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Heroes, Violence, and the Devil’s Tempation
Editors’ Note: This post contains spoilers regarding the first seasons of “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones”, as well as references to other superhero movies and shows.
Given its dependence on violence, the superhero genre struggles under a childish reluctance to explore its implications. As a general rule, superheroes — exemplified by Batman and Superman — are not allowed to kill their antagonists, but are expected to bring them to justice and (hopefully) repentance. Villains don’t always live to commit another crime or threaten another city, but they are far more likely to meet their end through suicide or their own hubris, rather than at the end of a hero’s fists, blade, or — God forbid — gun. And even when this hero’s rule is broken (even Superman and Batman have killed), it’s rarely give the weight it deserves, and is often undone by the genre’s reliance on resurrection and reboots.
https://youtu.be/m5_A0Wx0jU4
This problem was particularly acute in the first season of “Daredevil”, as Matt Murdock’s refusal to kill is presented as admirable but unquestionably leads to a great deal of innocent (and preventable) death. The show’s inability to deal with this was laughable at times, but frustrating at others. Wilson Fisk may not be the wickedest villain in the Marvel universe, but he was a selfish brute who was indifferent to human suffering if it stood between him and power. He needed to be stopped and Murdock’s prohibition on killing — but moral ease with very nearly everything short of that — deserved a more honest accounting. As it was, the series retained a pre-teen morality, even if its levels of blood and gore were well into R-rated territory.
In contrast, “Jessica Jones” approached the subject with much greater maturity, giving — in turn — good reason for Jones to keep Kilgrave alive, showing the tragic consequences of that choice, and showing what happens when circumstances change. We were still inhabiting a world where villains can mind-control others at a word through a “virus” but this is much more mature and thoughtful stuff.
Based on the newly released trailer for the second season of “Daredevil”, however, it seems we’re in for a bit of grappling with this, as Murdock confronts Frank Castle (aka, the Punisher), a vigilante who shares none of Murdock’s scruples. More importantly, the trailer shows Castle landing some rhetorical punches on Murdock, questioning his naiveté and — through him — the show’s own first season.
I hardly expect the series to vindicate Castle — whose vigilantism is every bit as immature as Murdock’s Catholic-flavored boy scouting — but seeing the two in conflict should be interesting.
Published in Culture, Entertainment
I’m not familiar with them from the comics, but they had an early version of the story in the Arrow TV show. The person who made the decision to use them was of extremely questionable morality, willing to do evil in her pursuit of what she understood to be good.
She’s not presented as being admirable, by any stretch….
Arrow‘s another good examination of this topic, btw. The hero starts off killing people left and right, and then decides he’s got to work within the framework of the law.
One big difference between the MCU and our world is that in the MCU incarceration simply isn’t a viable option, not only because of superpowers, but because of infiltrators working within the system and the relative ineptitude of authorities. Hydra managed to infiltrate both SHIELD and the highest levels of the US government.
Thus, Alexander Pierce orchestrated the release of Werner Reinhart, and weaknesses within the system enabled the Clairvoyant to spring Quinn, Raina, and Franklin Hall free (the last admittedly by accident). Hyde released a bunch of enhanced people to get revenge on Coulson. Grant Ward got out because his brother was so stupid when he had him transferred, and Absorbing Man used his own capture to his advantage. Even Loki was put in a high-level Asgardian prison, only to be released by Thor and wind up on the throne of Asgard. Kilgrave’s escape has been discussed in other comments.
Among the only “successful” incarcerations was that of Faustus, who was put in a cell with Zola and managed to teach him how to control minds (despite having a thing on his mouth to keep him from talking). thus enabling him to teach Hydra how to control minds upon his later release.
In fact, the only uneventful incarcerations I can think of thus far are those of Blonksy (in an Alaskan cryocell) and Wilson Fisk. But Fisk just got there.
A crazy psychopath who knows he is in a comic book? When you know everything is make belief why agonize over any morals. Welcome to nihilism.
The current DC TV universe is kinda weird, in that it’s really ambiguous just how common superpowered beings are. With Arrow and The Flash it’s seemed like costumed vigilantes are a very new phenomenon, and are not well-known.
However, if they confirm that Supergirl takes place within the same fictional universe that means the “heroes are secret and rare” paradigm gets blown out of the water since Superman is a well-known character within the context of that show. If Supes exists, then presumably why not Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, etc, etc, etc.
You can get away with not exploring these issues if your fictional universe only consists of one hero (e.g. the Tim Burton Batman movies), but once you allow for a universe where superbeings are common it creates so many ethical, political, and logistical issues that not exploring these issues makes them conspicuous in their absence.
I think this is true of all comics. After all who are the guys in charge of law enforcement in Gotham? Arkham is basically a revolving door facility for all the Batman criminals. Yet, the Mayor, Gordon, and judges all keep getting elected.
One would imagine that in a world of super powered people the government and society at all levels would be come extremely militarized to deal with this threat. Perhaps they don’t because of the superheroes, but still their actions by and large seem irrational from an institutional stand point.
Of course this is because the comics aren’t about those societies, but rather the personal melodramas of the main heroes and villains. Everything else is just stage props.
I can’t speak to many comics, but I know it was certainly true on the original Batman 1960’s TV show.
Once they had the Penguin on camera in prison planning his next crime with his cronies, and they still let him go the next day.
And don’t get me started on how the Joker got out during the prison baseball game.
If it’s true that he exists within a comic book, that means he’s not crazy.
In the comics, they’ve revealed that the voices in his head are the spirits of dead Marvel characters, so you can’t even call him schizophrenic any more.
Nihilism is entirely rational if you know you live in a fictional universe.
If he’s the only one who knows he’s in a comic book, then he’s clearly not the crazy one… ;)
And he’s not a psychopath. I don’t think he kills a single person in that movie who’s not part of the criminal conspiracy, and generally in the act of trying to kill him.
Indeed, one of my biggest pet peeves is the habit of needlessly killing movie villains so the writers don’t have to deal with the problem. The suicides of The Joker in Batman (1989) and Whiplash at the end of Iron Man 2 are the most egregious examples.
In the comic books, other characters have met their creators (i.e. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, etc). Since this knowledge hasn’t changed their behaviour, one could argue that they are the crazy ones.
Of course, one can also argue that these meetings were outside-of-continuity…
Also, in the comic books, as a person who knows that he lives in a fictional universe and therefore understands how this knowledge skews the moral code of that universe, he knows enough to only kill non-recurring characters. If he was truly psychopathic he would have no such limit on his behaviour.
“Get your first look at The Flash–Supergirl crossover”
They’ve both been carefully written to make it clear that they’re dealing with the problems within their cities.
They’ve learned the lesson from Marvel. They’re clearly following the same playbook.
And I’ll say it, I enjoyed the Green Lantern movie. Hopefully if they reboot it they’ll do a better job than what happened with the Fantastic Four, which first two movies I also enjoyed. Love the Silver Surfer (talk about ambiguous heroes!).
In The Flash, they run their own private prison. They never really get into who takes care of the villains who are in their, as their cells don’t even have toilets.
Multi-verse.
In pretty much every incarnation, the government and civil society of Gotham City is portrayed as irredeemably corrupt, so much so that the government of the United States once sealed it off completely from the rest of the country (sorta like Manhattan in Escape From New York).
In the current version of the comic books, the causes for this irredeemable corruption are quasi-supernatural in origin.
Now, while it’s true that the laws of virtually any comic book universe by necessity are different from our own, the degree to which their laws differ from ours vary greatly.
Creators like Mark Millar have made entire careers out of creating comic book universes where the laws of physics/morality are closer to ours than the mainstream DC and Marvel universes, or failing that, at least more thoughtfully take into consideration the logical implications of the fictional universe’s divergent physics/morality.
Which is how you know it’s a comic. In the real world, those people would have been elected to National office and be running the whole show. :)
In the real world, Gotham would have the economy and population of Detroit.
The two most ludicrous deviations from real-world logic in the DC Universe are 1) the idea that Gotham City would have a robust economy and an increasing population, and 2) the continued economic health and massive cultural influence of the Daily Planet.
It’s a major urban center. We have to conclude it is run by democrats. Democrats fail upward.
Have you read that they’re gonna make Supergirl’s world a separate Earth, or are you speculating? It would be a workable solution, since they’ve been exploring the multiverse extensively in The Flash.
Last episode of Flash involved them travelling to Earth 2 and while crossing they saw an image of Supergirl.
It is speculation, but I believe they will be on Earth 2 for a few episodes, and when they travel back, Barry will end up somewhere else.
I don’t think they can have her on the same Earth as after he helps her, they’d be buddies, and she is an insta-fix for stopping Zoom.
Keep in mind, the DC movie universe and the DC tv universe are TWO different universes. Pretty soon there will be two versions of Barry Allen existing simultaneously, one on tv and one in the movies. That’s very different from the Marvel model.
That’s good. Continuity and logic became a real flustercuck on Smallville once they introduced too many heroes. Like, how the heck was the existence of the Justice Society of America kept a secret for all those years? A young Clark Kent should have read about the exploits of those 1940s heroes and think “I could totally do that!”
In a world where public superpowered heroes are already an accepted thing, the odds that some kid would keep his powers a secret diminish greatly (unless it’s also already well-known that superpowered people generally end up being exploited by the government as in the MCU, or oppressed by the government as in the X-Men universe).
>:^(
On the killing of villains:
The significant difference between Kilgrave and Fisk is that while Fisk has plenty of personal power, he hasn’t super powers. The possibility of bringing Kilgrave to justice on terms we know proved to be absolutely nil. The only way to incarcerate him was through means that entirely ignore any concept of civil rights, and the only to neutralize him would be to isolate him indefinitely or deliver the death penalty in a manner that assured he wouldn’t be able to turn the table on his executioners. He was a sociopath to an extreme, such that it was soon apparent that the only way to eliminate the damage was through his death.
Fisk, on the other hand, had plenty of temporal power but nothing super powered to back him up (that he was aware of at the time). Daredevil was eventually able to bring him to temporal justice. Though Fisk had plenty of palms greased, eventually that ran out (so far – the advantage of his imprisonment is that he can return). Nor is he an extreme sociopath (not like Kilgrave in any case.) Justice can be done. Death is not the only apparent solution.
Frank Castle/The Punisher has long skipped back and forth along the line of Anti-Villain/Anti-Hero. He makes a good Daredevil antagonist in that they share attributes. Castle’s family was killed by criminal syndicates; Murdock’s father was killed by criminal syndicates. The difference is that one seeks retribution through vengence and the other through justice. That puts them at odds despite similar paths.
But Daredevil the show has enjoyed this dichotomy. Murdock and Fisk also shared something like that. The strength of this approach is that the antagonist’s motivations can require the protagonist to examine himself.
So there.
Deadpool is an interesting cat. In his original incarnation he was just an evil merc who ran his mouth, then he became a violent SOB who was trying to do better, but only knew one way to act, then he became a fourth wall breaking character, who performed comical levels of violence.
From the perspective of the reader Deadpool is sane, we know he is a comic book character, he knows it too. Everyone is in on the joke. Yet, no one in the comic is in on it. If we apply suspension of disbelief then we can not know it either, and he is just insane. Deadpool makes the reader choose, between liking him and not taking the comic seriously of taking the comic seriously and thinking him a a violent loon. I haven’t read much of his later stories where he gets really cartoony. Just the earlier ones where he is a disturbed guy trying to figure out right and wrong, while not being able to see the line.
It was recently pointed out to me that Billy Joel might be Batman. Which begs the question: Do any superheroes play an instrument?
Dazzler is the best-known super-powered pop star. She’s a singer, however.
Her team up with Deadpool to stop a vampire invasion of New York was pretty awesome, incidentally.
Just more evidence of Deadpool’s awesomeness. It’s hard to imagine a different book managing to make freakin’ Dazzler a relevant, useful character.
Most superheroes (at least those not written by Frank Miller or Garth Ennis) do not beat people “within an inch of their life.” Usually they try to subdue them with the minimum amount of force necessary to get the job done (in this Spidey’s webshooters are a godsend).
The ones who tend to get a pummeling are the similarly super-powered villains, but they’re able to tap into their Timex power to take a lickin’ and, well, you know (or do you?).
Relatively recently DC dealt with this for Batman by explaining that his fear is that he won’t stop killing once he starts. For a normal person, this would be a weak argument, but we’re talking about a guy who put bat ears on his head, then proceeded to stick them on every single thing he owned.
But it hasn’t always been that way. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, etc, were all killers when they were first created in the 1930s/40s.
It wasn’t until the Comics Code Authority came along later that the “no-killing” rule came about. Heroes stopped killing because politicians were threatening to destroy the comic book industry entirely.
Heroes started killing again when creators like Alan Moore and Frank Miller started creating graphic novels which were sold without the CCA stamp-of-approval. By the 2000s, the CCA had been abandoned entirely.
DC was the last to abandon the CCA completely, which helps explain why Marvel had such a leg up on DC storytelling during the 80s and 90s. The “New52” reboot was sorta the coming-out party for DC’s post-CCA era.
Interestingly, Season 1 of Daredevil took a lot of inspiration from Frank Miller’s run of Daredevil …