The trailer released a fortnight ago for Guardians of the Galaxy, the latest addition to Marvel's movie universe, promises a classic questing story. An ordinary person gets displaced - if what looks like a classic Walkman playing Blue Swede's Hooked on a Feeling is any clue - in time, space or social status, and learns some enlightening lesson about themselves.
The questing story has served to propel many beloved characters from their staid and ordinary worlds into fantastical adventures. How those characters acclimatise to their new surroundings can often tell us a lot about the world they left. And when the world they leave behind is our contemporary present, those characters become a fascinating social critique.
Characters, fuelled and shaped by the ideas and social structures of our times, but set free from the bounds of social norms, say a lot about how we see ourselves. They hold up to the light the things that we value, and our potential and limitations. Two stories in particular come to mind that show the effectiveness of this approach.
In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent from England in the 1970s is swept up into an improbable adventure. His friend Ford Prefect reveals himself to be an alien while rescuing Arthur from the destruction of the Earth. In Adams' novelisations, Arthur struggles with the galaxy he encounters. He never settles or finds himself comfortable amongst the impulsive and adventurous people he meets - often to their chagrin.
His character is in stark contrast to Trillian, née Tricia McMillan, who seems effortlessly at ease. From floating parties to improbable physics, Trillian, who seemed only to eager to escape Earth's shackles, always seems to adapt with ease. Dent, on the other hand, finds himself forever shackled and hindered by his own cowed timidity and closed-minded bafflement. What Arthur's hitchhiking amongst the stars shows us more than anything else is how deeply ingrained the customs of Dent's England could become, to the point of being essentially self-inflicted.
Matt Groening's Futurama shows us something else. Taking for its subject Philip J Fry, a man from New York in the nineties, we see a down-on-his-luck slacker with no prospects cast into a spacefaring future. For Fry, the possibilities and prospects offered by the future are not the same as those offered by the world he left behind. They are not material gains and selfish ambitions. In a future of spectacular diversity, he finds an acceptance and companionship that he had failed to foster in the rigid, frigid, world of the twentieth century.
In his new environment Fry finds room to grow. He is able to display his bravery, his compassion and even his romantic nature in a way that New York in the nineties would never allow. Trapped within the cold ambitions of the twentieth century Fry was stifled, bored. His new life in the future offers him a world that looks very enticing to kids of the nineties: excitement, adventure and companionship, freed from cold, complex, mundane, reality.
The question with Guardians of the Galaxy is what will Peter Quill, aka Starlord, say about us? What will the freedoms or restrictions he finds away from Earth say about the world we live in, and about our own potential?
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References:
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+ Simon Brew's 'First trailer lands for Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy'; on Den of Geek; 19 February 2014.
+ Douglas Adam's 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'; 1979.
+ Matt Groening's 'Futurama'; 1999.
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