The Four Color Media Monitor

A writer at the UK Spectator may have been disappointed with James Gunn's new Superman movie, but he argues such comics have supposedly always been "woke". It may be written with a satirical edge, but the conclusions he comes to still annoy me based on how cliched they risk being:

Friends, I was bitterly disappointed. Of wokeness, in this messy and basically terrible new movie, there was very little sign. It turns out that there’s one scene in which Lex Luthor denounces him as an ‘alien’ – which he is – and Supes makes some syrupy speech about our common humanity. This, I guess, has been taken to be a ruthless attack on ICE’s mission to purge the US of immigrants. And, y’know, our hero stops one country with a very well-funded military from invading its armed-with-sticks-and-stones neighbours (it’s Israel/Palestine! No: it’s Russia/Ukraine!… or maybe it is, even more insidious, a general principle). And the villain is a megalomaniac tech billionaire, which comic book villains have been since long before megalomaniac tech billionaires actually became comic book villains.

If it matters, of course I don't think technologists are saints, and never have. And Iron Man at Marvel surely featured the most notable adversaries, billionaire or otherwise, specializing in technology, like Obadiah Stane and Justin Hammer. Why, even Green Lantern featured technologists, earth-based and intergalactic, who could prove formidable. What, do they actually think the average conservative doesn't believe technologists are capable of evil? Unfortunately, that's what some leftists would surely like everybody to think, and the absurdity is ludicrous. All that does is ignore and obscure how IBM's early managers were complicit in WW2. There's a prime example of technologists who used their talents for evil right there.

But if you think that broad-brush comic book endorsements of defending the weak against the strong, or objecting to rolling tanks over people armed with sticks and stones, or any suggestion that undocumented aliens can be human too, constitutes ‘woke propaganda’, you need to give your head a bit of a wobble. If standing up for ‘truth, justice and the American way’ strikes you as unfairly partisan, we may have to start wondering what principles we’re allowed to give goodies in movies. I thought it was the left that these guys liked to accuse of moral relativism. Also, I can’t wait to tell you about Jesus.

Does it need repeating for the zillionth time that by these standards, Superman has always been ‘woke’? That he was the creation of two nerdy Jewish boys whose families fled European anti-Semitism, that he made his debut just before the second world war made its debut, and that opposition to fascism was kind of his big thing? Do we have to dig out all those spot-coloured panels from half a century ago in which Superman piously lectures passers-by about how un-American it is to discriminate against people on the grounds of race, creed or colour?

The more interesting and more subtle question, I think, is not to do with the predictable conniptions that this children’s movie has caused in pantwetting Maga influencers of a certain stripe. It is, rather, that of whether superhero movies (and comics) are by their nature not ‘woke’ but, at a deep level, what the young people would call fascist-coded.

There’s a decent case that they are. Their narrative roots are in the oral mythologies of the pre-democratic, pre-Christian world. They are myths, and their heroes are spandex-clad godlings, and their basic message is that humanity needs the vigilante violence of near-invincible individuals, answerable only to themselves, to keep it on the straight and narrow. Comic book universes and superhero stories offer the fantasy of a world in which problems are simple to solve through violence, and the goodies and baddies are painted in bold bright colours – the same fantasy populist and, at the extreme of this tendency, fascist politics depend on. It can’t have escaped anyone that ‘superman’ is the most common translation of Nietzsche’s ‘Ubermensch’ – and we know who loved that idea.

For heaven's sake, arguments and allegations like these have been made before about supposed fascism in the narrative, and it's honestly offensive and insulting to the intellect, along with the memories of Siegel and Shuster too. That aside, I've seen the advertisement he's talking about, and if there's any flaw in it, it's the part about religion. No doubt, stuff like that damaged the ability to take a more objective view of Islam long ago. I realize the makers of the ad were probably alluding to Judaism, but still, what they did most likely also caused damage for people who uphold the Religion Clause of the 1st Amendment. Something to consider: if National Socialism and Communism were religions, it's sadly possible everybody would be lectured those ideologies have to be respected as well. The same doubtless goes for Scientology, despite all the damage and poor influence it's had over the years. That's why, if there's something in that Superman advertisement that just doesn't belong, it's the part about religion.

All these, be it said, are points that the more intelligent writers of superhero comics have repeatedly addressed. Marvel’s Civil War plotline (somewhat adapted for the Avengers movie) addressed the vigilante question: unexpectedly and interestingly, Captain America (Marvel’s own big blue schoolboy), comes out in the no-democratic-oversight corner, while Iron Man goes to bat for democratic oversight and the military-industrial complex.

Alan Moore’s Watchmen – named for its on-the-nose evocation of Juvenal (‘quis custodiet…’) – had looked at just the same issue some years earlier. It concluded that anyone who wanted to set the world to rights by dressing up in a cape and mask and beating spit out of the bad guys deserved a psychological once-over. And it’s no accident that ‘Nostalgia’ was the brand name of the villain’s perfume.

At the same time as that, back in the late 1980s, Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns drew thrilling power from the mythic grandeur of its set-up, without stinting on the darker aspects of that set-up’s appeal: Bats, in despair at juvenile delinquents and liberal apologists for the Joker, comes out of retirement to beat and murder these unwelcome avatars of modernity. (Frank Miller’s later politics suggest that he may have got a bit too high on his own supply.)

Considering Miller was quite the liberal at the time, and still more or less is today, I don't see how this makes any sense. This is yet another article that obscures whether the villains in the stories were committing violence themselves, and were so far gone only corporal punishment could possibly persuade them to cease their barbarism. And then look at that, we're even lectured about 2006's Civil War supposedly being a wonderful political allegory, when it was most definitely not. Let me put it this way. If registering all superheroes under government supervision was wrong, then do I want to see Iron Man supporting the registration position any more than Captain America? Of course not. I don't want either one written backing what could do more harm than good, mainly for the fantasy narrative I thought comic stories like these were meant to go by. Even DC put out a storyline not all that different at the time (I think it was titled "Decisions"), and it was no better.

And it goes without saying that this awkward piece only ends up serving as an apologist for DKR, which as I've concluded before, did more harm than good to comicdom with its bleak narrative, even though it's not literally the fault of DKR itself, but rather, self-important editors who used it as a playbook and blueprint for what was to come the following decade or so, effectively ruining Batman as a storytelling vehicle.

In the end, what really lets me down is how somebody writes what's decidedly a baffling item that only runs the risk of accusing superhero fare of emphasizing fascism, and absurdly obscures any and all the villains fought by the superheroes, both superpowered and non-superpowered villains alike. What next, will they obscure the heinous acts of the Joker, whenever he murdered people, the villains who killed the Doom Patrol, and the time when the Green Goblin murdered Gwen Stacy? I hesitate to think what such news sources think of the Punisher, and how they'll surely obscure what all the villains Frank Castle fought were like. Even if the Spectator's writer is disappointed with the new Superman movie, his whole narrative is equally disappointing, because he can't rise above the repellent claim superhero fare was "fascist", which may have begun with the discredited Fredric Wertham. Also, Superman was anything but woke back in the day, and no serious right-winger thinks it was entirely the kind of narrative some leftists want everyone to think it is.

Labels: dc comics, history, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, Superman