Power of a Penny

          Today’s popular culture is overloaded with superhero characters through mainstream media.  However, there is one mighty crusader who has gone unnoticed and undetected for many years. Immeasurable capabilities are found in a young girl named Penny Alkaline.  Penny is not your average superhero, and her unsuspecting abilities are far more powerful than any superhero portrayed in mainstream media today.  According to Charles Moss’ “What the World Needs Now: Society’s Desperate Need for Superheroes”, today’s superheroes do not just fight the “clear-cut enemies who plan on world domination.  Today’s superheroes fight many battles within themselves” (3).  One’s internal voice and inner demons affect not just Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, or the like, but ordinary people.  At times the inner demons prove to be so strong that they debilitate even the strongest person and silently plague members of society. Penny combats them with effortless conviction through a series of electrical currents generated at her core.  This, in and of itself, proves to be more valuable to members of society and their culture than any leap from a tall building in a single bound.
          Born on the far away planet of Plusminus, which is in a previously undiscovered celestial body just outside of the Milky Way, Penny came to Earth through a series of electrical lightning storms in the year 1959.  Human-like and laced with copper-colored short pixie hair with a small framed body, Penny speaks in a hybrid language that is not heard by the average human.  This fact is of particular importance because once the average human hears Penny, her powers would be limited.  Penny’s powers, and what makes her heads and tails above any other superhero, are such that she possesses an inner magnetic power.  This electrical magnetic power is so strong that it permeates from her core as she simply walks down the street on any given day compelling ordinary individuals to listen to their positive inner voice and ignore the negative inner battle that is driven by their own fears and hesitations.
          In order to give definition to the importance of Penny and her super powers, one must first travel inward to discover the importance of listening to inner voices.  Susan Evangelista writes in “Women in Peacemaking: Inner Voices and Outer Positions” that each individual has their own inner voice and it speaks with insistent clarity, we simply must learn to listen to it (1).  Remembering to listen to your inner voice is a learned behavior.  According to Denise Riley in her essay “A Voice Without a Mouth”, inner speech is an index of one’s solitude and, dependent on the isolation of its speaker, this chatter can conjure an aura of loneliness (58).  Riley goes onto say that inner speech is closely related to hallucination and is the carrier of conscience that is a source of distinct style (60).  To argue Riley’s point, the inner voice is not a carrier of conscience, rather a reflection of personal morals and values. Regrettably, it is the uniqueness in people that bring about the biggest challenges in society as some people do not understand and accept differences of other people who are not like them.  Cultural and environmental issues lead people to assume and insinuate events on the outside; and unknowingly, these outside forces have a direct reflection on our inner voice often turning it into an inner critic or ignoring it altogether.  Coupled together with the fact that humans have an innate need to self-criticize, the critical self represents an internal enemy, a defensive foe, set on a path to destroy our self-assessment, and be destructive to our self-fulfillment.  This defense leads to anger and frustration which ultimately leads to unhappiness, loneliness, despair, and depression.  Riley suggests that our “own inner voice does not lie and to possess an inauthentic inner voice is impossible” (68).  Ignoring the inner voice, therefore, is deceiving one self, ultimately leading to self-destruction and sabotage of our authentic self.
          Superheroes, as depicted through the mainstream media, are not immune to the self-destruction inner demons cause.   Because of this destruction, they have become layered with complex emotions and are more sensitive to society around them (Moss 2). Ironman, himself, struggles with everyday social issues such as greed, lust, rage, and addiction.  Despite these social woes and inner flaws, the Ironman film trilogy grossed an estimated $1.3 billion (boxofficemojo.com). This landslide of gross profit is proof that mainstream pop culture believe that superheroes are just “brightly-colored, two-dimensional extensions of ourselves” (Moss 1) and the average consumer will support the fictional characters in the box office, merchandising, and other paraphernalia.  Movies are not the only pop culture element that has capitalized on inner demons and the challenges conquering them.  Most recently rapper Eminem, who has been publicly scrutinized for his song lyrics, relationship problems, and addiction battles, released a song titled “Monster” where the lyrics ,“I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed, get along with voices inside of my head” (Mathers), describe his own internal battle of getting in his own way.
          Getting along with one’s inner voice and exercising that voice are precisely the reasons why Penny Alkaline is important to the world, its’ societies and cultures.  Most of the inner voices in people go unheard and the people in power carry the day without listening to their inner thoughts (Evangelista 1).  Penny’s core silently acts as a generator for everyone around and her magnetism does not recognize racial, gender, or class differences, rather her powers focus on all of humanity.  The energy Penny radiates compels people to act according to their authentic self, exercise their own agency, and empowers them to accomplish great things.  Without even knowing what is happening, everyone within her general vicinity suddenly sees with extreme clarity the blending of their visions and their voices.  For 55 years, Penny, who never ages, has roamed this earth traveling from town to town exposing all humanity to her visions, and searching for others like her.  Over the years there have been a number of people resistant to Penny’s electrical charges.  These have been mostly individuals whose judgments and assumptions of their outward self have been too egotistical for Penny’s voltage to penetrate.  For these people, she has simply deposited a louder vocal box within their body and, as the years pass, she slowly increases the volume of the artificial inner voice box and decreases their outwardly voice in the hopes that eventually they will listen.
          Together with Penny’s energy and new-found inner strength, individuals no longer have to look to mainstream media, celebrities, fictional characters, and other pop culture icons for heroes to worship.  Cultures and societies would flourish with new and unique ideas instead of focusing on mass production for mass consumption.  Humans, regardless of race, religion, or gender, are able to find their own distinct greatness, their own absolute calling, and most importantly, their own superhero within themselves. Ultimately, humanity becomes the superhero.

Works Cited

Box Office Mojo.  Boxofficemojo.com.  Web.  17 July 2014. 

Evangelista, Susan.  “Women in Peacemaking: Inner Voices and Outer Positions” Peace Research. Vol 29. No. 1 (February 1997): 1-12. JSTOR. Web. 17 July 2014.

Mathers, Marshall.  “Monster”.  The Marshall Mathers LP 2. Perf. Eminem featuring Rihanna. Aftermath, Interscope, Shady. AAC.  2013.

Moss, Charles.  “What the World Needs Now: Society’s Desperate Need for Superheroes”. Popmatters.com. (5 September 2008): 1-3. Web. 15 July 2014.

Riley, Denise.  “A Voice Without a Mouth: Inner Speech”.  Qui Parl. 14.2. (Spring/Summer 2004): 57-104. JSTOR. Web. 17 July 2014.