Fans escape real life at Comic-Con

For more than 130,000 fans at Comic-Con International in San Diego this week, the annual convention is the closest they can get to stepping inside the fictional worlds of their favorite superheroes and fantasy characters.

Attendees, many of them dressed like their favorite characters, can roam 460,000 square feet of booths showing off the latest TV shows, movies, and video games and hawking trading cards, toys, books, and memorabilia galore. Warner Bros. is displaying the Batmobile from the upcoming movie Justice League, and Netflix has set up a virtual reality game that lets players wander the set of the hit sci-fi show Stranger Things.

Faith-based entertainment is scarce at Comic-Con, though some fantasy films in recent years, such as the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, have Judeo-Christian roots. The convention annually draws street preachers and picketers, known throughout the convention as the “yellow sign people,” who carry placards with messages like “Faith in Jesus Saves.” Westboro Baptist Church has protested the convention before, condemning attendees for participating in idolatry.

The largesse of Comic-Con (it started in 1970 with just 300 attendees) has grown out of the booming business of science fiction and fantasy entertainment in the West. Stories of superheroes, medieval quests, and magical creatures tap into the power of nostalgia marketing with millennials and Gen-Xers by reminding them of their childhoods.

Fantasy entertainment also taps into what psychologist Geoff Kaufman calls “experience-taking.”

“Through experience-taking, readers lose themselves and assume the identity of the character, adopting the character’s thoughts, emotions, goals, traits, and actions and experiencing the narrative as though they were that character,” Kaufman and researcher Lisa Libby wrote in a 2012 paper. Experience-taking works best when storytellers hook the audience with a character who seems just like them at first but then goes on an adventure that would be inaccessible to the average person.

The phenomenon explains why origin stories about how normal men and women become superheroes have become so popular. Kaufman says the psychological effect can last after the story ends.

Scientists also have found the brain activity people experience when reading a fictional story differs little from the emotions and sensations they have in real life. That makes intuitive sense; it’s the reason we cry at sad movies and jump in scary ones even though we know they aren’t real. But the same is true for sensory input, meaning that reading about a flowery perfume and actually smelling it stimulate the same part of the brain. If an audience member likes the feelings and sensations a story evokes but doesn’t have access to those experiences in real life, he or she will keep coming back to the story again and again.

Still in the spotlight

A Nevada parole board agreed during a hearing Thursday to release O.J. Simpson from prison in about three months. As of October, Simpson will have served nine years for his involvement in a 2007 armed robbery at a hotel in Las Vegas.

At his hearing, the retired football player maintained he was trying to retrieve items that belonged to him when he and five other men entered the room, one of them brandishing a weapon. “I thought I was glad to get my stuff back, but it just wasn’t worth it,” he told the board. “It wasn’t worth it, and I’m sorry.”

Simpson’s lawyers have argued he was given an unnecessarily harsh sentence to punish him for the murders of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, for which he was acquitted in Los Angeles in 1995. Major TV networks and news channels aired the parole hearing live, showing the public is still fascinated with Simpson more than 20 years after his acquittal. Asked what he planned to do if released, Simpson said he would move to Florida to be close to two of his four adult children. —L.L.

In memoriam

This past week brought the deaths of several notable actors and artists:

Going for the gold

After lackluster ratings during last summer’s Shark Week, Discovery Channel is doing everything it can to make its biggest week of the year its biggest week ever. Phelps vs. Shark: The Battle for Ocean Supremacy, starring Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, kicks off the event Sunday. Spoiler alert: Even with performance-enhancing swim fins, there’s no way Phelps is going to swim 35 mph like some great whites can. Phelps told Esquire.com his main reason for doing the show was to interact with sharks and share with viewers his love for the ocean’s most fearsome predator. A second Phelps special, Shark School with Michael Phelps, is set to air July 30. —L.L.

Muppet mayhem

A feud has broken out between the actor who succeeded Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog and Henson’s family. Steve Whitmire recently spoke out about his Oct. 16, 2016, firing, saying he tried to keep executives from changing the Muppets and was punished. But the Hensons say Whitmire was the one not keeping up the true spirit of Kermit. With accusations flying in every direction, neither side is living up to the friendly, generous example set by the humble green frog. —L.L.

Cents and sensibility

The Bank of England announced this week plans to release a 10-pound note with the face of author Jane Austen on it. Austen is the first female author to grace a banknote in the United Kingdom. Die-hard Austenphiles welcomed the news but not without critique of the portrait and the quote chosen for the note. —L.L.