In response to Michele's question in my summer-movie geek post, Lori posited that superheros appeal to an audience (mostly male) that desires to be the powerful superhero, a desire that stems from a desire to return to a childhood fantasy of omnipotence. I think Lori is right -- though I wouldn't phrase it as she does.
A good superhero comic book and/or movie allows the audience to feel like a superhero for the duration of the film, to know that, for once, one fights on the side of good against evil, with more abilities than one would possess in the real world. It might be a fantasy we are learn at an early age, but I don't know that it's infantile, as Lori suggests. It's a desire for a less complicated world, and in a sense is narcissistic, no doubt; the superhero/audience is always in the right, and will prevail by the end of the film.
That said, I would also argue that a good comic book film isn't simplistic -- that it presents a complicated (emotionally and logically) thematic structure. In effect, the story's structure is something that the superhero must fight through/with for the narcissistic identification with good to be realized. In Spiderman and Spiderman 2, the villains are born of their own narcissism -- the desire to be special, to receive fame and wealth, to have the good forcibly aligned with them. Peter Parker/Spiderman must learn to align himself with good. His troubled relationships with his Uncle Ben, Aunt May and girlfriend, Mary Jane, lead him away from a desire to do what is right (to behave selfishly) until the bad-narcissist villain appears to force him to battle. In other words, Spiderman is good because he accepts that his values must align with an exterior good, one that does not rely on him for validation, although it does rely on him for protection. Thus, the narcissistic identification with Spiderman is always conditioned by his relationship t his power. Spiderman is on our side/is us, and always wins no matter what -- so we always win, no matter what.
The Hulk is another character that can be seen as a childhood or infantile fantasy, and both the comic book and movie make this clear. Bruce Banner was an abused child, and in the comic book actually developed dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder, as a young boy. The Hulk is one of his alter personae, given enormous power by gamma radiation. In the film, he doesn't have DID, but he is emotionally reserved as a result of his childhood trauma, and pushes those who love him away while allowing those he dislikes to bully him. The film Hulk character is based on one of the comic book Hulks (Banner has different Hulk personalities in the comic book) known as the Savage Hulk, who is childlike, expresses a desire to be left alone (though he frequently puts himself in situations where he has to encounter other people, and develops attachments to special people), and has the ability to grow stronger than any of his nemeses. In short, Hulk is a case of arrested development, stuck at a pre-adolescent emotional age, the embodiment of the conflicted desire to be loved and to be strong enough to survive alone because people are untrustworthy. Thus, Hulk's earliest foes in the comic book and in the movie are society (the military and defense contractors) and ultimately his abusive father.
Partially thanks to the growth of computer generated imagery, comic books have become prime fodder for movies -- their spectacular feats are difficult to render with traditional special effects, and Lou Ferrigno in a green fright wig was never a particularly good adaptation of the gargantuan comic book Hulk. But I think comic books also make good films because of the narcissistic themes outlined above. Much ink has been spilled theorizing how cinema encourages narcissism in viewers -- or at least, how the classical Hollywood system does, with its emphasis on clear narratives, action-oriented heroes with obvious psychological goals, Oedipal narratives, and editing patterns that suture audience members into identification with a film's protagonist. What better examples of this than superhero films, with their almost transparently narcissistic heroes and villains?
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To preface: I don’t read a lot of comics. However, in thinking about Mookie’s comment, I’m put in mind of David Carradine’s spiel toward the end of Kill Bill vol. 2. The gist of it was, if I remember, that Superman is unlike other superheroes because he is REALLY Superman (he was born that way; Clark Kent is his disguise/”other”), whereas other superheroes are REALLY ordinary people (born as humans; special powers acquired as a “supplement”). Schematically, something like:
Peter Parker = Peter Parker (+Spiderman)
Superman = Superman (+Clark Kent)
So, to the question of identification:
1. Lori/Mookie’s model: (i) we (the audience) are not superheroes; (ii) in the movie theater we get to identify with a superhero for two hours.
But what if the truth was precisely the opposite? Namely:
2. THE KILL BILL ALTERNATIVE (which works in all cases except, of course, one: Superman): (i) we (the audience) are in fact superheroes (we have the capacity to act in the world, to create events, to bear a fidelity to those events (an example would be that particular event called “falling in love” or alternatively “starting a revolution”)); (ii) in the movie theater we get to identify with a superhero who is REALLY an ordinary guy (and through this identification we learn to view our own (very real) superpowers as a mere “supplement,” not really us at all, so just forget about them and just get on with real life.)
Rob, the Superman rant in Kill Bill was a bit of a deconstruction. You're right that Bill describes Superman as really Superman and Clark Kent his alternate identity, whereas other heroes were humans first before gaining their powers; your schema are up to this point accurate. However, Bill then says that Clark Kent is Superman's critique of humans: weak and cowardly. So whereas the Spiderman does add to Peter Parker -- it becomes the vehicle by which he (and the audience) learn how to act for the common good -- Clark Kent actually subtracts from Superman by being a negation of what Superman really is.
At least one comic book writer (Mark Millar) has called Tarantino's theory shit (or, rather, shite; Millar is Scottish). I don't recall Millar's argument off-hand, but my disagreement with it comes from the fact that it ignores the fact that Clark Kent existed before Superman. Superman wasn't born Superman; he acquired his powers when he arrived on earth, thanks to our planet's yellow sun (Krypton orbited a red sun), and learned to use them as Clark Kent, a Kansas farmboy. His superheroism isn't a critique of humanity, its an expression of his deep belief in it. Hell, he even pines for a human -- Lois Lane -- and wishes she would love his human identity as much as she idealizes his superhero identity. (In the comic book, they've been married for 20 years, I think, but remain apart in the movies.)
Which brings me to your second point. I'm not sure I see how you've arrived at your first premise -- that we're all already superheroes, or at least potential superheroes, learning to discount our powers by displacing them onto fictional others. "Falling in love" and even "starting a revolution" are both non-superhuman activities, and they're both things that superheroes aren't very good at. To be a superhero means to be alone (although both Spiderman and Superman are married in their comic books; also, the Fantastic Four are for all intents and purposes an actual family). I would instead suggest that superheroes function as narcissistic others that reinforce individual interpretations of social morality. Depending on the writer/reader, Captain America can be seen as the avatar of a John Birch Society vision of America, the symbol of American imperialism, or the apolitical expression of popular wisdom and fortitude. The Hulk can be seen as mentally ill, a riff on Frankenstein and Jekyll/Hyde, or a prominent example of the truth of Ayn Rand's objectivism. Superman can be read as the exemplar of the American melting pot, or (had Tarantino framed his critique a little more academically) a parody of that melting pot.
I might be eventually dovetailing back to you point Rob, but I would say that, rather than encouraging us to forget our superpowers and get on with real life, superheroes create space for us to fantasize about having the ability to get on with real life, to be able to succeed against all costs.
Obviously we can't, but we can succeed at many real world tasks -- those that superheroes can't succeed at. The genre is a way of simultaneously participating in and disavowing the symbolic -- the Law is me, but it is not an important part of my life.
I wonder about the original premise of the whole argument here (at least the Lori/Mookie model), which I take to be that superheroes are popular because we identify with their power. I haven't put a lot of thought into this, but the reason I question it is my experience with Simon, my three year old. Simon loves superheroes. Superman, Batman, Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, it doesn't matter -- he loves them. Simon has no conception of powerlessness in society, and I therefore doubt his love comes from the identification with power. What I think draws him, and audiences, is the simplistic moral universe in which most comics and comic book movies exist. In the comics, for the most part, there is good and there is evil. Good fights evil and defeats evil, all with bad ass costumes, powers and martial arts. Think of the name of the X-Men’s original main antagonist super-group: The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. They identify themselves as being evil in the name of their organization. I realize that this binary morality has been muddied in recent comics, but the same good/evil dichotomy still continues. This allows people to escape the reality of the world where morality is not so easily separated into opposing forces and also for people to regress into a time where they could naively believe that the world was separated into good guys and bad guys, heroes and monsters. I don't have the same training in deconstruction, but this is my thought.
One point that may hurt my starting premise with Simon is an event where he may have identified heroes with power. Simon had just done some harm to his sister and I was coming to dispense some parental justice; i.e., he knew a smack on the butt was coming. He ran into his room picked up his Superman doll and assumed a spread foot position, with one fist outstretched and the other clutched to his chest (his version of the Superman pose). I asked him what he was doing, to which he replied that he was Superman. It was heartbreaking in its pathos. So maybe I am wrong and even a toddler understands the idealization of power.
Very eloquent and interesting, Deron. It almost makes me want to begin reading comics--almost!
The Lori/Mookie model is not quite accurate. The Lori model sees the adult male facination with comics and superheros a little differently than does the Mook.
My theory is that adult males identify with the franchise because it gives them a sense of security and nostalgia from their childhood.
In addition, adult men may feel powerless in many ways and the superhero lets them live in the skin of someone, not only powerful, but, as Eric pointed out, righteous.
Eric made good points that actually support my theory.
1. Simon loves superheroes because he is a child. Children do understand and identify, I think, with the very simplistic good/evil, power/powerless model on a very visceral level.
2. Men love superheroes because it reminds them of that security that had with it as a child. It allows them an escape that they are not allowed to have in other aspects of their lives. It feeds that Western fantasy that so many of us have, male and female: the knight in white, shining armor.
Eric, you're right that my analysis of the attraction of superheroes doesn't necessarily work with children -- in other words, I assume an adult viewer. Simon doesn't have the same understanding of power differentials, and I doubt even Lacanians would say he has a meaningful understanding of his place in an abstraction like the symbolic or the Law. Perhaps I should have added an element to my argument that the narcissistic identification with superheroes is an adult version of the childhood fantasy for and identification with superheroes as power as protection, as that which guarantees good beats evil, and that we (the audience) are on the side of good. That might explain why Simon went to Superman for protection from his spanking, even if he doesn't necessarily realize why he's doing it.
Sorry for the balls up on the last two comments: I wanted to edit my comment and ended up publishing my e-mail password. (Don't ask how.)
Anyway: As long as it's a question of interpretation, is it the application of a Freudian/Lacanian model that leads to the conclusion "obviously we can't"? (Deleuze/Guattari would have something to say about this.)
In my earlier post, I had in mind a conception of universal ethics (Badiou's) as that which realizes the "immortal in us" (I just changed the word immortal for superhero), in order to precipitate my implied conclusion "obviously we can."
RK (incase I'mstill logged in as RD)
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