The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Wednesday 15 January 2014

THE AMERICAN SUPERHEROES

They are doing roaring business with their Box Office collections running in billions of US$. And more than half of the collection for these global blockbusters comes from the markets (countries) outside the US.

Apart from the sheer value of entertainment, these superheroes have also been the tools of the soft branding efforts of the US administration and its industries, to project the US dominance and supremacy in a positive, more approachable and humanitarian way.

And the bombardment, the messaging, has been consistent.

But like always, like with every such exercise, they, the American superheroes, raise some valid questions (to enrich the General Knowledge base; to understand what is yet to be addressed): :) 



== How many times have the American superheroes saved the world?

== How many times has the US saved the Earth?

== Who is the most powerful of the superheroes - one 'manned' with a prefix or one without it?

To say, like from among the likes of Superman or Ironman or Batman or Spider-Man or from The Hulk or G.I. Joe or Captain America or Fantastic Four or X-Men or ‘so on’.

== How does the nationality of a superhero affect his 'superhero'ness?

Have you come across a superhero of global fame having a nationality other than American?

== How come almost of the superheroes of global or universal fame have native or permanent or mutual connect with the US only?

They are born American or they have grown American or they come to the Earth from the Outer Space with an American interface as their primary (and only) connect with the people of the Earth?

== What are the differences between the American superheroes and the superheroes of other nations?

== Difference(s) between the superheroes of the developed and the developing countries? Can underdeveloped countries afford a superhero?

Yes, other nations, too, have their own superheroes, but they are restricted to the country of their origin only and are easily overpowered by the American Superheroes in most of the Box Office duels.

== So few of them - how deep is the gender bias among the members of the exclusive group of elite superheroes?

== So few of them - why don't we have good enough presence of female superheroes, or the more politically correct term 'superheroines'? Studies?

The gender activists, the women voices, the feminists, have they carried out studies on this blatant gender-gap on a platform that packages content and messages reaching out to the global audiences? Have there been such studies? Please share.

== A superheroine/super-heroine (female superhero) of global or universal outreach - name please?

== Evolution of superheroes and Evolution of women's rights - what are the parallels (and skews) to be drawn?

And dear folks, the list here is not exhaustive. Much more can be added. It depends on how curious you get to know how much you can dig while watching an American superhero movie or while reading about it or even while watching its phenomenally-larger-than-life promos.

But one thing is for sure, they come with brilliantly packaged bouts of entertainment for the masses spread across the countries.

It’s just yet another, subtle, American way to say ‘we are here and we are everywhere’.

:) 

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/