Baconsale Episode 56: The Psychology of Superheroes – Part 1

Our favorite clinical psychologist, Dr. Matt Woolley, is back! And this time Baconsale is talking to this educated man with a Ph.D. about our culture’s current obsession with comic books and superhero movies. Well, Kent and Joel do most of the talking. Jacob is nursing a sore mouth, so he remains largely silent.

So press play and find out which graphic novels Dr. Matt likes, why DC fanboys hate Marvel fanboys and what your favorite superhero/supervillain may say about you on this episode of Baconsale.

20 thoughts on “Baconsale Episode 56: The Psychology of Superheroes – Part 1”

  2. This episode is soooooo good. I’m already on my second listen, and I’m already planning on listening a 3rd time. Dr. Matt is awesome! Can’t wait for part 2. I’ve had 4 characters that I feel like have really stuck with me in the past year or so and this episode has me trying to profile them and see what commonalities they have. My 4 are Wolverine, Captain America, Batman, and Prof from The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson.

    Kent, playing any Star Wars game as a Rebel or a Jedi is a waste, I’m totally with you on that. I ALWAYS pick the dark side.

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    1. Our next ep is pretty fun. Though we only have an hour to cover the A-listers. We are always looking for more content to do with Dr Matt, so if you have suggestions, throw them our way!
      And yeah, Siths have more fun.

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      1. Been mulling over this and I’ve only come up with two topics you could do with Dr. Matt, it was a lot harder to come up with ones that would make good episodes than I thought it would be.

        The first one is The Psychology of Villians, its an obvious one, I know, and goes hand in hand with this episode, but theres a perfect opportunity to do it around when suicide squad comes out. I’m guessing you guys have already come up with that one, but if not I think it would be awesome.

        The second one I thought of probably isn’t as good but I thought it might be fun. The Psychology of Fandom, it kind of goes along with Ep. 31 All Your Fanbase Are Belong to Us, and may be a weaker choice if you don’t want to kind of repeat a topic. Basically you could go into why people get so obsessed with different things like Firefly, Star Wars, or starting a GoFundMe to meet Kate Beckinsale.

        Like I said the first idea is probably the stronger of the two and has a pretty logical period you could release it. BTW this may be my favorite episode, and would get my vote for the best one you’ve ever done. Really good job.

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  3. My son (6 yrs old) has asked me multiple times why people like to dress up as darth vader and kylo ren since they’re “bad guys” and “people should want to be good guys.” He then goes on for a few minutes how he doesn’t think bad guys look cool and that he would want to be on the light side of the force and save people. I think he has arguments at school with his friends and is just rehashing them with me. I haven’t yet told him that I dressed up as Darth Mal to go see the midnight showing of Star Wars Episode III. I totally get what Joel is feeling when his kids wants to dress up as Darth Vader, except my kid is a good kid, whereas Joel’s kid is obviously under the influence of satan, probably because he watches movies like “The Ring”.

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  4. This was my first experience with Dr. Matt since I skipped out on all the Halloween episodes. I liked it and would like to have him on more, and I don’t think you even necessarily need him on to have a specifically psychologically based show. Since he is a comic book geek, his take on comic book movies would be great to have and if he throws in some psychology stuff here and there that’s okay.

    In hearing Dr. Matt’s analysis of why people like comic book movies, I was reminded of the personal statement I submitted to law schools wherein I talked about Smallville and the Spider-Man movies (Toby’s Spider-man at the time). I got into law school, so….

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    1. I’m with you. I think Dr Matt should become a semi-regular. Also, I think you need to email us that personal statement. My curiosity is piqued.

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  5. Suggestions for future Dr. Matt episodes:
    Best and Worst on-screen psychiatrist/psychologist (ie. Dr. Frasier Craine, Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, The whole team from Dangerous Minds, Dr. Leo Marvin, Dr. Ben Sobel, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, etc)
    I like Chidwick’s suggestion of analyzing the psychology of villains. What sort of treatment plan would Dr. Matt prescribe for each villain.
    Why is it good for guys to take girls to see chick flicks? You would think that it wouldn’t be in our interest to have our date compare us to Mathew McCon-allrightallrightallright-aughey. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

    That’s all I have for now.

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      1. To the OFFICIAL LIST!?!?! I’m honored. And if I may be so bold as to suggest another topic for consideration, though not one related to Dr. Matt, it would be a Sherlock Holmes episode. I say Sherlock Holmes, but really a podcast about Sherlock Holmes type detectives in movies and TV. So, of course you have BBC Sherlock and Elementary Sherlock and Robert Downey Jr Sherlock, but you would also have Psyche and the Mentalist and all the CSI’s etc, etc. You could answer questions like: Which ones would you want solving your own murder? Which one do you think could actually exist in real life? How so much of the clues they find would be inadmissible and how the perp could actually be found not guilty in court if he just avoided confessing.

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      2. We actually have that one on the list already, we’re calling those the “smartest man in the room” shows. There are so many!

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      3. And I think you need to do a Lawyers of film and TV episode and for that, you will need to bring in a lawyer as a guest. I wonder if you know any lawyers?

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