Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Random factoid but George Lucas actually was aware of the audience taking the wrong message from his work. George Lucas mostly left Lucas Arts to do its own thing and licensed Star Wars freely but the one thing he stepped in to smack down was TIE FIGHTER 2 and THE FORCE UNLEASHED.

He cancelled TIE FIGHTER 2 because he didn't want the players being too nice about playing the Empire and thought the first game (which he apparently watched videos of unlike most EU) did too good a job valorizing the Empire and its viewpoint. Lucas was always clear the Empire=Nazis and it was something he made a history of fighting (see Indiana Jones).

He also insisted when the Force Unleashed was created that Starkiller primarily kill Imperials and get betrayed midway through.

I mean, if a X men fuck up and kill people, who is going to be acountable? that is a good point to make, specially since Xavier is dead set they become better than the persecuters, is what diference from magneto.

A few other things to consider:

-I would argue the biggest point to consider is that the Superhero genre was actually codified by Jews, and hated by OG Fascists. In addition, superhero fiction has often been used to attack fascism. Captain America isn't just a weapon to kill Nazis in-universe, the series itself is one too. Indeed, I'd call the claim that they are fascist somewhat problematic on these grounds.

-Superheroes are usually meant to symbolize the people, not the state. Think of it this way, Superman isn't a ruler or part of the government. He's a mild-mannered news reporter. He symbolizes the secret power of what everyday people can achieve. The Superhero is meant to represent you.

-Symbols are versatile. Robots, aliens, superheroes, zombies, can symbolize whatever political movement the writer wants them to or the reader interprets them as.

-In addition, I'd argue that at a certain point your analysis of a genre in general might say more about you than it does about the work itself, especially if you begin invoking Death of the Author.

-The idea of heroes vastly predates fascism and they by no means have a monopoly on it. Marxists have a hero they idolize too, a guy by the name of "Karl Marx".

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23157/how-superman-defeated-ku-klux-klan

I find this story genuinely touching and is arguably one of the great Crowning Moments Of Awesome for superheroes as a genre. It had a measurable effect on depressing Klan membership in the South.

@ unknowing, who's holding the government accountable when they are making killer robots?

Also, did the Ultimates have superheroes work for the government and they ended up doing Bush's dirty work for him.

Edited by Overlord on Nov 23rd 2020 at 7:30:54 AM

https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/superman-smashes-the-klan

Here's the update of the Superman vs. Klan story in 2020.

I have to say the art is ADORABLE.

The Chinese American author has a lot of interesting commentary too.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 23rd 2020 at 7:32:26 AM

RE: Kingdom Come

I find funny how that story has Superman building a Gulag and causing the deaths of lots of inmates by allowing supervillains to go "hey, all supers are in a single point, time to get crazy" and the story treats it as "Ooopsie, sorry for the deaths of a generation of metahumans".

What a oopsie man...

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 23rd 2020 at 10:32:39 AM

I think the Multiversity actually did introduce one, but in that case that worlds Superman seems like a Obama homage, so that might be an issue with Clark more than the Superman identity he has.

That said I think in said A Us where Supes ends up a Tyrant, it tends to be the result of coming from a morality flipped universe, a changed upbringing or in one specific case, the death of a loved one causing him to question his moral code.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 23rd 2020 at 7:33:22 AM

Well Lex Luthor nuking the place is hardly Superman's fault.

Also, the Gulag is because someone needs to reign in the superhumans that the government is LETTING execute people. Part of that story is the idea that Superheroes must use their powers responsibly and not give into the bloodthirst of the mob.

Which is an irony there given this conversation.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 23rd 2020 at 7:34:03 AM

Superman literally building a prision to host teenagers without consulting any goverment.

And no, this Superman is not meant to be a superman gone rogue, just Superman in a emotional crisis

What a crisis man, just building gulags to host all those crazy teens...Of course, is Superman, he had a super midlife crisis

Then Superman should have told the government the facts the the Metas were killing as many people as the supervillains if he wanted to have a...argument.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 23rd 2020 at 10:36:06 AM

Can you really call them crazy teens when they're on killing sprees?

They are crazy teens, they need to be rehabilited.

The thing is...Clark really had no idea and his choice was "Imma build a giant jail, thrown them in and let it sort it out".

Worst thing is...Superman and Mister Miracle should have do this a long time ago and the situation of "governments allow meta vigilante killers because they don't want to deal wit supervillains anyore" would have be avoided

You don't fight vigilante killings by creating jails without legal supervision.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 23rd 2020 at 10:40:10 AM

With superheroes as a hypothetical institution: It'd a mildly bad or Awesome, but Impractical idea. Real reason why it wouldn't work is that a superhero is just one person. The big killer app would be their "brand" and getting people interested in a cause.

As for their morality, though:

The governments in superhero fiction are often portrayed as cruel and/or inept, but it should be noted that's a circumstance created for Doylist purposes to justify the existence of Superheroes.

It is correct that police and such are hardly always ethical, but I would argue it's worth considering that's despite their status as agents of a democratic government, not because of it. Police would be even worse if they were just self-appointed joes.

You can make the idea work in theory though, with some modifications. Essentially, you'd need some kind of national superhero registry and legal terms for the limits of the secret identity, etc.

Though, I'd also argue Reed Richards Is Useless is important to the superhero genre, and the more you drift from it the further you drift from the genre. This means, for example, a superhero who is 100% a cop and part of mundane society essentially stops being a superhero per se and becomes something more akin to a police equivalent of Master Chief.

Though admittedly you can do something like that fairly well, that's actually kind of what Jedi are.

Honestly, I think that heroes fit the mold of revolutionaries of La Résistance pretty well. Folk heroes like Robin Hood exist because people want someone outside of the law to protect them when the law goes silent.

And while you argue, "that's a narrative conceit to allow superheroes to exist", bluntly that's also a day to day reality for many people.

Police also exist because crime exists (theoretically). So the superhero exists just to fulfill a need in society, which is that bad things happen and you wish they could be stopped.

Superheroes are arguably less offensive than copaganda.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 23rd 2020 at 7:53:53 AM

Let's face it a lot of superheroes in real life would be useless idiots like Phoenix Jones, Kick-Ass and the Boys likely have a more real-life take on this subject matter, Marvel and DC are more idealized than that.

Also, superheroes would kinda useless because most nights they would go patrol and not find any crime, its why you do have to suspend your disbelief with them.

Oddly, I do recommend Superhero Lit to discuss superhero worldbuilding. WEARING THE CAPE is a story about how superheroes were created after an empowering event that made dozens of superhumans. They made superheroes as licensed rescue workers (not cops) because it gave something for powered people to focus their energy and reduce fear.

In my games, all superheroes belong to the Justice League equivalent which is chartered by the United States and has individual laws for superheroes depending on the country but is the only way you're a "legal" superhero.

Gray widow's Walk has no superheroes but its protagonist and she's established as completely fucking nuts.

I only see superheroes as a temporary measure, only as an aid until the police and military can catch up and their services are no longer required.

That being said, I also have less problems with police in general, even if they do act like thugs on occassion.

That's a theme in my book that the "Age of Superheroes" is a temporary measure until anti-superhuman measures are normalized.

Like the Wild West.

Broadly speaking, superheroes are like the medieval knights, they had a reason to exist at one point in history but became obsolete as the medieval era gave way to the modern era.

In particular, modern writers of the Big 2 have written a lot of stories in which superheroes cross lines that would put anyone else in villain territory and suffer little to no consequences. The mindwipes in Identity Crisis, Batman’s numerous instances of torture and abuse, the numerous villains the X-Men have allowed into their ranks whose histories include terrorism, murder, eugenics, Nazi collaboration and even rape.

The problem is that superhero teams are often rather cliquish when it comes to actually holding their members accountable and will give them a pass that no one else will get. In other words, the same issue people have with cops.

@Protagonist 506, the reason you will find corruption within institutions is because they are made of people not because said institutions are inherently evil. Unfortunately, there are those who do not grasp this particular nuance.

This tendency has been taken Up To Eleven with X-Men recently. As part of their whole The Promised Land package they have going with Krakoa, they've offered total amnesty to every Mutant who wants to go there. And many former villains have taken them up on that offer. Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Gorgon, Sebastian Shaw, Mystique, and Selene to name a few.

Edited by M84 on Nov 25th 2020 at 4:12:00 AM

Sinister is the particularly egregious because he isn't even a mutant. He stole an x-gene from a dead Mutant and grafted it onto his DNA. Note that Sinister is a eugenicist and Nazi collaborator and the mutant he stole an x-gene from, Thunderbird, is Apache.

Krakoa's criteria for letting people on it is solely about whether or not they have an X-gene (natural or not).

Probably because Krakoa's a mutant energy vampire island that feeds on Mutant lifeforce - as long as it can suck up their energy it doesn't really give a shit.

Edited by M84 on Nov 25th 2020 at 4:30:14 AM

Here's another instance of the X-Men having a bad look.

I recently finished X-Factor (2006) which I enjoyed. At the end of the final arc, we got six issues each showing what the team had been doing after they'd split up. Polaris is shown drinking her depression away in a bar. When the bartender threatens to cut her off, she threatens to destroy the bar and makes good on it by using her powers to throw a pool table out of the bar in the midst of a panicked crowd. This results in the cops getting involved and Quicksilver (this was before he got retconned into not being her brother) has to step in to save people from getting hurt. This incident is exactly the type of thing that would reasonably make humans afraid of mutants and the only reason Polaris doesn't come across as a villain is because she isn't being written by Garth Ennis.

The X-Men's insistence that Franklin Richards of the Fantastic Four belonged on Krakoa with them because he was a Mutant instead of with his family (Cyclops even tells Sue that the Mutants of Krakoa are Franklin's "family") also kind of reminds me of the CCP's insistence that everyone of Han descent (like myself) belongs in mainland China.

This was before it was revealed that Franklin was never really a Mutant. The moment this was discovered, Professor X immediately told the boy he once tried so aggressively to join them that he was no longer welcome on Krakoa.

The X-Men are kind of jerks, is what I'm getting at.

Edited by M84 on Nov 25th 2020 at 4:43:52 AM