EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Ironically, it was the very "white picket fence" that caused a lot of this--or, rather, how enforced the white picket fence was.
For some 50ish years, art languished under self- or even government-imposed censorship that harshly punished anything which showed a world less than squeaky-clean. It wasn't just that villains were bad and heroes were good; it was that villains were definitionally bad and heroes likewise definitionally good; neither was allowed to have any nuance, and they sure as hell weren't allowed to do anything "inappropriate" unless they got punished for it (which meant, of course, that only villains could). Of course, "inappropriate" back then included things like interracial relationships or the very idea of being gay; queer-coded villains arise from that. Two entire generations under a yoke like that. Of course the dam broke.
Unfortunately, your last clause there was the natural result of this. We had lived in a world without shadow for so long, any darkness was a sickening relief, and the earliest works brave enough to take on those censorship codes (Some Like It Hot, original Star Trek's Uhura/Kirk kiss, the God Loves, Man Kills comic, the Watchmen graphic novel, The Dark Knight Returns, the Spider-man comic tackling depression that I can't remember the title of, etc.) really were brave and effortful....and also tragically easy to misread. Watchmen isn't about how powers inherently make terrible people or that being a superhero inherently makes you a fascist jerk--it's about how people who get high on their own supply stop being able to see the real human element, the compassion and understanding, literally dehumanizing themselves and, in the process, failing to be able to see humanity as human in the process.
But the natural result of a literary revolution is literary copycats. It's not inherently a rise of schlocky crap, either; it's just natural that a new phenomenon that does something cool inspires others to think in similar ways. What this did with the "Dark Age of comics"--and the wider world of TV, film, novels, etc.--was create a pervasive pessimism and cynicism. The old ways were naive; the new ones had woken up from the plastic, hollow, enforced nature of the prior era. The only possible way to be intellectual, to actually show thought, was obviously to always and eternally reject anything and everything that came before this great awakening.
We are, now, in the throes of the new enforced thing. It's been 40 years--nearly two full generations. The enforcement, this time, has come from within, rather than without, but it's still there, just enforced by social judgment and condescension rather than "moral guardians" and censorship. And that means we're starting to see the push in the other direction. Daring to believe that ideals can matter. Pushing back against the unthinking embrace of dark-for-dark's-sake.
That's why I call my fantasy choices "chiaroscuro." For half a century, we had light which forbade any darkness, no matter what, and it washed out every detail until there was nothing left. For nearly half a century after that, we've had darkness that permits no light, and it has erased all ability to see anything at all, leaving nothing left. It is only when we bring light into dark places that we can see anything at all. We add darkness to add contrast--but many, many creators have made the fatal mistake of assuming that it is always the case that more darkness = more contrast, and that's simply false. We as authors need both the darkness and the light--and a balance between them does not always mean equal amounts of both.
But we should not fight a revolution. "Defeating" the cynicism that came before is both unnecessary and counter-productive. Questioning it, however, is necessary and productive. To claim victory absolute over the plain of meaning is to spell one's own doom. What we need is victory reconstructive: not to crush the oppressive darkness or oppressive light, but to give each its place and forbid either from hegemonic conquest.
