Martin Scorsese digs himself deeper into his self-made hole in his attack on the superhero genre. Given the perch in the elite NY Times, Scorsese proves why "Hollywood" missed the superhero era in terms of recognition of those films' general artistic achievement in the years 1999-2017. Scorsese's op-ed conflates big budget and taste issues and then uses that conflation to deny the entire genre any legitimacy as an art form. Scorsese offers nothing in the op-ed to show us he has watched any of the era's superhero films with any engaged eyes.
Readers of my blog, and on my FB page, know how I feel about superhero films. See here, here, here, and here. As the blog posts show, I am not an uncritical fan of superhero films. The point is they can be good or bad, and strong or weak, whatever the case may be--just as in the western genre. And my other point is they have often been, in the above-mentioned period, extremely powerful from sociological, philosophical, economic, and theological standpoints.
Any half wit of an editor could easily see the logical flaw in Scorsese's op-ed, but because he is "SCORSESE," well, idiocy has to reign. I wish someone could sit Scorsese down and have him engaged to watch "X-Men: First Class" or the "Iron Man" series, for starters, and perhaps have to explain to him how important sociological, philosophical, and emotional points were in fact covered. For Scorsese to dismiss what he calls generically "Marvel" films for their big budgets is laughable when his films cost oodles of dough. They are big budget films beyond anything John Sayles or Ken Loach ever did.
Oh well. As I often say to people, our cultural elites have failed us for a long time, starting with the cultural elite attacks against progressive rock in the 1970s. What is now clear is the cultural elites, in the period of the end of the 20th Century and dawn of the 21st Century, missed an opportunity to engage with young audiences the literary importance of the superhero films. For me, in my powerless life, I try not to miss a chance to discuss the superhero films when I am with the youngs. And when I do have the chance, I find them grateful to hear how what they like is even more profound than they themselves thought. It makes them more curious to learn about other genres, other films, other books, and television shows. It creates connections both personal and literary over long stretches of human lifetimes.
