Real life villains cast as supervillains

[Colin YNWA]

Think this is the best place for this. Either way its GOLD.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/02/19/the-dc-bad-guys-reinvented-as-the-real-bad-guys-there-are-t-shirts/

[Dandontdare]

excellent - I love the way Mark Zuckerberg has been lumped in with Hitler and Bin laden and the rest!

[JamesC]

I can sort of justify this as satire regarding the political leaders - but Charles Manson and Mark Chapman? Really?
I hate the way murderers (or in Manson's case murder-by-proxy) get treated as 'cultural icons' and stuck on T-Shirts and shit. It's inappropriate and childish in my mind. I'm sure John Lennon or Sharron Tate's families would be thrilled to see someone wearing one of those.

[TordelBack]

And I'm sure people whose relatives have been killed in drone strikes get sick of seeing that 'Hope' poster everywhere.  I used to get quite aggravated by otherwise-normal people who ate at a Dublin restaurant called Mao, then I realised that everything's shit (and more importantly nobody was actually being starved to death in the kitchens in order to pay back debts to the Soviets). 

Zuckerberg as Loki would be funnier if I couldn't imagine him proudly wearing it.

[JamesC]

The thing is, if you accept these people as 'icons' (which I assume we are supposed to - these T-shirts being iconographic in purpose unless I misunderstand) then they sort of have to stand for something.
So Hitler stands for Nazism, Mao for communism, Bin Laden for radical Islam. But what does Manson stand for? Murdering pregnant women?
I think it's shit 'shock value' tat at its most puerile. It wasn't witty when Marylin Manson was doing it twenty years ago - it did make shit loads of money though so I guess there are plenty of people that go for it.

[Colin YNWA]

Mock the things you fear and despise.

I find it strange that some one can have one view about mocking individuals who killed several people, but a different more accepting view about people, all be it embedded in political ideology, who are responsible for the deaths of thousands and even millions.

Still ya pays ya money.

[JamesC]

Mock the things you fear and despise.

I find it strange that some one can have one view about mocking individuals who killed several people, but a different more accepting view about people, all be it embedded in political ideology, who are responsible for the deaths of thousands and even millions.

Still ya pays ya money.

Because, like it or not, political leaders like Hitler are part of our social history and are symbolic of certain big ideas and political systems that have proven to be severely floored. It's beneficial for everyone to remember these lessons from the past. Political satire is all part of this and can be a very important tool for making valid political points and drawing a bead on the inadequacies of systems or individuals.

Drawing a picture of Charles Manson that very specifically looks like the Heath Ledger incarnation of the joker - an incarnation that is very clearly linked in the public psyche to images of 'cool' and 'rock n roll romance' due to the actors early death serve no one, prove nothing and trivialise the crimes of a despicable arsehole while similtaneously sending a pretty disturbing message that he may somehow be cool or some kind of tragic icon.

Apologies for that very long and poorly constructed sentence!

[darnmarr]

There is only one 'floor' in that statement (seriously tho', I agree with you but people always morph the bad guys into symbols of something or other sooner-or-later... happened to pirates, happened to vikings, some future society may have a jolly old trope about the charming chavs of yesteryear)

[JamesC]

There is only one 'floor' in that statement

Doh! 

[Dark Jimbo]

No idea who Chapman is, and I had to look up Zuckerburg. I must be missing something. He's the CEO of Facebook, right? ....And? Has he stomped on puppies or something? Or are we supposed to hate him because he's made a lot of money?

[Dandontdare]

No idea who Chapman is, and I had to look up Zuckerburg. I must be missing something. He's the CEO of Facebook, right? ....And? Has he stomped on puppies or something? Or are we supposed to hate him because he's made a lot of money?

of course not. He's sickeningly young and has a hot wife too.

[Eric Plumrose]

Am I missing something, here? Galactus is "beyond Good and Evil" . . . Which is the title of a book by Nietzsche . . . Whose philosophy was hijacked by his sister and the Nazi Party . . . So Hitler is therefore cast as . . . Galactus?

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Mock the things you fear and despise.

I find it strange that some one can have one view about mocking individuals who killed several people, but a different more accepting view about people, all be it embedded in political ideology, who are responsible for the deaths of thousands and even millions.

Still ya pays ya money.

"If you kill six, you are a murderer. If you kill six million, it is a statistic."

- Stalin*



* Umm. In C&C Red Alert.

[Bat King]

Only the Zuckerberg one isn't offensive. I assume her was included due to Facebook related murders & suicides. But they are not attributable to him.

I wouldn't give these house room. In the same way I wouldn't wear a t-shirt with Hitler dressed as Hitler, etc.

That said I can understand that though I don'tb like them someone might.