"Now grown ups ... can go and watch this comic-superhero rewrites on the big screen and talk about how great the acting, story and everything else was, as if it

"Now grown ups ... can go and watch this comic-superhero rewrites on the big screen and talk about how great the acting, story and everything else was, as if it was serious art that they had seen." How is this any different from e.g. Kyrgyz nomads listening to a bard recite the Manas, in which the eponymous hero shows veritably superheroic strength in battle? Indeed, if you are an ordinary man barely making ends meet and the politics of the world are rough, the make-believe of an epic tale where your people are depicted as great and once capable of great deeds, can be a great consolation. Now, the reason that the Manas and similar folk epics have been acclaimed as masterpieces of intangible culture is that the bard is expected to improvise much of it, and Western superhero stories might not show that particular kind of skill. But in terms of the subject matter, the contemporary superhero obsession isn’t all that different from previous genres worldwide.