Superheroes, please, not positive role models

Leave Iron Man alone. He's only as brutal and bling-laden as his comic-book ancestors, says Tom Chivers.

Superman
Superman was created in 1938

The debate about violence in the media has reared its head again, with an American psychologist, Dr Sharon Lamb, claiming that modern-day superheroes such as Iron Man are far worse role models than their 20th-century predecessors.

"Today's superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence. He's aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity," she says. "When not in superhero costume, these men, like Iron Man, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns." She pines for the "comic book superhero of yesterday", whom boys could look up to because "they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities".

Does media violence encourage the real thing? And are modern superheroes any worse than their ancestors? The first question is difficult to answer, and really one for behavioural scientists, not journalists. A 2008 meta-analysis on the subject in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior, which looked at the results of several earlier studies, found no link, but the findings were uncertain and further studies have said otherwise. It is open for debate.

But Dr Lamb seems to be wrong even on her own terms. For a start, Iron Man is hardly "today's superhero". Certainly, the film only came out in 2008, but Stan Lee developed the character in 1963. Besides, the "bling" lifestyle of Iron Man's alter ego, Tony Stark, a billionaire arms manufacturer, is not so different from that of Batman's Bruce Wayne, created in 1939. You can see why they do it: if your superhero has no actual superpowers, but relies instead on expensive equipment and training, it makes sense to write it so he's rich enough actually to afford them. It's a plot device.

In fact, most of the superheroes Dr Lamb decries are simply movie versions of old comic books. There's plenty to disapprove of – it's derivative, boring and shamelessly trawling for box office receipts – but her fundamental point is flawed. Recent superhero movies have included X-Men (based on characters first created in 1963); Watchmen (1986); Batman Begins (1939); The Incredible Hulk (1962); Fantastic Four (1961); Spider-Man (1962) and Superman Returns (1938). If Dr Lamb really wanted to criticise modern superheroes, she could point out that they don't exist: nobody seems to have thought up a really interesting new one in 25 years. And things don't look like changing – 2011 will see the return of the Green Lantern and the Green Hornet, two more staples of the 1940s. Dr Lamb will at least be pleased to see the former, whom she holds up as a positive role model for having a dull day job.

Besides, it's not as if the old, comic-book superheroes were all wonderful, anyway. They may have "spoken to the virtue of doing good for humanity" (whatever that may mean), but they beat up an awful lot of wrongdoers while they did so. Watchmen and the 1986 Frank Miller version of Batman spilt blood left, right and centre; Judge Dredd (1977) blasted his way through post-apocalyptic criminals with abandon. Further back, the Hulk was hardly a model of decorum;

X-Men's Wolverine was no moral paragon either. All that this tells us is that ambiguous characters are more interesting than saintly heroes and devilish villains. Similarly, Dr Lamb moans that superheroes' bodies now "look like they're on steroids", clearly drawing a contrast with the nine-stone weaklings of yesteryear, like Superman and the Phantom.

Dr Lamb's research was based on surveying boys between four and 18 to find out what they read and watched. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have surveyed many boys between 19 and 85 to see what they used to read and watch, as well. She might have found that, apart from better special effects, not much has changed. Besides, who goes to the cinema for a "good influence" anyway?