My son occasionally accompanies me on my morning dog walks.  When he comes along he does most of the talking, telling me of this video game or another.  I will admit here, and I have said to him, I don’t understand half of what he is telling me with platforms and third-person shooters and the like.  Finding most games inane and frustrating, I am not inclined to learn more on my own.  I listen to what he says, mostly, and it has lead to various interesting conversations.  Today’s conversation was not about video games, but superheroes.  He was laughing about the stories that were created to describe how each of the superheroes comes into their power.  We talked of how limited the range of where superhero powers and abilities came from (aliens, scientific manipulation, exposure to radioactivity).  The conversation evolved, as conversations usually do, and we ended up talking about the physical structure of the super heroes, heroines, gaming avatars, and fantasy figures.  These images of human physical impossibility.  It got me wondering if we as a society intentionally or unintentionally set ourselves up for perpetual unhappiness and failure.  We aspire to or desire these forms that exist only in print or digital image.  Photographs and film continue the delusion with digital manipulation and editing,  lighting, positioning and make up.   Using a real person as a starting point, but creating people that don’t truly exist.  Setting up an unachievable physical paradigm that is constantly in our faces through every source of media, overtly implying that we as individuals no matter our age, colour, or ethnicity won’t reach the goal, but that we can keep trying and this…product might help you along the way…

Here I was only worrying about the effect the violence in the games would have on him.