Analysis Of Peter Coogan's Superhero: The Pro-Social Mission

“The Pro-Social Mission” If you think about what a superhero means to you, many answers may fly around like bravery, strength, or power. Very rarely do you ever hear about what exactly makes a superhero, super. In my opinion, I believe it is this pro-social mission that keeps them going on the never ending battle against the fight with evil. A hero can have as many powers or identities that they want to have, but the most important component of their being is that they have a specific goal in mind that will work for the greater good of not only the world, but the entire universe. These other two qualities, power and identity just reinforce who the superhero is. In Peter Coogan’s “Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre,” he gives a brief definition of a superhero: “A heroic character with a selfless, pro-social mission with superpowers” (Coogan 30). There was more written after this sentence, but this part stuck out to me the most. I must point out that a superhero doesn’t necessarily have to have superpowers because, look at Batman (I’ll go more into detail about his story later). Coogan does agree with my belief about the mission of the superhero. He also has a formula that he uses to determine whether or not someone would be considered as a …show more content…
Now having class discussions about it, I realized how big of a role it plays in determining how a superhero acts and if they even have something to prove. To be “masculine is not to be feminine, gay, ethnic, or anything else inferior,” (Roblou 77). When it is put into context, it makes you think about if their missions would be biased had they been someone that is not a white male superhero, like Black Panther trying to stop the oppressing of blacks in America or Wonder Woman killing off men because they tried to make women seem weak. Whatever the case may be, to be masculine, you need to have all these different type of