Thoughts on Political Identities and Superhero Franchises - Part 1 of ?

[aniseshaw]

In 2008 I wrote an undergraduate thesis on Superhero television shows, digital new media, identity, and fascism. I specifically focused on the NBC television show "Heroes" that was being broadcast at the time, and how the narrative was being extended into new media spaces that broke down and recreated identities through digital means. It was okay, I was young and interested, but it definitely meandered and could have used some more focus overall. Nonetheless, I hit on something that seems to have continued long after I finished my semester in advanced visual culture theory.

One thing I wasn't expecting when I wrote my thesis was an explosion of the Superhero genre, through the creation of Marvel Film Studios and it's eventual acquisition by Disney, to the exclusion of almost all other genres in film. It was a simultaneous franchising and colonization - collecting the money, power, and decision making around the most widely distributed and prolific popular culture medium in human history into a very small group of executive hands.

I was also not expecting this explosion to be absolutely and completely related to 9/11 and the endless war in the middle east, almost overshadowing all other cultural conditions that would justify such a proliferation. At the time of my writing, "Heroes" was more a reinterpretation of old identity politics - orientalism, antisemitism, fascism - into a combination interactive and viewed media experience that created digital ghosts of characters and events that never happened, but could be experienced as if they had. The combination of power fantasy, narrative of persistent threat, and immediacy of interactive media led me to theorize that there were the seeds of a new orientalism and fascism being born in online entertainment activities by audiences, funnelled through more traditional visual media with larger reach, like television. While that has largely come to pass, it was the relationship between the wars in the middle east and the sudden explosion of specifically marvel superheroes that wasn't on my radar, so I've been interested in re-evaluating since that time.

I am reading several journal articles and writing my initial thoughts here. Feel free to continue reading under the cut.



The first article I'm reading is Fighting the Battles We Never Could: "The Avengers" and Post-September 11 American Political Identities

1. There is a satisfying and compelling argument to be made that the proliferation of Superheroes in film is a response to the helplessness felt at the attacks of September 11, but the logic is flawed. For one, I think it's important for theorists to separate the comic book and film mediums - we know from readership data that people largely don't read marvel comics. They command audiences in the 10s of thousands on a good day, compared to the millions of viewers in cinema. Comic book superheroes post-9/11 explored helplessness, but the films don't, and their cross over is minimal. Instead, I propose that the proliferation of Marvel films is a response to the actual actions taken by the American public to overcome their helplessness - starting the war in Iraq. These films are not so that the American public can feel strong again, but rather to revise the icon of "strength" as a national activity. The displays of strength in the face of helplessness by neoconservative politics from 2001-2008 were morally contested and became widely unpopular; superhero films help to sanitize that morality after the election of Obama, when it became clear that it wasn't just the Bush administration that maintained the machinations of endless war, but something within the American culture itself.
2. This article is analyzing from a framework where every character in the film represents a portion of the post 9/11 American psyche. I largely agree that this is an interesting framework with a lot of potential, but I wish it was stronger on the fact that these are all franchise characters. This means that they ultimately can't be separated from the fact that they were all created, consumed, and turned into icons long before 9/11. These are not original characters from a single piece of media in a single decade. Therefore, it's important to remember that, unlike "Heroes" when I wrote my thesis, these films are one of the most significant reinterpretations and post modern updating of American cultural identity since the end of the cold war.
3. I agree that Bruce Banner is the most interesting character in the Avengers from this framework - he is oppressed and ultimately harmed by his own uncontrollable rage, which is meant to represent the rage of the American people in the face of what they perceive as injustice, harm and vulnerability. I also find it interesting that in future instalments of the Avengers movies, he starts to take on a smaller and smaller role compared to more well liked characters like Iron Man. In fact, since Iron Man is representative of the military industrial complex, there is a disturbing implication to the Iron Man Hulkbuster suit and it's use to "contain" the Hulk when he starts to turn on innocent people (placeholders for everyday Americans). The not so subtle hint that the Military Industrial Complex is the one force strong enough to contain, direct, and make safe the uncontrolled rage of the American identity has very serious fascist undertones.
4. I want to talk at length about Loki as representing audience understanding of international terrorism and it's conflation with German nazism in the 1930s. In particular, how it's important that Loki is part of the family (Thor's brother), but that he's not of blood relationship. He is part of, but also foreign, and continues this obsession with hereditary blood lines and genetic origin as a determining factor in morality, ideology and behaviour left over from the eugenics movement. This topic is so lengthy, though, that I will need to make a separate post on it.
5. SHIELD being a stand in for homeland security isn't controversial, it's relatively obvious and coded through out the films. What I find more interesting and may explore at a later date, is the fact that it's almost impossible to tell if SHIELD is part of the US government in the Marvel Universe. This is so unknowable, that it even made the US government itself uncomfortable with continuing to fund marvel movies until the matter was clarified by Disney.
6. The takeaway from this analytical framework is that the American cultural identity has no room for the Manichean narrative of American foreign policy and aggression created by the Cold War and reintroduced by the Bush administration. The American identity is trying to reconcile itself through these films - the power of the nation on the global stage (a superpower), the potential for limitless and world destroying violence if the nation's rage isn't controlled and regulated, and forever the need to be the moral and ethical good guy in their hearts no matter the pile of historical and physical evidence to the contrary, nor the actual crimes committed in the service of their goals.