By Travis Trombley | |
Warner Bros.
I recently rewatched a childhood favorite of mine: Osmosis Jones. Fun action animation + Bill Murray phoning in a classic Murray experience + loads of human physiology puns... How this was a box office bomb, I'll never know.
If you've never had the pleasure, the film is classic cop drama, but the "city" is actually a body. Specifically, the body of a zookeeper named Frank who, against the wishes of his daughter, practices the habits of healthy living you'd expect from a zookeeper named Frank (indeed, fried chicken and fart jokes abound in this film). Jones is a white blood cell (a cop) who must learn to work with his new partner, a by-the-book "consultant" cold pill named Drix, in order to stop a new threat (a virus named Thrax) that everybody else refuses to acknowledge as real. It's familiar, but the backdrop adds an interesting degree of depth.
Frank's poor health is reflected on the inside as a rotting, "crime" infested city headed by a negligent mayor who's more concerned with his own reelection than Frank's welfare (yeah, like the mayor in Jaws...). Reporters pester him about the "education" of young red blood cells not knowing how to carry oxygen and the "housing crisis" for fat cells. Dock workers in the mouth talk about the need for more "hand washing" initiatives, and a mayoral candidate establishes a platform on long-term goals like "ordering salads." Worse yet, these institutional issues make possible the more existential threat that is Thrax's plan to kill Frank by posing as a common cold before attacking the Hypothalamus, thus blending the common crime drama with the bigger, "we're all gonna die" superhero narrative.
This combination of story structures got me thinking about our conceptualization of the "good" and how that translates to the roles of superheroes in relation to that conceptualization in their mainstream narratives. Just as Osmosis and Drix can only help Frank by eliminating external threats, superheroes are relatively limited in their capacities to achieve "justice."
In other words, I wonder if superheroes help improve the health of a community in which they operate, or - like white blood cells - do they only function to eliminate the 'bad' stuff?
If you've never had the pleasure, the film is classic cop drama, but the "city" is actually a body. Specifically, the body of a zookeeper named Frank who, against the wishes of his daughter, practices the habits of healthy living you'd expect from a zookeeper named Frank (indeed, fried chicken and fart jokes abound in this film). Jones is a white blood cell (a cop) who must learn to work with his new partner, a by-the-book "consultant" cold pill named Drix, in order to stop a new threat (a virus named Thrax) that everybody else refuses to acknowledge as real. It's familiar, but the backdrop adds an interesting degree of depth.
Frank's poor health is reflected on the inside as a rotting, "crime" infested city headed by a negligent mayor who's more concerned with his own reelection than Frank's welfare (yeah, like the mayor in Jaws...). Reporters pester him about the "education" of young red blood cells not knowing how to carry oxygen and the "housing crisis" for fat cells. Dock workers in the mouth talk about the need for more "hand washing" initiatives, and a mayoral candidate establishes a platform on long-term goals like "ordering salads." Worse yet, these institutional issues make possible the more existential threat that is Thrax's plan to kill Frank by posing as a common cold before attacking the Hypothalamus, thus blending the common crime drama with the bigger, "we're all gonna die" superhero narrative.
This combination of story structures got me thinking about our conceptualization of the "good" and how that translates to the roles of superheroes in relation to that conceptualization in their mainstream narratives. Just as Osmosis and Drix can only help Frank by eliminating external threats, superheroes are relatively limited in their capacities to achieve "justice."
In other words, I wonder if superheroes help improve the health of a community in which they operate, or - like white blood cells - do they only function to eliminate the 'bad' stuff?
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It’s a common trope in superhero narratives for the hero to begin an adventure by “going on patrol,” which is to say he is scouring his turf for some criminal activity to stop. Said turf varies in size, from Queens to Space Sector 2814.
The name of the game, though, is almost always protection. Protecting the neighborhood from a crime lord, protecting Metropolis from Lex Luthor’s latest plot, protecting the planet from alien invasion.
Superheroes seem active in their pursuit of protection, but this means they are actively….passive. They are reactive, literally waiting for something to happen, only engaging as a response to someone or something else taking action (this trope is played up to great comedic effect at the start of Spider-Man: Homecoming). As such, the narrative role of ‘shaking things up’ usually falls to villains.
In his essay “Superheroes Need Supervillains," Frank Verano writes, “In a way, supervillains give superheroes a reason to exist and function in a given society. When supervillains disrupt order, superheroes restore it. . . . They preserve the status quo and rid the system of radical super-criminal elements.”
This active-passive binary between supervillains and the superheroes who thwart them carries some heavy assumptions about society, or at the very least a superhero’s role in society. Chiefly, it assumes that society is fine as is, and simply requires occasional purging of corruptive or destructive forces. Think about it - how many superhero stories end with the world a better place - not just safer, but actually improved? The conditions that created the supervillain in the first place actually addressed or the institutions questioned?
Not many.
The name of the game, though, is almost always protection. Protecting the neighborhood from a crime lord, protecting Metropolis from Lex Luthor’s latest plot, protecting the planet from alien invasion.
Superheroes seem active in their pursuit of protection, but this means they are actively….passive. They are reactive, literally waiting for something to happen, only engaging as a response to someone or something else taking action (this trope is played up to great comedic effect at the start of Spider-Man: Homecoming). As such, the narrative role of ‘shaking things up’ usually falls to villains.
In his essay “Superheroes Need Supervillains," Frank Verano writes, “In a way, supervillains give superheroes a reason to exist and function in a given society. When supervillains disrupt order, superheroes restore it. . . . They preserve the status quo and rid the system of radical super-criminal elements.”
This active-passive binary between supervillains and the superheroes who thwart them carries some heavy assumptions about society, or at the very least a superhero’s role in society. Chiefly, it assumes that society is fine as is, and simply requires occasional purging of corruptive or destructive forces. Think about it - how many superhero stories end with the world a better place - not just safer, but actually improved? The conditions that created the supervillain in the first place actually addressed or the institutions questioned?
Not many.
Marvel. In 'Spider-Man: Homecoming,' young Peter spends the beginning of the film seeking out a crime to stop, a reason to be a superhero.
Anthony R. Mills charts this trend of the “Edenic status quo” to the “American monomyth” established in 18th Century writings that incorporated Puritan theology, Social Darwinism, and frontier narratives. In his book American Theology, Superhero Comics, and Cinema, he writes about how the hyper-masculine heroes of the frontier would gladly save a community from internal or external forces, but neither the hero nor the community would change as a result, as transformation would call into question the independence of the hero and the divine status of the civilization. He writes:
Nothing is challenged, and at the end of the day the community goes about its business as usual until the next time it needs a savior. The town in peril is self-sufficient and perfect just as it is, with no ethical judgement on the conditions of its own institutions. Correlatively, this means that evil and sin are limited to the perceived malignancy of particular individuals who either threaten the community externally or have gone astray within. (20)
To some extent, we’ve evolved beyond the flawless hero - many of the higher-quality superhero narratives serve as intense dissections of protagonists’ psyches and motives - but the community at large remains largely unexamined.
Thus enters the supervillain. Narratively speaking, most fall into one of two roles: the overt external threat (usually aliens like Brainiac or Thanos) or the internal threat. This latter category can be subdivided into those who seek a personal gain of sorts (wealth, revenge, thrills) and misguided activists like Wilson Fisk, Magneto, Hydra, and Doctor Horrible. These ‘activists’ seek to alter society in some manner - to shift the status quo, usually by any - often violent - means necessary.
Take, for example, this description of a superhero narrative:
Thus enters the supervillain. Narratively speaking, most fall into one of two roles: the overt external threat (usually aliens like Brainiac or Thanos) or the internal threat. This latter category can be subdivided into those who seek a personal gain of sorts (wealth, revenge, thrills) and misguided activists like Wilson Fisk, Magneto, Hydra, and Doctor Horrible. These ‘activists’ seek to alter society in some manner - to shift the status quo, usually by any - often violent - means necessary.
Take, for example, this description of a superhero narrative:
A city is best upon by a masked assassin who’s waging a one-man war against corruption by killing a select group of wealthy individuals he believes have abused their powers to the detriment of the masses.
Without other details, it sounds like a typical intro for a villain to be stopped by a superhero, right? Someone out to make change, but through a lethal violence that a civilized society cannot condone. But it is, of course, a logline for the first season of CW’s Batman-ripoff Arrow. In the series, Oliver Queen returns to Starling City with a list detailing the corrupt rich of the city and an intent to kill the people on that list. As it progresses, much of the show centers around Oliver’s transformation from violent vigilante to superhero - from active change-agent to passive protector (though the mayor change-up in the fifth season offers some interesting possibilities).
Courtesy of CW: "You have failed this city"
The major problem with this model is that, of course, the community is not actually above reproach. Our country’s past and ongoing efforts to secure social justice serve as proof. Mills highlights this flaw in his criticism: “[the Edenic status quo] precludes the possibility that the community itself may be embracing structures that are inherently oppressive or exclusive. By being concerned with unquestioned restoration of community and its conventions, the hero works to promote possibly unethical systems, implicitly if not intentionally” (21).
Given the frontier narratives Mills discusses as the root of the American monomyth, the institutions in question might include ethnocentrism (colonialism, slavery, and racial prejudice), rigid gender norms, and unhealthy values like materialism. It’s not too far fetched to say that a number of these remain strikingly relevant in 2018.
Put another way, stopping an armed mugging doesn’t address poverty, deficits in education, or the prevalence of firearms.
All that said, this isn’t so much an indictment of superhero characters as much as it is the genre, and much of that is due to its inherent limitations. When Batman saves a mugger from falling off a building during a fistfight, he’s obviously not condoning the act of mugging. Rather, the serial nature of the medium and the expectations for bombast prevent the heroes from engaging in more socially constructive political discourse.
In short, their job is to beat up bad guys. Their influence is violent and destructive, almost by nature - best suited for thwarting the forces of evil. Usually, in the history of the genre, when superheroes’ ambitions turned towards the ‘improvement’ of the community, not just its protection, they’ve become authoritarian rulers to be toppled (see Justice Lords, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Miracle Man, The Authority, and Tony Stark’s role in Captain America: Civil War for a few examples).
As such, it seems superheros cannot be super-activists, for better or worse. As such we need some supervillains to question the mores of society in these stories - to seek change. Though their lot is to do so violently, thereby meriting the attention of costumed protectors. However, we can hope that the result of such Hegelian Dialects can result in something constructive: a healthy criticism of the community that maintains respect for the rights and safety of all the people within it.
And thus we return to the opening analogy. The role of the superhero, it seems, is that of the white blood cell. It’s designed to rid the social body of malicious pathogens, and that is indeed a critical contribution, but it has no power within itself to improve the baseline health of a patient. Such results stem from more long-term practices of healthy living, which we see Frank attempting (hiking, eating carrots) after his near-death experience.
Too bad, for both ourselves and our communities, it usually takes getting sick to realize a need for improvement.
*Note. I wrote this essay the weekend before seeing the new Black Panther film, and I was elated to see that the film tackled - among others - this very issue of reactive conservatism vs proactive intervention. Look out for an article on the topic in the coming days.
Given the frontier narratives Mills discusses as the root of the American monomyth, the institutions in question might include ethnocentrism (colonialism, slavery, and racial prejudice), rigid gender norms, and unhealthy values like materialism. It’s not too far fetched to say that a number of these remain strikingly relevant in 2018.
Put another way, stopping an armed mugging doesn’t address poverty, deficits in education, or the prevalence of firearms.
All that said, this isn’t so much an indictment of superhero characters as much as it is the genre, and much of that is due to its inherent limitations. When Batman saves a mugger from falling off a building during a fistfight, he’s obviously not condoning the act of mugging. Rather, the serial nature of the medium and the expectations for bombast prevent the heroes from engaging in more socially constructive political discourse.
In short, their job is to beat up bad guys. Their influence is violent and destructive, almost by nature - best suited for thwarting the forces of evil. Usually, in the history of the genre, when superheroes’ ambitions turned towards the ‘improvement’ of the community, not just its protection, they’ve become authoritarian rulers to be toppled (see Justice Lords, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Miracle Man, The Authority, and Tony Stark’s role in Captain America: Civil War for a few examples).
As such, it seems superheros cannot be super-activists, for better or worse. As such we need some supervillains to question the mores of society in these stories - to seek change. Though their lot is to do so violently, thereby meriting the attention of costumed protectors. However, we can hope that the result of such Hegelian Dialects can result in something constructive: a healthy criticism of the community that maintains respect for the rights and safety of all the people within it.
And thus we return to the opening analogy. The role of the superhero, it seems, is that of the white blood cell. It’s designed to rid the social body of malicious pathogens, and that is indeed a critical contribution, but it has no power within itself to improve the baseline health of a patient. Such results stem from more long-term practices of healthy living, which we see Frank attempting (hiking, eating carrots) after his near-death experience.
Too bad, for both ourselves and our communities, it usually takes getting sick to realize a need for improvement.
*Note. I wrote this essay the weekend before seeing the new Black Panther film, and I was elated to see that the film tackled - among others - this very issue of reactive conservatism vs proactive intervention. Look out for an article on the topic in the coming days.
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