Comic Book Politics

O'Neil: Superhero in the Age of Genocide

Apologies for the abrupt end to postings.  I got really busy, and the blog became detached from the class, so it went on a brief hiatus.   We will return.    But for now, be sure to check out Tim O'Neil's very interesting discussion of "The Superhero in the Age of Genocide,"  part one and part two.    I admit that I've never read Marshall Law, but Tim sure makes it sound interesting.:

in the world of Marshall Law, the ability of American power to operate indiscriminately and without any check has been codified by decades of aggression. The super-hero has been reshaped by the government as an instrument of war, as immoral and as unstoppable as a bullet in a gun. These “heroes” don’t have origins where their terrible responsibilities have been explicitly laid out with defining moral boundaries. They were told to go and to kill, so is it any wonder that when they got home they were still wearing their necklaces of human ears?

The first Marshall Law is basically Chinatown with superheroes. There’s a series of crimes that eventually leads to a deeper rot in the status quo. Marshall Law isn’t particularly bright or particularly strong, but he is tenacious. He is the last honest man in a world gone upside down, where power is exercised indiscriminately and the privilege of ability is the perception of incorruptibility. Marshall Law can’t change the status quo, because the decay is set too deeply in society’s foundation, but he can certainly spend the rest of his life trying to expose every last hypocrite.
.....

Marshall Law is the ultimate counterpoint to these relatively utopian conceptions of superhero morality. Despite whatever dystopian scenarios they depicted, Watchmen, Dark Knight and Squadron Supreme all end with the heroes chastened but relatively unscathed, and fully recommitted to the cause of heroism. On the contrary, Marshall Law begins at the exact point where heroism is rendered obsolete - there will be no great moral epiphanies, no triumphant battles against the forces of darkness. The forces of darkness, represented by nihilistic genocidal destruction, have already won.

If the superhero was at least partially conceived as a bulwark against European fascism, it must still be acknowledged that the genre's idealized foundations are sometimes uncomfortably similar to those of Nazism. This is an uncomfortable idea which was recently explored in the excellent Truth: Red, White & Black limited series. By seeking to subvert and stymie the Axis menace, Jewish kids chose to create strikingly Aryan models of the physical ideal.

Read the rest.

 

Vigorous Apologies

V for Vendetta yielded an extremely interesting and intense two days of class discussion. But viscious time constraints prevent me from posting any version of it here any time soon. Hopefully someone else can fill the void...

Open Thread V For Vendetta

V for Vendetta... a heartwarming tale of a young scamp and her theater-loving father figure, the amusing antics of English fascists, and the amazingly anarchic escapades of a super-terrorist! As always, I'll hold off on posting my own thoughts for a bit, but feel free to use this open thread to start talking.

Watchmen: Philosophical Smackdown

This one goes out to Marc Singer (with deterministic tongue in cheek): 

IF:  Adrian Veidt represents the rationalist enlightenment:  the triumph of intellect and will over body, the absolute confidence in the ability of scientific reason to overcome all obstacles, the determination to improve the world through the exercise of reason.... which ends, as modernity does, in Auschwitz;   and

IF:  The Comedian represents the Hobbesian Realpolitik state:  a status quo in which life is nasty, brutish (and short?),  the harsh exigencies of life make considerations of morality a luxury, the state must define its own interests in terms of power, and ultimately no moral or legal frame of reference exists beyond that set by the sovereign state;  and

IF:  Rorschach represents a nativist, populist right wing,  xenophobic and irrational and contemptuous of liberal society and mistrustful and prone to violence;  and

IF:  Dr. Manhattan represents Einsteinian physics elevated to the status of god-hood;  and

IF:  Daniel Dreiberg represents the liberal do-gooder, well-intentioned but ineffectual; 

THEN:  Alan Moore's philosophical smackdown consists of this:  the Enlightenment (Veidt) succeeds in saving the world at the cost of millions of innocent lives (and his soul) by appropriating the technological contributions of Einsteinian physics;   it succeeds in this project only with the tacit collusion of the sovereign state (the Comedian), which chooses not to prevent it out of recognition of its own obsolescence and thus hastens its own demise;  in the end (though "nothing ever ends"), well-meaning liberal society (Dreiberg)  lives happily ever after, while right wing populism (Rorschach) and authoritarian statism (the Comedian) both die, and God (Dr Manhattan) leaves.

The Not Beastmaster Dissents

Marc Singer, who is NOT the Beastmaster dissents from the geopolitical reading of Kingdom Come. He worries that the method, searching for a political allegory and finding one, no matter how forced, is not the most productive way of approaching the text:

"When I teach Invisible Man I try to wean my students away from pre- (and over-) determined allegorical readings and encourage them to focus on the text first. What signals is it sending us? What questions or dilemmas seem to preoccupy it? What recurrences or comparisons or contrasts demand our attention? Once we've identified the parts that appear to work through some theme, then we can start worrying about what they "represent" (although even then, I stress that metaphoric or allegorical representation is only one of many types of meaning at the writer's disposal). That way, we aren't presuming the answers before we even ask the questions.

"It's a difficult struggle with Invisible Man, which courts symbolic interpretations at every turn. It should be much easier with politics in Kingdom Come. Mark Waid and Alex Ross loudly tout a number of allegories - allegories for the comics industry and a particularly blunt, yet almost content-free, appropriation of apocalyptic religious imagery. But the politics in Kingdom Come are so vastly oversimplified (all political institutions are unproblematically reduced to the United Nations, which can apparently authorize unilateral nuclear strikes) that any more sophisticated political readings would have to emerge against the grain, in spite of the comic's overt thematizations. Comic Book Politics makes a good game of it, but while we can certainly read the internal politics of any narrative (his post, for example, examines the reasons why Superman loses his leadership position), those readings won't always translate into a neat allegory about geopolitics.

"I think the cart is driving the horse here. This teacher wants to teach Kingdom Come in a course about comics and politics, goes looking for interpretations that support the claim that Kingdom Come is "about" politics, finds them (some quite interesting, some forced), and, to his credit, reaches the only reasonable conclusion, namely that the politics in Kingdom Come are underdeveloped and superficial. I have to agree - which is why I think Kingdom Come probably shouldn't be taught in a course about comics and politics in the first place."

Fair enough. Three quick self-exculpatory points:

(1) although just because this isn't the Non-Beastmaster's preferred method doesn't mean that it can't be a productive one. Reading Kingdom Come, or any other text, through a "what is the political allegory" lens can lead to some unexpected insights, just as could filtering the text through a gender lens, or a race lens, or whatever.

(2) Particularly since Kingdom Come is only one in a series of texts. Asking the same questions of a series of dissimilar texts seems to me to be a useful way of approaching those texts. In this class, we read KC after reading Dark Knight Returns - which very much conditioned how I (and the students) read it!

(3) Most of the action in the course has turned out, surprisingly or not, to be in the seminar room and not on the blog. Students have been fabulous in the classroom (and keep it up, folks!), but haven't really taken to the on-line forum. In the classroom, we've been doing more the kind of thing you describe - combined with the method I just described in (1) and (2).

All of that said, thanks to Marc for the critical insights on a work in progress. (left as comments on Marc's blog, too - so feel free to continue the conversation here or there!)

Superheroes and conservativism

"Dave in Transition" sent this extremely interesting email, presumably in response to my Kingdom Come post, which I'm putting up as its own thread.:

"I think it important to remember that the superhero is at his essence a libertarian or conservative icon, simply because he uses his 'gifts' and his will to set things right as an individual. Even an anti-system rebel-- say 'Batman' in DK2-- is an individual imposing his or her vision upon the world. The values are individual rather than collective. Moreover, it is the individual, the hero, who is uplifted over the group. One person sets things right, usually with violence. This fits right into the extreme individualist models so common in modern American conservatism or libertarian thought.

"Much liberal politics is really based upon working with patience and understanding to 'dissolve' problems, or to attack them at their roots, long before they exist.  The teacher who gets an inner city kid interested in engineering prevents a villian, but such stories are difficult to tell in comics and not superhero stuff. Talk is the stuff of liberal politics, or as Winston Churchill once put it, "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war".

"'Liberal' comics, such as the old Green Lantern/Green Arrow really focus on issues and social relevance, but in the end the heroes make the difference uplifting the opposite paradigm. If we wish to look at a liberal comic today, one has to go into the alternative scene, say 'Love and Rockets'.

"The one superhero who might fit the liberal model is Alan Moore's Promethea, who is there to give light to a world stifled in imagination.  Of course that can work both ways as many conservatives consider government regulation and political correctness as stifling them, but with Promethea's primary opposition based in fundamentalism that uses the tools of evil and thus becomes evil, Promethea might be the most liberal comic I know."

One response to this might be, ironically, enough Mark Waid's in Kingdom Come:  the powerful individual, to be a superhero, must be committed to the public good.  What makes Superman different from the other super-beings is not just his "moral sense" - even the nasties in the Gulag protest that they are the good guys - but rather his commitment to defending a conception of the public good which would have no real place in more extreme variants of libertarian or conservative thought.   Using power to help others, to protect the weak and the suffering, is what makes a superhero - which seems more a liberal than a conservative message.

Interesting point about Promethea.  I've read that book - which I love, at least through the end of the third trade (which is as far as I've gotten) - more as mysticism than as political critique.   Hmmmm.

UPDATE:  Mark at TML has this to say in response to Transitional Man (not "Dave In Transition" - sorry about that) via Trackback (Mark, leave a comment!!!)

"I think this is largely correct, but we must be very careful here. There seems to be an implication that individuality is a conservative ideal in opposition to liberal ideal of promoting the group. But this simply is not correct. Is that activist fighting the system in the attempt to promote gay rights or save an endangered species a conservative? Is the military a liberal institution because it promotes the group over the individual? (Liberal radio host Randy Rhodes claims this, btw.) Are those promoting multiculturalism and the "salad bowl" view of integration conservative, with the liberal "melting pot" advocates fighting back? Is patriotism a uniquely liberal concept? I don't think so.

"Now, I'm not claiming the opposite, either, I just don't think the left/right divide works well in this case. I do think, however, that liberals tend to promote cooperation while conservatives promote competition. Conservatives don't think it is wise to look beyond the natural order of eat or be eaten while liberals think we can rise above all that and find a better humanity. Looking at the cooperation/competition divide it becomes less obvious whether comics tend towards liberalism or conservatism. "With great power comes great responsibility", is that a liberal concept or conservative one? I'd like to claim it is liberal but I doubt conservatives agree."

 

Watchmen Open Thread

What can one possibly say about Watchmen that hasn't been said already by so many smart people?   We'll see.  Use this as an open thread to post your observations.  As usual, I'll weigh in with my thoughts a bit later.

David Fiore's Course-Blog

Comic Book Politics Blog welcomes a very fine looking cousin: David Fiore's American Radical Thought. Dave's class is going to feature a number of the same texts covered here in CBP: Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, along with Squadron Supreme, Animal Man, Jaime Hernandez's Locas, and a hefty dose of Ralph Waldo Emerson. David is also planning a course-blog.

It reminds me of the farmer guy from the famous Wuffa Wuffa issue of Cerebus:

Farmer: "A few week back, the de-partment of electoral management sent me a strappin big lad in a velvet sissy jacket who told me I was supposed to de-stribute these ballots he give me to evebuddy in the province over the age o'eighteen. I hitched up old Wilma up to 'er carriage an' I spent a whole day I could bin mendin' fences ridin' all over the good father's land.

"I de-livered 'em to all seventy-eight folks over the age limit who could spell their own names or at least make an "x." An' I told ever last one of'em that the feller in the sissy jacket said if any of the ballots were crumpled up, ripped 'r in any other way despoiled or de-filed the ballot was not to be counted...

"Well, sir.. the day afor yestidday, I spent the whole day gatherin' up them ballots. Them folks who had given the matter a little thought handed the ballots back all crumpled up. Them folks who had given the matter a lot of thought told me they lost theirs. Them folks what had talked it over with their wimmen-folk sicked their dogs on me.

"Unfortunately, as is bound t'happen any time you assume that a person can think just cause he's over the age o'eighteen, some folks didn't do any thinkin' about the matter at all. They jest put a neat little 'X' in whichever box they was partial to. There were four ballots like that..."

Cerebus: "Four?! Out of seventy-eight?"

Farmer: "Yessir. Last time one - this time four... It's like watchin' gangrene spread."

Last week, one comic book politics blog.... this week, two. It's like watchin' gangrene spread.

Welcome David Fiore!

Welcome new friends!

Comic Book Politics Blog welcomes The Moderate Liberal:

"When discussing politics, ethics or anything of contemporary importance we easily fall into the trap of partisan bickering or steer the discussion in a way that supports our side. Fantasy has always been a useful device to avoid our real-world prejudices and hang-ups. We can't discuss our king or his court objectively, but the king of the Lilliputians is fair game. Our prejudices emerge when discussing the relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but what about the Klingons and the Federation, will they ever learn to get along? In the year 2004 the United States is a military superpower very much like a superhero (villain?) running around Gotham City. There isn't a country in the world we couldn't destroy if we wanted to, but there are serious limits to that power as well. We can't be everywhere at once. And air power only helps so much in nation building or against insurgents. Nor can Batman stop every crime.  With the blog and the power of the internet we can all audit this fun class."

ML hits on one of the reasons that I decided to avoid "real world" books like Palestine, Maus, Safe Area Gorazde, Stuck Rubber Baby, and so on... I didn't want the class to get bogged down in arguing about the real world Palestinian-Israeli conflict rather than focusing on the political ideas being explored in the book via allegory or abstraction to a "safe" fantasy world.    Welcome to the class, Moderate Liberal! 

And thanks to Neil Alien for pointing some more people this way. 

Now if only the students would be as active as the blogosphere on-line...

Kingdom Come: Plumbing the Shallows

It is jarring to read Kingdom Come after an intense, close reading of Dark Knight Returns. DKR rewards a close reading: it operates on so many different levels, it subverts itself, it offers the possibilities of its own internal critique.

Kingdom Come is all surface. A pretty, neo-classical, surface with astonishing art, but still all surface.

The most common way to read Kingdom Come, of course, is as a genre statement: a reassertion of traditional superhero comics over the nihilistic, violent anti-heroes which dominated the 1990s (and which Miller's DKR played a big role in ushering in, stylistically at least). The Silver Age striking back against Image, retaking the noble myths from MacFarlane. All well and good, but that doesn't help much on this blog, where we want to focus on the politics. So away we go.

In its own way, Kingdom Come seems to me a work just as conservative as Miller's Dark Knight Returns. A different conservatism, a different tradition, but still conservative.

Why do things fall apart in DKR? Liberal society and political correctness runs out of control, once the heroes are forced out by the politicians and the media. Miller's portrayal of society during Batman's retirement is a conservative's parody of liberalism, with its airheaded media and ineffective politicians and corrupt lawyers and politically correct social workers.

Why do things fall apart in Kingdom Come? Kids stop respecting their elders and traditional values, mostly. Plus, the legal system and the media drive the heroes away, by acquitting Magog for killing the Joker. Which, as Magog tearfully confesses to Superman ten years later, was so very wrong.

Each is a conservative answer, I'd say: one rooted in rage at "Liberals" and a conservative-libertarian world-view, the other rooted in a celebration to the point of fetishization of traditional values. When the kids stop respecting their parents' values, the world literally falls apart.

But Kingdom Come, unlike Dark Knight Returns, seems deeply politically underdeveloped. All surface. And a bit incoherent.

Take Superman. What exactly is he supposed to represent? Can he be read as standing in for the United States geopolitically speaking? Not clear. Could be a warning against isolationism - if America turns its back on a world consumed by horrors, then the world will fall apart (as it does when Superman goes into seclusion). Maybe.

Superman's portrayal in Kingdom Come seems to me to reflect how America wants to see itself - as well-intentioned, desperate to use its power for good, but a little naive about how to go about doing so. His noble intentions are never in doubt. But he runs into trouble in two directions: first, in his inability to comprehend that others might not share his values or want to join his alliances; and second, when he builds the gulag to "re-educate" those who don't join him. This seems more promising as a geopolitical critique. Superman's fatal flaws, in this reading, are also America's: an inability to comprehend how others might not see us the way we see ourselves; and a failure to recognize how the means we use in pursuit of goals we believe to be just might corrupt us from within. Superman's gulag equals Abu Ghuraib. That's a bit obvious, but at least a coherent liberal internationalist foreign policy metaphor - particularly given the ending, when Superman/America finds a workable solution to the problem of power by joining the United Nations and "binding" his/its power in ways that would make John Ikenberry proud.

What to make of the fact that Wonder Woman is portrayed as the hard-nosed hawk, then? What are the gender politics behind her portrayal as the one who is willing to do whatever needs to be done - to kill, to rule by force, to act unilaterally? Beats me.

But it's pretty striking that Superman loses his leadership position when he refuses to fight - "but in a war people will have to be killed" - and everyone else follows the battle-garbed Wonder Woman to the battlefield. So now, we have a more hawkish metaphor: you have to lead to be a leader, and doves don't have a clue about how the world really works. Of course, Wonder Woman's hawkish leadership leads to disaster, no matter how necessary it seemed at the moment, so maybe that's part of the above narrative?

Perhaps the point is that once Superman chose to try and use his power to enforce order, WW's means became necessary. So he had to renounce it to retain American idealism. Yeah, I think that's it: Kingdom Come is an argument about American grand strategy after the end of the Cold War. If the US turns its back on the world (isolationism), the world will fall apart - this is the Cold War internationalist consensus. If it tries to dominate the world unilaterally, on the other hand, it will lose its democratic ideals and became a tyrant. If it believes that the force of its universal values and good intentions will carry the day, it is doomed. The only hope for the US and the world is to build strong, binding international institutions built on mutual respect and self-restraint.

It works even better for post-9/11, even though it was written in 1996: if you take the Kansas nuclear disaster with Captain Atom as the functional equivalent of 9/11 - especially since this brings Superman back as an interventionist looking to use his power to reshape the world in his own image, only to discover the limits of his power.

And there you have it. 100% made up off the top of my head as I wrote, and I head off for dinner without even re-reading it, I might add. Comment away!

[I know, I haven't said a thing about the whole man/Gods thing, or lots of other stuff... but you can if you want.]