I missed the discussion on the Batman piece earlier this week but I really enjoyed reading the article. I've never really thought about it that much but I definitely would be a lot more uncomfortable with Batman in real life, and I think it has to do with the sort of shades of gray/different perspectives that reality brings. In superhero stories, the villain is very clearly the villain -- even in more recent storylines where they add some more nuance to the big bad, they're still definitely bad. There might be storylines that are different, but I can't think of any right now (if you can please comment!). Still, though, even if there are exceptions, they're pretty rare, because they make viewers uncomfortable. It's nice to know that this is what Batman is supposed to do, this guy is supposed to be killed/defeated and the world will definitely be a better place for it. The thing that happens with a lot of news stories is that in many cases it's hard to exactly tell who's good or not, and really there aren't a lot of people who are properly good or bad -- if someone robs a bank or something that doesn't mean they're evil.
We talked about this a bit on the second day of class but another difference between superheroes and the reality is that, like with Goetz, actual people tend to be much more complex than the typical superhero (and if the superhero does have flaws, they're generally picked so that the superhero remains sympathetic, whereas real life isn't always so neat). Just as it's hard to easily slot someone into the "villain" category, it's equally as difficult to put them in the "hero" category, because different facts will come to life or there will be different interpretations. The simple act may be heroic, but even if it's straight-up heroic (instead of more complicated like with Goetz) it's still hard to separate the act from the more morally ambiguous person.
I do think that people are starting to explore these subtleties a little more -- the anti-hero is something that's a little different but along the same lines -- something that I thought was interesting with a series like Breaking Bad was that a lot of people (especially in the earlier seasons) really tried to justify Walt's behavior and viewed him as something of a hero (you can see this in the vicious backlash towards Skyler, who was viewed as standing in Walt's way). Even in a show like Breaking Bad where there aren't really any "heroes" people are still looking for one, trying to flatten the issues to something less uncomfortable.
