There’s an instructive scene in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when Big Daddy, a harsh Mississippi plantation owner, calls his son Brick a 30-year-old kid and says he’ll soon be a 50-year-old kid. The reproach implies a definition of hero that isn’t winning at football. Big Daddy says: “Heroes in the real world live 24 hours a day, not just two hours in a game.”



Heroic is a word synonymous with valour and honour, with courage and decency. A hero sacrifices themselves for others. Hollywood comic-book superheroes fly about attacking evildoers, guided by a simplistic moral code. Superman has his never-ending battle for truth and justice, and appears unarguably respectable until people start asking questions about whether he is a fascist. There he is, without authority, wielding superpowers, passing judgment and dispensing justice.



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Meanwhile, some superheroes have stopped bothering to be honourable at all. Ironman, for example, is a louche playboy, exploiter of women and flaunter of wealth.



It’s complicated, being a superhero. And Hollywood’s solution appears to be: keep the violence and aggression of adolescent fantasy and don’t worry about the rest. Killing the bad guy is fun, right? Never mind the damage to infrastructure and the innocent bystander body count; things are exploding! Who cares about the protecting and defending part?



One real life exemplar of this was when Bush-era US attorney general Alberto Gonzales called the rules of the Geneva convention “quaint”. A taste of the toxic US administration to come. Australia’s attitude to refugees has likewise devolved from reluctant civil obligation to the shameless nightmare of offshore detention. And as for quietly working towards a moral good, well, that’s positively anachronistic.



Where is the fantasy-fulfilment in a hero who simply does their job well, who fronts up and shoulders responsibility regardless of all the mess that might be happening in their own lives? Who does, in other words, the kind of work that women do every day? That would hardly appeal to the imagination of an adolescent boy, surely. Show of courage, yes: clean up afterwards? Er, no.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Studio executives were reluctant to make a Wonder Woman movie. Photograph: Clay Enos

Hollywood firmly believes this. Studio executives were hesitant to make a Wonder Woman movie. They feared a lack of audience appetite for a female hero with a complex back-story in Greek mythology. Superman’s story is simple; Wonder Woman’s entry our world in the middle of the first world war to fight against fascism is not. In the comic and the Lynda Carter TV series, in sharp contrast to many of her contemporaries, Wonder Woman was reluctant to use violence.



There’s an assumption, too, that women will read and watch stories with male heroes, and men will not do likewise with female heroes. Successful movie-making formulae apparently require the satisfaction of male fantasies of power and supremacy. As Steve Rose suggested in the Guardian, the action genre has “evolved to cater to fantasies of macho manliness” and that’s why female action heroes aren’t in demand. Meanwhile, the 2017 movie starring Gal Gadot surpassed box office expectations. (There was a fairly predictable and silly backlash, mainly over a women-only screening of the movie.)



When a woman is cast in a previously male role – take the remake of Ghostbusters or when Jodie Whittaker was announced as Dr Who – the emotional reaction is ferocious. Beware the dethroned man-toddler in the dark throes of infantile rage over a fantasy need unmet.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Australian author JM Green. Photograph: Nicola Bernardi/Supplied: Scribe

Recent threats of nuclear war with North Korea demonstrate how dangerous unchecked hyper-masculine posturing can be. The catastrophic consequences the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 led to a change in Japanese mindset, and a deep aversion to war. “Godfather of anime” Osamu Tezuka and Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki, who were alive at the time and witnessed the aftermath first-hand, went on to create animation heroes with strange powers, who ponder the correct use of those powers. The characters are thoughtful, almost sad. Tezuka’s Astro Boy favours peace over aggression and worries about the future of human race. Miyazaki’s films explore themes of lost innocence, and feature courageous female characters.



Who would watch a movie in which the hero must labour at menial tasks? A hero who bravely faces a tyrant, maintains her civility and, with hard work, patience and her wits, wins out in the end? As it happens, a lot of people.



Chihiro Ogino is a 10-year-old girl and the hero of Spirited Away, Miyazaki’s 2001 masterpiece that remains one of Japan’s most successful films.



Chihiro’s parents decide to move house and she’s not happy. On their way to the new place, they stop at a mysterious abandoned theme park. When Chihiro’s parents are turned into pigs, it’s up to her to break the spell.



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Haku, a helpful river spirit, tells Chihiro that the park hosts a bathhouse for spirits, and she must take a job with the boilerman or else a terrifying witch will turn her into an animal. Plucky but ever-respectful, Chihiro confronts the witch. She toils in the bathhouse, approaching each new chore with alacrity and care. She returns Haku’s friendship and loyalty, imploring the witch to spare his life.



Ultimately, Chihiro triumphs. We can’t say she is an adult now; she’s still only 10, but we do know that she has grown and accepted the burden of responsibility with good grace.



Chihiro’s quiet moral fortitude and patient hard work allow her to prevail over a hostile power. Her heroism is the best response to childish, hyper-masculine fantasies of violence. Big Daddy would be proud.



• Too Easy, the second Stella Hardy novel by JM Green, is out now through Scribe



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