Female Heroes

There are many female heroes. Princess Leia, Wonder Woman, Jean Grey, etc., just to give a few examples. Unfortunately, though, these characters are often underdeveloped or passed on for more established and known male characters. There are plenty of examples in film or literature where women are empowered. For example, in the original Star Wars, there is an expedition led to rescue Princess Leia. In fact though, once Han, Luke, and Chewie "rescue" Leia, they are about to be killed and the whole mission is for nothing. But in fact, Leia ends up saving them, gets them out of trouble, and is arguably a better shot than the rest of the group. Interestingly enough, in Japanese anime, many of the stories center around female protagonists. It seems as though in America and the west, not always, but often times when there's a an action film or a male-type role played by a female, it seems inauthentic and forced. I think that regular women need to behind the empowerment movements, and not some corporate executive. We do value our female heroes, a we do value them being women, but i think we can more appreciate them for being heroes. We're able to look beyond their gender and just see them as heroes. This is better than just focusing in their womanhood. We like Samuel L. Jackson, and it may be an issue, but we don't see him as a black man. We see him as an iconic actor. Sure his heritage affects some of the things he does, but we don't think of him just being good because he's black, but because he's talented. He just happens to be black.

Batman

Batman is a combination of all of the types of heroes that we've discussed in class. He is the archetypal hero, as we see through examples of the heroes' journey. (Alfred, Bat-gadgets, problems with his parents, etc.) He's also an anti-hero because of his methods of taking the law into his own hands. But if I were to make case for what type of hero Batman is, I would say he isn't a hero or that he is the tragic hero. He's a tragic hero because he'll never be able to complete his journey. he won't kill these villains, thus they'll keep retuning to haunt him. He can stop their schemes from occurring, but he's still at their discretion. Also, batman has made it his life's mission, he has dedicated his all to it, (even his alter-ego of Bruce Wayne is a tool utilized by Batman), but the thing is, Batman creates his villains. They are all fixed on him and all of these characters are drawn to Gotham out of some sort of fixation on the Caped Crusader. At some point, their lives were all molded somehow by Batman. You could also argue that Batman is not a hero, and in fact he is just as crazy as the Joker, or Two-Face, or Killer Croc, or whoever. And really, batman could stop all of this mayhem, but due to his own beliefs, he is actually causing more harm to Gotham than good. batman is just as insane as his villains, but just due to luck, he fights on the side of the law and not with his villainous counterparts, but hte essence of Batman and his rogues are all the same.