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Are sports stars the new superheroes?

Sax

10:00 / 17.07.02

The BBC trailers for the Commonwealth Games coverage started me thinking yesterday. "Superhumans from 17 nations competing in blah blah blah."

Remember the Beeb's World Cup manga/anime-style teasers, with footballers rendered as cartoon supemen with glowing eyes and impossible physical feats?

And how about the Wimbledon ads with John McEnroe, using his hands to return tennis balls at incredible velocity and at one point appearing to float a ball with telekinesis in front of his head before swatting it away, Jean Grey-style, with the power of his mind?

It seems to me the BBC is trying to sell us sportspeople as the post-humans we've all been waiting for.

higuita

12:48 / 17.07.02

It explains Vinnie Jones, Nietzschean superman that he is. Ubermensch=Wimbledon.

The Planet of Sound

12:53 / 17.07.02

Chris Eubank is clearly a metahuman of some sort.

Shortfatdyke

12:53 / 17.07.02

perhaps not totally on-topic, but i saw a billboard ad for the bbc's coverage of the commonwealth games this morning, and something about having an afro-caribbean man hurdling a hedge next to a couple of race horses made me a bit uncomfortable.

Sax

13:51 / 17.07.02

Isn't that how Jesse Owens ended his days, racing against horses in the Mid-West because he couldn't take part in serious athletics competitions because he was black?

grant

14:48 / 17.07.02

Ethan Hawke

15:01 / 17.07.02

Ted Williams, the greatest hitter of all time, is being cryogenically frozen, so that he can emerge to bat .400 again in a dystopian future.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:29 / 17.07.02

Look at it this way: a lot of the original elements of the superhero "look" - the cape, the spandex pants, etc - are a direct steal from wrestling outfits. In fact you could argue that the whole idea of fetishing the rippling muscles, tight outfits, physical ability and personal charisma of sports stars fed into the superhero mythos and still continues to do so. (I'm sure someone with more classical knowledge than me could say something clever about the gods and the games at this point...)

So really sports stars are the *original* superheroes.

But yes, David Beckham has all the necessary attriutes of the "hero" archetype... That's why I'm shamelessly basing a character in a comic I'm writing at least 50% on the boy...

moriarty

16:26 / 17.07.02

Supposedly, Siegel and Shuster were inspired primarily by circus costumes, not wrestling outfits, though they may have taken from a broad range of influences. The standard superhero costume was adopted by their peers because it combined two interests that appealed to former art students, drapery (the cape) and anatomy (the tights, which were as close to naked as they could get). The basic primary colours worked well with the lousy colouring process and attracted the eye, which is probably why they're used for a number of sports and activities.

And that's a Flash Fact!

grant

18:11 / 17.07.02

Flyboy:
Olympics.

Nuff said. Although I've heard the circus strongman/acrobat thing before, for Golden Age heroes.

Saveloy

15:42 / 24.07.02

Cyuh, see, this is what I've said every time over the last 10 years that an athletic event has been on the telly, isn't it? "The Olympics", I said. "Check out those swimmers' outfits" I said. "All that's missing is the super-villains" I said. I tell ya, the BBC's got my house bugged.

I heard that it was circus strongmen too, but in the case of Spiderman, with his all-over gimp suit, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were a fetish connection. I heard that Stan Lee and Eric Stanton (check yer Tachen catalogue) shared a flat together.

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