In a series of articles on race and superhero comics, several HU regulars cast doubt on the possibility of racially progressive superhero comics. This, in turn, prompted Noah and others to suggest that the superhero genre is itself racist. Conceived in an era of scientific racism and honed through nationalist propaganda, the superhero genre seems to contain a worldview that pulls creators toward narratives that are, if not exactly white supremacist, unable to comment thoughtfully on issues that concern African Americans.
Of course, there are rebuttals. Some argue that because two Jewish kids created the Ur-Superhero back when Jews weren’t exactly white, therefore superheroes can’t be totally racist. However, this rebuttal ignores the fact that you needn’t be racist to create racist art. Another rebuttal follows from the idea that the traits that make the superhero different also make them super, which suggests that superhero comics portray difference, and maybe even diversity, as a social good. This seems like a difficult possibility to reject out of hand, but the fact that few superhero comics have thoughtfully addressed issues of diversity creates a difficulty for anyone looking to make the case. To my mind, this suggests that the jury is still out on the question of whether the genre is racist.
But what does it mean to call a genre racist? To answer this question, I’ll start with a brief definition of genre.
Following the work of Carolyn Miller, I’m defining genre as social action, i.e., as a typified response to a recurring situation. Defined as such, we recognize eulogies as eulogies because they respond to a situation that recurs (the funeral). This is not to suggest that the genre is not defined in part by form and content, but that this form and content responds to, and is therefore shaped by the situation and audience to which it is addressed. As the funeral situation evolves and audiences for eulogies change, the genre will evolve with it. So, if you found a eulogy in an old file cabinet you could recognize it as a eulogy based on its formal characteristics. However, those formal characteristics exist as such because they address recurring needs and expectations.
If superhero comics are a genre, to what situation(s) were/are they addressed? Often, we look for the answer in eras. For example, we might argue that Superman reflects the anxieties of late depression—a culture of feeling shaped by a sense of injustice and the need for strong leadership. Not coincidentally, this was the era in which the US flirted with fascism, and in which certain European nations embraced it. Thus, we have the argument that the genre is tainted by fascism, or a fascist mindset that trips easily into racism. However, by defining an era according to a specific concern, one is forced to operate at a level of abstraction at odds with the rhetorical conception of a situation, which includes historical context, but also material constraints such as medium, power dynamics between the producers of and audiences for texts, and so on. Where does this leave us?
To define superhero comics as a social action, i.e., a motivated, conventionalized response based on the demands of a recurring situation, I think we need to look at the relationship between the producer and the audience. Specifically, we need to see comics as a response, at least in part, to the situation of adolescence as experienced by boys. After all, adolescent boys were, until quite recently, the primary audience for superhero comics. Moreover, and more to the question of race, white adolescent boys were the imagined audience for comics, which is to say they were the audience to which comic creators addressed their narratives.
Is it any surprise, then, that the X-Men are a lousy metaphor for race? Sure, mutants appear as a persecuted minority, but they’re a minority that assumes great power as a birthright. This strikes me as a better metaphor for the young white man who is old enough to see power on the horizon, but is feared and despised by the adult world during this particular stage of his development. Compare this to the young black man, who can expect to face fear and hostility for years to come.
A similar combination of power and persecution dogs Superman. Though he is celebrated as a hero, he submits to daily humiliations. Why? We can psychologize Kal-El all day, but I’d bet money that the answer lies not in his character but in the demand it fills. Namely, it’s an effort to connect with an audience of young men subject to the regular degradations of adolescent life.
How does race factor into all of this? After all, it’s not as though young black men aren’t subject to fear and persecution. The answer is that superhero comics, as a general rule, assume that unearned power lies behind or beyond the fear and the persecution. The mutant, the Kryptonian, the scion of billionaires, the kid genius who sticks to walls… All of these characters could get everything they want and more. Only two things hold them back. One is ethics, and this is a potential positive to the genre. The other is less positive: it’s the notion that lesser beings are holding them back (I’m looking at you, X-Men).
So, is the superhero genre racist? As a rhetorical theorist, I’m contractually obligated to answer yes, and no.
Yes, the genre is racist. It is addressed to a situation unique to an increasingly small but nevertheless over-privileged group. As a result, it developed conventional features that make a dog’s breakfast of any effort to incorporate issues of social justice that don’t entail being nicer to young white men.
No, the genre isn’t racist. Situations recur, but they evolve over time. As the audience for comics grows increasingly diverse, the conventional features of the form will change accordingly to better address the situation of the readership. Sure, we’re going to read some confused comics as we transition, but it will all work out in the end.
In short, the answer to the question of whether a genre can be racist is yes, but it doesn’t have to be. As to whether the superhero genre is inherently racist, I want to suggest that it has developed some narrative conventions that are, if not racist, seriously problematic. However, I’d be reluctant to consign the genre to the realm of minstrel shows and Orientalist travelogues. Instead, I’d argue that recent flare ups over its less progressive features indicate a genre that’s struggling to expand the range of situations to which it can speak.
Well done. This seems to be the most precise summation to the question of the genre being inherently racist thus far. The only point I would contend with is the X-Men being a ” metaphor for the young white man who is old enough to see power on the horizon, but is feared and despised by the adult world than for the situation of minorities.” I can’t exactly wrap my head around that. I think that posits the X-Men story to be about overcoming fear of the masses to achieve greatness rather than peace in the face and reality of fear (or, racism) being the central theme.
You’re probably having trouble getting your head around the quote because I mangled the grammar… What I meant to write was:
“This strikes me as a better metaphor for the young white man who is old enough to see power on the horizon, but is feared and despised by the adult world during this particular stage of his development. Compare this to the young black man, who can expect to face fear and hostility for years to come.” I’m not sure if this speaks to your question/reservation, though.
Should be fixed now; I think that was at least partly my editing mess up; sorry about that!
Thinking about your contention, I think you’re pointing out that X-Men comics don’t tell stories about waiting for acceptance to come so much as they tell stories about the proactive fight for acceptance. On this, I agree. However, the ways in which the X-Men wage this fight for acceptance hinges on a particular form of recognition. Specifically, it assumes that eventually mutants will be accepted for what they are, namely “homo-superiors.” This strikes me as an acceptance that is a little bit racist no matter how one cuts it.
Of course, this isn’t to say that a good writer couldn’t appropriate the X-Men (and the genre) to make a thoroughly un-racist X-Men story. It’s just that they’d have to contend with the accrued formal baggage that comes with the genre.
Morrison was moving in that direction when he pushed the idea of mutant subculture, I think. Not anywhere as far as he could have taken it, but certainly an improvement over the idea of isolated paramilitary groups warring it out.
Given the complicity of nearly all genres with white supremacy, I would have to say that I’d prefer talking about *how* the superhero genre is structurally racist rather than separating it out from other genres as racist.
“Thinking about your contention, I think you’re pointing out that X-Men comics don’t tell stories about waiting for acceptance to come so much as they tell stories about the proactive fight for acceptance. On this, I agree. However, the ways in which the X-Men wage this fight for acceptance hinges on a particular form of recognition. Specifically, it assumes that eventually mutants will be accepted for what they are, namely “homo-superiors.” This strikes me as an acceptance that is a little bit racist no matter how one cuts it.”
Right, exactly Nate. I’ve always had trouble with the Homo-Superior label as it sounds like something Magneto would assign to the Mutant race rather than a scientific designation differentiating the two species. Of course it recalls the more intense proselytizations of Malcolm X who argued similar thoughts when he was in the heat of the Nation of Islam. But because Lee was writing this, one would imagine that the induction of the term “Homo-Superior” would be a covert acceptance of the concept of a superior race, and again I can’t really go along with the idea that the X-Men lends itself more in theme with angsty white kids rather than persecuted minorities. But it begs the question when exactly was the term “Homo-Superior” introduced in the X-Men books. Was that from the very beginning?
Page 11 of the first issue, True Believer. Magneto says it; dunno when the “good guys” first used the term.
I must say that I’ve never liked superhero stuff. It strikes me as inherently elitist, overly individualistic, silly, and celebrating of egotism.
On the other hand, I can’t see how the entire genre can be specifically racist, given that there is nothing inherently racial in the notion of a superhero. (Obviously the X-men are the exception here.)
I also don’t see how the fact that it “is addressed to a situation unique to an increasingly small but nevertheless over-privileged group” makes it racist – it might (possibly) make it short-sighted or uninteresting to the larger population, but that’s not evidence of inherent racism.
Curiously, Marvel’s concept of “mutant”/”Homo superior” does map on to the broader cultural notion(s) of “race” in at least one respect — it’s a category with no basis in actual biology
Rob, I’d agree that most genres have racist baggage in various ways. Some are more racist than others, though. KKK genre fiction (which I think someone mentioned downthread) is more racist than superheroes, pretty clearly. I would say that sf has always been ambivalent; HG Wells can be read as anti-imperialist fairly easily for example…and of course there’s been important explicitly anti-racist sf (which is not really the case with the superhero genre in the same way.) So…you know superheroes are somewhere between KKK genre fiction and sci-fi, I’d say…
Donovan,
I think that angsty white kids (and men… see Norman Mailer) have a sordid history of likening their struggles to those faced by black men. That having been said, I don’t disagree that the X-Men stories are thematically consistent with some aspects of the civil rights struggle, and I think those themes have provided an “in” for persecuted or marginalized groups. It’s just that I think the genre is sufficiently at odds with those themes that the results aren’t altogether too great.
Jeremiah:
I guess I’d say the genre racist in the structural sense, as in it’s built to appeal to the worldview of a “small but nevertheless overprivileged group.” As Rob noted, in this respect the superhero genre is hardly unique.
That superhero books fulfill a racist function because they supposedly best relate to how white male adolescents can see their social power “on the horizon” but are hampered by adults is a very narrow interpretation of how superhero stories operate or appeal to readers. The frustrating powerlessness of youth is something all young readers can feel and that’s surely why superheroes are so attractive to them, even young black men. If anything the notion that “unearned power lies behind or beyond the fear and the persecution” is more appealing to individuals at a societal disadvantage.
It’s pretty strained to say that the superior power relationships that young white male readers will inherit makes the superhero genre-a genre predicated often, but not always, on the notion that great power is a birthright-racist. That assumes that having great power or unique abilities by birth is always racist or must serve a racist function. Sure racism makes claims to innate superiority of certain individuals, but individuals with superior abilities-whether physical or moral-is the basis of heroism. It’s also probably the enduring problem of democracy: how do you make use of superior individuals? Superhero books are more interesting and more useful seen against that latter lens.
There is nothing inherently exclusionary about the power fantasy of superheroes. Of course a female reader is given the young male perspective of Peter Parker in a Spider-Man comic and not the perspective of any of the young female characters of the book. The female reader can nevertheless recognize similar frustrations of her life in Parker’s story and thrill to the fisticuffs of Spider-Man’s adventures. Any individual of a racial minority could do the same as well and do.
Talk of scientific racism being in the air and somehow influential on superhero stories (in a racist way) is even more strained and at best genetic fallacy. What do you see as so problematic about the genre conventions of superheroes?
Nate,
I still don’t see how fiction that appeals to the worldview of such a group must be racist. The entire worldview of (most) isolated white kids is not founded on racism, and there are elements of isolation or “angst” that merit an address (at the very least from those who experience them). To dismiss any writing from that point of view as racist simply because of who or where (in terms of circumstances) it comes from or who it is built to appeal to seems unfair.
I think that superhero fiction is a very negative expression of things that a lot of isolated white guys who went on to write books grew up with (for reasons I gave above), but it doesn’t seem to be intrinsically racist (in particular).
Couple ways superhero genre is maybe racist.
1 — They’re assimilation fantasies, about the other being absorbed and erased. That privileges whiteness as innately super/good/desirable.
2. They’re built on fantasies about law and order policing. In the U.S., that has racial implications.
Noah, your reason #1 strikes me as a little bit troubling, in the sense that super hero comics tell a broad enough range of stories that if they are all inherently about assimilation, then you’re functionally defining tales with white people as racist. But #2 seems very difficult to avoid in super hero stories. The uber-powerful figure who fights evil that the average person is powerless against either fits into an authoritarian or vigilante mode unless the author works very hard—and consistently—to undermine it. Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible to successfully undermine the authoritarian nature of the super hero in a open-ended, commercial comic or film. The urge to focus on action and heroism (or anti-heroism) will ultimate trump concerns about social justice and democracy.
It might be just a reflection of my own failings, but in my writing, with a protagonist who has powerful magic at her disposal, writing a storyline that deals with anything more substantial than subverting coup-plotters and violent mobs requires a great deal of thought. I’m not completely convinced I’ll be able to do it. And I don’t have the commercial aspirations of Marvel or DC, nor the pressures of a $100M+ budge to worry about.
I don’t see that I’m defining tales with white people as racist? I think stories about alien immigrants turning into perfect Aryan Kansas farmboys, and the offshoots of such tales, are arguably racist.
“It’s also probably the enduring problem of democracy: how do you make use of superior individuals?”
This is a really good point, Erik. However, I think that in the American context democracy and race are wound together in all sorts of problematic ways, particularly where questions about the relationship between representatives and the represented are concerned.
As for the notion “that having great power or unique abilities by birth is always racist or must serve a racist function,” I don’t think this is the case. That is, I don’t think in terms of always or must. However, in the American situation and in the case of the superhero comic in America, I think it has been the case. Of course, if you reject this premise then we’ll have to agree to disagree about the entirety of my argument.
As to the argument that those not in the target audience can nevertheless thrill or identify with the narratives, sure. But that doesn’t make the narratives less racist. It simply testifies to the creative faculties developed by readers.
“Talk of scientific racism being in the air and somehow influential on superhero stories (in a racist way)…”
I didn’t write that. See my definition of genre.
Jeremiah,
I’m not arguing that a genre “that appeals to the worldview of” white adolescent males “must” be racist, but rather that it has by virtue of this narrowcasting taken on certain thematic and narrative characteristics that made it racist. I tried to stress that this condition is neither necessary nor permanent.
Nate,
Ah, ok. Thanks for the clarification.
“the fact that few superhero comics have thoughtfully addressed issues of diversity creates a difficulty for anyone looking to make the case.”
If a superhero comic thoughtfully addresses anything, it’s not a superhero comic any more.
I would say what is missing simply genuine anti-racist sentiment (the first Superman comics are certainly not thoughtful, but they are genuinely pro-New Deal).
“As the audience for comics grows increasingly diverse, the conventional features of the form will change accordingly to better address the situation of the readership.”
This implies that the non-white audience are all in the same boat, racially speaking, which they aren’t.
More likely is that comics – assuming comics still exist in the future – will “better address” Asians and maybe Latinos, as Golden Age comics did Catholics and Jews, compared to 19th century adventure stories. Not because of increasing “dives[ity]” – Asian Americans will still be a relatively small group, and Jews have always been an even smaller one – but because of the gradual acceptance of those groups as equals by white people (or something close to equals, anyway; even Catholic and Jewish whites still aren’t quite treated the same WASPs, though, as Noah Berlatsky noted in an article here, those discriminating against them may not even consciously realize what it is they’re discriminating against any more).
For black Americans, on the other hand, when and if it gets better is anyone’s guess.
^ Upon immediate reflection, I guess Marston’s Wonder Woman disproves the first thing I wrote above (talk about overlooking the obvious). Alright, so let’s just say thoughtfulness of any kind is rare in superhero comic books.
…
Graham,
When I wrote “thoughtful,” I didn’t mean super-smart so much as I meant not oblivious to white privilege.
I’m not sure what you mean when you write that I implied that “the non-white audience are all in the same boat, racially speaking.” If you mean to say that I don’t make the distinctions between white Catholics and white Jews and white Puerto Ricans in the article, then you’re correct. Maybe I should have, given that a white first generation immigrant in the US, or the white grandson of Holocaust survivors will differently perceive their racial situation. However, I don’t think I implied that all white people are the same so much as that the audience or demographic to which these comics are addressed is imagined or envisioned as “white male” in the cultural sense, which is to say reading from a position of relative privilege. The result are narratives pitched to that situation.
One thing I want to make clear is that I don’t think readers are passive consume. In fact, I think that readers often work hard to make the cultural products they consume relevant to their lives. However, I think that some readers have to work harder than others, and I also think that a failure to address a smarter, more diverse audience leads to bad art. And this gets me back to your first point… To the extent superhero comics aren’t that thoughtful, it seems to me this has more than a little to do with assumptions about their audience.
“If you mean to say that I don’t make the distinctions between white Catholics and white Jews and white Puerto Ricans in the article…”
No, I mean you don’t make distinctions between – well, what I wrote: Non-whites. e.g. Asians and black people.
I did make a huge sloppy mistake in that, of course, a majority of Latino Americans identify as white, so what I should have written is “non-white and/or Latino.”
Clark,
Oh, OK! I’m sorry about the misinterpretation. I was still on my first cup of coffee.
I’m not sure where you get the idea that I think all non-whites are in the same boat. By diverse narratives I mean narratives that address diverse audiences by addressing diverse issues. To an extent, we see this with Ms. Marvel, which addresses issues specific to young Muslim women born to immigrant parents and as a result seems to be creating new readers. I think “American Born Chinese” used generic devices from superhero comics to do something similar for the kids of Chinese immigrants.
Well, if you mean things will get better for some demographics, but not necessarily for all of them, then I guess we agree, but then your “it will all work out in the end” strikes me as too optimistic. (“It will probably work out for many groups of people,” maybe.)
I never meant to imply that things would work out, just that they could work out. I think this is one of the first times I’ve been accused of optimism… How dare you!
Yes, I realize you were speaking hypothetically there. But you seemed to me to be implying that if an “increasingly diverse audience” results in an improving situation for marginalized groups, then it can be assumed the situation will improve for all of them (as opposed to just some of them). That’s what bothered me.
“I think this is one of the first times I’ve been accused of optimism… How dare you!” Well, you know – we pessimists are a competitive bunch.
If you think superhero fans got a challenge, try being a fantasy or horror fan. Inherent exoticization, inherent nihilism & Fear of the Other– there’s a limit to which genres can be politically cleaned up & remain the same genre. (Horror is my favorite genre ever, BTW!)
OTOH, by the same token, the superhero genre could be said to be inherently elitist. Superheroes are power fantasies, something fantasy sometimes but not always is (horror, contrarily, is more often a ‘fantasy’ of powerlessness).
Horror is easy to read against itself though…all you have to do is sympathize with the monster, which is often encouraged/an open possibility.
Angel Heart and Night of the Living Dead are two horror films that are substantially more thoughtful about race than any superhero narrative I can think of (to name two that come to mind right off the bat.)
I mean, maybe that’s overly harsh…but I do think horror actually does better than superhero stories at this.
Maybe this is less common, but couldn’t you say that superhero stories sometimes encourage you to sympathize with the villain, more than with the hero? (e.g. Tim Burton’s Batman Returns; to a lesser extent both the ’60s live action series and the early ’90s animated series? Though maybe it’s significant that none of those are comic books.)
Superhero comics often encourage you to sympathize with the villain. B:TAS’ “Heart of Ice”, Brian Azarello’s “Luthor: Man of Steel”, any time Geoff Johns writes Lex Luthor really.
I suppose that’s true…I feel like the sympathy is a lot more stable and contained though? Like, you’re supposed to understand/feel pity for the kingpin, but there’s never really a suggestion that he is actually the good guy. And the villains just about never win in superhero comics…whereas in horror, they do, at least sometimes.