A few authors got together and wrote this book of the 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived. It's a list of the most influential fictional characters ever.
I haven't read the book, so I can't judge the authors' reasoning, but the list seems a bit wonky to me. For one, no matter what my personal opinions of the characters, I do think Superman (#64) has been more influential than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (#44) and Batman (#60). Is Buffy even old enough to really judge it's level of influence? Also, so many of these characters feed off the other characters on the list, or off of characters that don't even make the list. Isn't it a bit redundant to have both King Arthur and Luke Skywalker on there. Since Luke is more clearly derivative of traditional allegorical figures, wouldn't Han Solo be the more influential character since you can't throw a stone in the sci fi world without hitting one of his clones.
As for characters that were influenced by characters that didn't make the list, Batman borrowed a lot from The Shadow, so where's he? If you're going to include superheroes, where's Spider-Man, a character that, while definitely drawing upon and reacting to what came before him, turned that stuff on it's head? And I daresay Buffy would not exist if Peter Parker hadn't existed first.
Furthermore, I can not think of a single reason why the Marlboro Man came in at #1, especially when they have Joe Camel selling the smoking image at #78 and the American Cowboy selling the Western hard-man image at #19. Isn't the Marlboro Man just a derivation of the American Cowboy used to sell cigarettes. I won't even go into the irony that the Marlboro Man was developed as a way to start marketing a brand to men after the release of milder cigarettes with filters became preferred among the women the brand originally targeted. Essentially, the Marlboro Man is the result of a corporate sex change.
I can't really comment on the more literary and mythological figures. I will just trust that they deserve their ranking.
I haven't read the book, so I can't judge the authors' reasoning, but the list seems a bit wonky to me. For one, no matter what my personal opinions of the characters, I do think Superman (#64) has been more influential than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (#44) and Batman (#60). Is Buffy even old enough to really judge it's level of influence? Also, so many of these characters feed off the other characters on the list, or off of characters that don't even make the list. Isn't it a bit redundant to have both King Arthur and Luke Skywalker on there. Since Luke is more clearly derivative of traditional allegorical figures, wouldn't Han Solo be the more influential character since you can't throw a stone in the sci fi world without hitting one of his clones.
As for characters that were influenced by characters that didn't make the list, Batman borrowed a lot from The Shadow, so where's he? If you're going to include superheroes, where's Spider-Man, a character that, while definitely drawing upon and reacting to what came before him, turned that stuff on it's head? And I daresay Buffy would not exist if Peter Parker hadn't existed first.
Furthermore, I can not think of a single reason why the Marlboro Man came in at #1, especially when they have Joe Camel selling the smoking image at #78 and the American Cowboy selling the Western hard-man image at #19. Isn't the Marlboro Man just a derivation of the American Cowboy used to sell cigarettes. I won't even go into the irony that the Marlboro Man was developed as a way to start marketing a brand to men after the release of milder cigarettes with filters became preferred among the women the brand originally targeted. Essentially, the Marlboro Man is the result of a corporate sex change.
I can't really comment on the more literary and mythological figures. I will just trust that they deserve their ranking.
No comments:
Post a Comment