“We Are Who We Choose To Be”: Sadistic Choices, Forking Paths, and the Rejection of Social and Narrative Progress in Superhero Comics and Films

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Eric Berlatsky

The idea for this paper began when I noticed a pattern in a series of superhero films that I was showing to a recent class devoted to the genre. Whether it was the 1978 Richard Donner Superman film, the pilot of the 1970s Wonder Woman television show, the 2002 Sam Raimi Spider-Man, or the 2008 Christopher Nolan Dark Knight, superheroes are repeatedly asked to make a “sadistic choice” (to quote the Green Goblin) between two equally unpalatable options. In the case of Spider-Man, he must choose to either save Mary Jane Watson from being dropped off of a New York City Bridge, or to save a tram-car full of children from the same fate. Superman must save Lois Lane or Hackensack NJ from being obliterated by a cruise missile. Wonder Woman must save either Steve Trevor or Washington DC from death-by-Nazi, and Batman must save either Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes from the Joker’s explosives. As the Goblin notes, these choices seem designed to define the heroes, and heroism itself. Will they make the “selfish” choice that benefits them directly, or the more “selfless” choice that benefits the greater good.

These choices seem to advance the familiar superheroic dictum, “with great power comes great responsibility,” suggesting that super powers make people necessarily more responsible to others and that “heroes” must abandon their own selfish interests for the good of the many. In fact, however, these scenarios most often emphasize not the burden of great power, but the ways in which great power alleviates the hero from responsibility. In almost all of the examples mentioned above the hero is never actually forced to make a choice. Rather, Spider-Man, Superman, and Wonder Woman are all able to triumph over time itself and save both parties. It is my goal in this paper to indicate the ways in which this exercise in simultaneity provides a useful metaphor for the ways in which superhero comics, particularly those by mainstream publishers, treat matters of diversity. Rather than shouldering the ethical burden of social, political, and temporal “progress,” Marvel and DC more often attempt to have things “both ways,” retaining a troubling embrace of white male hegemony, while simultaneously introducing more diverse characters and storylines, without ever admitting that these two ends may be mutually exclusive. These companies, like their heroes, seem unwilling to “progress” temporally, or ethically, particularly in terms of race, class, and gender equality, despite initial appearances to the contrary.

Part and parcel of this problematic, as mentioned, is the fact that the scenes described deny temporal progress in multiple ways. First, each scenario presents a fundamental spatiotemporal impossibility, the idea of being in two places at the same time. The Superman film acknowledges this most clearly when Lois is initially killed by the missile, prompting Superman to reverse the Earth’s rotation, improbably turning back time and saving her life. More metaphorically, the Spider-Man film also “turns back the clock” and brings the hero’s lover back from the dead by restaging the comic-book death of Gwen Stacy, which occurred some thirty years previous in Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973). In the comic, as in the film, the Green Goblin hurls Peter Parker’s love interest from a NYC bridge. In the comic, however, Spider-Man is too late to save her. The film Spider-Man, then, succeeds not only in saving Mary Jane and the children, but also in metaphorically traveling through time to save Gwen Stacy. The fantasy of power in play in this alternate continuity, or “forking path,” is a fantasy of overcoming the progression of time and therefore overcoming mortality itself. Concomitantly, it is a fantasy in which ethics are not asserted, but abandoned.

As Jean-Paul Sartre, in particular, and existentialist philosophy in general, remind us, our identity and our ethics are only a compilation of the choices we freely make dynamically in time. If we do not have choices, we have no ethics. Indeed, near the outset of “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Sartre also discusses a “sadistic choice.” He tells of a “boy” he knew, who “was faced with the choice of leaving for England and joining the Free French Forces…or remaining with his mother and helping her to carry on” after the death of her other son (24). Sartre uses the example to explain the ways in which “we are condemned to be free” (27) and to insist that our choices will define us. We do not make our choices on the basis of a ready-made system of ethics, argues Sartre. Rather, ethics are made only through choices. “In creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be” (17). Similarly, the film Green Goblin functions as a surprising Existentialist when he tells Spider-Man, “We are who we choose to be,” emphasizing the ways in which heroism, ethics, and identity are a matter of choice. In my initial examples, however, and quite frequently, superheroic power involves not the power to make choices, but the power to avoid them. Here, Superman and Spider-Man need not choose between their love interest and a broader catastrophe. They instead save everyone involved, denying the basic relationship of cause and effect, and therefore of ethical responsibility.

In the 1962 essay “The Myth of Superman,” Umberto Eco articulates the ways in which mid-century Superman comics operate in an “oneiric climate” that involves a basic denial of temporal progression, and therefore of mortality, and of ethics, citing Existentialist thinkers like Heidegger to make the link. Like Sartre, Eco notes that the “existence of freedom, the possibility of planning….[and] the responsibility it implies” all depend upon temporality (156). However, subsequent critics like Charles Hatfield and Henry Jenkins have argued that the introduction of “continuity” particularly to Marvel in the 1960s served as a rebuttal to Eco, pointing to the ways in which events in continuity did have consequences and therefore could serve as a meditation on ethics, morality, and social progress. Indeed, Gwen Stacy’s death is one of the most obvious examples of “events with consequences,” and therefore, as Ben Saunders illustrates brilliantly in his book Do the Gods Wear Capes? it serves as an event that can teach both Peter Parker and his readers important truths about ethics, about cause and effect, and about the real possibility that we will never be powerful enough to overcome mortality, nor good enough to avoid tragedy.

Certainly, continuity, and even death, remain, even now, as central components of the Marvel and DC universes. Events do occur month after month, and these events do seem to have consequences, resulting in the births, deaths, marriages, and separations of heroes and/or their enemies, companions, lovers, and acquaintances. It is worth noting, however, as Marc Singer does, that rarely, if ever, are these consequences permanent. Superman, after all, has died and come back to life, as have Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Phoenix, Batman, Captain America, and a slew of others, helpfully chronicled by Wikipedia’s extensive chart of dead and resurrected characters. Superman and Spider-Man have both been married and now are not (though neither has been divorced). Spider-Man has graduated high school and been returned to it in at least three different alternative realities. These events happen both “in the continuity” of the basic Marvel or DC universes and in “alternative continuities” in the comics and other media like video games, television shows, and movies, all of which continually elaborate new paths forking outward from the temporal “nodal point,” what David Bordwell calls an “intersection,” from which they begin. The “Imaginary Stories” of the 50s and 60s cited by Eco have been superseded by Marvel’s “What If” tales, DC’s Elseworlds, periodic reboots of standard continuity, the Ultimate Universe, and etc. There is no fan of superhero comics and/or films that is not versed in the idea of multiple realities, and, indeed, Henry Jenkins notes that the age of strict continuity was very brief, if it ever truly existed. He argues that there has been “a shift away from focusing primarily on building up continuity within the fictional universe and towards the development of multiple and contradictory versions of the same characters functioning as it were in parallel universes” (“Just Men”). As a result, like their own characters, the editorial staff of Marvel and DC never have to live with the ethical and material consequences of decisions they make about characters and worlds. Instead, time can be rewound, universes rebooted, and/or alternatives created, allowing mutually contradictory outcomes to coexist, just as they do when Superman both fails to save Lois and rescues her.

In this way, contemporary comics resemble a series of thought experiments of the “What If” variety. “What if” Superman died? (an eventuality played out both in a 1950s “Imaginary Story” and in the 1992 in-continuity comic adventure)? What if he didn’t? What if Aunt May died? What if the woman who died was just an actress playing Aunt May? What if Gwen Stacy came back as a clone? While these perpetual reboots and alternative explorations are both frustrating and delightful to fans, the provisional nature of all superhero adventures denies any kind of permanent consequences.

What then, if anything, does this have to do with questions of diversity? Though Marvel and DC have been introducing racially diverse characters to their superhero universes since the 1960s, in the past few years, such efforts have increased dramatically, and have been widely celebrated in the popular media. Certainly, this increase in attempts at diversity is preferable to the alternative. But the reliance on the structure of multiplicity as opposed to continuity limits the impact and suggests the ways in which comic book companies (and perhaps their primary fan base) are willing to accept diversity only up to a point, as long as it requires no sacrifice of privilege on the part of hegemonic interests.

It is worth recalling, in this regard, that the superhero idea is a variation on the notion of the übermensch, popularized by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The übermensch itself is tied to the idea of racial Eugenics, a discourse that imagines an ideal human being as a blond-haired, blue-eyed hyperintelligent white man to be achieved through selective breeding. Early proponents of Eugenics opposed immigration by “lesser races” and were, not surprisingly, anti-miscegenation. The quest to become “ideal” or “super” was then, in many cases, the quest to become “whiter.” As critics as diverse as Gershon Legman and Chris Gavaler have noted, the Ku Klux Klan is not far removed from the idea of superheroes, masked men embodying and protecting white male privilege by rooting out the alternative through violence. A true transformation, then, of the superhero concept along the lines of racial, gendered, or sexual egalitarianism would need not only to introduce characters and heroes of different backgrounds, but to challenge the notion of white male heterosexist supremacy. It would have to make a choice between white patriarchal heterosexual privilege and actual equality.

Unfortunately, as I have articulated above, contemporary comics are not designed or inclined to pursue this kind of choice. As in other matters, diversity is almost always presented in the form of a “What if” question. What if, for instance, Spider-Man were black? This thought experiment is explored through the character of Miles Morales in the Ultimate universe. Interestingly, in this timeline Peter Parker dies in order to pave the way for Miles’ ascension to superhero status. In a vacuum, of course, this turn of events seems to dynamically symbolize the exact scenario I suggest. If Peter Parker is a symbol of white privilege, then perhaps his death is a symbol of the sacrifice of the privilege that must occur if true equality is to be achieved. However, “Ultimate” Peter Parker is only one “forking path” and, in fact white, straight, male Peter Parker remains as Spider-Man in the primary Marvel Universe. In truth, Marvel is not willing to sacrifice white male power and privilege for the sake of diversity. Instead, diversity here becomes a consumer option that requires no sacrifice of another more common to the superhero idea, that of white supremacy.

Similarly, “Wwhat if Superman were black” has been answered in multiple contexts, none of them challenging the primacy of white male Clark Kent. In 1992, John Henry Irons was introduced as Steel, briefly replacing Superman while he was dead. When white Superman returns, however, Steel becomes a secondary or supporting character, indicating the ways in which DC, like Marvel, is unwilling to entertain the notion of the sacrifice of white power and privilege for the sake of diversity. Another black Superman, Calvin Ellis, is President of the United States in an alternate, secondary continuity. Again, what exists here is not temporal, social, or political “progress” in time, but the willingness to view space-time as a series of forking paths, where any spatiotemporal “intersection” can be revisited and followed without sacrificing any other path, regardless of its troublesome politics. Likewise, John Stewart, James Rhodes, and Sam Wilson are introduced to answer the question, “What if Green Lantern, or Iron Man, or Captain America were black?” In all cases, however, even though these shifts have occurred “in continuity,” the emblems of white power and privilege that are Hal Jordan, Tony Stark, and Steve Rogers return to their original roles (or will), displacing their African-American counterparts into subsidiary ones.

Woman superheroes often undergo similar fates, as the dual questions of “What if Gwen Stacy had lived?” and “What if she were bitten by a radioactive spider?” can both be explored in the alternate universe Spider-Gwen. Likewise, the recent turn to the idea of “Thor as Woman” will seem progressive until Thor the man returns to the role (likely keeping the female Thor as an alternate or subsidiary character). In this, as in the above examples, the typical strategy, is to create separate but “unequal” universes, timelines, or comics magazines, just as separate but unequal schools, bathrooms, hotels, and drinking fountains were created in the aftermath of Plessy vs. Ferguson and in the Jim Crow south. Obviously, the results are far less important in the world of formulaic genre fiction than they were in real historical circumstances, but it is worth noting the ways in which “progress” here is rejected in favor of marketing “alternatives.”

In his reading of “multiple draft” or “forking path” films like Sliding Doors, Run Lola Run, and Groundhog Day, David Bordwell notes that in almost all such films, though multiple alternative narratives are presented as emerging from one spatiotemporal “intersection,” (“What If”) the director is careful to “mark” one narrative as the correct, “real,” or “authentic” path. For a conventional single narrative, Bordwell, argues, it is always the final path that “we take…as the correct one” (“What If”). In serialized and multiple narratives wherein there is no “final” version, it would seem, as Karin Kukkonen posits, that there would to need be no “baseline reality” or preferred version. In truth, however, and particularly in regard to diversity, there is, as Marc (qtd. in Duncan, Smith, and Levitz 214) has argued, a preferred “state of grace” for iconic characters, a constellation of historical, physical, and personality attributes that are deemed authentic by creators and fans, even if no currently functioning “version” of the character fulfills them all. In the case of the heroic pillars that mint cash for Marvel/Disney and DC/WB, part of the superheroic “state of grace” seems to be, in most cases, whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality. Certainly, there are characters whose “authentic” identity is black, or female, or even gay (or all three), but the economic and symbolic flagship heroes of Marvel and DC are white men who still serve the symbolic function of the übermensch, an ideal founded on notions of white power and privilege that are diametrically opposed to ideals of diversity and equality.

While Steel exists as an independent character, he was also introduced as a decidedly “inauthentic” Superman to be shoved aside upon Clark Kent’s inevitable return. While John Stewart has played the role of Green Lantern for years at a time, both in the comics and on an animated television series, Hal Jordan repeatedly returns as the “one true Green Lantern” (despite his death) both in the comics and in a failed blockbuster Hollywood film. Tony Stark/Robert Downey is the white hero who fights brown terrorists in the Iron Man film franchise, while Rhodes is a faithful friend and sidekick. Blond-haired blue-eyed Steve Rogers roams the movie screens even as he has been momentarily displaced/replaced by Sam Wilson in the current comic book series. In the Marvel Universe, it is always Rogers who is the “authentic” Captain America, the perfect representative of the white male heterosexual privilege that is America, whether we like it or not.

On one hand, it might be seen as laudable that comics companies, like their heroes, wish to “save all parties,” refusing to sacrifice their iconic heroes even as they attempt to introduce alternatives. At the same time, ethical decisions are predicated on sacrifice and difficult choices. Alternative continuities and reversible temporalities allow comics companies to avoid those choices. In fact, in clutching so tightly to nostalgia for the middle part of the twentieth century, when most of their heroes were created, they, like Superman, show a perhaps buried desire to spin the Earth backward upon its axis to a time when Jim Crow ensured the white power and privilege that superheroes exemplify. Likewise, it takes us to a time before second-wave feminism or the gay rights movement. While it is perhaps understandable that Superman does not wish to sacrifice Lois in order to save strangers, at long last white male America should be willing to sacrifice our own power and privilege, rather than constantly revisiting and rebooting it, while retaining more diverse alternatives only provisionally and without any permanence. As the Green Goblin says, “We are who we choose to be,” and as long as we choose to privilege white power, and to refuse temporal, social, and political progress, we should not be congratulating ourselves on a provisional, temporary, and, yes, marginalized, turn to diversity that functions primarily as niche marketing. Perhaps questions like “What if Ms. Marvel were a Muslim” and “What if Batwoman were a lesbian” are the beginning of a more egalitarian comic book world, but it can only be a beginning if we are willing to progress forward in time from there.

Bordwell, David. “What-If Movies: Forking Paths in the Drawing Room.” Observations on Film Art. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog.

___. “Film Futures.” Observations on Film Art. http://www.davidbordwell.net/books/poetics_06filmfutures.pdf

Duncan, Randy, Matthew J. Smith and Paul Levitz. The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture. 2nd edition. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Eco, Umberto. “The Myth of Superman.” Trans. Natalie Chilton. 1962/1972. Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on A Popular Medium. Eds. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004. 146-64.

Gavaler, Chris. “The Ku Klux Clan and the Birth of the Superhero.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 4.2 (2103): 191-208.

Hatfield, Charles. Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2012.

Jenkins, Henry. “Just Men In Capes.” Confessions of An Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/just_men_in_capes.html.

___. “ ‘Just Men In Tights’: Rewriting Silver Age Comics In An Era of Multiplicity.” The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero. Ed. Angela Ndalianis. New York: Routledge, 16-43.

Kukkonen, Karin. “Navigating Infinite Earths.” The Superhero Reader. Eds. Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2013. 155-69.

Lee, Stan and Gerry Conway, writers, Gil Kane, penciler, John Romita, Sr., penciler and inker, Jim Mooney and Tony Mortellaro, inkers. Amazing Spider-Man: Death of the Stacys. New York: Marvel Worldwide, Inc., 2012. Originally published as Amazing Spider-Man #88-92 and #121-22, 1970-73.

Legman, Gershon. Love and Death: A Study in Censorship. 2nd edition. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1949/1963.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Human Emotions (often published as Existentialism is a Humanism.) 1957. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1990.

Saunders, Ben. Do The Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes. London: Continuum, 2011.

Singer, Marc. “The Myth of Eco: Cultural Populism and Comics Studies.” Studies in Comics 4.2 (2013): 355-366.

Spider-Man. Dir. Sam Raimi. Perf. Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Willem Dafoe. Sony, 2002.

Doing the Krypton Crawl

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Jaz Jacobi

Noah Berlatsky brings up some interesting points in his essay “Why Do We Love Batman But Hate Superman?”, observing the Superman v Batman trailer as yet another incarnation of society’s desire to see “normal guy” Batman kick Superman’s “alien other” ass. But Superman’s journey from Man of Tomorrow to lame old-timer represents a complicated trail, the character walking a razor’s edge between the ephemera of junk culture charm and the drive to make superhero stories—and likewise their creators and devotees—seem “mature.” There’s a tension: expecting a fictional character to continue to serve as DC Comics’ figurehead, often in the face of public indifference, while constantly facing reinvention in a struggle to maximize corporate gain. If someone can be heard rattling off a list of favorite Superman comic book stories, odds are he or she is over 60 years old. Conversely, my wife, who was 8 years old upon the release of the Tim Burton Batman movie that in many ways is ground zero for mass-marketed superhero cinema, often tells me her peer group “never thought Superman was cool.” (I’m ten years older, so I got to see Superman become a movie star firsthand.) Much like when rock fans speak of Elvis Presley, there seems to be a fear of sounding like an uninformed clod if you don’t pay polite lip service to notions of Superman’s “importance” and “influence,” yet the particulars of just why the Man of Steel had such resonance, and to whom, has become an increasingly distant cultural memory.

Superman maintained a unique position among the raft of superheroes that arrived in his wake, not only enjoying a media profile beyond comic books (newspapers, radio, cartoons, television, stage, movie serials), but also being one of the very few to remain in publication through the Forties and Fifties. Editor Mort Weisinger oversaw the character’s renaissance beginning in the late-Fifties, with enduring concept seemingly introduced every few months (within a year and half: the Bizarro World, Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, Red Kryptonite, the Legion of Super-Heroes, “imaginary stories,” the Fortress of Solitude, the Bottle City of Kandor). The comics took on a sense of craft and charm reminiscent of the Forties’ top-selling superhero, Captain Marvel—fitting, since many of these concepts were originated in the scripts of Otto Binder, looking for work after CM was driven out of circulation by DC’s litigation. In the 1960s, the top 10 selling comic books in America regularly contained all seven Superman titles: the perfect entertainment for 8 year olds, full of arctic hideouts and robot doubles and a city in a bottle and an imperfect duplicate of Earth and bizarre transformations and outlandish coincidences, packing more plot into 8 page stories than some 6-issue “arcs” do today. But the very strengths that made these comics appeal so much to children—whimsy, fairy tale-style fantastic sweep, enchanting emotional drama, majorly unpredictable weirdness—became an Achilles’ heel to the expanding comics fandom who didn’t feel the need to outgrow comic books, but also didn’t want the public to think less of them for their tastes. Many of these young fans became the generation of comics creators who filled the shoes of those who wrote, drew and edited such “kids’ stuff” as they moved on or passed away; the young crowd knew things had to change.

After Weisinger retired in 1970, the difficulty was finding an adequate encore. Current Superman comics were seen by an increasingly older comics audience as bland, workaday filler; no better or worse than the majority of Seventies superhero books, really, but nothing to write home about either. Marvel’s rise to dominance through the ’70s was sold on Stan Lee’s hype job that Marvel was the “collegiate, intellectually complex” superhero line, and DC was increasingly seen as juvenile and tiresome. “Realism” was the buzzword of the day, from Marvel’s strategy of angst-ridden “superheroes with problems” to Neal Adams’ grimacing poses. But the easy appeal of those ‘60s Superman comics shows up the misguided thinking in subsequent attempts to graft contemporary ideas of “character development” or slambang action onto the series. The Marvel-style approach has often been compared to soap opera: heavily continuity-driven, with suspense built by ongoing angsty personal lives and dramatic installment-to-installment serial rhythms. Whereas Silver Age DC stories are closer to the model of the situation comedy, starting at the same default “normalcy” each time, presenting a disruption in that comfort zone, and returning to the starting point upon denouement. Squareness was the point of old-school DC: instead of heroes with feet of clay, these square-jawed, confident crimefighters were most put out by humiliation. Just as likely as villain-of-the-month conflicts were cover gimmicks promising the latest violation of the hero’s sacred dignity (the infamous Flash cover with the thought balloon, “I’ve got the strangest feeling I’m being turned into a puppet!”). Red Kryptonite or a Mxyzptlk curse or a flask of potion could turn Superman or Jimmy or Lois into any number of beasties, grant a third eye, make them fat, what have you—the angst in Silver Age DCs is all about “how do I get through the day without someone noticing my face is a living mood ring,” much more entertaining than Hank Pym’s marital strife. (I wish I could remember which of my friends to credit with the astute observation that, when you hear people complain about DC’s “cardboard characters” in relation to Marvel’s “fully rounded personalities,” it sounds more like they’re speaking of Hanna-Barbera’s TV show Super Friends than actual familiarity with the comic books.)

As of the mid-1980s, notions of DC’s second-class-citizen status mostly held steady with the fan populace, but with an increasing view that Batman was the exception that proved the rule. Morphing from corny Caped Crusader to menacing Dark Knight, Batman was seen as a rare example of a “badass”/”complex” superhero amongst DC’s largely cool/cerebral personalities—DC’s only real competition for Marvel’s “dangerous”/”gritty”/”street level” Wolverine/Punisher types in those pre-Lobo times. DC’s few thriving sellers tended to be from the dustier corners of their continuities, spun on the appeal of the X-Men-style team book dynamic—Teen Titans, Legion—and the Superman/Flash/Green Lantern DC mainstream that was so appealing during the ’60s seemed to remain in print more out of habit than honest enthusiasm. The Crisis on Infinite Earths “event” was designed to “clean the cobwebs” from DC’s backlogged continuity (read: eliminate the goofier aspects to prevent fan embarrassment). Superman and his pals were presented as having the biggest need for this push, so away with Supergirl, pets with capes, Bizarros, and so forth. “Post-Crisis” attempts to reinvigorate what came to be known as the “Big Three” did wonders for Batman, via the efforts of Frank Miller et al, but even the appointment of fan favorite creators couldn’t reverse the lasting impression that Superman and Wonder Woman were for squares.

By the ’90s/21st century, the party line on Superman within an increasingly influential fan populace was that he was to be condemned as “the Big Blue Boy Scout,” a clueless, morally-uptight fossil looking lost in a time of antiheroes and fashionable ultraviolence. A counterrevolutionary, if you will. Younger fans tended to observe Superman as an empty personality-free shell merely occupying a necessary merchandising trademark, like they might with Mickey Mouse. From the distance that I observed the megaselling “Death of Superman,” those millions of comics seemed to sell to A] aging former readers of Weisinger’s comics who hadn’t touched the stuff in years and/or B] investors eager to resell these comics—actual enthusiasm among current comic book readers seemed difficult to pinpoint. And of course, the press releases implicitly sold the line to a cynical public that Our Hero’s worth had been exhausted in this cold, hard world, and it was time to do away with the poor old relic. (Veteran comics readers had been led down this garden path a few times and knew better—he wouldn’t “stay dead” for long.)

Today, selling fanboys on the idea that Superman is at all interesting, let alone “cool,” always seems to involve some menacing, “intense” image, all gnashed teeth and smoldering laser-beam eyes; a far cry from the placid, smooth Curt Swan model of prior decades. The occasional well-received effort, like Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s All Star Superman, seems to have an easier time gaining traction with older readers—and, tellingly, invoke the long-abandoned tropes of those still-intriguing ’60s stories, with their reliance on “silliness” like super-pets and signal watches. Another take is to remove as much of the superficial resemblance to the franchise as can be achieved—the marketing for TV’s Smallville (and the producers’ pithy mantra, “no tights no flights”) seemed designed to scream, “This is not your father’s Superman.” 2006’s Superman Returns consciously attempted to wipe away memories of the ill-received third and fourth Christopher Reeve films by following up plot threads of Superman II—perhaps not coincidentally, just about the last point in time the larger public’s finger was on the pulse of a Superman story.

The frosty reception for Superman Returns seemed to be painted by some as evidence of the character’s lack of appeal or relevance to modern audiences, leading to that major overhaul in the face of commercial panic, the “reboot.” (After Hollywood was caught off guard by the blowback over Michael Keaton’s casting as Batman, making fandom unhappy has been seen as the quickest route to monetary oblivion.) The Man of Steel movie gained much controversy over its fatal climactic moments, with much online debate about “destruction porn” and proposing ways the story could have been led to avoid Superman taking deadly action. But the makers of the film seemed to coldly calculate exactly the effect they were looking for—giving audiences who aren’t wired to like Superman the shock effect of a Man of Steel who kills. Inserting Batman into MoS’ sequel seems like a box office insurance clause as much as a response to any desire to see the two duke it out; the view that DC has spent decades following Marvel’s lead isn’t abated by the impression created by cramming four more heroes into what is nominally “a Superman film,” just so Warner can fast track their own “cinematic universe”.

Striving to navigate the appealing fantasies of childhood into escalating “darker” territory keeps leading to nastier dividends. Witness Identity Crisis, a miniseries that proposed that, behind the veneer of kiddie-comic cheeriness, those buffoonish villains in tights you read about as kids hid rapist impulses; it was truly depressing to overhear the comics-shop water cooler conversation turn to this being the way “DC should have done it all along.” The cliché goes that audiences like Batman because anybody can work out and build gadgets and blow stuff up (as long as you’re a millionaire who lives in a fantasy setting, I guess), but supposedly nobody can relate to Superman because he’s “too powerful” (the usual complaint about past incarnations of the Man of Steel is that he could “juggle planets,” even if nobody can offer an example of this actually happening). It becomes about the usual concerns of “who can beat up whom,” the appeal of Superman assumed to be that he’s stronger than everybody else while struggling to maintain drama by coming up with somebody strong enough to fight back.

Almost every reboot attempt goes further in making Superman less connected to his Kryptonian heritage, more a “regular guy” like Batman, depowered to reduce those godlike abilities and make for more thrilling fisticuffs. But the “childish” fantasy of Weisinger’s Superman—who could destroy planets with a sneeze or perform plastic surgery with his fingertips!—didn’t make for less interesting stories; that “anything can happen,” wild card element led to the most outlandish and unpredictable plots imaginable. Those looking to recapture the appeal of Superman could do worse than learn from the successes of the past, rather than refute them.

P. Marie, Zoe Samudzi, and Julia Serano on Feminist Exclusion

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Last week I wrote a piece about Laverne Cox’s nude photoshoot for Allure and how various feminisms have often failed black women and trans women. The piece was in particular a response to a post by Meghan Murphy in which she criticized Cox in what I argued were transphobic, racist, and cruel terms.

For my essay I conducted several interviews — but as often happens, I was only able to use little bits of them. The interviews were all really thoughtful and enlightening, though, and it seemed a shame to waste them. So I asked folks if it would be okay to reprint them here, and everyone (including Playboy) kindly agreed. All the interviews are below, from shortest to longest responses, more or less. My questions are in italics; answers are of course by the interviewees.
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P. Marie is a former sex worker; she blogs a mix of trash, nail art, and selfies at pmariejust.tumblr.com and @_peech on twitter.

Why has feminism and radical feminism had trouble respecting black women?

As far as I can see, the problem can be boiled down to (among many things) entitlement and a sense of ownership. For decades, white feminism has said things like “being a voice for the voiceless” – essentially taking ownership of the voices (and bodies) of Black women, sex workers, and Transgender people through exclusion and subscribing to violent, racist, and transphobic rhetoric.

While at points in history, speaking up to protect others was necessary and desired by us from them, it’s now turned into a clear case of overbearing entitlement and greed for the spotlight. Opportunistic hatred is published quickly and easily by both news houses and blogs with large followings, giving bigoted white feminists a platform to share their trash with a digital megaphone.

The shame in all this is how difficult it seems for feminists as a community to see this happening as often as it does.

With dangerous ideas like “women born women”, the new emergence of the “rescue industry”, and anti sex work and anti black feminists these newest waves of feminism are going on the offensive and becoming more harmful by the day. The problem blooms larger when the actuality of “being the voice for the voiceless” is comprised solely of ignoring people who are willing to speak for themselves. Feminism isn’t helping anyone anymore – unless helping yourself to take the stage by way of abusing women you don’t like counts, and I don’t think it should.

Could you talk just briefly as a black woman and a sex worker what your reaction to the Laverne Cox photos are? Is it empowering or satisfying to see black women recognized as beautiful in that way? Do you see sexualized images of black women as a problem at all, or does it depend on agency/the situation?

As for my reaction to Laverne’s pictures, I feel a sense of happiness for her. She’s done interviews and spoken about her self esteem/appearance, and to see her be able to have those photos done and (very obviously) look and feel so beautiful, what a happy moment. It helps me as an individual when I see any Black woman feeling beautiful and sharing that with the world – reminding people we ARE beautiful, desirable, feminine, and strong – which is exactly, thankfully, what Laverne Cox has done for us.

When it comes to sexualized images of us, for me it’s all about agency! Did we consent? Are we respected? Is this our choice? Is this a collection of body parts or erased humanity? There are a lot of questions that run through my mind at that intersection of sex work and being a Black woman.

What Laverne Cox did put a smile on many faces and some hope in a lot of hearts. I think there are very few better things a person could do in life.
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Zoe Samudzi is a researcher and activist; she’s a project assistant at UCSF. You can follow her on twitter, @ztsamudzi.

Could you talk just briefly about how some strains of radical feminism have marginalized black women and trans women? Like, specifically, why does feminism have trouble embracing those groups? Are the reasons linked?

It isn’t just radical feminism, but also mainstream White Feminism that has targeted and excluded women of color, sex workers, trans women, and others marginalized identities. But these radical second wave feminisms emerged in reaction to traditional femininity, a part of which is female sexuality, which they characterized as “slavery to patriarchy.” These radical feminisms, in my opinion, don’t even feign inclusivity: there’s a very prescriptive understanding of what emancipation and liberation looks like and in the rejection of femininity, it fails to recognize women’s agency (including sexual agency). Couple this misogynistic demonization of femininity with the general devaluing of certain bodies and identities – black women, trans women, and sex workers most notably – and you have shaming, commentaries about “self-objectification” (actually the imposition of the male gaze) when women pose nude, refusal to recognise sex workers as agents, and so on. This exclusion and marginalisation links to white female entitlement and the refusal to de-center whiteness. White women have historically been perpetrators of violence against black women’s bodies, and the same entitlement and identity-centerdness in feminism has enabled them to proclaim themselves as the arbiters of womanhood. It’s also worth nothing that it isn’t just radical feminism that has marginalized trans women and sex workers: that has and does happen in black feminism/womanism, as well.

Do you see fashion images of black women as disempowering? empowering? Some mix of both? Do black women have a different relationship to objectification/sexualization than white women do?

I guess I don’t pay them much attention, but the models are gorgeous. Beyond being empowering or disempowering, I see fashion images of black women as promoting similar discouraging messages about body images as white ones. But black women lend an element of “cool” and afford a cultural capital to fashion that white models to not (they’re always thrown in there for some performance of athleticism or exoticism). The objectification of black women is both gendered and racialized: there’s not only a gendered sexualization, but also a fetishization as an exotic radicalised “other.”

I know you don’t identify as a feminist right now…I guess I wondered what feminism would have to do to get you back? What needs to change before you’d feel comfortable identifying as a feminist again?

I don’t think I’ll ever identify as a feminist again, though there’s a tremendous amount of scholarship in marginal feminisms (i.e. from sex workers, in transfeminism, from migrant/immigrant women, from disabled women, from women in the Global South, and so on). I’m not spending any more energy trying to convince white women that my identity is worthy: I’d rather invest my energy in gender politics grounded in intersectional understandings, as womanism is.
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Julia Serano is a trans feminist and author. Her most recent book is Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive.

Why has feminism been so resistant to including trans women?

There was a time when most feminists (like society at large) were very resistant toward trans women, largely because of misconceptions that people in general had about us. But with increasing trans awareness over the last ten or twenty years, most strands of feminism now acknowledge (and sometimes ally with) trans people and issues. One major exception has been trans-exclusive radical feminists (often called TERFs).

While they may differ to some degree in their perspectives, most TERFs subscribe to a single-issue view of sexism, where men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed, end of story. This rigidly binary view of sexism erases transgender perspectives. It leads TERFs to view trans men as “dupes” or “traitors” who have bought into patriarchy’s insistence that being a man is superior to being a woman. This framing also leads them to depict trans women as entitled men who are “infiltrating” women’s spaces and “parodying” women’s oppression, or as “gender-confused” or androgynous people who transition to female in some hapless attempt to “assimilate” into the gender binary. Which is so bizarre that they think that, because no one in the straight mainstream views out trans women as being well-respected legitimate gendered citizens!

Is that linked to, or how is it linked to, feminism’s discussions of objectification, or with its discomfort with sex workers/sexualized portrayals of women?

Yes. Their single-issue view of sexism (i.e., men are the oppressors and women are the oppressed, end of story) ignores intersectionality—the fact that there are many forms of sexism and marginalization that exacerbate one another, and that people who experience multiple forms of marginalization may view sexism (and feminist responses to sexism) very differently.

Some feminists (including many trans-exclusionary ones) forward the following overly simplistic argument: In patriarchy, men sexualize and objectify women, therefore women should avoid being sexualized and objectified, because it is inherently disempowering and anti-feminist. This seems to be the case that Meghan Murphy is making. But it ignores the fact that all women are not seen and interpreted the same in the eyes of society. If you happen to be a disabled woman, or a woman of color, or a queer or trans woman, or a sex worker, then you are also constantly receiving messages that you are *not* considered desirable or loveable according to society’s norms.

Feminists have long discussed the “virgin/whore” double-bind: If we express our sexualities and/or expose our bodies, many people will sexualize and objectify us. But if we repress our sexualities and hide our bodies, that also has negative ramifications, especially for those of us who are deemed to be non-normative or undesirable for some reason or another.

I completely understand why, in a world that constantly attempts to erase and eradicate trans women of color, Laverne Cox might feel that that photo-shoot might be empowering for her and for other trans women who share similar identities, backgrounds, or circumstances. This does not by any means imply that they are “buying into the system”—rather, it most likely means that they are navigating their own way through society’s mixed messages (e.g., women are seen as sexual objects, but at the same time, trans women and women of color are viewed as sexually deviant, undesirable, or sexual abominations).

Laverne Cox is an outspoken feminist who has been raising public awareness about sexism and multiple forms of marginalization for several years now. Given that history, Murphy’s response seemed especially condescending to me. It is okay for feminists to disagree. But when you accuse someone who is creating positive change in so many ways of “reinforcing” sexism (especially when they face obstacles that you do not have to face), then you should probably consider whether you are the one who is “holding back the movement” by excluding women who differ in their experiences from you.

Announcing…the Next Roundtable!

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

So, we’ve had a ton of suggestions as to what to do for the next roundtable, from Roz Chast’s new book to the Claremont X-Men to Mad Men. I have considered all the suggestions carefully, weighed the pros and cons, and decided on the next one true roundtable topic.

(Drumroll.)

Joss Whedon!

Okay, so no one actually suggested that we do a roundtable on Joss Whedon. But! I am morally certain lots of folks are interested in him, and I would like a better sense of his virtues and weaknesses.

In short, I am a not especially benevolent dictator, and I say Joss Whedon it is.

Unless no one will write about Joss Whedon, in which case we’ll have to pick something else, or shutter the blog, or take drastic measures. So! If you would like to avoid that horrible fate, whatever it is, say you will write about Joss Whedon in the comments, or email me or contact me psychically if you are able to do that.

Update: There seems some interest in this from folks who haven’t written here before, so I should probably explain that HU is an all volunteer endeavor, alas; we have no ads, no funding, and no one gets paid. So, if that does not dissuade you, we’d love to hear from new folks!

Utilitarian Review 4/25/15

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Pam Rosenthal on Jo Baker’s Longbourn — literary fiction or romance?

Shonen Knife forever.

Ginsburg and Breyer have doomed us all.

Nate Atkinson wonders whether the superhero genre, or any genre, can be racist in itself.

Stephan Gary on ARTS video games, neoliberalism, and randomness.

Chris Gavaler on the X-files and super doctors.

The Premiere of Agents of Shield is really racist.

Episode 2 of Agents of SHIELD is also really racist. They’re on a role.

Utilitarians Everywhere

This was kind of an insane week. I had six pieces published in one day, which I think is a record…and the Playboy piece on Laverne Cox went semi-viral on twitter.

For Pacific Standard I wrote a piece on the importance of sex workers and former sex workers doing research on sex workers.

For Chicago Magazine I wrote about how Chicago’s torture reparations fit into the case for reparations for African-Americans.

At TNR I wondered why all the hate for Superman?

At the Life Sentence I explained why cozies are morally reprhensible.

At Reason I wrote about how Daredevil sacralizes torture.

For Playboy I wrote about:

—how the structure of twitter is optimized for abuse, and needs to be changes.

— how poptimism does’t limit music criticism; attention does.

—Laverne Cox posing nude and how radical feminism often fails black women and trans women.

At Quartz I wrote about how searching for happiness makes you unhappy. Also evil.

At Ravishly

—I wrote about Daredevil and how white saviors need injustice.

—I argued that to puncture the cult of motherhood we need to value other relationships, not independence.

At Splice Today I wrote about how Orphan Black’s male clones are kind of boring stereotypes.

Other Links

I think with all the above I’m a little link-exhausted…but if you have pieces you’d like to share in comments, that’d be great.

Waiting for Alan Rickman

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

This first ran on Splice Today.
_________

Good guy, bad guy. It’s what you do if you’re making a basic action/adventure movie. In Die Hard, you have John McClane as the hero…and the most interesting, most charismatic, most important secondary character is Alan Rickman having the time of his life as Hans Gruber. In Face/Off, you’ve got John Travolta as the good guy (or bad guy) and Nicholas Cage as the bad guy (or good guy), and who the hell can remember anybody else in that film? Superman’s got Lex Luther, Batman’s got the Joker, and Jennifer in I Spit on Your Grave has her evil rapists. Good guy, bad guy. A simple-minded formula for people who want to sit and watch simple-minded virtue triumph while things blow up. You give them what they want, and they are happy.

Olivier Megaton, director of Colombiana is not trying to be fancy. He wants to give you the good guy — he hired Zoe Saldana to play heroine Cattaleya, gave her lots of firepower, skintight outfits, and a tragic backstory, and sent her out there to right wrongs and/or cause explosions. And he wants to give you the bad guy too. Evil Colombian drug lord who murdered Cattaleya’s parents while she watched — offensively stereotypical, yes, but for that very reason an efficient fulfillment of narrative expectations. So you see crime lord Don Luis (Beto Benitas) and his henchmen Marco (Jordi Molia) pop up at the beginning all swarthy and sneering and you say, okay, so these are the guys we hate; for the balance of the film we’ll get to see them being sneaky and nasty and underhanded and ruthless and then at the end they’ll get their satisfying comeuppance. Thus it has ever been, thus it shall be.

Except…somewhere, somehow, something goes horribly wrong. Cattaleya, the good guy (or in this case good gal), wreaks horrible vengeance on slimy evildoers just the way she’s supposed to…but somehow the prime evildoers, the guys we’re supposed to love to hate, are brutally blindsided not by our heroine, but rather by a series of viciously sodden subplots. There’s lots of back and forth with Catalleya’s adoptive, tough, but tender-hearted uncle. There’s sexy shenanigans with the hot artist-guy boyfriend with the adorable sign between his ears proclaiming, “this space for rent.” There’s the earnest cop and his earnest cop sidekick who pursue Saldana by drinking coffee and looking at computer screens and talking into cell phones, or sometimes by doing all three while simultaneously reusing footage from every Hollywood film from the last decade.

By the time we’ve eliminated the uncle and watched the boyfriend take off his shirt and watched the cop and his subplot emit their last joint indifferent fart, Megaton has almost run through his hour and forty minutes, and there’s no time left for the baddies. The final apocalyptic fist fight between Cateelya and Marco is shot in kinetic jerky fast forward, presumably because the director was worried the clock would run out. And after that, the supposed criminal mastermind doesn’t even get a face-to-face confrontation. It’s like Saldana spent her life looking for revenge, and then just shrugged and said, “ah, to hell with it. I guess I’d rather whimper at that boring artist guy — or maybe talk tough to that cop, presuming I can tell him apart from all the other cops.”

The saddest part is that Colombiana has a real star; a hero with charisma and beauty and oodles of killer instinct. Not Saldana, alas, who has the intensity of a mildly weepy guppy, but Amandla Stenberg. Stenberg plays Cattaleya as a child with a restrained and canny brutality that brings the film’s first half to life despite the best efforts of every adult involved in the project. When the young actor impassively makes herself vomit, or declares to her uncle with utter conviction that she’s given up on being Xena Warrior Princess, and now she wants to be a killer, you know that here, at least, is a hero who deserves the best villain Hollywood can dish out.

Denied that, however, she should at least get the chance to kick Olivier Megaton a good crack in the shins on our behalf. Vengeance is beautiful.

Stealing Your Relics for Your Own Good

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Noah Berlatsky

Well, I was supposed to have another post today, but it fell through…so. Second episode of Agents of SHIELD, just as racist as the first? Somewhat improbably, yes.

Our team heads off to Peru to find an object of great power, which they appropriate in the name of international law and harmony and because white people are the best ones to hold onto bombs, just ask Hiroshima. The Peruvians understandably don’t see it quite that way, and try to get the object for themselves. In particular, one of Coulson’s old flames, a (surprise!) hypersexualized Latina woman tries to use her wiles on him, but he’s too stoic and smart and white. The team sets aside its internal differences to self-actualize through the slaughter of the brown people whose stuff they’re stealing. Then at the end Samuel Jackson shows up and gives forth with the silly over the top indignation just to show that there’s no hard feelings from POC about the pillage and murder. Happy ending all around.

What’s interesting here is that this isn’t even really a superhero narrative. There aren’t any metahumans about; it’s a basic action-adventure narrative. Yet, the superhero filled world it exists in remains important — and part of the way it’s important is in the racism. Superhero genre default is that the powerful are good; the righteous who win are right. In the context of international security arrangements, this ends up meaning that stark imperial condescension is justified, and the bad guys are the indigenous people who object to having their borders violated and their resources robbed.Similarly, online activist Skye’s efforts to argue for people resisting oppression are pooh-poohed; rebellion against authority is portrayed as violent while the gun-wielding international agents with the flying fortress are just protectors.The connection between superpower narratives and the international superpower couldn’t be much more naked, or much more unquestioned.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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