

Reply to Terrapin Station

They are produced in America (well some filming locations are outside America). Most people who watch them are American, and, they (almost always) promote American values.

I don't think I could be any clearer.

Reply to Question

Well, they're produced in America because Marvel and DC are American companies and they've both been aggressive in pursuing film production of its properties recently because they've made so much money off of it. That's simple enough. I suppose we could try to come up with reasons why comic books wound up being such a big business in the US/why Marvel and DC became so dominant in the comic book world.

If you're wondering why they're typically set in the U.S., it's because the companies are located here and writers/artists base their work on what they're familiar with, even when they're strongly fictionalizing-to-fantasy their work.

Re "most people who watch them are American," I'm not sure if that's true, actually. Most of the superhero films have had massive worldwide receipts.

Re "American values," I don't really buy the idea that there are unified values hinging on nationality.

The original superman comic book provides unique insight into the matter. For a long time superman could not fly, but could leap over a tall building in a single bound and in the comics he was more likely to fight an evil slumlord than any super villain. This was during the depression and early forties when those with money were equated with the bad guys and the entire country was steadily acquiring a more skeptical view of things like the supernatural. After the war money flowed like water into the US due to both Europe and Japan's infrastructure being decimated and superman changed into what we are more familiar with today. That is, all abstract philosophical talk and little substance with the comic book addressing few if any real concerns and the characters becoming little more than abstract caricatures.

Notably, Stan Lee brought a little more to the genre in the sixties when he started introducing more adult themes, but even those seldom had anything to do with the specifics of current political realities and the lives of everyday people. In other words, comic books became more of a mythology than a reflection of reality which can also be seen in the evolution of movies into more of a form of escapism. Today psychologists have noted that every seven years or so the movie industry switches from science fiction to supernatural themes and back again and their delusional clients follow the trend.

Americans are, perhaps, more individualistic, more inclined to a git-er-done attitude and self-reliance (improvise-adapt-overcome), anti-intellectual, and really, really like to shoot bad guys and blow shit up.

Quoting Brainglitch

Americans are, perhaps, more individualistic, more inclined to a git-er-done attitude and self-reliance (improvise-adapt-overcome), anti-intellectual, and really like to shoot bad guys and blow shit up.

LOL, you mean more violent. We have the worst social record in every regard in the developed world, but it certainly makes for better drama and plenty of it. For a long time Hollywood made more realistic movies and even pseudo documentaries such as "All The President's Men" that depicted real life people fighting the good fight, but those days are over now that money is doing all the driving. Movies like "Silkwood" are simply depressing reminders that its impossible to fight the system.

Superheroes spell out the American Dream - transcendent individualism. So it is the logical endpoint of the romantic mythologising of the "self-made self".

The contrast with, say, Japanese culture and the films of Miyazaki, is pretty stark.

Another strikingly US trope is the smartarse kid. There is always the child that says the cute and clever things to show up the adult characters. Again it is obvious how this plays up something core to US values.

The adult superhero is the guy with the concealed physical powers. The child hero is the kid with the exhibited social dominance. Both spell out the same message. The individual can always transcend the mundane constraints of the collective norm. One can aspire not merely to succeed, but to exceed.

And from there, the failure to exceed becomes the new failure.

There's a lot of mythologizing going on in this thread already.

Quoting Question

I once saw a short piece about them on Al Jazeera and the strongest point was that America doesn't have a lore or people that are part of it's legend due to its rather recent advent in the world.

Americans have been working at being Americans since about 1620 at the latest. That's about 400 years. Minds were not erased at Ellis Island. Everyone arriving here brought with them their culture, however ancient it might have been.

And, btw, Americans have plenty of "lore"--the least of which are the story lines of comic books.

Americans have had more opportunities than some people to reinvent themselves. When Europeans arrived on these shores (and the reason for coming to these shores in the first place) they were able to remake themselves to some degree.

Having 3.797 million square miles to roam around in, and believing that it was all ours before it was all ours (Manifest Destiny -- now there's another piece of Lore for you) proved to be a very stimulating fact of life. (By way of comparison, the UK only has 94,008 square miles. Of course they once had an sizable empire on which the sun never sat and the blood never dried.)

The 19th century entertainment industries morphed into the 20th century entertainment industries morphed into the 21st century business. They roll out products in every genre--everything from legitimate theater to comic books, radio to television to books, Gone With the Wind to Deep Throat. Parcheesi to Grand Theft Auto V. They sell to the world the same way IKEA, VW, and Sony sell to the world.

What people like, for better or worse, generally becomes popular. American chamber music written within the last 30 years might be very fine, but 99% of The People don't like it -- in the US or anywhere else. It's not popular. They do like adventure movies, they do like super-powered characters that transcend ordinary limitations, and they like a lot of the music we produce or distribute (and other stuff).

It helps having a population of 320,000,000 English-speaking people. It's a large market base all by itself. It helps having the capital to invest in producing high end entertainment products. Netflix spent $100 million to produce The Crown (about Queen Elizabeth II) which is now available. It's currently 8 hours long and is supposed to be 24 hours long when complete. So far it's superb. Spain, Italy, and Denmark can generally not cough up anything close to that amount to make equally good products.

The arts in the rest of the world aren't deficient because they don't have the huge volume of American cash. The highest quality art often comes from underfunded cultural companies. They just can't make anything close to our very big splash, most of the time.

Another point: There are a lot of young people in the world. Young people like comic book characters. They inhabit a world of black and white, GOOD and EVIL, which is easy to understand, easy to relate to, easy to rout for. The super characters always (or at least 99.9% of the time) overcome all obstacles.

A lot of the cultural products that sell so well are intended only for the huge immature audiences around the world. Adults generally can't stand a lot of the crap that kids like.

We've had superpowered heroes prior to Superman, but heroes like Achilles, or Hercules have divine components, while Superman's powers seem to be more alien than supernatural, he is also mortal. It interesting that he lives two lives, the life of the everyday hero and the life of the mild mannered reporter Clark Kent. The intimacy of their connections is not hidden from the characters in the narrative. As a character he is at once everyman and the epic hero. A meme suggesting that even the most timid of us can rise to the occasion and be a hero, an appeal to sacrificial patriotism based on truth and justice.

He ages, but interestingly, it is not a progressive form of aging, he ages more in terms of liquidation of plot possibilities (of course his ability to fly faster than the speed of light means he is not confirmed fate, as were the classical heros). He is free to totally do whatever he pleases, but he "fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way." He is an instrument of society, he does not ask what his country can do for him, he asks what he can do for it. His fight is predictable, like watching a TV series, we all know who the main characters are, we understand that there will action, but it is not so much the particular action or plot that attracts us (main characters typically stay in character, they are predictably), the fans enjoy how the series characters respond to their challenges.

Reply to Question Because they're based on American comic books written by American authors for an American audience?

Reply to Thorongil

Yes, that is the superficial explanation; but, there's more to it why it appeals to Americans (e.g the themes, values, and sense of justice presented). I think, there is a lot to learn about American culture via analysis of such a form of entertainment.

Quoting Question

there is a lot to learn about American culture via analysis of such a form of entertainment.

Let's downgrade that estimation. "We can learn something about American culture via analysis of such a form of entertainment" but American culture is far too complex for comic book analysis to yieldmuch understanding.

Whether it's ancient Greek culture, modern Italian culture, 19th century German culture, or post-soviet Russian history, one has to pull in the heavy guns. Like...

religious history
influence of literacy
the Bible
economic history
development of technology
immigration
European literary influences on American culture
military history
and so on.

In the big picture of contemporary life in 2016-2017, comic book figures are not the diamond point on which the world is spinning. Comic books, and the films that are made to illustrate the stories, are passive entertainment to entertain children and young adults. Superman or Strange just aren't very important.

It would be a simpler world IF one could psychoanalyze a comic book and thereby determine what is wrong or right about America. Not surprisingly, the world is much more complicated than that.

The new Doctor Strange film, for example:

US box office so far: $85 million
Worldwide, non-U.S. box office so far: $240 million

It would be better to do box office for that by number of screens (I also don't know how many countries that includes--films don't open the same date in every country), but this isn't an aberration. Comic book films have consistently had very good worldwide receipts. So parsing it as something uniquely about the U.S. is misleading.

For those old enough to have watched the Superman episodes on TV, during the opening credits, they would announce that Superman was fighting for "Truth, justice, and the American way," with an American flag waving in the background.

The reason Americans like superheros is that they stand for what America is supposed to stand for. I appreciate the comments of the detractors in saying it doesn't actually stand for that, but that is beside the point. The point is that America really does hold itself as an enforcer of justice and of higher ideals. This makes it distinct from all other countries. Whether it has failed or not is irrelevant to the question posed by the OP. I say this pre-emptively because I'm used to those responses.

Quoting Hanover

The reason Americans like superheros is that they stand for what America is supposed to stand for.

Batman is a darker figure and on the amoral side... obviously west coast. Where Superman is an alien who is pervasively inexplicable, Batman is rich, high-tech, and menacing. So it's not necessary what we're supposed to stand for. Vigilante justice became a thing in California during the Depression when hordes of starving people with nothing to lose started heading in that direction. But it's not unusual for epics to contain both political theory and history... what we want to be plus what circumstances have made of us.

Reply to Hanover

Your comments are written as if you believe that the U.S. is a unified, thinking entity somehow.

Reply to Mongrel

From Wikipedia:

Batman's place of residence was first identified as Gotham City in Batman #4 (December 1940). The city is located in the Northeastern United States, in close proximity to Metropolis, with the majority of DC Comics references placing Gotham City specifically in New Jersey.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Cities such as New York City[7] and Chicago[8] have also influenced the look and feel of Gotham over the years.

Gotham is also one of NYC's nicknames, also used by Washington Irving. The West Coast too la de da.

Oh. I must have my own private Batman.