This first ran on Splice Today.
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Superheroes conflate goodness with hitting things. For the superhero genre, the best person in the world is the one with the greatest power; beating evil is a matter of hitting it harder. A world in which force and goodness are one and the same and both always triumph is a world in which you’re essentially worshipping force — and the worship of force is, as Richard Cooper pointed out last week in Salon, a good thumbnail description of fascism. No surprise, then, to find that early superhero tropes have roots in pro-KKK pulp novels and discourses around eugenics. A fantasy of eugenic superiority and righteous violence can give you Hitler or Superman, either one.
Chris Yogerst at the Atlantic objects to this characterization of super-heroes on the grounds that superheroes are, in fact, righteous and use their power wisely. Or as he says, “The “fascism” metaphor breaks down pretty quickly when you think about it. Most superheroes defeat an evil power but do not retain any power for themselves. They ensure others’ freedom.” But, of course, if you were making fascist propaganda, the fascist heroes wouldn’t be portrayed as power-hungry whackos. They’d be portrayed as noble and trustworthy. Batman’s a good guy, so it’s okay that he has all-pervasive surveillance technology in the Nolan films, because we know he’ll use it for good ends. Tony Stark is awesome, so when, munitions manufacturer that he is, he makes a superweapon, we know it’s fine because he’ll use it well. And all those superheroes can act outside the law and beat people bloody without trial, or even torture them, because they are on the side of good, just like the KKK can operate outside the law in Birth of a Nation because they are on the side of good. (Yogerst also argues that superheroes can’t be fascist because they often mistrust the government — as if there’s no history of fascist vigilantism, in Germany or here.)
In fact, as Yogerst and Cooper both acknowledge, there’s a long history of superhero comics criticizing the superhero genre specifically because of the fascistic way it links the good and the powerful. Back in the 1940s, almost as soon as the superhero genre was created, William Marston and Harry Peter created Wonder Woman as an explicit repudiation of what they saw as a male glorification of violence. Wonder Woman preached peace, and worked to convert her foes in lieu of (or sometimes in addition to) battering them senseless. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen presents superheroes as violent lawless bullies and megalomaniac monsters. The film Chronicle has a teen with superpowers who picks up on the rhetoric of eugenics, with disastrous results. Chris Ware (in Jimmie Corrigan) has a Superman/God figure who acts as a violent ogre/bully; Dan Clowes (in The Death Ray) presents vigilante violence as a kind of adolescent fantasy leading to murderous psychopathy.
On the one hand, you could see the fact that this critique is so prevalent as evidence that it’s true; if so many creators over such a long period of time have seen the link between superheroes and fascism, and have questioned the equation of the powerful and the good, then that critique must have some merit. On the other hand, though, if so many superhero stories warn of the conflation of the powerful and the good, is it really fair to say that superhero comics always promote that particular fascist link? Superhero critique and parody is, and has just about always been, a central part of the superhero genre — so much so that Cooper’s essay can be seen not as an attack on the genre, but rather as an example of the genre itself. When he says, “Maybe one day we will get the hero we need: one who challenges rather than reinforces the status quo,” you could argue that superhero narratives have been doing that for a long time — and that his essay in fact uses superheroes to do just that.
Superhero narratives, then, are about fascism, and the glorification of violence as the good. But being about those things doesn’t necessarily always mean they endorse those things. Some, like the Nolan Batman films, seem to; others like Chronicle very much don’t; still others, like Iron Man, may go back and forth. Cooper and Yogerst correctly identify some of the key concerns of the superhero genre, but they both err in suggesting that those concerns have a single meaning. It would be more accurate to say that one thing superhero comics do is think about the relationship between the good and the powerful, sometimes equating them in a fascist way, sometimes criticizing the tendency to equate them, and sometimes examining that equation. The genre is one way we think about fascism — which is, no doubt, why it was so popular in World War II, and why it has had its recent, post-9/11 resurgence.
I donno Noah I think that both arguments are wrong. I don’t think superheroes and fascism have enough in common to make anything but the most tenuous, hyperbolic and reaching comparisons.
Vigilante violence in the name of the state…I dunno. That seems pretty straightforward to me.
“Superhero narratives, then, are about fascism, and the glorification of violence as the good.”
I’m not seeing why they’re also not liberal propaganda and labor propaganda and communist propaganda.
I think this is pretty on point. I’d say that the superhero itself has a fascistic undertone that some writers have used to critique both the genre and the primitive appeal of fascism. I think Gaiman’s development of Moore’s Miracle Man does a great job of this.
I hate hate hate when people try to claim that Schuster and Siegal’s Jewish heritage means it is impossible for them to have created a character fascist undertones.
Noah, this is a really important question. I had the opportunity recently to talk about Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s ‘All*Star Superman’ with several colleagues. We explored many facets of this work, but one scene in particular strikes me as informative here. It’s the page where Superman goes to talk to a young girl who is standing on a ledge, getting ready to jump and kill herself. Superman does not use violence here to achieve anything. He uses his wits, but more importantly, he uses a human-like empathy to help this young girl live.
Another example comes to mind. In Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ ‘For the Man Who Has Everything,’ the superheroes (Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin) fight Mongul to save Superman’s life. As often is the case, it isn’t their physical strength that solves the problem. In this story, it’s their team work, their intelligence, that allows Superman to survive the episode.
Granted, both of these examples are out of the ordinary. Morrison/Quitely and Moore/Gibbons don’t necessarily write ‘traditional’ superhero stories. So my question for you is this: doesn’t this assertion of Facist vs. Not Facist depend on the particular character, the creators, and the narrative?
Frank, sure. That’s what I’m saying in the piece. That is, superhero narratives focus on issues around goodness and power. It’s fairly easy to end up with a story that equates the two, which can be fascistic. But a lot of stories also critique that in one way or the other.
Charles, fascism in particular tends to equate violence and goodness, and power as itself righteous. That’s not the case for left ideologies, which are about equality, and so don’t tend to elevate individual power as the apotheosis of goodness.
This isn’t to say that comics can’t promote liberal ideologies in various ways, because of course they can. Marston and Peter did. It just tends not to be the genre default (and in fact Marston and Peter were specifically and explicitly reacting against the genre default.)
Superheroes — at least the vast majority of them — do not even come close to meeting the definition of fascism.
If Superman declared himself king, established a central government that he controlled, and then used force to keep his power and destroy all opposition, then he would be a fascist.
Doctor Doom is a fascist character, as are a couple of other major villains, such as the Mole Man. Superman, and all other major legacy superheroes I can think of, are not.
Again, the assumption that goodness inheres in being the most powerful guy around, and the further assumption that vigilante violence in support of the state is a reasonable thing — these point to fascism.
Though, again, there’s lots of ways to work these things out, and lots of criticisms of them in many superhero comics. Fascism is something superhero comics are interested in, not necessarily something they endorse.
Noah, as you know, I strongly agree with your analysis here. The Golden Age superheroes were created as fascism-fighting fascists and the genre continues to be haunted by that ethic.
Vigilante violence is not part of the definition of fascism. Any society can be subject to vigilante violence.
In fact, one could easily argue that vigilante violence in the closely coordinated control of a fascist state is an anathema.
Think about it: Vigilante violence is something that is characteristic of an anarchist society, not a fascist one.
So if you want to call Superman an anarchist because he works outside of the law, you’d have a much better argument.
Russ, you could say that…if you were willing to ignore the entire actual history of fascism and fascist violence. Which I think is not an especially thoughtful way to make the argument.
Probably the stupidest thing I have read all year.From begininng to end.Like saying fiction promotes libertarianism because you once read Ayn Rand.
Hey Mark. It’s actually nothing like that, not least because I specifically say that superhero comics *do not necessarily* promote fascism. That’s the point of the piece.
Noah — You seem to assume that the “vigilante” violence fascists use to initially grab their power is inherent to fascism. It’s not. Once fascists have power, they tightly control it, and they don’t allow vigilantes because such loose cannons are a threat to their power. Look at Nazi Germany once Hitler considated his power. There were no autonomous vigilantes running around. The SS had an iron grip and reported only to Hitler. Ditto for North Korea. Nothing happens without government approval.
Autonomous superheroes would be the last thing a fascist state would tolerate.
But superheroes aren’t autonomous, are they? They uphold the law and are often answerable to the authorities (Batman works with the police, etc.) They’re basically para-military forces. Authoritarian states often use such forces.
Again, though, I’m not saying that supeheroes promote fascism. I’m saying that fascist violence, and the link between power and goodness, is something superhero comics explore, sometimes to endorse, but not infrequently to criticize.
Batman works with the police sometimes, as does the Spirit. But calling them paramilitary forces (ala the Blackwater contractors in Iraq) is a huge stretch, as they are not on the government’s payroll, and they are not answerable to the government. And Batman and the Spirit are exceptions. The Hulk doesn’t work with the authorities; government proxies chase him. Ditto for Spider-Man. Superman doesn’t check with any head of government when he goes after some threat to the Earth. Neither does Thor. Even Captain America goes his own way most of the time, as did Iron Man through most of his continuity (there was an instance when he was the Secretary of Defense, but since the US is a democracy and not a dictatorship, it does not fall under the category of a fascist state).
You’re really trying to pound a square peg in a round hole here, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
Fascists use violence, but violence does not equal fascism. If a little old lady pulls out her Smith and Wesson to take out a home invader, she’s not a storm trooper.
Actually, that little old lady and the home invader are stereotypical excuses for the use of vigilante violence against minorities, and vigilante violence sanctioned by the state against minorities is a good approximation of fascism.
I’m not trying to put any kind of peg into any kind of hole. I’m saying (and keep saying) that these are issues which superhero comics deal with in different ways. To which you reply, different superhero comics deal with these issues in different ways. So we’re in agreement.
Yeah, but you could also have made the same sort of point with liberalism or any number of topics dealt with in superhero comics. Why fascism? Violence is a component of establishing many political ideas. Violence, or its celebration, isn’t a sufficient condition for fascism.
The only comic that really fits most of the nebulous conditions for fascism is, in fact, Wonder Woman. It lacks the machismo and beards, but otherwise, it’s pretty close. It’s certainly anti-individual and pro-police state and uses an iconic hero as the ideal representation of the people. Yet, you see Marston as a liberal reaction to the prominent strain in superheroes? Superman was, if anything, back in the day, closer to being a sort of superheroic emblem of the general strike, not a fascist. Of course, fascism subsumes many socialist ideas and metaphors.
Fascism is particularly inclined to promote might as right; it’s a worship of power. Like I said upthread, liberal and communist philosophies don’t do that; they tend to be interested in promoting equality (though of course they’re perfectly capable of supporting state violence.)
Octogenarian Marion Smigiel, who was my landlady before I joined the Air Force, was bludgeoned to death with her own cane behind the Chicago west side apartment building she and her late husband owned for decades. Her death was no “stereotype.” Criminals do this shit all the time when there’s no cop around, and apologists or “pooh-poohers” of such scum makes my blood boil.
To my knowledge, they never caught the vermin who did this.
My parents, who Ms. Smigiel insisted on interviewing before she’d rent me an apartment, sent me a newspaper clipping of the incident in 1992.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-02-06/news/9201110780_1_landlady-tenants-garage
It doesn’t happen all the time. For pity’s sake. And using the fact that it sometimes happens to justify shooting folks like Trayvon Martin are to make the US the country with the most incarceration in the world is still fascist. (Not that that’s what you’re doing.)
But those who tend to support might as right in comics are called supervillains, so superhero comics deal with that view by largely being opposed to it. Okay, doesn’t every reader know this? Isn’t it more accurate to say of violence in the genre that it’s used to uphold/restore a liberal status quo (capitalism, etc.). Or maybe that the same thing that supports fascism also supports liberalism, as suggested by superheroes? I guess I’m not seeing what you’re rhetorical point is here.
Christ, Noah. Look at the national crime stats! Those aren’t made-up numbers. And think of how many crimes go unreported. My old neighborhood in Chicago has been a frickin’ war zone for 40 years! And who did the mayor take handguns away from? Law-abiding citizens, that’s who.
Just because it’s not happening around you doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
And I don’t see why the celebration of the revolutionary in leftist thought isn’t also a celebration of violence.
Russ, crime stats have been falling for decades at this point. Using law and order rhetoric and paranoia to bolster the power of the state and violence against minorities is pretty much definition fascist. It’s how we’ve wound up with an insane police state, unfortunately.
Charles, the issue is that fascism is linked to worship of power for its own sake, as well as to law and order rhetoric. I don’t think this is super complicated.
I think the celebration of violence in leftist rhetoric is actually a celebration of violence. It just isn’t usually couched in terms of a worship of power and law and order. I’m trying to think of a genre that encapsulates this, but I don’t know that there is one necessarily — other than Communist propaganda (of which there’s a certain amount.)
I’m not sure why linking superheroes to fascism hits such a raw nerve. Fascism is obviously not the only influence on or only quality of the genre, but its presence is significant. Personally, I would argue the figure of the romanticized vigilante came first and was converted into the comic book superhero in response to the rise of fascism. But however you analyze it, superheroes were critiqued for being fascist since the beginning of the Golden Age. We tend to view Wertham as a bit of lunatic in the 50s because he appears to be standing alone in the critique, where in fact he was just the most recent and loudest voice in a very large choir. Here’s a history mini-lesson for anyone who still cares:
http://thepatronsaintofsuperheroes.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/fredric-wertham-not-a-complete-idiot-after-all/
Actually, superheroes are about capitalist democracy – might makes right together with a bit of (self serving) moralistic waffle about justice and the individual.
I’m not sure that the worship of power is fascism’s defining feature… Sure, it’s a defining feature, but so is worship of expertise and genius, and a belief that what is best for the state is best for the people (understood as a mass agent). Hence the fascist notion that prosperity is achieved through often violent processes or ordering the unruly mass. Upshot? Violence is a means to fascist ends, which is a powerful state. None of these parts (the violence, the powerful state, the faith in technology) are peculiar to fascism. It’s those parts (and others I’m missing as I type on this phone) in combination and proportion that make for fascism. That superhero comics deal with these things in part is up controversial, and so is the notion that in so doing they address issues closely associated with fascism, and even fascism itself, at times. However, it’s also seems like a bigger stretch to argue that the genre is itself determined by a 75 year engagement with fascism. Indeed, it seems like superheroes are often more focused on the question of whether might makes right, when to intervene, etc than they are with any particular political system as such.
Chris, thanks for that link – but people may also want to checkout “Wertham Was Right”. :)
I think it is pretty clear that that the extension and development of the superheroic moral paradigm leads to fascism, but that many creators have used the genre as a way to critique the obfuscation of that arc with the “law and order” rhetoric and the general acceptance in the genre of forms of state authority being endangered by small time or local corruption of an otherwise overall ideal Western so-called democratic system. It is for this reason that superheroes very rarely actually challenge the institutionalized inequities that lead to the crime they abhor, etc. . . 1) It would require a complete rethinking of what justice might mean, and 2) that kind of total reimagining of the organization of state power and capital would make a world that is unrecognizable to the reader in comparison to the suspended disbelief that the generic superhero world requires, where some people can have jetpack and quinjets and boom-tubes, but in general the average person still uses cars and subways and accept their governments as legitimate in the face of alien invasions and underground mole people. It is for this reason I cited Miracle Man, which actually envisions that transformation and finds it both awesome and terrible.
Up controversial is supposed to be uncontroversial… Phones!
Just to respond to Charles upthread; I think Watchmen is actually about the links between modern liberal states and fascism in a lot of ways. The rational liberal one-worlder is shown to be more of a violent fascist murderer than the fascists (is at least one pretty obvious way to read it.)
Fascism is hard to pin down as a political ideology, you can’t really point to a single template for fascist states and only a handful of regimes have embraced the label.
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy weren’t exactly the centralized all-consuming states people make them out to be and since both movements started out as gangs of thugs I certainly don’t think vigilantism and fascism are mutually exclusive. It’s also really hard to pin down what fascist ideology is, it’s not a system of thought like Marxism, not surprising since it all but rejects reason.
From what I’ve read some sort of mass democratic politics are generally considered a prerequisite for genuine fascism, it’s what distinguishes it from the authoritarian conservatism of military juntas for example. One historian (might be Hobsbawm) in fact mentioned the Ku Klux Klan as the most obviously fascistic of American movements, which reminds me of the articles on the prehistory of the superhero and certainly ties into vigilantism (with varying approval of the state).
McCarthy was not a complete idiot after all! And the Hollywood Blacklist actually blacklisted communists!!
Noah,
I think it would cheapen the point of Watchmen to simply read Ozy as a closet fascist. It’s much more interesting to reveal connections between various utopian desires.
I think superheroes have mostly been supporters of liberalism in their history, not fascism. A fascist hero is Dirty Harry who undermines liberal values and the state and is proven right in the end for doing so. Maybe that’s the Punisher, maybe sometimes Batman, but it’s not the largest portion of them. Yes, they all use violence, but violence has content and serves a purpose. It’s not reducible to one ideology, so that every time it appears, we can simply cry, “fascist,” and shut the book. Fighting fascists doesn’t make one a fascist, as was claimed up above. That’s silly.
Charles – not sure I get your point about McCarthy – whether those people were “actual Communists” doesn’t justify blacklisting them.
And who cares if Wertham made some good subtextual points?
Wertham made lots of good points, some subtextual, some not. He was a smart guy and a thoughtful reader, even if I disagree with most of his conclusions.
McCarthy wasn’t an idiot. Neither was Hitler. Both were very effective demagogues. Hitler intended to murder Jews, and did so. McCarthy intended to ruin the lives of leftists, and succeeded. I’m sure Suharto killed lots of Communists too. The problem with these ideologies is not that they’re dumb or that they don’t effectively target the groups they set out to target. It’s that they’re evil, and effectively target the groups they set out to target (as well as others). I mean, I’m sure the Russian authorities are effectively imprisoning and persecuting actual gay people. That doesn’t mean that Putin is an admirable figure. Quite the contrary.
I didn’t say Ozymandias was a closet fascist. I said that the comic is in part about how liberal one-worlders talk a good game, but are ultimately about obsessive control and mass murder, which get associated with fascism because of Hitler. The comparison is very much in the text; Rorschach and the Comedian are both right-wing assholes in the fascist vein; neither is as ruthless or as vicious as Ozymandias. I love that about Watchmen, actually.
Batman is probably the single most popular superhero. Punisher is hugely popular. So is Wolverine, who is also about vigilante violence. Superheroes are always about upholding the status quo, and yes, the status quo is presented as liberal and friendly. But, you know, that’s how propaganda works. I think Watchmen is pretty smart in identifying both the fascism at the heart of the genre and the way that that is not necessarily a contrast with liberalism (or neo-liberalism.)
Uh-oh. Mr. Berlatsky (and company) is calling superheroes fascists again. This should go well.
(Incidentally, I used to think it that the one-time staple act of beating up bank robbers was just good superheroics. I’ve since questioned whether even such simple and seemingly innocuous depictions of heroism aren’t representative of the status-quo-loving fascist element of superheroes currently being discussed. (I doubt that’s a commonly held view, but to the extent that it is held, I wonder what role recent economic crises and financial sector malfeasance have played.))
For my part, I’m not sure I would say that I would say outright that superheroes are fascistic, though I certainly think there exists a pernicious and preponderant strain endemic to superhero narratives that celebrates violence and the maintenance of the status quo. If that equates with fascism for some, well… My question is, does that indictment lie squarely at the feet of the super-people)? Aren’t the super-books just a culmination, exaggerated or otherwise, of the old narratives humanity has delighted in telling itself since time immemorial which celebrate power, force, and violence? From the Iliad to the Bible to the founding myths of nations (including the U.S.), even when we gain a level of moralism and sentimentalism to lace our discourse with platitudes like “right makes might,” this really flies in the face of the fact that at the end of the day, people by-and-large value agency most things (including moral considerations). Even the most uplifting battle stories of virtue and piety and nobility and all nice things ultimately chronicle a war that is determined through various forms of power, agency – force. I mean, we like good guys, I guess. But we like better “good” guys that are powerful. Superheroes negotiate through violence, but at their core they (are supposed to) embody agency, of which violence and aggression are just a form. We like violence because we value agency, and if that agency happens to find itself situated high among the echelons of power, well, that merely transposes what we like to a rule under which to live and a status quo to value, amirite. (By the bye, it tickles me to wonder if the “truth” of Christian moral philosophy would ring as true for as many professed Christians had Jesus been a super nice regular guy and not the super nice son of God.)
Sorry to have written a novella about it – that’s one of the reasons why I mostly read and don’t post at this site.
Also, I feel the need to take to task an earlier post citing the examples of All-Star Superman and For the Man who has Everything as not being of the “fascistic” mold of superhero stories. While I certainly agree that All-Star is very much an outlier from the norm in that regard, but I’d argue that that is a result of its off-kilter plot, themes and borrowing a little from Superman’s Silver Age (an era not without its fascistic streak), not because of that scene where Superman rescues the girl from suicide. I for one am not prepared to pat the story on the back for showing Superman like a normal human being in that one instant against very much a non-villainous character. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely scene, if a tad overrated, and it’s true that Superman could have used his powers to rob the teen of exercising her free will rather than change her mind, but really it is not exemplary of a different kind of superheroics, I feel. As for The Man Who Has Everything, I forget exactly how the struggle with Mongul went down, but I do recall that if victory wasn’t achieved through force, it sure wasn’t for lack of trying. If anything, given that I consider Alan Moore a very thoughtful writer, it disappoints me a bit that such a neat story basically reduces itself to a standard superhero fistfight between Superman et al. and Mongul.
Something else that fascism appears to be fond of, from my admittedly lazy readings, is the notion of the heroic figure taking it upon himself to right the problems of society in desperate times.
This figure is exceptional both in terms of his presumed capabilities and in his self-imposed responsibilities. The norms of society and law don’t necessarily apply to him because he stands aside from (above?) the rest of the crowd and does what needs to be done.
How many beloved comic heroes does that describe?
Successful fascists may become leaders in which case deference to authority and the rule of law become paramount – because at this point they ARE the law; less successful fascists, or those not involved in politics, don’t share that deference for authority and laws which they pointedly don’t regard as being effective or legitimate.
I think it’s preferable to imagine fascism as a series of related philosophies rather than as a tightly delineated political system.
Noah: “Wertham made lots of good points, some subtextual, some not. He was a smart guy and a thoughtful reader, even if I disagree with most of his conclusions.”
The problem with Wertham was never really his intelligence, though (many people can come up with creative readings, cf. Room 237), nor that he loved minorities and little kittens in trees, so the modern day apologias aren’t getting at the central problem. He was a demagogue, another useless censor, who, just like the other McCarthyites of the time period (this one a “commie” who conveniently didn’t emphasize his own leanings when trying to use the fears of the time for his own purpose), made up shit to control others. Leave his defense to Ann Coulter.
I don’t think we disagree enough on Watchmen to argue about it.
It’s okay by me to use ‘propaganda’ in a loose sort of way, but you seem to be using it in a loose way and then drawing some definitive conclusions from it. Nazi, communist and fascist propaganda served a particular group. The superhero genre as propaganda is selling us what ideology exactly? All the guys bent on ruling because might=right tend to be the villains are beaten. Now, you might say that this is a way of seeing the fascist as an oppressed group in need of striking back (Jewish control of the world, etc.), but (with the exception of the ones who offer knowing reflexive critiques a la Miracleman) you don’t identify with the fascist types in the stories (and by ‘you’, I’m excluding the occasional sociopathic reader). Even Batman tends to return everything to an equilibrium, and that equilibrium isn’t a fascist state. I’m all for discussing various violent fantasies connections to other violent fantasies, just don’t reduce them all to one.
“and are beaten”
“All the guys bent on ruling because might=right tend to be the villains and are beaten.”
The stories show that the mightiest are the rightest. The good guys always win. Do they always win because they’re the good guys and right confers might? Or are they the good guys because they always win, and might confers right? How can you tell the difference exactly? And isn’t the point of the genre default in many cases to obscure that difference?
Is it that difficult for you to tell? Really? These are mostly children’s stories based on black and white morality. The supervillain wants to enforce his individual will and desire on the entire population (of a city, country, the world or universe). The superhero wants to stop him, so that the population can continue as it has before the disruption. The superhero’s violence is justified because he’s fighting for the rights of the population. Once again, the reason for why he fights is just as important as the fact that he fights (violence has content, it serves many purposes).
They’re not really for children these days. And violence has purpose, sure. But the purpose in these cases is generally to entertain, which means violence is its own rationale, and the various reasons advanced for it should be looked at, perhaps, with some skepticism.
As just one example, that first X-Men story I talked about. The social order defended there is a social order built on attacking marginal groups in the name of defending the military. That seems fairly fascist, yes?
Like I said, different stories do different things. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man stories are quite critical of default superhero violence, as just one example.
But the adult versions of Batman, for example, only further complicate any ideological alliances he might have. The Nolan films question his heroic virtue throughout while finally concluding with a fairly pessimistic conservatism. His surveillance system is presented as a problematic, not a wonderfully imaginative invention pointing our way to a glorious future. This is poor propaganda if that’s how its intended. The last Superman film showed his dependance on the military to succeed against a militaristic alien authoritarian. Is that propaganda for fascism?
“Like I said, different stories do different things. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man stories are quite critical of default superhero violence, as just one example.”
So why not just say superheroes are about violence, then? All violence doesn’t equal fascism.
If Hollywood had to produce propaganda for the communists or the Nazis, the Kathryn Bigelows or Christopher Nolans recruited would have reasonable, good guy, characters express disgust with the violence needed to get rid of the bourgeois, or ethnic minorities. Within the narrative the violence would still be cathartic, because X controls the worlds financial system and is oppressing the good folk of the world. (The Joker is still out there, we need the NSA. The terrorists are still at large, we need this ethically troubling torture to continue, because it works.)
Superheroes are at their most fascistic when they excuse their violence with this paradigm of ‘it’s disgusting, but it works’. (See the complete works of Miller and Moore.) Most superhero comics don’t go that far but only because they don’t think through the implications of fetishizing people who are talented at being violent to uphold the status-quo or to protect their rights.
So yeah, I liked the article.
At this point, I’m wondering how any opinion in a narrative isn’t propaganda to some of you. All that stuff that’s problematized is just a sneaky way of fooling us into the clear and direct message that’s somewhere in the narrative, even though it’s being read in different ways by different people.
I think in general the line between propaganda and non propaganda is mostly a matter of whether you like the message or not. Complexity is it’s own ideology, it seems like.
I like Brecht a lot, not to mention constructivist Russian posters, so propaganda isn’t something I’m opposed to in itself.
Maybe, but there’s quite a difference between Nolan’s Batman and those Russian posters. I have no idea what ‘complexity is its own ideology’ is supposed to mean. Providing contradictory messages to an ideology within the art that’s supposed to be propaganda for that ideology is evidence that it’s not simply propaganda.
The idea that complexity is a moral good, and that subverting one’s own statements is noble, is part of the liberal hegemony that you were talking about earlier.
The fact that a given work presents its ideas with complexity doesn’t preclude it from being propaganda. Especially if one recognises as an integral function of propaganda the need to be convincing, it may well be necessary for a work to acknowledge a degree of complexity around an issue to even be effective at all. Tempered propaganda is still propaganda – e.g., what I took away from the Dark Knight issue wasn’t “Lucius Fox had problems with illegal surveillance”; it was, “Lucius Fox had problems with illegal surveillance…but they still used it, because it sometimes such measures are necessary and righteous.”
But I almost feel like talking about Nolan’s Batman is an obfuscation. What about other “adult” superhero fare like Man of Steel, The Avengers, or the Iron Man movies? What about the comics? They’re rather less complicated in their messages and themes, and much more naked celebrations of violence and power. I imagine one would not be too hard-pressed to find in those movies some pretty rich source of the hegemonic violence being talked about. Nolan’s Dark Knight seems more exception than rule among superhero blockbusters.
That’s a great point. Especially in terms of torture and surveillance, the argument tends to be that folks who aren’t on board are simplistic and naive.
My point was that someone in the narrative objecting to the violence legitimizes the violence within the narrative. In the Batman movie, it’s clear Batman must break the norms of society and rule of law to catch the Joker. When characters raise objections it doesn’t problematize the story, it just provides a veneer of objectivity to a narrative that justifies extra-judicial violence to protect us from what civil institutions are too weak to handle. It’s more subtle than Soviet posters, but it’s still a form of propaganda.
I feel kind of silly going on about this, because it’s a cliche to have a police chief yell at a hardass detective who breaks the rules but gets things done, or to have a female character recoil in horror when an action hero does something violent and badass, and what I’m thinking of in the Batman movies and many other superhero stories are clearly variations on these cliches. But I’m always annoyed by the argument that “this story doesn’t endorse X, it has supporting character A raise valid objections.”
(Sorry didn’t see mywa’s comment. My own is kind of redundant now.)
Dark Knight doesn’t just have “supporting character A” raise objections. Batman has the surveillance technology destroyed, because he doesn’t even trust himself with it.
He eventually has it destroyed. But he’s the one who destroys it; we’re supposed to trust his judgement absolutely, and the sign that we can is that he destroys it himself.
Pretty sure that Lucius Fox (aka Morgan Freeman) does object and quits based on Batman’s use of the surveillance tech – but my memory is based on one viewing of that mostly shitty film.
Oh, I hated that film too. Though it was better than Batman Begins, at least.
“He eventually has it destroyed. But he’s the one who destroys it; we’re supposed to trust his judgement absolutely, and the sign that we can is that he destroys it himself.”
I thought that was a sign that he was “simplistic and naïve,” not that the audience can trust him. I’m sure more conservative viewers were shaking their heads at the destruction of the surveillance tech. After all, he just used it to save the city, why shouldn’t he preserve it for future use? It seems like the definition of “propaganda” that has emerged in this comments thread is “maybe kinda suggestive of some ideology I don’t like.” You’re welcome to use it that way, but it sure as hell ain’t Oxford standard.
The film sets up Batman as the good; it has him use surveillance technology; it presents him as so thoughtful that he can be trusted with surveillance technology. It seems pretty close to how Obama portrays himself, it seems to me. And sure, Dick Cheney thinks Obama’s a wuss, but that doesn’t mean that Obama’s propaganda isn’t propaganda.
And, in fact, I’d argue that Obama’s propaganda is significantly more effective than Dick Cheney’s.
Most people’s concept of a superhero is really just an idealised police-officer, and the vigilante aspect of any given story is purely for added drama. Their role is NOT to dole out justice, but simply to apprehend and then hand them over to the courts. I think you’d be hard-pressed to define that as fascist.
Its when the heroes stray into doling out ‘justice’ (in the form of excessive beatings, death, etc) that things tend to get iffy and I’d be inclined to agree with your thesis.
I would like to think that most people’s ideal superhero falls in the camp of super-policeman, NOT super-judge. But the problem is that most superhero comics tend to veer from Serpico to Dirty Harry from issue to issue. Which makes the whole “Is Batman a fascist?” question completely pointless. Batman isn’t real, nor is he consistently written enough to make any kind of reasoned answer. But is there inherent fascism in many comics (or even most)? Probably. And do a lot of super-comic readers confuse fascism for heroism? Yes, that’s why fascism succeeds.
Why stop with superheroes? By that definition, everything where the conflict is resolved by “beat/blow stuff/people up” can be fascist. All action movies, plenty of video games (including Super Mario Bros.), many space-battle-centered sci-fi like Star Wars and Star Trek, most Shounen Manga like Dragonball Z and One Piece…
I can’t help but be reminded of George Orwell’s “What is Fascism?”
Isaac: “My point was that someone in the narrative objecting to the violence legitimizes the violence within the narrative.”
There’s two ways of thinking about legitimization here: legitimizes the use of violence in the narrative or justifies the violence. I agree with the former: if you want to tell a story of slavery, then having either a character or the narrative objecting to the violence of slavery legitimizes the use of slavery in a narrative. The latter, however, is ridiculous: the portrayal of the violence of slavery, or having someone object to slavery does not automatically justify slavery. We wouldn’t even be able analyze slavery in any way without supporting it if that were so. So, the first way of thinking about legitimization is true, but fairly trivial, and the latter is just plain wrong.
Propaganda doesn’t encourage people to think contradictory thoughts about its supposed subject. That isn’t necessarily about “complexity,” but about the encouragement of critique to some thesis. I’m not seeing in the views of propaganda put forth in this thread why everything Noah writes, including the present essay, is not propaganda or why anyone who ever agreed that superheroes are fascists isn’t buying into propaganda. The current crop of superhero films express a lot more nuance and skepticism than the ‘superheroes are fascists’ crowd here.
Where did I say that what I write isn’t propaganda? I said earlier that I don’t have a problem with propaganda per se.
The idea that the Nolan Dark Knight films express any subtlety or nuance at all is pretty laughable. Those movies are dumb as rocks.
Ha, I took out my sentence “maybe Noah believes that’s what he does.” Okay, everything is propaganda. Now, we’re left with determining good propaganda (what used to not be called propaganda, but merely the expression of thought) and bad propaganda (what used to merely be called propaganda). All this does is ultimately serve anyone who wants to make propaganda (“everyone’s selling you something, kid: Coke, science, the Nazis”).
“The idea that the Nolan Dark Knight films express any subtlety or nuance at all is pretty laughable. Those movies are dumb as rocks.”
You’re forcing me to whip out my blog posts on the 2nd and 3rd films, man. I agree that they’re ultimately conservative, just not that conservative = propaganda.
Oh, cool. Thanks for the links. I’ll try to read those (I’m sure your analysis is a lot more fun to read than the films were to watch.)
Charles; no, I mean the latter. For example, in Drive, in the elevator scene, when the main character beats a bad guy up super-violently and the female character recoils in horror, it’s not like the audience identifies with the horror expressed. The violence is still cathartic and fun, and is shot, directed and soundtracked to be fun. Having that character reacting with fear just sends the signal that it’s ok to enjoy the violence because the film recognizes on some level this screen violence is sadistic.
So when Morgan Freeman reacts with shock to Batman’s plan, it’s effectively the same thing. In fact, if the story didn’t make such a big deal out of it I don’t think I would attach much symbolic significance to what is just another sci-fi superpower. Morgan Freeman didn’t object to Batman bringing paramilitary vigilante justice to New York City, why is spying and phone tapping a line that shouldn’t be crossed? By showing that line being crossed and making Batman right, the film is very much making the argument that some civic norms need to be broken to protect us from the real Jokers out there.
“In fact, if the story didn’t make such a big deal out of it I don’t think I would attach much symbolic significance to what is just another sci-fi superpower”
That’s so true. If no one had said anything about it, I would have just chalked it up to “Batman being Batman” and not question it, like the fact that a grown man feels the need to run around in a bat costume.
That said, I would take issue with describing Batman as using “paramilitary vigilante justice” if only for the fact that as one man operating alone, he is no paramilitary, however high-tech his gadgets are. More importantly, vigilante justice and spying on people are two distinct issues, each carrying different moral and political implications. So it would be, I think, entirely consistent for one to support the one while opposing the other; I mean, that’s the point of drawing lines in the first place.
“Vigilante violence in the name of the state…I dunno. That seems pretty straightforward to me.”
But how many superheroes can you list who literally report to agents of the State? As opposed to going to them for intel, etc., before said superheroes go off and do whatever the hell they want to do?
Charles said:
“And I don’t see why the celebration of the revolutionary in leftist thought isn’t also a celebration of violence.”
If Brecht’s MOTHER COURAGE is not calling for violent resistance channeled through a revolutionary spirit, then the play makes no sense at all.
Lest it not be clear, I’m agreeing with Charles in this one respect.
“But how many superheroes can you list who literally report to agents of the State? As opposed to going to them for intel, etc., before said superheroes go off and do whatever the hell they want to do?”
I dunno, many superheroes on the DC side have been known to enjoy a very healthy relationship with the State. On the one hand you have Aquaman (a king of Atlantis), and Green Lantern who, whichever he is (and it is a he), is invariably an intergalactic space cop. But even the ostensible lone ranger Batman has been known to collude with the top brass of the police as we’re assured of the decency and incorruptibility of the GCPD commissioner. In between this you have figures who may operate outside of government, but whose actions are clearly sanctioned if not explicitly commended by the State. I personally question their vigilante credentials at this point.
On the Marvel side, it’s both hilarious and disturbing how much their characters have since sold themselves to the State. While Spider-man (one of the few, it seems, that may legitimately said to be an actual vigilante) is still doing his thing in NYC, we have the Avengers, whose movie version is basically a government strike force, an element lifted from the Ultimate comics, along with Samuel L. Jackson. Though I haven’t paid much attention to them lately, the militia that is the X-Men had very recently gone as far as to become a state unto themselves during the whole “mutants are an endangered species” nonsense.
My God. I think it’s become worse.
Slip on the slope much? Noah’s squishy thesis reminds me of all those terrible high school policy debate arguments where any change to the status quo would inevitably result in nuclear annihilation.
Noah starts with “Superheroes conflate goodness with hitting things.” an idea, although incomplete (supervillains conflate evil with hitting things) and oversimplified (superheroes are just as much about outsmarting or working harder than the bad guy as they are about hitting the bad guy.)
But how the hell does ” For the superhero genre, the best person in the world is the one with the greatest power” follow from the first statement? There certainly isn’t any preponderance of evidence for that being the case.
Now Noah goes ass over teakettle down the slope “A world in which force and goodness are one and the same” Uh, when did we enter this world exactly? The existence of two distinct qualities in a person, even a fictional one, do not make the two qualities equivalent or unified. Noahs make an assertion here, but he never really makes a case.
“and both always triumph is a world in which you’re essentially worshipping force” It’s no wonder Noah qualifies “worshipping” with “essentially” here, because even he must realize that the argument needs a bit of wiggle room to make any sense. It’s no coincidence that Cooper (perhaps quoting Seagle, perhaps offering his own interpretation of Seagle) the same word in his article (“Superman triumphs by being able to move faster and hit harder than everyone else: essentially a fascist concept.”)
“and the worship of force is, as Richard Cooper pointed out last week in Salon, a good thumbnail description of fascism.” “Thumbnail description”: this too reads to me like a qualification made necessary by an argument that has stretched to its breaking point. There certainly isn’t an plain language meaning of fascism in which “worship of force” would be adequate to define the word. Celebration of force, particularly military force, is certainly an element of fascism, but it certainly isn’t sufficient to determine whether something is or isn’t fascist. Perhaps this is some jargonistic use of the term by specialists in one academic discipline or another, if so, that might explain so much of the reaction against the article. Ask the man on the street what fascism is, he’ll think of Hitler ranting and jackbooted marching, and genocide, not Superman.
Of course, that may be because the propagandists behind superheroes are too clever to show the more negative side of fascism. Thank goodness we have a few committed deep readers able to suss it all out rather than be deluded like the sheep that make up most of humanity.
How can there be a slippery slope when I say that the superhero comics don’t necessarily support fascism? The thesis is that the comics are not fascist. Fascism is one important thing they talk about, but not necessarily to support it, or propagandize it, or lead people to evil. There’s no slip. There’s no slope. Unless you count folks reading the thing and sliding into whatever conclusion they decided I must have come to.
I feel like everybody is happier reading the essay they wanted me to write than they could ever be with the one I actually wrote.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premises. The entire first two paragraphs of your essay make strong assertions equating superheroes and fascism. You even go out of your way to explain how the nobility inherent in superhero narratives is quite possibly due to propagandists downplaying the negative aspects of fascism.
Sure the last paragraph of your essay starts “Superhero narratives, then, are about fascism”. On its face you’re right, that doesn’t come right out and say that comics are fascist, but the sentence finishes “[Superhero narratives then are about…]the glorification of violence as the good” Your entire first paragraph is a series of assertions that conclude that the glorification of violence as the good is, “essentially” fascism.
Is there really any wonder that there might be some confusion as to whether you think superheroes are fascist or not?
I’m specifically reacting to an essay in which the writer said superhero comics are fascist. And my reaction is that superhero comics can be fascist, but aren’t necessarily; that they deal with fascism and think about fascism, sometimes to endorse vigilante violence and sometimes to reject it.
This is silly though. You want to be upset about whatever it is you want to be upset about, go ahead. Knock yourself out.
I’m not the slightest bit upset about anything. Amused? Absolutely.
I too am specifically reacting to an essay in which the writer said superhero comics are fascist. Until he didn’t, until he did it again in the same sentence.
Well, glad you’re entertained anyway.
On a less snarky note, I do appreciate that you posted the essay, and are willing to entertain comments on it. Also, I generally appreciate what you do here with the site. I often read it, but rarely have the time necessary to comment.
I am really interested in the notion that glorification of violence, or equating violence with goodness are sufficient for defining fascism. It seems to me to be an overly broad definition.
As someone said upthread, the definition of fascism can be a bit slippery. I think the embrace of violence and strength as good coupled with vigilantism in the name of law and order seems like it qualifies, though.
Mywa said:
“many superheroes on the DC side have been known to enjoy a very healthy relationship with the State”
With agents of the State, perhaps, but not always with the State itself. One can certainly find instances where particular heroes have been ideologically aligned to the State itself, as with the example of Iron Man, at least in his earliest period. Yet even if its “anti-Commie” period there appeared storylines in which Iron Man continually avoided coming clean to congressional investigations, not because they were evil Mccarthy-ites but because the character wanted to remain independent for whatever reasons.
Working with certain, carefully selected agents of the State is not the same as working with the State as such, as Noah defined it:
“Vigilante violence in the name of the state”
No, it’s vigilante violence in support of life and against whatever threats are deemed injurious to life. Sometimes these are ideological enemies like Communists and sometimes they’re killer adamantium robots.
Aquaman rules Atlantis and frequently butts head with any number of “states” in the surface world, including the United States. If Green Lantern’s a cop, he’s a “Dirty Harry” who keeps tossing his badge away and then being brought back because the State just can’t do without his badass skills.
I would say the key aspect of fascism is that of ideological unity; decide for yourself if that fits the majority of superheroes.
“The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.”–Wikipedia.
Again, Gene; I”m not arguing all superheroes are fascists. I’m saying that it’s a possibility and an ideology that supehero narratives think about, either to flirt with it or to reject it. The fact that there’s negotiation about what the state is and how the heroes relate to it is not a contradiction of what I’m saying.
“No, it’s vigilante violence in support of life and against whatever threats are deemed injurious to life.”
That’s a description of the Klan’s ideology, too. Not that supeheroes are the Klan (they’re not, for the most part), but what similarities there are not refuted by saying that supeheroes claim they’re doing right.
And neither are similarities between the political aims of the Klan and those of MOTHER COURAGE. Or any two entities, real or fictional, striving for supremacy by whatever means they employ.
I’m not addressing–at present– the “claim to be doing right” at all. At present I’m only concerned with the question of whether the actions of heroes can be viewed as defenses of the State when diegetically the heroes are not agents of the State. And tangentially, whether a battle against a killer adamantium robot means the same thing as a battle against a Commie rabble-rouser.
Sometimes they are diegetically agents of the state though.
Also, the thing about fascist vigilante violence is that the violence is in the name of law and order and the state. It’s not necessarily actually in collusion with the state (the Klan was illegal,and lynchings were technically illegal as well.) The issue is that superheroes claim to be using violence in the name of law and order, that order being linked to the state (sometimes while wearing the flag.) Rorschach is fighting in the name of law and order and Harry Truman, rather than in the name of a people’s utopia, which is why his violence is fascist.
If superheroes were promoting insurgent violence, you could actually see them as more like Che or Mother Courage. I can’t really think of anytime this happens…? Maybe in Marvel Civil Wars? Somebody whose read more superhero comics than me could maybe think of something.
“And tangentially, whether a battle against a killer adamantium robot means the same thing as a battle against a Commie rabble-rouser.”
It depends on the context of the comic, probably. Which is what I say in the essay.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
gene phillips said: [stuff]
When I say the DC heroes have historically enjoyed a healthy relationship with the State, I really do mean with the State, its peoples and its power mechanism. I think even enjoying a relationships with highly placed “agents” of the State indicates a healthy relationship with the State, carefully placed or not. Heck, I don’t even know how, in their capacity as “agent” of the State, that can’t be the case, unless their interactions with the hero were clandestine and disapproved of; to be an “agent” of something is inherently to act on its behalf. They are a walking metonym of the State. And in Batman’s case, we’re talking about a character who traditionally has a searchlight with his symbol on it operated by the GCPD. That seems like a pretty cosy relationship to me.
I’m talking Superman as authority figure beaming in front of American flags while fictional mayors or presidents of the US commend him from time to time and proclaim him defender of “Truth Justice, and the American Way.” I don’t say these things (entirely) lightly – Superman’s my favourite Superhero., but it amuses me how a roughneck socialist crusader for the dispossessed from two Jewish kids can be co-opted to become a stalwart authority figure and State-approved champion of (middle-)American values in such short order. I think Frank Miller expressed similar amusement in The Dark Knight Returns.
Kim Jong-un is the leader of North Korea and frequently butts heads with any number of “states” in the Western world, especially the United States. Aquaman was added (like the X-Men) not because he represents alignment with our state (although his clashes seem much less meaningful than X-Men’s), but because as head of a State whose rule is not really contested much ideologically, diagetically or in a meta-narrative sense (to my knowledge; I don’t particularly care for Aquaman, so I could be wrong), very much represents violence and power fantasy linked to a ruling authority. This is a little different from most of the other examples where the characters align ideologically with “our” State interests, but no less relevant to the topic being discussed.
As for Green Lantern, he can grandstand and be as “Dirty Harry” as he wishes – you said it yourself, he remains a cop because the cosmic authority is willing to tolerate his infractions as they clearly do nothing to subvert their order, so it’s ultimately tantamount to letting a rambunctious adolescent have his way every once in a while. Imagine, being an indispensable part of the State’s policing arm due to your “badass skills” and because your exploits and desires do little to challenge the pre-existing power structure (which you are a part of) in any meaningful way. What an exhilarating, quid-pro-quo power fantasy!
I agree that a key aspect of fascism is ideological unity and have decided a number of superheroes easily fit that particular criterion.
(…Again, this is why I oughtn’t post comments on this site!)
“Maybe in Marvel Civil Wars? Somebody whose read more superhero comics than me could maybe think of something.”
It’s odd. I didn’t think that much of it at the time (I’m not sure I think that much of it now), but Marvel’s Civil War is far and away the best of the line-wide superhero comics from either company in the past decade. Coincidence? You decide.
“Sometimes they are diegetically agents of the state though.”
These would be the characters who are strongly implicated in a political worldview, then, and they would be either “flirting” with the idea of being incarnations of the State or absolutely committed to it, as you intimate in this phrase:
“an ideology that supehero narratives think about, either to flirt with it or to reject it.”
I think what I and a few other posters have been objecting to is a tendency in your essay to emphasize the flirtations and de-emphasize the rejections. Moreover, in many cases “rejection” isn’t even an adequate term, as the matter of political alignment doesn’t even come up in the diegesis(cf. Doctor Strange, for one). I guess if one is dedicated enough to “the political unconscious” of Jameson, one can find political scenarios in any narrative. As you may guess, I disagree with such readings.
Mywa said:
“As for Green Lantern, he can grandstand and be as “Dirty Harry” as he wishes – you said it yourself, he remains a cop because the cosmic authority is willing to tolerate his infractions as they clearly do nothing to subvert their order, so it’s ultimately tantamount to letting a rambunctious adolescent have his way every once in a while.”
Well, I said that the authorities would bring GL back to the fold because they couldn’t do without him, which is not quite the same thing as tolerating the hero’s tantrums. It’s a power fantasy, all right, but it’s one in which the hero, despite his occasional failings, shows himself to be the center of the cosmos and the upholder of life. That’s precisely why I don’t find the heroes to represent “ideological unity;” they’re close to being solipsistic in their emphasis upon the individual ego. Not that one can’t find the same ego-fantasies imbedded in many more allegedly sophisticated works, including those that purport to be “liberal.”
Good point re: Aquaman. It’s true that the reader may not feel any sense of conflict when he opposes the interests of Atlantis to those of the US, in part because Atlantis is imaginary. But the focus is still upon negotiating power between different political entities, as opposed to Aquaman doing what a characteristic fascist would do: deciding issues strictly through the implementation of violence.
There are lots of narratives that reject fascism in various ways. Watchmen, the original Wonder Woman, pretty much any superhero parody, the Civil War storyline, etc.
Dr. Strange is an interesting example. It’s kind of a hybrid genre (superhero and fantasy) which perhaps accounts in part for why these issues to feel relatively distant there. It’s been a while since I read it, so I don’t know that I don’t think I can do a reading without maybe going back and looking at it again.
Here’s the last thing I wrote about Dr. Strange, fwiw.
I’m asserting that the rejection process is amply present in what some would call the “normative” superhero work. But if you don’t see it, you don’t see it.
No,no; I think that’s the case. The Siegel/Shuster Superman comics have a lot of push/pull around fascism, trying to turn the fascist superman into a lefty semi-socialist New Dealer. I don’t think they’re entirely successful, but I wouldn’t say they’re entirely unsuccessful either.
The relationship between the head of state and the people is key feature of any 20th century political system.
In fascism, the people is conceived as an extension of the will of the head of state, usually because said person supposedly knows what’s best for the people.
In a democracy, the head of state is supposed to act according to the will of the people, and are accountable to the people for their actions.
I’ve got a cold, and can’t think of examples in which superhero comics engage with this relationship… I’ll try to return when my face is less filled with stuff, and my brain in better shape.
Also, it seems weird to suggest that Wonder Woman and Watchmen aren’t “normative”, or are odd or out of the mainstream or whatever. Those are two of the most popular and influential superhero comics in history. One of the interesting things (to me) about the superhero genre is how absolutely central parody and critique is to it, right from the beginning.
By “normative” I mean something like Schopenhauer’s definition of the “serious” as opposed to the “ludicrous:”
“The opposite of laughter and joking is seriousness. This, accordingly, consists in the consciousness of the perfect agreement and congruity of the concept, or the idea, with what is perceptive, with reality. The serious person is convinced that he conceives things as they are, and that they are as he conceives them. This is just why the transition from profound seriousness to laughter is particularly easy, and can be brought about by trifles.”—Arthur Schopenhauer, WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION (trans. Payne), p. 99.
Parodies and ironies such as you mention are inverted versions of the serious or normative. WONDER WOMAN is at heart a serious work, in the sense that it matters whether or not the hero wins her battles, but the series includes a heaping helping of ludicrous diversions that dispel some of the expected serious tone.
BTW, if there was a superhero series where the character ran away helping insurgents throw off their chains– wouldn’t that still be a case of “might makes right?”
That seems like a really largely useless distinction when you’re talking about superhero comics, where ludicrous absurdity is a big part of the reason for and the pleasure of the genre. Maybe that’s part of why parodies are so central to the form, though.
Isaac, well, obviously we completely disagree. The elevator scene from Drive, for example, is probably the best remembered and oft-cited bit. I regularly heard from friends and read articles that expressed shock at it. It seems to me that you’re not happy with narratives the present ambiguity while maybe not coming down on your own side of the fence. The Searchers and Straw Dogs don’t really express my view of things, but neither is propaganda. They suggest many things, some of them troubling, and allow you to make up your own mind about them. Conservative art can be open, too. … Not that Drive is particularly ideologically inclined, unless you call entertainment an ideology (it is, in a way). But the way it ties into the other, more ideologically inclined narratives, is that its use of the violence (as in the elevator scene) is meant to horrify the viewer at the same time as it exists within an entertaining film — so, de facto, the violence is also there to entertain. The violent act is both entertaining and horrifying, not simply one or the other. Refn’s one of the better exploitation directors working today.
“that present”
And I agree with Dean (no surprise there).
Since you Noah have expressed earlier your conviction that superheroes are all about absurdity, I was pretty sure that would be the way you’d go. I’ll just point out that just because you find them absurd, that doesn’t mean that their readers do.
For myself I maintain that every genre– which may be the same as what you’re calling a “form”– inevitably generates parodies and that they’re all founded on finding humor in elements that someone somewhere takes seriously.
Every genre has parodies, but the parodies aren’t then part of the genre. For example, parodies of pop music aren’t pop music, usually; they’re something else. Parodies of romance aren’t romances; they’re something else. And so forth. Sci-fi parodies can be sci-fi, but they’re nowhere near as central to the genre as superhero parodies are to the superhero genre. Many (most?) of the most important, critically acclaimed, and popular superhero comics have been parodies and critiques (Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, Watchmen, Miracleman, the Batman TV show, arguably the Dark Knight, Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol…I’m sure there are more.) Even the Lee/Kirby comics were meta-romps in large part; Lee’s writing always deliberately verged on self-parody, it seems like.
I think absurdity and goofiness and fun have been central to lots of supehero comics, and appeal to superhero comics audiences, pretty much. The line you’re drawing between serious fans and snooty condescending critics (which is I presume where you’re going) seems like it doesn’t hold up all that well to me. I mean, Iron Man is pretty light-hearted, and that sells exponentially better than any dark vicious superhero comic. For that matter, Marvel Zombies was wildly successful, right? Trying to draw a ring around serious superhero comics and making them the center of the genre seems like it (a) cuts out a lot of what’s most interesting about superhero comics and, (b) has little to do with which superhero narratives have been most popular and most influential.
I mean, you’re willing to defend sex and violence from highbrow critics, but somehow slapstick is to be scorned? Come on now.
For me genre parodies are an integral part of the genre parodied, which is one reason I don’t give superhero parodies any special status. As Schopenhauer more or less argues, “serious” works are those wherein the reader can see a congruity between the idea proposed by (say) a narrative and the reality in which they dwell. This doesn’t mean that the reader has any delusion that Captain America is real, but rather than he thinks that the ideals the Captain represents are serious matters for his life and culture.
That’s the only thing I’m getting at with my line about “elements that someone somewhere takes seriously.” I think that you and other critics may have overvalued the non-serious elements of the superhero genre, but I can’t claim that it’s true only of comics critics. There are probably critics out there who view slightly funny westerns like DESTRY RIDES AGAIN better than your basic “serious” oater.
For me it’s not so much “drawing a ring” around the serious stuff, as seeing them on one end of a spectrum, with the explicitly funny stuff at the other end.
I don’t scorn slapstick or funny stuff in the least. But you can find humor in a lot of “straight” narratives, simply because it makes a convenient relief valve for the more grueling moments.
Schopenhauer’s definiton doesn’t provide you with a distinction between parody and non-parody, at least not as you’ve put it. Parodies propose ideas, and folks can take them seriously. Why shouldn’t they?
Again, I don’t think you’re right to say that parodies are always part of the genre of which they’re a part. It really depends. Genre definitions are always up for grabs, of course, but as far as I can tell, romance parodies (which actually make fun of the idea that two people getting together is worth talking about or profound or whatever) really don’t exist, pretty much — at least not as part of what people consider the romance genre (though romance is often funny or comic.) Similarly, as I talked about here, there’s not a whole lot of space in dance pop for parody. Whereas, again, many of the most important and critically acclaimed superhero narratives are parodies or critiques of one form or another. Parody’s really central to the form.
An example of what I think Schopenhauer means by “the idea” might be summed up by the visual trope of the superhero cape. In a “serious” superhero narrative the cape-image projects into the reader’s mind associations of dignity and power. Most serious superhero narratives will not show it to be an impediment, not even the humorous CAPTAIN MARVEL. It did happen once in CAPTAIN AMERICA, but though it was funny it wasn’t an attack on the visual trope– as it is when WATCHMEN does a bit about a hero getting killed when his cape is caught in something-or-other.
It’s not that there are no ideas in parody works; its that their primary function is to invert meanings. That doesn’t make them secondary, but it does make them interdependent with the serious stuff.
There are genres which aren’t friendly to parody because of the makeup of their readership, but that doesn’t mean that the relationship doesn’t exist. Horror films, for instance, are far more friendly to parody than romance stories. That only means that the audience likes horror parodies and the romance audience does not.
“That only means that the audience likes horror parodies and the romance audience does not.”
??? On what basis do you deny any possible formal or thematic meaning exactly? That seems like kind of a huge stretch.
Besides, genres are importantly defined by audience. Saying, “horror film audiences just like parody” is like saying “Horror film audiences just like horror films.” It’s tautological.
All genre works are interdependent. You can’t know what the cape means without reference to other works in the genre. That’s what a trope is. Again, the distinction you want to make between non-parody and parody isn’t convincing to me.
“On what basis do you deny any possible formal or thematic meaning exactly? That seems like kind of a huge stretch.”
I’m not denying formal or thematic meaning, but they aren’t the source of any genre’s appeal. In the same way I don’t recognize violence in superhero comics– or any adventure genre– to be rooted in its political manifestations. *Those* I do consider to be of a secondary nature. The appeal of violence has its source in human fascination with transgressive behavior, as Bataille states in EROTISM.
My comment about audiences is not tautological in that it’s made on a comparative basis, suggested by your statements on the romance and SF genres. It’s quite possible that in most era the adherents of those genres haven’t been deeply devoted to parody forms of their favored genres, but that doesn’t say anything essential about the genres themselves; only about the audiences. This may be demonstrable in that some period-audiences may be friendlier than others to parody forms. One may find more SF parodies in, say, the 1960s than the 1940s. That would also be one of the reasons I wouldn’t credence defining the superhero in terms of absurdity or “critique” concepts. Assuming that we could agree on where this yardstick applies and where it doesn’t– I can tell you right now that I don’t deem Cole’s PLASTIC MAN a comedy, just a work with many comedic elements– the essentialist definition of the superhero genre in terms of “comic absurdity” or whatever you’re calling it is one that is disproved by the fluctuations of audience taste. I mean, maybe as you say the current IRON MAN is being played for more humor– I wouldn’t know– but it lasted for the first forty years or so as a pretty sober-sided feature with only middling dollops of humor.
“they aren’t the source of any genre’s appeal”
Who says? And why not? If many of the most popular examples of a genre are parodies, then why isn’t that part of the genre’s appeal? And on what basis do you claim there’s a universal genre appeal anyway? You’re making fairly sweeping statements about who likes what and why, but I don’t see any evidence, nor even any even marginally logical basis for those statements.
“that doesn’t say anything essential about the genres themselves; only about the audiences”
Again, genres are largely defined by what audiences think that genres are. Separating form and audience like this doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not trying to define superheroes by parody. I don’t think formal definitions of genres are particuarly useful. I am saying that parody has long been central to the genre, and that ignoring that in order to create some sort of platonic core untouched by parody or critique is silly. I’ll stick by that.
““they aren’t the source of any genre’s appeal”
Maybe you can get what I’m saying if I add stars to stand in for italics:
“they aren’t *the* source of any genre’s appeal”
Emphasis needed because I think that *you* have privileged the parody-potential of the superhero genre, even if you haven’t advanced a full “definition” in those terms. Thus I have no problem with saying that parody is a “part of the genre’s appeal,” as per my statement that puts them on the same level, like two ends of a spectrum:
(me)”Parodies and ironies such as you mention are inverted versions of the serious or normative.”
But mere seconds after you claim that I don’t want the parody-stuff to be “part of the genre’s appeal,” you make an argument that that stuff is central to the genre:
“I am saying that parody has long been central to the genre.”
This is a “sweeping statement” which I would like to see modified, though I don’t imagine I’ll change your priorities any more than you will mine. The examples that you choose to prove centrality are no more logical than any of mine; they just make sense to you because, well, they’re yours.
I could do a whole essay on the problems of defining a genre by what the critics like about it, but obviously, not here.
“Separating form and audience like this doesn’t make any sense.”
Not “separating;” acknowledging that the form is dependent on the audience’s preferences, which are mutable.
“I don’t think formal definitions of genres are particularly useful.”
Well, they’re useful for getting debates started, but if you want enough heat to light a fire, you’re better off with a Zippo lighter.
To say it’s long been historically central to the genre’s appeal is not sweeping. It’s a verifiable statement of fact. The Batman TV show was hugely, mammothly popular. Watchmen is probably the most important comic critically of the last 30 years. Etc. Certainly there have been non-parodies that have been popular too, but I don’t think I ever denied that. I’m saying that parody is unusually central to the superhero genre, and has been since Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman started outselling Superman.
Edit: I cut unnecessary snark. Sorry about that.
What critics like is only one way to think about genre. What’s popular is another. I think insisting that one is the only way to go is silly. But I think denying the importance of either isn’t convincing either.
I see your Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Batman TV show– all series that started out with an antic sense of humor, though not really “critiques of fascism” in my book– and I raise you the original Batman and Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Captain America, and the Doll Man. (With a name like that you’d think he’d be full o’fun, but nope, just marginal humor, like the others.)
Parody is not central to any of these properties, some of which were popular for long periods, some for shorter ones. If as I believe the majority of superhero properties in most eras has been serious in tone, then it’s impossible– and unncessary– to see the funny and/or ironic stuff as “central.” Why not just say that it’s an important “part” of the genre, rather than its “center?” Unless you’re trying to gore some particular ox, of course.
“Whereas, again, many of the most important and critically acclaimed superhero narratives are parodies or critiques of one form or another. Parody’s really central to the form.”
I don’t see you validating popular tastes there in any way; hence my remark about the problems of following only what the critics like about a genre.
The basic failure of the whole “superheroes as fascist” is that anyone advocating it will inevitably read almost everything through the hermeneutics of deceit, and yet insist that whenever the text “really” represents the author’s theme, *then* the text really means what it says.
Thus if Captain America breaks up a Commie spy ring, that’s taken as proof that superheroes are fascist.
But if Green Lantern saves the whole universe from being destroyed, that must be re-read through political lenses until it proves that he has defended the status quo in so doing.
I don’t think Doll Man is a particularly convincing response. Is he especially popular? Has he ever been? (Batman Dark Knight seems like a much better example; it’s both dour and extremely popular.)
Anyway, Superman and Batman have both drifted towards parody often throughout their existence; all those nutty 50s and 60s goofball stories (such as the one with Flash getting a giant head.)
Re; green lantern…if he’s saving the universe, then that is in fact protecting the status quo. You don’t need to read deep to see that. He’s fighting for law and order and keeping things the same. You can argue about whether or not maintaining the status quo is a good thing, but I don’t see any way you can argue that maintaining the status quo is not what he’s doing.
I mentioned Doll Man because he enjoyed a very good run, which indicates that the readership was following him consistently from 1939 to 1953. If you go purely by longevity, he did a little better than some of the better known costumed heroes, many of whom got cancelled in the late 1940s. Not that longevity is the only possible measure of success, obviously. But the point is that from the POV of the 21st century, it’s easy to forget some of the successes of the period in favor of works that have received more critical attention, like that other Quality success, PLASTIC MAN.
If you want to judge what is “best,” I have no quarrel with a critic ignoring Doll Man and his kindred. But I think we were addressing what was characteristic as a whole, so you can’t just deal with “the best.”
I’d need a whole essay to demonstrate why saving the universe is not the same as preserving the status quo, so we can let that one go.
You’d need considerably more than an essay, I think. Since preserving the universe is in fact preserving the status quo.
There are some genre works that place the hero as fighting against the status quo. The original Star Wars trilogy is about heroic rebellion, is maybe the most popular example. This almost never happens in superhero narratives though. Maybe in some future past arcs where evil has won and superheroes are a resistance?
Grant Morrison’s Invisibles I guess is a counter-example too, at least to some degree.
Oh, and I didn’t realize Doll Man did quite so well. Fair enough.
@mywa And what is wrong with superheroes becoming agents of state? If superheroes existed isn’t that the kind of thing we would want?
“And what is wrong with superheroes becoming agents of state? If superheroes existed isn’t that the kind of thing we would want?”
Well, not necessarily. Would we really want superpowered individuals flying into the south side of Chicago in order to enforce the drug war and put even more young black men in prison for non-violent offenses? Or formed into phalanxes to invade whichever middle eastern nation we feel like invading this week? or professor X helping the NSA do searches for terrorists?
The state can sometimes do good things, but it isn’t a good guy. Which is why superheroes being presented as both avatars of law and order and as good guys can be unfortunate (though, again, it doesn’t have to be, since some superhero writers are aware of these issues and use supehero narratives to deal with them.)
I understand but having (mostly) anonymous people with such kind of power taking law into their hands doesn’t seem to me as preferable option.
True. It is propably the reason why so many Superman plots since the reboot focus on his conflicts with American goverment.
I also wanted to add that you are right about superhero narratives very rarely focusing on fighting the status quo, which is a shame since I think superhero concept works best in them but it is rather impossible due to never-ending nature of Marvel and DC superhero franchises. You can’t really tell stories about heroes trying to change bad status quo while achieving little to no progress without it enventually becoming overly depressing and repetetive. Sooner or later, status quo changes for the better so much it will become about things not getting worse.
Other than those “bad guys won in the future” stories, there is Batman: Year One, pretty much anything Marvel during Dark Reign and I guess Daredevil maybe? I mean, his main enemy is the Kingpin and him being powerful crimelord is a status quo that Daredevil is fighting against but I’m pretty sure he has a lot of stories where he’s just stopping things from getting worse.
Quick refutation, though it passes over a lot of fun wrangling:
If Green Lantern saves the entire universe, he has not saved ONLY the status quo. He has also saved every possible element in the universe that may conceivably overthrow the status quo. Since those elements are part of the whole package, Green Lantern cannot be said to have saved the status quo since he has also saved everything capable of destroying the status quo.
Of course, if the status quo COULD be destroyed, you would just have another status quo, world without end. But the alternative to that is non-existence.
Do you deem all forms of order in the universe to be “status quo?”
Is the air you breathe “the status quo?”
Nope, that doesn’t do it, Gene. Any status quo is heterogeneous. When you’re fighting to keep things the same, you’re fighting to keep things the same. I guess it would depend on the particular narrative at hand, but (for example) in Crisis on Infinite Earths, the destruction of the universe is embodied in the anti-monitor, who’s basically a super-villain; opposite of all that is good (monitor, anti-monitor, whatever.) So fighting to save the universe is figured basically as just another especially big battle against bad guys who are trying to change who’s in charge. They’re evil rebels, a la Shakespeare (who also always supported the status quo.)
I think you’d have to talk about a particular green lantern story, but this is how a lot of destroying the universe stories work. It’s just a big, impressive way of saying “you’re going to destroy the status quo!”
Again, there’s plenty of good reasons not to want to destroy the status quo; revolutions are pretty horrible, and not worth the bloodshed almost ever (imo). And it’s not like there isn’t lots of great art about maintaining the status quo (see Shakespeare.) But saving the universe in the name of law and order is a conservative impulse in most of the narratives I can think of (though, again, if you have a particular counter-example, that would be interesting.)
I guess it would be more ambiguous if the end of the universe were figured as a natural disaster. But that’s almost never the case in superhero narratives, I don’t think. Superhero narratives like their supervillains.
“So fighting to save the universe is figured basically as just another especially big battle against bad guys who are trying to change who’s in charge.”
Obliterating the universe so that no one exists to be either chiefs or Indians is not in any way homologous with fighting over who’s in charge. This is the logical problem you always encounter when you reduce all phenomena to their political aspects. That’s why I ask if you thought that basic fundamentals of ordered life, like being able to breathe or take substance, were aspects of the status quo. Thanks for your indirect answer of “yes.”
Superhero narratives like their supervillains because in real life human beings suffer far more from human villainy than from natural disasters. It’s a measured choice, I suppose, based on one’s own experience, but I would have to say that even though I live down in hurricane territory, hurricanes do not levy the same extent or type of suffering, as, say, Stalinism.
BTW, when re-reading part of the essay I did see you calling the formula of “superheroes win by hitting evil harder” as the default position of the genre. So would that not mean that the formula I have called “normative” is more pervasive than the “critique formula?”
Maybe you should re-think the image of the critique formula’s position. If you don’t like my spectrum-image, perhaps sticking them at the top of a pyramid would suit you better. But the center (hah) will not hold.
“Superhero narratives like their supervillains because in real life human beings suffer far more from human villainy than from natural disasters.”
Oh, man, that’s hysterical. Because of course it’s ridiculous to map politics onto superhero narratives, but it’s simple to just determine what “real life” is, and instantly figure out how that maps onto super-hero narratives.
Also, that’s simply untrue, as I’m sure folks in Haiti would tell you. For that matter, I’m sure cancer can beat even Stalin over the long haul.
Now, if you want to argue that people tend to focus more on villainy than on natural disasters for various reasons, that may be. Hard to say. Superhero narratives do…which is a genre choice, not a simple explication of how-things-are. For pete’s sake. You do get that the guiding principle of superhero comics is not realism, right?
“Obliterating the universe so that no one exists to be either chiefs or Indians is not in any way homologous with fighting over who’s in charge.”
It’s crisis on infinite earth which equates the two; it’s not my fault. Again, most other superhero fighting-for-the-universe tend to equate them as well. If you can think of a counterexample, I’d be interested to hear it. But calling me stupid in this instance just suggests that you think superhero comics are stupid, which I presume is not what you’re trying to do.
“It’s crisis on infinite earth which equates the two; it’s not my fault. Again, most other superhero fighting-for-the-universe tend to equate them as well. If you can think of a counterexample, I’d be interested to hear it. But calling me stupid in this instance just suggests that you think superhero comics are stupid, which I presume is not what you’re trying to do.”
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS isn’t any kind of paragon of brilliance, but I don’t think that it ever suggests that the Anti-Monitor is going to institute a new status quo. He’s just out to waste everything, period. This makes it a patently non-political threat given that nobody’s party is going to be “in charge.”
I haven’t denied that there are many, many superhero narratives that do boil down to “who’s in charge?” I admitted that when I said that there were many stories about Captain America busting Commies or Nazis. But there are also more apocalyptic stories– about Anti-Monitors, about adamantium robots– that don’t reduce to a political spectrum.
I haven’t called you stupid, or even implied it. I just think you’re letting ideological readings overwhelm logic in certain cases.
I don’t think that it erases a political reading. Revolution is often figured as just evil destruction by folks in power. I think the anti-monitor fits that well enough.
Again, if there’s a narrative where it is really the end of the universe as a kind of natural disaster, I think that would get out of the good guy/bad guy law and order meme. I don’t know of any that do that, but they may exist.
Actually, thinking about this more; the anti-monitor is (if I remember right) in the Galactus tradition of resource extraction. So it’s basically an imperialist narrative, which fits into the long sci-fi tradition of Western paranoid fantasies of what would happen to us if someone came along and treated us the way we treat the rest of the world. (More on that here.) Not exactly fascist (though the paranoia about outside attack and corruption and traitors can be seen as part of a kind of status quo justification for violence, I suppose — especially since there are traitors in crisis if I remember right.)
I wonder if what’s at heart here is less a conversation of superheros and fascism and more a superheros and power, Foucault-style one (not to go all fancy names here).
Every relationship a superhero has is about power, whether being able to hit the hardest and thus win victory- or being able to reject power and thus not create a fascist state.
The fascism of the first of the 20th c., the Communism of the second half, and the unchecked Capitalism of the 21st are all equally inherently carried as part of the superhero genre and critiqued by it simultaneously.
Bruce Wayne was born in the time of Fascism, but I’d say has become much more interesting a figure in relationship to capitalism. Because the superhero is about relationships to power-all kinds of power. Fascism just being a single type of power and one not more inherently connected to the genre than those that followed.
Noah, I know work can promote a message without intent of the author and if the story unintentionaly promotes something harmful or problematic it is failing on the author’s part but aren’t you reaching just a little bit? I don’t think Crisis on Infinite Earths had ever tried to be anything more than a big space opera about people punching stuff and conecting it to Imperialism seems like serious (and I know it’s a problematic term) overthinking. It’s not like anyone’s feelings about Imperialism would be affected by reading that story. This like saying Ninja Assasin promotes cultural assimilation.
I just wanted to a that there is also Batman: Long Halloween. Although, that one is kind of strange in that it seem to be saying that the only way to change a bad status quo is to basicly become the same as the people upholding it. But given that Loeb couldn’t even make the ultimate twist of the story make any sort of sense (kind of a big deal when the entire story is built around that mystery) I doubt that was the intention.
I don’t think it’s promoting imperialism, or even thinking that hard about imperialism. But it’s a story about some powerful outsider coming in and sucking up your resources (a la Galactus.) That’s a long standing sci-fi trope, going back to War of the Worlds more or less…and yeah, it’s about imperialism. As in, literally, that’s what it’s about. The anti-monitor is an outside conqueror who wants to eat the DC universe. Outside conquerors mining your world for its resources is a storyline about imperialism.
“It’s not like anyone’s feelings about Imperialism would be affected by reading that story.”
I’m not sure what this means. The folks who created the thing are using a narrative which gets its energy (such as it is) from imperialism. Like I said, the main reference is almost surely Galactus, which is definitely about resource extraction. To the extent that there’s any interest in the story at all, it’s the imperialist narrative that gives it its reason for being and its logic.
If the point was just for people to stand around hitting each other, they could have had people just stand around and hit each other. They wanted it to have resonance, and so they picked a narrative with resonance (of a sort.) I wouldn’t say it promotes imperialism; more just casually picks up an experience of the marginalized for the non-marginalized. More or less what Orion says often happens in the X-Men (though more half-assed even than that.)
“Revolution is often figured as just evil destruction by folks in power. I think the anti-monitor fits that well enough.”
That’s a forced reading, being dependent on other texts.
A substantive reading need not depend on anything but the text itself. One may bring in other texts for comparison, but never depend on them.
“Actually, thinking about this more; the anti-monitor is (if I remember right) in the Galactus tradition of resource extraction. So it’s basically an imperialist narrative, which fits into the long sci-fi tradition of Western paranoid fantasies of what would happen to us if someone came along and treated us the way we treat the rest of the world. (More on that here.) Not exactly fascist (though the paranoia about outside attack and corruption and traitors can be seen as part of a kind of status quo justification for violence, I suppose — especially since there are traitors in crisis if I remember right.)”
Even if the Galactus trilogy can be seen through a political lens, it’s still not homologous with the Crisis in that, as I remember, the Anti-Monitor also doesn’t give a crap about having resources any more than he wants to have subjects. He just wants everything gone. Maybe I’ll give it a quick re-read for stated motives.
When you say that even a threat to one’s planet or one’s universe can be reduced down to a “status quo justification of violence,” this too is a forced reading, in which you must ignore the text to make it fit the paradigm.
Incidentally, since in this essay and others you have frequently asserted that superhero narratives conflate “goodness” and “power,” here’s an essay to demonstrate that what you claim to be a “conflation” is really just a linkage.
http://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2014/01/theoretical-goodness-practical-violence.html
“Like I said, the main reference is almost surely Galactus, which is definitely about resource extraction.”
But it’s first and foremost about the threat of the universe being destroyed, which is an eschatological threat that goes beyond the political.
I don’t get your Orion/X-Men quote, what’s its source?
“A substantive reading need not depend on anything but the text itself. One may bring in other texts for comparison, but never depend on them.”
Where do you get this crap? All texts rely on other texts for their meaning. Language itself depends on other texts, as does iconography. Without that, you’ve got diddly. I mean, what do you think you’re doing when you talk about “existential threats”? You got that idea the day you were born? It came to you out of a clear blue sky? Or is it an intertextual reference that depends on other literature for its meaning?
Especially in a pulp medium as dependent on recycling tropes as comics, the idea that you can’t look to other texts for meaning is jaw-droppingly ridiculous.
And no, it’s not “first and foremost” about the universe being destroyed. It’s not first and foremost anything. Texts are polysemic, always, and Crisis is way too much of a mess to be unified thematically or ideologically anyway. You could easily see destroying the universe as just an excuse for characters to hit things, or you could argue that it’s primarily about the company trying to rationalize its properties. Or whatever.
Since the main bad guy is destroying the universe in the name of resource extraction, it seems to me that you kind of have to willfully ignore the text to make it about man vs. nature (which is what you’re doing when you claim it’s an existential threat.) This isn’t the old man and the sea; it’s the war of the worlds.
Oh, and Orion’s article is here.
The Final Night crossover was about a natural disaster… the Sun-Eater entity doesn’t have a personality. Galactus is insistently described as being like a force of nature, beyond judgments of good and evil. The Cataclysm/No Man’s Land storyline in Batman was about the aftermath of an earthquake. The Phoenix is a little vague. What about those Cthulhu Mythos gods in Hellboy and other magic/occult comics, beings so alien they’re not relatable?
I haven’t read Hellboy, but Lovecraft is a pretty flagrantly sexist and racist creator; fear of a racial other, or a gendered other, is where he gets a lot of the loathing and horror in his stories. That’s been pointed out by lots of folks, but I talk about it at length here.
Oh, and also here.
While I agree with the thesis in general I want to take aim at a few particulars. (For what it’s worth, I’d say that superheroes merely appeal to the same instincts as fascism, rather than being propaganda, which would some degree of plausibility. You may as well say Adventure Time is monarchist propaganda)
I think though, that the connection only really exists for the classic super-vigilante type of superhero, which many heroes deviate from.
You mentioned Wolverine and that was the one that really didn’t work for me, because I can’t think of the last time I read a Wolverine comic that was about vigilante violence. He’s more in the mold of a Western hero, who refrains from violence until he’s forced to defend himself or take revenge. In Wolverine stories, people who go around looking for fights are assholes at best and psychopaths at worst, the sort of person he worries he is.
And the rest of the X-Men aren’t really vigilantes either, I think they’re the closest thing to what communist superheroes would look like*, hindered only be the fact that they take the liberal/reformist position in the mutant-human conflict. But broadly, the various factions are drawn together by shared ideology rather than shared moral fibre, and prefer to recruit enemies rather than destroy them, resorting to violence only when other people interfere with their political goals. Notably, when they do form straight superhero teams (as in the original X-Men and X-Force runs) it’s explicitly a PR trick – they don’t think beating up criminals will solve anything, but it makes them look good.
Who else, hmm, the various super-monarch stories I’ve read come across as Avatar-esque Western Third Worldist fantasies – the enlightened hidden kingdoms are being always wounded to the point of death by the folly of Americans, despite their superior technology, due to their unwillingness to resort to violence. Or maybe it’s that reverse-colonialist nightmare you mentioned.
And Daredevil is, at it’s best, a comic where law an order is seen as something that by does not natively tend to justice, which must be fought for. More to the point, it’s a comic where violence isn’t enough to solve the case – Born Again would play out exactly the same way if Matt Murdock had beaten The Kingpin to a pulp when they fought – Daredevil can’t just beat up every criminal in New York, he has to expose them and root out corruption. Conversely of course, comics where Matt solves all the crime by beating up all the criminals are superheroics at their most nakedly fascist.
I’ll stop there as this is getting out of hand, but we’ve discussed other examples in this thread – superheroes who are really explorers of the unknown, or sci-fi heroes, or whatever – the point is not all superheroes are vigilantes and it’s only the vigilante kind of violence that’s particularly fascist (the kind that’s it’s own end – that sees the main problem in the world as too many people who should be beaten up but aren’t). If Wolverine is fascist then so are all action movies, and while there might be an argument for that I think there is something uniquely fascist about that ‘classic’ superhero type, the super-vigilante, that makes them worth distinguishing from all the other comic book characters who just happen to wear spandex and get into fights a lot. (Also because, as the examples of Wolverine and action movies show, it’s not necessary, if you want a book about someone who fights a lot, to have a book about someone who goes around looking for fights and thinks by doing so he’s making the world a better place, as Spiderman and Batman both do)
*Okay, I mostly suggested communism so I could make a joke about being in the Brotherhood of Mutants(Evil), not the Evil Mutant Brotherhood, who are almost as bad as those splitters in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. But the X-men are engaged in politics of a sort at any rate, which is something Fascism generally portrays as corrupt – they always know who the villains are, as the X-Men, somewhat uniquely among the cape crowd, frequently don’t.
I’d say the X-Men were pretty directly vigilantes at first; the first Lee/Kirby story doesn’t shilly shally about who’s good and who’s evil (US military — good!)
I think they have actually tried to fiddle with that in various ways over time, as you say.
Lovecraft is surely more interesting than that when it comes to racism. For one, he treats poor white trash in a manner similar to other races. For another, the way he treats the other is as having a relation with the incomprehensible Cthulhu entities that points to the reductive biases of Western science and thought. His message is, again and again, “stupid fucking white man.” Anyway, this doesn’t really get at Yes’ point above, that the Old Ones are beyond ideology and what pomos might call human finitude. Any strictly ideological reading of them is a betrayal of Lovecraft’s horror … and too simplistic.
No, I don’t think that’s true. You’ve read Herbert West: Reanimator, right? Evil black zombie? Hideous Arabs are everywhere in his work. And then there’s the terrifying fear of being the other, which is both feminine and pretty clearly homosexual in Shadow Over Innsmouth.
Robbing Lovecraft of his terror of otherness — particularly of his terror of miscegenation — in the name of some sort of purity of otherness seems like it’s determined to make him a much less interesting writer than he is. People in his books are always being corrupted by what’s out there; maybe he says, oh it’s completely other, but if it’s completely other why are his characters always switching bodies with it?
The reason white men are so fucking stupid is because they keep wanting to interact, have sex with, exchange fluids and bodies and power with, the non-white men out there. Lovecraft’s stories are a repetitive, agonized, desperate declaration of difference that’s always sliding towards corruption. Insisting that the Old Ones have nothing to do with humanity, that all categories are pure, is to make Lovecraft a writer of easy purity. Why that honors his work is something I can’t say I get.
Looking to Lovecraft for the surface statements of how the universe works also seems really banal.
“Where do you get this crap? All texts rely on other texts for their meaning. Language itself depends on other texts, as does iconography. Without that, you’ve got diddly.”
I didn’t say each text was isolated from all others. If I meant that, why would I say that other texts could be used for comparative purposes? But if you apply a reading to a text without looking at what a given text actually says, then no one’s texts are safe, not just the superheroic ones. The same logic that says “Anti-Monitor must equal phony threat” is thus about as valid as picking out Bible passages and saying “grafting plants is sinful, so stem cell research is sinful.”
Lest anyone doubt that the equivalence has been made:
http://www.openbible.info/topics/embryonic_stem_cell_research
“Since the main bad guy is destroying the universe in the name of resource extraction, it seems to me that you kind of have to willfully ignore the text to make it about man vs. nature (which is what you’re doing when you claim it’s an existential threat.) This isn’t the old man and the sea; it’s the war of the worlds.”
If you’re claiming that “resource extraction” is in the text, you should be able to quote stuff to demonstrate its presence. Up to now you’d just been deducing the quasi-imperialist theme from the similarity of CRISIS to THE GALATCTUS TRILOGY. If you have a textual resource, by all means trot it out.
I’ve only started re-reading CRISIS the other night. Haven’t found what I was looking for, but I have found Wolfman and Perez working in a lot of Christian myth-tropes. See, now when I say that a comic book creation RESEMBLES a trope from Christian myth, that’s a comparison. But it’s not allowing the reading to overpower the text.
“Orion’s article”
I was trying to figure out why in the world a New God would be talking about the X-Men– or for that matter, an archaic Greek hero.
“Robbing Lovecraft of his terror of otherness — particularly of his terror of miscegenation — in the name of some sort of purity of otherness seems like it’s determined to make him a much less interesting writer than he is.”
Again, you’re claiming that it has to be all one or the other: all political or all non-political. No writer is interesting only from one restrictive POV.
“No writer is interesting only from one restrictive POV.”
Sure. I don’t disagree with that. I’m happy to hear other interesting readings of Lovecraft. I don’t really find “the world is entirely alien” existential reading either convincing or thoughtful, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to talk about him that could be both.
As an example, Geoff Klock’s book which mostly looks at superhero comics in terms of how they deal with superhero tropes is great. He’s not primarily interested in political readings (though he doesn’t reject them either.)
It could be fun to talk about Lovecraft in terms of naturalist writers like Stephen Crane and Jack London, I suppose. I don’t think that would move you away from political discussions necessarily though (both Crane and London were quite explicitly political writers.)
I prefer to see the horror in Lovecraft as a fear of encountering capital-s substance where Leibnizian pure reason or Kantian categories completely fail us (e.g., all the more-than-can-be-said descriptions of the biological, mathematical and architectural impossibilities). The horror is based on the possibility of a radical otherness, a materialism that suggests the real extends far beyond our anthropomorphic relations. That’s why his reactionary views actually add to the generic affect, whereas an anthropological sympathy wouldn’t make for good horror (it does make for good SF, though). The racism is an instance of the greater metaphysical fear, not the other way around. Which ties into an approach to the alien encounter that’s not the usual “we’re all more alike than different, so let’s ban together to fight the alien”: As a pessimist, he suggests all those others who have been treated as less than human might actually side with the inhuman. If you want to read ideology here, fine, how about a warning against colonialism and a critique of modernist condescension that’s perversely entwined with a racist fear of those who’ve suffer from colonial subjugation? That seems to me a lot more interesting than, once again, saying, “look, racism!,” but your mileage may vary, I guess.
As for the racism itself, I like Michel Houellebecq’s characterization: “This is no longer the WASP’s well-bred racism; it is the brutal hatred of a trapped animal who is forced to share his cage with other different and frightening creatures.”
On these matters, I recommend Harman’s book, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy.
And stop making me agree with Gene.
Charles, anti-colonialism I can see…though anti-colonialism isn’t necessarily anti-racist. An argument that you need to not be colonialist because the colonies are evil and will sap your purity is a longstanding racist trope. (See Walter Benn Michael’s “Our America.”)
I think talking about Lovecraft in terms of difference is fine. I think the suggestion that it’s more original or universal or whatever not to talk about racism is pretty silly, though.
Seems I recommended talking quite a bit about his racism.
And fear of otherness in Lovecraft goes far beyond “sapping your purity” — it’s also a fear that all the categories with which we relate to the world, that which we bring to the ontological table, might fail us completely. That is, there is no purity to be drained. He’s a pessimist.
Fair enough.
““This is no longer the WASP’s well-bred racism; it is the brutal hatred of a trapped animal who is forced to share his cage with other different and frightening creatures.”
That just seems to be saying it’s lower class rather than upper class racism, right?
I think there’s still an imagined purity as goodness though; that’s where the fear comes from. There’s a dream of getting beyond the muck, but it’s impossible, which is the horror. Miscegenation is inevitable, but it’s evilness is still dependent on some view of a world in which no miscegenation is a good, it seems like.
That’s pretty much Noel Carroll’s definition of the monster right there (well, minus the racism): a blending/transgression of categorical distinctions.
“If you’re claiming that “resource extraction” is in the text, you should be able to quote stuff to demonstrate its presence. Up to now you’d just been deducing the quasi-imperialist theme from the similarity of CRISIS to THE GALATCTUS TRILOGY. If you have a textual resource, by all means trot it out.”
Well, whether you Noah intend to check the text or not, I’ve now read 1-4 of CRISIS. And I will give you that the central menace *could* be reduced to a historical phenomenon. But it’s not imperialism, which conceives of binding other cultures into submission. The Anti-Monitor is closer to an incarnation of genocide, as in one issue his expressed motivation is to eliminate all realms but his own. In this sense, if one must Kirby-Kompare, this villain is closer to Annihilus than Galactus. It’s genocide not for motives of racism or “resource extraction,” but for pure solipsistic existence.
I’m finding a new appreciation for the number of Judeo-Christian motifs in CRISIS. A miracle child, a Wandering Jew-figure, and a traitor– though not a political traitor as you Noah may have been remembering above: more like a pre-designated holy executioner a la (who else?) Judas Iscariot.
I’ll expand on these for my blog eventually.
However,
Hmm, not sure what the “however” was there for…
I don’t think genocide and imperialism are necessarily opposed, in most cases. They weren’t for Stalin or Belgium in the Congo…or on and on.
Good for you for going back to check; I don’t know that I can really stomach re-reading those.
I’d forgotten about the wandering child…that’s Alex Luthor, right? Most of the christ stuff seems an offshoot of using the Superman blueprint if I remember right….
I wish our readers should note that Noah Berlatsky did not say that “superheroes are Fascist”. He stated that superheroes were “about” Facsism.
This is something I’ve investigated, in my series ‘Prehistory of the Superhero’.
I think Noah is right — but with strong caveats on my part– which I think Noah would not necessarily denounce.
Yeah,Nazi assholes lurk in my childhood herodom.
Boo hoo
I’m not expert in Belgian Congolese history, but didn’t the Belgies want to keep at least some natives alive to do the heavy labor? I’d deem that imperialism, but not genocide. Ditto Stalin, no matter how many thousands he killed.
Alex,
I can only re-iterate that I don’t think what Noah called “the default position” of the genre is fascist at all.
That’s an extremely idiosyncratic definition of genocide you’ve got there, Gene. Genocide has not generally meant killing every single human being, nor even intending to do so. Generally in humans rights terms the dictionary definition is “The deliberate killing of a large group of people, esp. those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” The Belgian murder of people in the Congo on the basis of skin color counts. So does Stalin’s mass starvation of Ukrainians for being Ukrainian. And both are also absolutely imperialism. As I said, imperialism and genocide very often go together.
Hitler was somewhat unusual in that his genocide did actually seem to have the goal of completely exterminating the group on the receiving end. But Stalin’s genocide was still genocide, and didn’t actually result in significantly fewer deaths (maybe even in more.)
I’ve actually edited a number of books about various genocides. The desire to kill everyone is just not something that is ever a part of any debates on the subject that I’ve ever seen anywhere. Most arguments around the term instead have to do with the issue of “particular ethnicity or nation.” That is, for example, were the mass killings of Communists in Indonesia a genocide (as the several hundred thousand dead suggest), or does it “not count” since people were targeted for their political beliefs rather than their ethnicity? (One of the more interesting pieces I read argued that in the Indonesian context, national anti-Communism had basically become part of the state identity, so Communists were in effect treated as a separate ethnicity rather than as a political party.) Similarly, the UN refused to categorize violence in Darfur as genocide, not because of any arguments around intent to kill all or some (which are completely beside the point) but because there wasn’t enough evidence that the violence was specifically along ethnic or racial lines.
Here’s one of the books I edited; I’ve done a bunch more in this series:
http://www.amazon.com/Kosovo-Genocide-Persecution-Noah-Berlatsky/dp/0737762551
A couple of dictionary definitions define “genocide” as only “the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group,” so no, my definition is not the least bit idiosyncratic.
That said, a lot of people use “genocide” to mean more limited forms of mass execution. Wikipedia seems to be taking this into account with this definition:
“the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”
The distinction “in part” or “in whole” works for me. Normative imperialism is more interested in subduing populaces in order to use them later, so usually they kill lots of people in a given group to pacify the rest.
Non-normative imperialism would be those cases where the authorities in charge decide just to get rid of the whole, which very nearly happened in Tasmania. Though a tiny number of aborigines survived, I would say that was a definite attempt to be rid of the whole population. Hitler, as you note, was unusual that he wanted the whole population gone.
“All or some” may not important in defining what the word means in the real world, though there is disagreement. But if you’re going to examine any fictional story– I don’t care if it’s CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS or HEART OF DARKNESS– one should be able to justify the reading by focusing on the text. I think it’s important whether the villain seeks to enslave or to obliterate. Obviously your mileage varies.
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