This past week, Chris Gavaler came to speak with us about the origins of superheroes. While we spoke at great length, both during and after class, my response to his ideas on transgression and the literary tradition of eugenics in Superheros will be intertwined with my final essay. As for this post, I want to address his idea of a \u2018point of popularity\u2019 in relation to my ongoing development of the tree of origins.<\/p>\n
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If you have read any of my previous posts (you most likely haven\u2019t), you may notice my fascination with the organization of origins. Specifically, I believe that each origin is a node on a hierarchical tree of all origins. The parent origin is unknown to us, but we can see how the origin of American short fiction traces to the origin of fiction writing which traces back to the written tradition of literature etc. etc. Gavaler mentioned something new to this theory: perception of origins construed by popularity. His theory is that we, as consumers and the uninformed, see Superman as his own entity. In reality, the origins of Superman is actually the summations of previous fictional characters, eugenics, and American diction circa 1938. We, as the uninformed consumer, do not notice the cultural influence, and instead focus on the cultural significance — we forget everything that led to this point.<\/p>\n
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I argue that this bottleneck of sorts fits into my hierarchical model quite well, and that we have a rather limited view of the tree of origins. For example, we are so struck by the invention of computers that we fail to recognize its predecessor: Alan Turing’s Bombe machine. Of course, with the creation of \u2018The Imitation Game\u2019 we ALL know that story. But what about the distant predecessor of computers? We often forget the importance of Ada Lovelace and diagram for the computation of Bernoulli numbers. Lovelace is credited by some to be the original \u2018computer programmer\u2019, but her work is often — dare I say, rightfully — overlooked, because\u2026 well\u2026 computers! That is to say, we — and I repeat –, as the uninformed consumer, are only aware of an impactful origin as long as it\u2019s popular. When the next great thing rolls around, we are quick to move on. Granted, we all see the name Nintendo and think of the N64; but can we name all the summands that led to the creation of the SNES\u2026 probably not.<\/p>\n
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Of course this has a great impact on the public perception of the term \u2018original\u2019. In previous posts, I have noted that the \u2018original\u2019 is actually only the first origin — the thing which has been around since the beginning. Yet, if we lose sight of the influential factors of an origin, as Gavaler argued, we understand that lone origin to be the original. Take a moment to look at a term in pop culture: \u2018OG\u2019 or \u2018original gangster\u2019. Often times, OG refers to Tupac and Notorious B.I.G., but that\u2019s because society has largely moved past Lucky Luciano and Bugs Moran.<\/p>\n
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If you\u2019re looking for a grand conclusion, which I\u2019m sure you are, take away this: nothing (except one thing) is the true original. Everything we interact with every second of every day, is a summation of predecessors and past influencers. Everything (except one thing) is an iteration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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