Kelly Kane Submission Hypernormative Heroes, Othered

Kelly Kane December 1, 2018 Hyper-Normative Heroes, Othered Villains: Differential Disability Narratives in Marvel Movies and Shows Superheroes and “Moral Pornography”: Judging By Appearances Superhero stories are often portrayed and enjoyed as a form of escapism, whether in the form of comics typically classified as “low-brow” or less cultured literature (Gavaler 76) or in the form of science fiction films and shows that must be vigorously defended against charges of inanity. In fact, social psychologists David Pizarro and Roy Baumeister go so far as to assert that superhero stories are a form of “moral pornography” because “much like the appeal of the exaggerated, caricatured sexuality found in pornography, superhero comics offer the appeal of an exaggerated and caricatured morality that satisfies a natural human inclination toward moralization… built to satisfy our moralistic urges but ultimately unrealistic and, in the end, potentially misleading” (20). They characterize superhero stories as appealing because such stories remove the complexities of actual moral decision-making while nevertheless portraying the triumph of clearly marked moral agents over clearly marked immoral ones. The key characteristics of superhero stories that make them morally pornographic according to this framework are such stories’ focus on simple, satisfying endings and high rates of success (Pizarro and Baumeister 22). Just as pornography features the most enjoyable aspects of sexuality with unrealistically nonexistent risk of sexual rejection, superhero stories depict moral struggles with extremely low risk of failure and unambiguous answers about who is right and who is wrong. Superhero stories must thus have clearly demarcated heroes and villains, in order to signal to the reader who the moral and immoral agents will be. Ergo, some of the most popular comic book characters of all time include Loki, a self-described “agent of chaos” (Lee 1) and Magneto, leader of the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants” (Lee and Kirby 8). Pizarro and Baumeister point out that in the early stages of most literary forms, “the villain could be seen twirling his mustache, cackling, and rubbing his hands together… Later, such overtly wicked characters were dismissed from serious literature as not being sufficiently realistic. But their perennial popularity in comic books is indicative of the appeal of moral clarity” (24-25.) If superhero stories at least partially derive their appeal through portraying simplified moral conflicts, then by necessity they rely upon these overt markers of heroism and villainy. Even as other visual markers of villainy have lost popularity within superhero stories — the film version of Magneto simply leads a “Brotherhood of Mutants” with no mention of evil, and the silver screen Loki claims to be motivated by the good of his realm rather than a desire for destruction — one especially troubling visual symbol has persisted: that of disability and its portrayal marking a character’s morality or lack thereof (X-Men: Last Stand; Thor.) In order to understand how disability so often functions as a visual symbol of a fictional character’s alleged virtue (or lack thereof), it is illustrative to look at the evolutionary psychology of moral judgment. Contrary to popular belief that natural selection prioritizes a “kill or be killed” system of morality, evolutionary psychology has overwhelmingly discovered that humans, both ancestral and contemporary, are motivated to make quick judgments about whom to trust in order to invest enormous altruistic efforts toward assisting those individuals deemed trustworthy (De Waal 299). Cognitive psychologists Aldert Vrij and Mark Baxter find that humans have a “truth bias” wherein they are inclined to believe all assertions as true unless given reason to disbelieve those assertions (27), and evolutionary psychologist Frans De Waal finds that contemporary human cultures almost universally value helping those in need of assistance. However, natural selection did not favor absolute trust in all conspecifics; humans have always had to decide who to trust and who to avoid. Therefore, Pizarro and Baumeister argue, the act of engaging in moral judgment is inherently pleasurable for the same reason that the act of sexual intercourse is inherently pleasurable: it increases the odds of survival for both groups and individuals. Given that “individuals so easily arrive at conclusions about the dispositions of others (and are motivated to do so) with only minimal information” and the act of deciding who to trust conveys intrinsic pleasure to the judging individual, superhero stories thus provide the same category of unrealistically simplified pleasure offered by pornography (27). As disability scholars David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder discuss in their analysis Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse, disability has been treated as an external marker of one’s moral status at least as far back into human history as Aristotle’s writings, and perhaps even earlier (57). This specific human bias, also known as the “what is beautiful is good” effect, leads to the automatic assumption that individuals who are physically attractive according to the conventions of their society are more trustworthy and moral than those who are less physically attractive (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 285). The oversimplified and pornographic nature of superhero stories often leads to a reliance upon such stereotypes to signify moral judgment: the heroic Punisher is traditionally masculine and traditionally beautiful while the villainous Jigsaw is more feminine and facially scarred; the heroic Captain America achieves normative masculine beauty while the villainous Red Skull loses his traditionally masculine appearance in the process of becoming a villain (Punisher: War Zone; Captain America: The First Avenger). One can even see such shifts manifest within the design of a single character: Bucky Barnes appears as a traditionally masculine and traditionally beautiful hero with short hair and a nondisabled body in Captain America: The First Avenger, shifts to a more feminine and nontraditional appearance with long hair and a highly visible prosthetic arm when he appears as the antagonist of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and then hybridizes his appearance with moderate-length hair and a de-emphasized prosthesis during his morally ambiguous role in Captain America: Civil War. Thus, the obvious signal of normative beauty then becomes synonymous with literal goodness of character. Although empirical investigation of disability has definitively refuted the assumption of the physical body as a reflection of the moral character of an individual, superhero stories especially nevertheless demonstrate a frequent bias against the moral character of individuals with disabilities. One reason for this persistent prejudice derives from the implicit bias of the system of moral judgment. Evolutionary psychologists David Buss and Douglas Kendrick posit that humans have evolved to judge one another rapidly on the basis of appearance, and that this system of judgment can be prone to error to the extent that it perceives evidence of untrustworthiness where none exists. Specifically, human perception is the product of many “good enough” mechanisms, ones that lead to errors as well as accurate judgments but which usually prioritize avoidance of the more serious class of error. This “smoke detector principle,” thus called because of the parallel with smoke detectors which are designed to be too sensitive in order to prioritize the less-costly error of detecting fire where none exists over the more costly error of failing to detect fire when it does exist, biases humans toward mistrust for any individuals whose outward appearance potentially signals unfamiliarity or contagious disease. This framework most certainly does not excuse the “armchair psychologists” in their judgment that external disability must necessarily reflect internal moral failings, but it does help to explain why humans will often make snap judgments to avoid individuals perceived as physically unusual, including those with non-normative physicality or gait (e.g. individuals using wheelchairs or crutches, individuals with scars, or individuals with mobility impairments). Humans not only can but should overcome this immediate impulse to avoid individuals with disabilities — just as we usually overcome the impulse to seek copulation with every physically attractive person we encounter. Nevertheless, it can be easy to fall prey to the temptation to justify these impulses through individual-level and systemic ableism, both of which act to exclude disabled individuals from public spaces. A dark corollary of the fun “pornography” of superhero stories is that they appeal to lazy human impulse through not only marking villains with mustaches or black hats, but also through marking them with disabilities. The Marvel universe especially makes heavy use of these types of metaphors. In his book Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond, disability scholar José Alaniz traces the history of the major superhero comics lines, and notes that Marvel, more so than its competitor companies such as D.C. Comics and Dark Horse Comics, has frequent representation of disabled heroes among its headliners. Alaniz notes that D.C. features disabled heroes such as the Doom Patrol and Oracle, but that Marvel has a wide plethora of disabled characters including A-list heroes such as Daredevil,

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