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Iron Man 2 and the moral landscape of superhero films
I just saw Iron Man 2. I know that LJ is full of squee for it and Robert Downey Jr. right now, so if you’re one of those people and don’t want to hear anything negative, you should probably not click on the cut. The short version is I didn’t like it and it’s raised many questions for me about superhero films, but while I’m unwilling or unable to not see certain issues in films like this, I think it’s entirely valid to be entertained by it. By no means would I ever want to suggest that because I had problems with it, you should too, or that it’s not acceptable to just like something because it’s fun/pretty/important to you. (If I sound defensive, I am, a little: I’ve been having some trouble lately expressing myself without sounding like I’m condemning people who like the things I don’t, so yes, this is a disclaimer. I like a lot of total crap, and I’m not consistent. But I have a lot of opinions. They’re not personal, and the following are just my own thoughts on the matter.)
I used to like superhero films. I think it’s natural for kids to do so: we’re shown gods among men, beings who look a lot like us (some of us more than others) but who can solve their, and other peoples’, problems in ways we can’t even imagine. I watched all the Superman movies as a kid, loved Batman: The Animated Series and the Tim Burton films, and in more recent years enjoyed the first X-Men and Spider-Man 2. I never really got into the comics, for multiple reasons that are irrelevant here. I think I always enjoyed the moral conundrum of that sort of power, conferred on a select few and used at the fallible discretion of individual human beings, in the back of my mind, but I didn’t think about it much. After all, even the non-super heroes of my childhood were sort of super: Sherlock Holmes, the Phantom of the Opera, etc. Gandalf really was super (and understood those issues, I think). Okay, and maybe the Phantom wasn’t exactly a hero, but he was a purported human who did things no human could do. I think most of our heroes tend to have that quality, something that makes them special or chosen or capable of rising above the fray.
Two years ago, I enjoyed The Dark Knight. The questions surrounding that responsibility, the ethical position of the vigilante, had been rising within me for some time, and I enjoyed stories which questioned it and which highlighted that ambiguity. Who gives these guys the right to take justice into their own hands? Can Uncle Ben’s words be enough to keep them in line? If accident or circumstance or a radioactive spider or money has conferred upon you some sort of superiority, is it okay to use that advantage? Or does that advantage, by its very nature, corrupt? When I watched, and to some extent defended, The Dark Knight, it was because I felt that those questions had been raised in the film and if not addressed (in fact, they were dismissed) at least they were in the open. It meant, for me, that the makers had considered those issues but been constrained by the genre against following it to its moral conclusion. I believe that I chose to believe that—or rather, that I chose to believe that this somehow made the fascist, paranoid, jingoistic elements “okay” not because they really were but because we were at least asked to think about them and if Hollywood required Batman to prevail, well, that was just to be expected. I wanted to believe this because in part, the film gave me what I was looking for from a Batman film—an exposé of the character as existing in a moral grey (dark grey) area that did not take his heroism for granted. Of course I understood that in the end it did, because it had to, and for my purposes that was enough because I needed it so badly.
After seeing Iron Man 2 today, and in tandem with my subsequent conversations about TDK and the release of Watchmen last year, I’m giving serious thought to this opinion. Iron Man as a franchise (so far) is the most transparent vision of what is wrong with the concept of the superhero. I don’t mean wrong as in “not okay to admire/enjoy them,” but rather wrong as in totally out of line with my personal politics and code of ethics. What was so interesting to me about the film was how blatantly my problems were laid bare, acknowledged, and totally ignored.
Essentially, what we have is a film about an individual who is in actuality a corporation who has, by pure chance, become the most powerful thing in the world. His motives are unclear: he states that he operates for his own pleasure, and we are assured by his starring role that he is “good.” He is a nuclear deterrent, an unstoppable force, the biggest gun. And hey, he happens to get a kick out of preserving the American way of life, so we shouldn’t worry, right? He’s not anonymous: he’s a rock star. It’s quite honest, in its way, this vision of the vigilante as superstar, not a shadowy figure like the Batman or a kid trying to do his best like Peter Parker. It’s all up front, a comic book in real life. Those who object to that sort of power being in the hands of one whimsical man with known stability issues are flat out wrong, but the military and government aren’t evil because they’re militaristic or motivated by something other than public safety, but because they are not Tony Stark and, more significantly, they are not a private corporation. Next to no effort is ever made to differentiate the “bad guys” from the good on any ideological level, and aside from the visual cues of tattoos and three-piece suits, even their hypocrisy has its correspondence in Stark. We have no indication that the government wants anything different from what Stark wants, or that their motives are any more or less pure. And however I feel about the government, I’m fairly certain that as a whole it doesn’t go on a bender and trash its own place, though I’ll admit that’s debatable and may depend on the time scale involved. And this isn’t even touching the politics of the world of the film—I’m just comparing the main players.
The politics, of course, are isolationist and militaristic, Iron Man the living embodiment of the arms race. This is not particularly surprising, of course, because it is a superhero action movie and it’s highly unlikely that any such film is going to work against the idea that a superpowerful individual is wrong to fight crime. What’s problematic to me, suddenly but really building over the years, is that I don’t think I can see any superhero in any other light. I’m not sure I can make excuses to myself anymore based on genre or the fact Spider-Man works on a smaller scale or the film “raises issues” about personal responsibility, because I no longer think I can handle the purpose of every one of these films being the shoring up of the vigilante’s rightness.
I think it’s interesting that superhero films seem to be questioning their inherent morality more and more. But the more they do so, the more blatantly they must ignore the very questions they raise in order to function. Essentially, I believe we have internalized Watchmen (the graphic novel, specifically) but the lesson we’ve actually learned is that Adrian Veidt is the hero. (Alternately, Rorschach is the hero, but the argument’s the same. What I believe was intended as a cautionary tale, or at the very least a call to consider the problem, has been integrated into the very fabric of the superhero to the point where every one of these films says, “this may seem questionable, but just trust us, it’s okay when he does it.”) And we’re meant to be okay with that, rather than to question the very genre we’re enjoying. I think that’s fascinating, and I’m not entirely sure what it means, or where it goes from here. But I think Iron Man 2 is, so far, the most blatant illustration of the conundrum.
Sitting and watching it, I was horrified by the idea that I was supposed to trust this man with such superior technology, that those who raised questions about that were misguided or outright criminal, and that we must be kept safe by any means necessary. And suddenly I wondered if my prior enjoyment of similar films (namely TDK, but by extension Spider-Man and all other incarnations except the Adam West Batman which neatly circumvents the issue by making them fully deputized agents of the law) should be called into question. Had I, indeed, been seeing what I wanted to (namely, a more intentional exploration of that issue of responsibility merely patched up at the end because Big Money required that they comply with the genre)? Or put another way, did intent, or the fact genre-conformity was the name of the game, really make the issues I took with the material palatable?
It’s not as though I hadn’t had the same thoughts before. Merely that it was enough, for me, to have the questions raised so I could think about them, understanding that the filmmakers were required to uphold the status quo. Now I’m not sure that that’s enough—for me. It comes down to what we look for in our media, I think, and entertainment is its own excuse. And in many cases, that is enough for me. But the subject is so interesting, and so morally fraught for me, that I am looking for something else from these films, something they’re not going to provide because then, I think, they would not be the movies we want to see. Iron Man 2 was such a clear vision of the superhero tropes, so unsparing in a way about all the things that have been bothering me, that it’s forcing me to look back at the others and reconsider how I feel about them.
I probably will watch more superhero films. I’ll probably still be looking for those moral ambiguities and objecting to the politics of escalation. I’m certainly not immune to the desire for heroes, or the excitement of watching them, and I hope I’ve made it clear that my thoughts here are personal and applicable in my mind only to my enjoyment, not anyone else’s. But I think I’ve turned a sort of corner in my thinking about them in watching the Iron Man films, perhaps because they illustrate so clearly the things that bother me without offering me the excuses (or button-pushing) I usually have to enjoy it anyway.
Feel free to offer your own thoughts: I’m curious about what other people think, or if you’ve grappled with any of the same issues, or if you think I’m totally off-base. I’m actually kind of curious if anyone’s read this far.
I used to like superhero films. I think it’s natural for kids to do so: we’re shown gods among men, beings who look a lot like us (some of us more than others) but who can solve their, and other peoples’, problems in ways we can’t even imagine. I watched all the Superman movies as a kid, loved Batman: The Animated Series and the Tim Burton films, and in more recent years enjoyed the first X-Men and Spider-Man 2. I never really got into the comics, for multiple reasons that are irrelevant here. I think I always enjoyed the moral conundrum of that sort of power, conferred on a select few and used at the fallible discretion of individual human beings, in the back of my mind, but I didn’t think about it much. After all, even the non-super heroes of my childhood were sort of super: Sherlock Holmes, the Phantom of the Opera, etc. Gandalf really was super (and understood those issues, I think). Okay, and maybe the Phantom wasn’t exactly a hero, but he was a purported human who did things no human could do. I think most of our heroes tend to have that quality, something that makes them special or chosen or capable of rising above the fray.
Two years ago, I enjoyed The Dark Knight. The questions surrounding that responsibility, the ethical position of the vigilante, had been rising within me for some time, and I enjoyed stories which questioned it and which highlighted that ambiguity. Who gives these guys the right to take justice into their own hands? Can Uncle Ben’s words be enough to keep them in line? If accident or circumstance or a radioactive spider or money has conferred upon you some sort of superiority, is it okay to use that advantage? Or does that advantage, by its very nature, corrupt? When I watched, and to some extent defended, The Dark Knight, it was because I felt that those questions had been raised in the film and if not addressed (in fact, they were dismissed) at least they were in the open. It meant, for me, that the makers had considered those issues but been constrained by the genre against following it to its moral conclusion. I believe that I chose to believe that—or rather, that I chose to believe that this somehow made the fascist, paranoid, jingoistic elements “okay” not because they really were but because we were at least asked to think about them and if Hollywood required Batman to prevail, well, that was just to be expected. I wanted to believe this because in part, the film gave me what I was looking for from a Batman film—an exposé of the character as existing in a moral grey (dark grey) area that did not take his heroism for granted. Of course I understood that in the end it did, because it had to, and for my purposes that was enough because I needed it so badly.
After seeing Iron Man 2 today, and in tandem with my subsequent conversations about TDK and the release of Watchmen last year, I’m giving serious thought to this opinion. Iron Man as a franchise (so far) is the most transparent vision of what is wrong with the concept of the superhero. I don’t mean wrong as in “not okay to admire/enjoy them,” but rather wrong as in totally out of line with my personal politics and code of ethics. What was so interesting to me about the film was how blatantly my problems were laid bare, acknowledged, and totally ignored.
Essentially, what we have is a film about an individual who is in actuality a corporation who has, by pure chance, become the most powerful thing in the world. His motives are unclear: he states that he operates for his own pleasure, and we are assured by his starring role that he is “good.” He is a nuclear deterrent, an unstoppable force, the biggest gun. And hey, he happens to get a kick out of preserving the American way of life, so we shouldn’t worry, right? He’s not anonymous: he’s a rock star. It’s quite honest, in its way, this vision of the vigilante as superstar, not a shadowy figure like the Batman or a kid trying to do his best like Peter Parker. It’s all up front, a comic book in real life. Those who object to that sort of power being in the hands of one whimsical man with known stability issues are flat out wrong, but the military and government aren’t evil because they’re militaristic or motivated by something other than public safety, but because they are not Tony Stark and, more significantly, they are not a private corporation. Next to no effort is ever made to differentiate the “bad guys” from the good on any ideological level, and aside from the visual cues of tattoos and three-piece suits, even their hypocrisy has its correspondence in Stark. We have no indication that the government wants anything different from what Stark wants, or that their motives are any more or less pure. And however I feel about the government, I’m fairly certain that as a whole it doesn’t go on a bender and trash its own place, though I’ll admit that’s debatable and may depend on the time scale involved. And this isn’t even touching the politics of the world of the film—I’m just comparing the main players.
The politics, of course, are isolationist and militaristic, Iron Man the living embodiment of the arms race. This is not particularly surprising, of course, because it is a superhero action movie and it’s highly unlikely that any such film is going to work against the idea that a superpowerful individual is wrong to fight crime. What’s problematic to me, suddenly but really building over the years, is that I don’t think I can see any superhero in any other light. I’m not sure I can make excuses to myself anymore based on genre or the fact Spider-Man works on a smaller scale or the film “raises issues” about personal responsibility, because I no longer think I can handle the purpose of every one of these films being the shoring up of the vigilante’s rightness.
I think it’s interesting that superhero films seem to be questioning their inherent morality more and more. But the more they do so, the more blatantly they must ignore the very questions they raise in order to function. Essentially, I believe we have internalized Watchmen (the graphic novel, specifically) but the lesson we’ve actually learned is that Adrian Veidt is the hero. (Alternately, Rorschach is the hero, but the argument’s the same. What I believe was intended as a cautionary tale, or at the very least a call to consider the problem, has been integrated into the very fabric of the superhero to the point where every one of these films says, “this may seem questionable, but just trust us, it’s okay when he does it.”) And we’re meant to be okay with that, rather than to question the very genre we’re enjoying. I think that’s fascinating, and I’m not entirely sure what it means, or where it goes from here. But I think Iron Man 2 is, so far, the most blatant illustration of the conundrum.
Sitting and watching it, I was horrified by the idea that I was supposed to trust this man with such superior technology, that those who raised questions about that were misguided or outright criminal, and that we must be kept safe by any means necessary. And suddenly I wondered if my prior enjoyment of similar films (namely TDK, but by extension Spider-Man and all other incarnations except the Adam West Batman which neatly circumvents the issue by making them fully deputized agents of the law) should be called into question. Had I, indeed, been seeing what I wanted to (namely, a more intentional exploration of that issue of responsibility merely patched up at the end because Big Money required that they comply with the genre)? Or put another way, did intent, or the fact genre-conformity was the name of the game, really make the issues I took with the material palatable?
It’s not as though I hadn’t had the same thoughts before. Merely that it was enough, for me, to have the questions raised so I could think about them, understanding that the filmmakers were required to uphold the status quo. Now I’m not sure that that’s enough—for me. It comes down to what we look for in our media, I think, and entertainment is its own excuse. And in many cases, that is enough for me. But the subject is so interesting, and so morally fraught for me, that I am looking for something else from these films, something they’re not going to provide because then, I think, they would not be the movies we want to see. Iron Man 2 was such a clear vision of the superhero tropes, so unsparing in a way about all the things that have been bothering me, that it’s forcing me to look back at the others and reconsider how I feel about them.
I probably will watch more superhero films. I’ll probably still be looking for those moral ambiguities and objecting to the politics of escalation. I’m certainly not immune to the desire for heroes, or the excitement of watching them, and I hope I’ve made it clear that my thoughts here are personal and applicable in my mind only to my enjoyment, not anyone else’s. But I think I’ve turned a sort of corner in my thinking about them in watching the Iron Man films, perhaps because they illustrate so clearly the things that bother me without offering me the excuses (or button-pushing) I usually have to enjoy it anyway.
Feel free to offer your own thoughts: I’m curious about what other people think, or if you’ve grappled with any of the same issues, or if you think I’m totally off-base. I’m actually kind of curious if anyone’s read this far.
no subject
THIS. I kind of found the first movie entertaining, but in a simultaneously horrifying way, because god, what repellent politics. (Mind, I also find Tony Stark repellent rather than tragic or complex or whatever.)
Essentially, I believe we have internalized Watchmen (the graphic novel, specifically) but the lesson we’ve actually learned is that Adrian Veidt is the hero. (Alternately, Rorschach is the hero, but the argument’s the same. What I believe was intended as a cautionary tale, or at the very least a call to consider the problem, has been integrated into the very fabric of the superhero to the point where every one of these films says, “this may seem questionable, but just trust us, it’s okay when he does it.”) And we’re meant to be okay with that, rather than to question the very genre we’re enjoying.
I agree 100%. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the people who've read Watchmen, especially recently, didn't know what Moore was responding to--their context is post-Watchmen comics, many of which are rather unironic versions of Watchmen. So it's a self-reinforcing loop.
Have you read any of Moore's comments on why he wrote Watchmen and how people have reacted to it? He's particularly disturbed by how much Rorschach fanmail he gets--not the "Rorschach is an awesome character" kind, but the "We need people like Rorschach".
Anyway. I've always been deeply uncomfortable with most superheroes. I liked Astro City, which examined some of this stuff (although I haven't read it since high school, so it may not be as good as I remember). I like a lot of aspects of X-Men. But I think the one superhero (ish) conglomerate that I feel really addresses these issues the most is Hellboy, at least from what I have read/watched of it (conveniently, it has the aspects that draw me to X-Men, too).
no subject
It was muted in the first film, a little, because part of me could excuse the military-industrial thing as being necessary to the Iron Man premise. Maybe "excuse" isn't the right word, but it seemed less of a statement.
...their context is post-Watchmen comics, many of which are rather unironic versions of Watchmen. So it's a self-reinforcing loop.
This is an excellent way of saying this, thanks. I have seen Moore talk about it, a little, but I'm going to look for some more concrete writing on the topic.
My "issue" here, and I'm having trouble getting it across (if the LJ comments are any indication), is not that I never saw this before or wasn't disturbed by it. I'm not sure what's changed, and maybe all I'm talking about is my willingness to suspend my politics or something. Which is not entirely accurate either, as I didn't "suspend" them before, I was still thinking about them. I haven't read Astro City and I don't know anything about the Hellboy franchise, but now I'm interested.
no subject
Astro City is explicitly intended to deconstruct some of the superhero stuff, but in a...I don't know...gentler? way than Watchmen.
no subject
And I think there might be a copy of Astro City in the house somewhere. Our comics collection is pretty big. I'll go dig that up, thanks!
no subject
no subject