Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Superheros

Over the past 5-10 years, superhero films have reigned supremacy at the box office. The Spiderman Trilogy has absolutely been by far the largest of any recently released series'. If you add to that The Incredible Hulk, TMNT, and the X-Men series, it is clear that Hollywood has found a hit. The question is though why release these movies know, when some of these superheros have been around in comics for over 50 years. Hollywood and the writers are always looking to release movies that people can relate to, or movies that reflect society in some way. We don't have any superheros or villains that we know of, so where is the connection?
It may be a stretch to relate them, but I feel that superhero films and the Iraq war are connected. Start by examining a superhero film. You have a hero, a villain, sometimes a sidekick for the superhero, and weaknesses for both sides. Then examine the Iraq war. You have the United States, our allies, Iraq and the Middle East. In Americans eyes, we are the superhero, our allies are the sidekicks, and clearly the Middle East is the villain. If you wanted to stretch it further, you could even say that the weaknesses of the Middle East are their economy and need for resources, and our weakness could be the government that nobody is happy with. It may be a little far out that these things are related, but one thing is a fact, since 9/11/01, superhero movies have dominated the box office.

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