What accounts for the success of the Harry Potter series, as well as the "Star Wars" films whence they derive? The answer, I think, is their appeal to complacency and narcissism. "Use the Force," Obi-Wan tells the young Luke Skywalker, while the master wizard Dumbledore instructs Harry to draw from his inner well of familial emotions. No one likes to imagine that he is Frodo Baggins, an ordinary fellow who has quite a rough time of it in Tolkien's story. But everyone likes to imagine that he possesses inborn powers that make him a master of magic as well as a hero at games. Harry Potter merely needs to tap his inner feelings to conjure up the needful spell.
Rewrite:
What accounts for the success of the Speed Racer series, as well as the "hot rod" films whence they derive? The answer, I think, is their appeal to complacency and narcissism. "Racer X/Spridle/Chim Chim/the Mach 5's rotary saws and pneumatic jacks will save you, regardless of what brain dead stunt you pulled, Speed, and regardless of how many times Trixie gets kidnapped and needs to be rescued". No one likes to imagine that he is Frodo Baggins, an ordinary fellow who has quite a rough time of it in Tolkien's story. But everyone likes to imagine that he is a naturally gifted racer who has a long lost older brother race car driver who wears a mask who is also an agent of the government and will be there to rescue you when you foolishly try to jump the Mach 5 over a canyon in a rainstorm. Speed merely needs to tap his inner feelings to drive the Mach 5 into the winner's circle, even though Racer X would have won if he didn't have to continually stop mid-race to pull Speed's ass out of the wringer -- clearly this is a thinly-veiled attack on the Western concept of meritocracy. Speed, by simple virtue of having the coolest car, the hottest girlfriend, and a seemingly limitless supply of free technical resources, is "destined" to win, whereas the working man, no matter how talented or dedicated, cannot possibly prevail against the "aristocracy". The Racer family is, after all, "better" than the proletariate by virtue of simply being the Racer family. Rex, in self-imposed exile from this aristocracy after a symbolic act of disloyalty to the "crown" (Pops racer, with the name Rex Racer being an obvious ironic social commentary), is doomed to forever fall short, regardless of personal integrity and heroism, since he is no longer of the correct social status, while Pops Racer, playing the role of King Lear, lavishes all his riches and affections on the least deserving of his children, having written Rex out of the peerage for his "disloyalty". It is Milton's Paradise Lost writ small. We can see, therefore, that Speed Racer is nothing more than an ill-concealed celebration of a feudal class-structure, designed to corrode the very metal of the modern Western libereralism championed by the likes of Locke and Mill.
LOL! You ought to expand that into an article. I bet you could get it published.