Superman Analogue: Super Grover
36Can you tell me how to get to this hero? Super-Grover, hero of Sesame Street!
Original Thread: https://twitter.com/CaseAiken/status/1097728303954362368
Original Text: I'm going to come back to Big Bang later. Today I want to dive deep into personal nostalgia and talk about a subset of #supermananalogue that I can't believe it took me 70 characters to get to, that being the escapist fantasy persona, so let's do Super-Grover!
I mentioned when I covered Mighty Mouse that the idea of Superman was something I was introduced to long before I really saw anything with the character of Superman. In this case, Super-Grover was a parody of Superman within the context of Sesame Street.
Back in the day, Grover (voiced by Frank Oz!) was one of our main viewpoint characters in Sesame Street, a really relatable, shy, and imaginative youth. Not that he isn't still, but Elmo has dominated the franchise in the public eye. Anyway, Super-Grover was his heroic fantasy
And what's fun here is that this is THE fantasy we experience of Superman in our youth, not just power, but power bestowing purpose, adventure, and freedom. It's teaching kids how to fantasize.
Super-Grover was generally used in sketches that intentionally lampooned old Superman serials, so this is yet another, and probably my first, example of me becoming aware of a fixture of pop culture through it's shockwaves.
He might have been stronger than steel, but it's important to remember that he was adorable too. Super-Grover was there for us to welcome our youths into the world of heroic fantasy, because sometimes we just need to escape.
Images 1-2, 4, 6-7, 9 - Images taken from Sesame Street
Image 3 - Art by Matthew J. Fletcher
Image 8 - Art by HillaryWhiteRabbit on DeviantArt
Image 10 - Art by Alex Ross
Music by Bret Eagleston - www.breteagleston.bandcamp.com
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