The Superhero Breakdown

At this point it feels like comic book aficionados have been arguing about superheroes since the dawn of time (certainly since the dawn of the Internet). Are they just entirely silly creations capable of serving no purpose other than to stoke the juvenile male power fantasies of the simple, or are they grand, mythic, characters capable of conveying the universal truths of human existence? I think the answer is somewhere in between, but definitely more toward the meaningful than the meaningless...

On our own Dr. Elmo’s personal blog about a month ago (http://www.whiterose.org/dr.elmo/blog/archives/005634.html), he referenced a blog posting by another fellow, Jim Henley, that put forth the idea that superhero stories are the “literature of ethics” ( http://www.affbrainwash.com/archives/010934.php). Henley provides some interesting arguments for his point of view, and the linked article is well worth checking out. But what interested me the most was some of the comments posted by readers challenging Henley’s thesis. In general, they attack the notion that superhero stories can actually say anything meaningful about adult ethics. There and elsewhere I’ve also seen people arguing that superheroes are “done.” That is, that there are no more genuinely fresh, original, compelling, or “relevant” stories that can be told with superheroes.

It strikes me as a poor understanding of storytelling in general to not recognize that anything can be done in any type of story. Draw a line in the sand and sooner or later someone will come along and cross it. People are just that creative and curmudgeonly. But of course just because one or two creators can do it doesn’t mean that’s what the genre is “about.”

It’s also interesting to me the way people attack superheroes. It seems that because superheroes are less realistic than conventional heroic characters in most instances (and those costumes – Lord, how people can’t get past those costumes!), people want others to prove that superhero stories somehow have all this deep, meaningful, adult, symbolic import – otherwise superheroes are completely stupid and worthless. It seems a bit unreasonable to apply this kind of all-or-nothing standard. Even if it’s true that all most superhero stories can provide is puerile entertainment, well, if it’s really good puerile entertainment, what’s wrong with that? But of course, I don’t think that’s all superheroes are about even at their most common.

I shall now boldly explain superhero stories as a type of genre fiction using the wildly successful and largely entertaining Die Hard movies, starting with Die Hard 2 (not even the best of the series). There’s a scene in that film where McLane grabs some makeshift torches and prepares to head out onto the darkened runway to try to wave off a plane that the bad guys are tricking into crashing into the ground. One of the airport employees asks, “What are you going to do?” and McLane replies, “Whatever I can.”

I think McLane exemplifies a major part of what superheroes are really all about. McLane is in a situation where he has no jurisdiction, no legal right to be doing anything that he is doing, has no real evidence (beyond the circumstantial and his own hunches based on personal experience), and his actions could well make things worse or cost more lives than if he did nothing. The airport itself already has a full-time staff of trained professionals equipped to handle the situation (and later in the story, even better-trained and specialized agents arrive from the government). Yet McLane whips out his gun and sets out to kick bad guy ass and save lives all by himself.

I think the movie is operating from the belief, or promotes the idea (however you want to phrase it), that:

• Individual people can act heroically and make a difference.
• Individuals are special. If an individual is special enough, rules don’t apply to that individual (or the individual can earn or receive special exceptions).
• Intuition and determination are often better than logic or official, legal, sanction.
• The bravery and ingenuity of the individual can serve better, particularly in a crisis, than procedures, rules, laws, and bureaucracy.
• It is better to act than to stand idly by.

If you think about it, these are very American ideas, and Die Hard 2 definitely plays them up. The head of the airport police is fat and, if not genuinely incompetent, overly concerned with the politics of his position. The SWAT team under his command waltzes right into an ambush. And then of course the team of soldiers the federal government sends to deal with the problem turn out to be corrupt and in league with the bad guys!

Bureaucracy sucks: Public servants are overwhelmed, overworked, possibly incompetent. Cops are fat and stupid or lazy. Nothing good comes from the Federal Gov’mint, which is corrupt and doesn’t care about regular citizens. Sounds like standard modern American anxiety to me. Who can you trust to do the right thing? Only yourself and maybe a small group of friends. Enter the hero, or the superhero, alone or with a small team of buddies.

Standing up to injustice in the face of opposition or insouciance from the formal agencies of life is a powerful message, one that resonates through much heroic storytelling, especially in American legends. Westerns are an easy and compelling example, and of course the first Die Hard film comes right out and draws the comparison for you. The other Die Hard movies keep the theme alive both in content and via the “Yipeekaiyay, motherfucker” catch phrase.

So superheroes have all of that going for them, and I consider that to be pretty worthy and potent mojo. But what else do superheroes have going for them that sets them apart? Costumes, Secret IDs, and Super Powers.

It seems to me that the costumes are what really bother a lot of people. Take the X-Men out of their tights and put ‘em in leather and suddenly they’re somehow less corny and somehow more legit, all other considerations being basically the same. Personally, I don’t have a problem with the costumes and never have. Costumes of one sort or another are a staple of heroic fiction: The armor of Arthur and his Knights, the Lincoln green outfits of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Zorro’s costume, the uniforms of soldiers in every modern war, the uniforms warn by the crew of the starship Enterprise, the uniforms of policemen from various time periods and localities, the black jammies of a ninja, or even the more varied but generally instantly recognizable attire of a Western gunslinger. Henley's article above states that superhero costumes come from circus outfits (presumably outfits warn by trapeze artists and acrobats – anyone have a citation that corroborates this position?), but I always assumed that they came more from the often skin-tight spacesuits of characters like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers.

Regardless, I’ve always liked superhero costumes because they’re colorful, usually well (or at least interestingly) designed, and it’s just more dynamic to see a muscular human body fighting than it is to see a human body wearing baggy clothes fighting, at least in illustration. To me the issue of whether or not someone with superpowers would “really” wear such costumes to battle crime is as irrelevant as pondering whether or not spacefarers in the far future will wear color-coded turtlenecks to explore the galaxy. It’s an issue I simply can’t make myself care about (since it’s probably the least reality-bending aspect of superheroes anyway). Superheroes who wear leather outfits instead of skintight “unstable molecules” or whatever simply aren’t any more realistic or literary to me.

Secret IDs I think are very important and very special in superhero stories. I’ve noticed that people who are dismissive of superheroes tend to use secret IDs an example of how the genre is nothing more than a juvenile male power fantasy. I, of course, disagree. First of all, I think fantasizing that one is somehow better or more capable than one actually is is one of the most primal human impulses. I don’t think something that common to most, if not all, human beings should be dismissed as being a juvenile power fantasy, male or otherwise. It’s true that the increased power of the superhero identity in such stories is usually of a nature that makes the character formidable in combat, but I don’t think there’s anything juvenile about that. It’s pretty clear at this point in human development that being able to physically defeat one’s foes is a fantasy that goes back to the dawn of our species and is shared by men and women of all ages. Or if it is juvenile, then pretty much all fantasies of personal triumph, riches, and sex appeal are equally juvenile, which is probably 98% of all fantasies anyway.

In any case, even if the power the fantasy persona has access to is physical power or power for combat, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a generic “power fantasy” in the pejorative sense in which that phrase is usually used, because that power in many instances is merely a means to an end. That end might be the ability to change the world for the better (which I think is a very good impulse that I wish more adults took seriously). In his earliest appearances, Superman was a force for social change (or at least battled social issues that may have needed to be changed). I will grant you that Superman, like most of the serial characters, veered off from that direction, but I think that has more to do with the never-ending, serial exploit nature of what Marvel and DC do. Even within that context, moving and compelling stores can and have been told. And besides that, when they aren’t, there’s nothing wrong with simple action and adventure stories.

I would also like to point out that for much of Superman’s history, even when he’d long since stopped battling recognizable social injustices, he did not simply use his powers to go and beat up bad guys. For most of his history Superman’s powers were a bag of tricks that he used to outsmart his opponents (usually via some horrendous pseudo-science, but that merely puts him in the same league as Star Trek), the vast majority of whom wouldn’t have lasted two microseconds in an actual fist-fight with the Man of Steel. I think that in many cases (not just Superman), the superhero power fantasy was as much or more a magical, trickster-ish, sort of fantasy as it was a simple, macho, beat-‘em-up power fantasy.

This actually brings up two sub-points that are kind of pet peeves of mine. The first is people (particularly comic book creators) who say that they didn’t like Superman because he was never an underdog in any of his fights. I have always felt like that kind of missed the point of most Superman stories up until the late 80’s, because Superman generally didn’t run around having a lot of fist-fights. In fact, although I too preferred Batman as a kid because I liked the self-made aspects of the character and the fact that he did have a lot of fist-fights, I enjoyed Superman stories for the problem-solving-with-super-powers aspect of the character.

Which brings me to my second sub-point pet peeve: Miller’s take on Superman. Dark Knight Returns is the birthplace of the “Batman is so uber-competent that he can beat anybody” school of thought, and how it happens in the story is Batman uses exactly the sort of problem-solving Superman is supposed to use to find a way to defeat Superman, who is presented as an airborne thug who simply flies straight in and uses brute strength to solve every problem. Quoth the songwriter, “That’s not how it used to be…”

Anyway, I think that secret IDs are about more than just the power trip. I think there’s an aspect to human nature (probably a psychologically essential one) where there’s always a difference between whom we think we are, whom others perceive us to be, and whom we’d like to be. In addition, there are probably a thousand different “dual nature” aspects to any individual, examples of the ID and Ego at odds, all sorts of stuff like that. Secret IDs are the perfect vehicle for exploring and expressing all of these things. Captain Marvel seems to suggest some interesting things about father/son, child/adult dynamics, just as an example.

Also, I think a final aspect of secret IDs that is good, interesting, and powerful comes from the fact that in a mass-produced, mass-marketed, homogenized, industrial society (which, interestingly enough, was really just starting to get going at 90 mph when Superman was first created), we all lose a little bit of ourselves, a little bit of our sense of the unique wonder of being me. Secret IDs give the creator a mechanism by which a character can be recognizably a real person who is part of the mass-produced, mass-marketed, homogenized, industrial world outside our windows, and yet be able to step outside of that and be wonderfully unique, and free, and tacky. I think that’s an important aspect of why superheroes won’t go away no matter how vehemently they’re attacked or intellectually derided.

Finally, super powers. I probably have the least amount to say about this because super powers are just magic. John McLane in Die Hard can magically withstand any amount of damage (even though he gets bloody and bruised, he’s never structurally damaged enough that he can’t keep up the good fight), Superman can magically fly, spaceships in Star Wars magically make noise in space, James Bond can magically do everything James Bond does, and Kevin Spacey can be magically annoying in American Beauty. Just about all stories have some kind of magic, which is to say that things happen in stories that would not happen in real life. This is a good thing.

But super powers in superhero stories are, to me, related to something else that is at the core of what makes them different and great to me: imagination. See, I would argue that superhero stories aren’t “the literature of ethics,” I’d argue that they’re the literature of imagination. Imagination as creativity, imagination as empowerment, and imagination as freedom. Imagination on the part of the creators, imagination on the part of the audience, and imagination on the part of the characters in how they use their super powers and how they go about being heroes. I think imagination in these multiple senses is very much applicable to the lives of every human being. And that’s where, to me, this ties into the idea of a “literature of ethics,” because in this exercise in imagination there’s a real, active, “will to power” dynamic. Imagine yourself making a difference in the world, act on that imagination, and it can happen. So I do think that there is a superhero genre or subgenre (however you want to look at it), and I think it has some powerful mojo, which is why superheroes won’t go away in spite of DC and Marvel’s attempts to bleed them dry. :-)

Posted by Chris M. at May 6, 2004 1:52 PM | TrackBack