#Hammy Manster

[howtohero]

#031 Pop Culture Parodies

Superheroes are, of course, a pretty big cultural phenomenon. They’re like celebrities who are also complete blank slates. If you’re doing your job correctly the public should know next to nothing about you. At most they should know your codename, costume and maaaaaybe powers (but if you can somehow keep that a secret all the better.) So that leaves the public with a pretty unique opportunity. They essentially have this mega-famous entity that they can ascribe any personality or backstory that they like. This will, inevitably, lead to countless disparate depictions of heroes across various media. Some will be doing their best to be as factual as possible. Others will be knowing and purposeful parodies. Others still will just be completely making stuff up or giving it their best guess. Now, as a superhero, assuming your (*you’re, come on Zach could you at least try to be a little bit professional what if potential publishers are reading this?) famous enough to achieve this level of fame, how should you deal with these representations of yourselves?

While your knee-jerk reaction to seeing the sitcom produced about your life where, instead of being a valiant crime fighter who has saved the entire world at least three times, you’re depicted as a mild-mannered ice cream man who became a superhero in order to impress ladies and to get discounts at your local stores, might be to shut that whole thing down you should really do your level best to support it. Just think about it, the more information the parody gets incorrect about your actual life the better. It’s only when they accidentally (or through actual thorough investigation) get things right that you need to worry. This is why you need to make sure that never happens. Surreptitiously leak purposely falsified information to the show’s producers. Publicly praise the show for how accurate they were in depicting your day to day life as a high school swim coach. Call up the producer or pay visits to the set under the guise of trying to make things more accurate while actually making things more outlandishly false than the show’s writers would have ever thought to stray. Have them introduce an invisible pet crocodile to the show. Have an entire subplot introduced about your secret love for purple cabbage (which you of course secretly hate and would love for supervillains to do away with). Reveal to them your secret backstory where you’re an orphan who was raised on the moon by sentient moon rocks and that you therefore have no loved ones on Earth for your enemies to get a hold of. All kinds of preposterous stuff that’ll really throw your enemies off the trail.

You can even try to utilize the parody of your life to your benefit. Sell the television studio the rights to air your theme song in order to recoup some of the costs of having a full length theme songs written, recorded, mixed and performed by people using actual jetpacks, which, honestly was just money down the drain if we’re being honest. If merchandise is produced for the show, try demanding royalties or some sort of compensation. Having a parody based on you also gives you a sort of platform to reach the world. After all, the studio would have to be crazy not to take input from the actual hero whose life and name they are utilizing for their own gain. As long as you promise not to sue them or melt them with your face lasers I’m sure they’d be willing to take some of your input. Utilize the show to teach viewers valuable lessons about kindness and tolerance and also as a platform to teach viewers about the different villains who live in the neighborhood (this really only works for local broadcasting. I mean you can do it for a nationally syndicated show but then the whole country will just be very well informed about the criminal populace of the one five to ten block area...) 

Another fun thing you can do -since again, these people are stealing your life and so they owe you on some level- is to demand that they let you play a recurring character on the show. Not yourself, you don’t have the time to commit to being the star of the show about your fake life. Just some minor character, like the lawyer or the village chimney sweep. Some small role you can show up and perform every so often when you’re bored. The kicker is that since you obviously can’t just reveal your secret identity to the show’s creators you have to play your small minor lawyer role in full costume. And none of the characters on the show ever comment on it. And the producers really just have to let you just do it because they don’t want to fall victim to your ability to turn human beings into cats with your mind. The producers don’t want to be cats. They want to be producers, that’s why they went to film school in the first place.

While having a pop culture parody version of yourself running around and becoming a household name that may eventually eclipse your actual self in popularity might be embarrassing, remember it’s actually somewhat flattering. If your super-friends make fun of you because there’s a popular web series where you’re a cat who is continuously outsmarted by rodent versions of your most fiendish enemies (except for Hammy Manster aka the notorious Hamster Man, he is, for whatever reason, depicted as a fish,) just remind them that you’re more famous and popular and beloved than them. That ought to put them in their place.

If the parody version of you is like really really offensive and you can’t simply stand by and let it exist, you can always hold a public press conference and slam the parody for getting so many key and intrinsic facts wrong. And then continue to spread different, less offensive lies about yourselves. The key is really to just utilize whatever public platform you can to spread lies about yourself.

Here are some popular parody formats superheroes often find themselves the subjects of:

The Japanese anime/manga where you pilot a giant mecha (this one is pretty harmless and honestly you should hit up your scientist friends to see if you could actually get yourself a giant mecha.)

The sitcom where you’re depicted as more hapless than heroic (see above.)

The children’s show where your image is used to teach valuable lessons (for sure let this one slide, this is clearly a good thing guys.)

The webseries where you rap battle other superheroes and villains (see if you can get them to write you a free theme song.)

The cereal (honestly if you think about, superheroes would make the perfect cereal mascots. They’d fit right in. Tiger on steroids, bird struggling with addiction, klepto-rabbit, phantom detective who can’t get enough of feeding on the souls of criminals.) 

The [The following joke has been censored as this is a family blog.]

The documentary that actually put a lot of work into it and so you need to step in to prevent it from being too accurate.

The movie franchise that depicts you as a one-dimensional action hero who spouts cool one liners and causes a lot of uncontained, actually really quite dangerous, explosions.

The social media profiles which make jokes about how you spend your day to day life (a lot of them seem to think you’re rich and sleep til noon every day as if you don’t have a day job or are a productive member of society outside the costume.) 

The commercial campaign where you’re depicted as the spokesperson for a variety of products (at the very least you should make sure they pay you for these.)