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I agree with some other commenters; this is a lot of cherry picking. You could just as easily compare Nosferatu (1922) with Blade (1998) with Twilight (2008) an

I agree with some other commenters; this is a lot of cherry picking. You could just as easily compare Nosferatu (1922) with Blade (1998) with Twilight (2008) and ask why culture gets happier and less serious as time goes on, “aren’t we all becoming like Brave New World???” Comparing Adam West’s Batman with today’s Batman is just lazy. They’re apples and oranges at this point: different genres, different climates (today the more “fun” stuff is Marvel), different film technology. And if we want to get into it, it’s not “depression” that’s trendy; it’s realism. 60’s Batman dealt with all the same “dark” themes as current Batman: mafia, crime, trauma and grief, etc. But the visual portrayal was different because it was a “comic book” before comic books adaptations were commonplace blockbusters. That doesn’t mean all of 1960s cinema is somehow a comic book movie. Hello: Psycho (1960), Dr. Strangelove (1964), The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966).

Apocryphon 4y ago
To chime in about how the article is cherry picking rather than doing deeper analysis: Dark and gritty superhero deconstruction was a product of the '80s and maybe early '90s, and then the '00s had the gritty reboot/reimagining trend for TV shows and movies in general. You also had a lot of prestige drama doing gritty realism with complex, dark antihero male protagonists starting in that era, which kicked into high gear in the '10s. Sopranos to Breaking Bad. Also shows where society was the gritty complex realistic antihero. The Wire to Game of Thrones. I wouldn't say contemporary culture is any more unhappy than that era, it's just harder to read because there's no GOT type "event" series that everyone is watching right now. Maybe there will be a new cultural phenomenon, or maybe with this glut of streaming content, there won't be. (And if we look at blockbuster films, so many of them are shiny happy Disney-MCU fare, which are definitely not dark and gritty.) It just feels like right now we have a huge array of choices. When presented with that variety, it's really hard to say that it's generally more or less happy. I do wonder what will replace comic books as the dominant subgenre of pop entertainment. I was hoping we'd get a reconstruction trend with comics like Astro City or Kingdom Come getting adapted, but in writing the previous section, I realized there's no need. For every dark and gritty realistic The Boys, there's multiple Disney+ shows. Batman is a character who's inherently going to have darkness. The majority of superhero comic screen media is escapist and optimistic, and this not-study is cherry-picking.
- uncomputation 4y ago
  Brilliantly said.

Apocryphon 4y ago

To chime in about how the article is cherry picking rather than doing deeper analysis: Dark and gritty superhero deconstruction was a product of the '80s and maybe early '90s, and then the '00s had the gritty reboot/reimagining trend for TV shows and movies in general. You also had a lot of prestige drama doing gritty realism with complex, dark antihero male protagonists starting in that era, which kicked into high gear in the '10s. Sopranos to Breaking Bad. Also shows where society was the gritty complex realistic antihero. The Wire to Game of Thrones. I wouldn't say contemporary culture is any more unhappy than that era, it's just harder to read because there's no GOT type "event" series that everyone is watching right now. Maybe there will be a new cultural phenomenon, or maybe with this glut of streaming content, there won't be. (And if we look at blockbuster films, so many of them are shiny happy Disney-MCU fare, which are definitely not dark and gritty.) It just feels like right now we have a huge array of choices. When presented with that variety, it's really hard to say that it's generally more or less happy. I do wonder what will replace comic books as the dominant subgenre of pop entertainment. I was hoping we'd get a reconstruction trend with comics like Astro City or Kingdom Come getting adapted, but in writing the previous section, I realized there's no need. For every dark and gritty realistic The Boys, there's multiple Disney+ shows. Batman is a character who's inherently going to have darkness. The majority of superhero comic screen media is escapist and optimistic, and this not-study is cherry-picking.

uncomputation 4y ago
Brilliantly said.