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Superheroes and The Chapter 6 1 2 Superheroes and the law 3 4 Batman, Superman, and the “Big 5 Other” 6 7 Dan Hassler- Forest 8 9 10 11 12 13 Since the beginning of the twenty- first century, Western popular culture 14 has been immersed in fantasy, arguably more than ever before. This 15 fantasy takes many forms, from the hobbits and elves of Tolkien’s Middle- 16 earth to the vampires of Twilight or the zombies of The Walking Dead. These 17 fantasies play a crucial role in the construction of identity within the mul- 18 tiple contradictions of late capitalist culture: “fantasy is a means for an 19 ideology to take its own failure into account in advance” (Žižek 1989: 142). 20 But among the large variety of cross- media fantasy figures and franchises, 21 most of which are spearheaded by big Hollywood blockbusters, the super- 22 hero has maintained the most consistent degree of visibility and popularity 23 in the early twenty- first century. Having found in digital cinema an appro- 24 priate vessel for this elaborate and reliably spectacular form of popular 25 mythology, superheroes have reached a level of popularity that for the first 26 time exceeds that of comic books’ “Golden Age” of the late 1930s and 27 1940s. 28 Drawing upon a massive stable of existing characters, many of which are 29 instantly familiar to global audiences after countless years of low- brow pop- 30 cultural iterations, the producers can draw upon a seemingly inexhaust- 31 ible variety of ready- made situations featuring iconic characters and 32 well- known themes. This overwhelming volume of archival continuity 33 makes the superhero trope far more flexible than most other figures in 34 popular fantasy: the Harry Potter franchise for instance relies not only on a 35 limited series of source novels, but also on a specific group of actors who 36 have appeared over the years in the lead roles. The flexibility of The Lord 37 of the Rings and its associated franchise is similarly limited, depending 38 again on a collection of narratives and on director Peter Jackson’s recog- 39 nizable aesthetic. 40 But besides the superhero’s unique wealth of character, incident, and 41 mythology, there are other elements at play in the genre that help explain 42 its massive impact on our contemporary media landscape. The figure’s 43 long and complex history associates the superhero specifically with dis- 44 courses of American national and cultural identity, to an immeasurably 294_06_Zizek and Law.indd 101 26/11/14 13:34:31 102 D. Hassler-Forest greater extent than any of the other aforementioned popular fantasies. 1 Giving physical form to abstract notions of nationalism, justice, and the 2 law, superhero characters embody ideological values even more explicitly 3 than similar characters like James Bond or Jason Bourne. Whether they do 4 so ostentatiously, like Captain America or Superman, or with some degree 5 of ambivalence, like Spider- Man or the Incredible Hulk, superheroes can 6 certainly be described as – to borrow a famous Žižekianism – ideology at 7 its purest. 8 The question then becomes: what kind of ideology does the superhero in 9 fact represent? And more specifically in the context of this collection: what 10 do these movies tell us about our understanding of Law? In my book Capital- 11 ist Superheroes (2011) I argued that the contemporary superhero – with very 12 few exceptions – embodies and even mythologizes the contradictory values 13 of neoliberalism. The most popular figures, such as Iron Man, Batman, and 14 Spider- Man, effectively humanize institutional discourses that glorify real- 15 world practices of surveillance and torture, while the characters’ various per- 16 sonal traumas legitimize their violent and unilateral response to external 17 threats. These superheroes thus sustain a popular and banal mythology of 18 superhuman powers that all too frequently provides a thinly veiled allegory 19 of geopolitical power and agency (see also Dittmer 2013). In this sense, con- 20 temporary superhero movies valorize not only specific historical and polit- 21 ical practices, such as the post- 9/11 War on Terror, but also Hardt and 22 Negri’s notion of American “Empire” as a form of power that operates out 23 of a supposedly universal and benevolent interest. 24 The superhero therefore comes to stand for a Law that functions differ- 25 ently from the actual laws that govern juridical processes at the local, 26 national, and international levels. Operating by very definition outside the 27 realm of any actually-existing legal framework, the superhero acts instead 28 in the arena of Stuart Hall’s “common sense”: negotiating tensions and 29 contradictions that provide a relatable and historically specific context for 30 the viewer, the superhero provides a fantasy of a shared Law that operates 31 along the lines of Lacan’s “big Other”: the symbolic fiction that structures 32 our perception of daily reality. Unencumbered by the oblique workings of 33 bureaucracy, democratic processes, or institutional inefficiency, superhe- 34 roes mobilize a popular fantasy of the “big Other” as a moral and ethical 35 code that continues to organize structure and meaning even in our 36 famously post- ideological world. 37 But do superheroes in fact share this condition? Are they all the embod- 38 iments of a neoliberal fantasy that would see the world’s problems repeat- 39 edly solved through the intervention of benevolent capitalists? And 40 assuming that there is in fact some degree of variety within the genre in its 41 current form, does this variety result in a wider selection of ideological 42 alternatives, or do all roads once again lead back to the mythologization of 43 patriarchal capitalism? 44 294_06_Zizek and Law.indd 102 26/11/14 13:34:31 Superheroes and the law 103 1 In this chapter I will first develop a basic typology that offers theoretical 2 differentiation between the two basic superhero archetypes, most specifi- 3 cally in how they relate to different notions that govern our understanding 4 of the Law. I will draw primarily on Žižek’s frequent but scattered and 5 often fragmentary writing on superhero movies (including his elaborate 6 discussion of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) included in this volume), as well 7 as his theoretical discussion of Law, religion, and ideology in his classic 8 books The Fragile Absolute (2001), The Ticklish Subject (1999), The Sublime 9 Object of Ideology (1989), and some of his more recent books on Hegelian 10 philosophy and neoliberal capitalism. By elaborating the relationship 11 between Žižekian theory and the contemporary superhero movie, the 12 chapter will shed new light on the historically specific fantasies that consti- 13 tute the big Other under neoliberal capitalism. 14 15 Superman and Batman: transcendence vs. 16 immanence 17 18 Any basic division between different types of superhero must begin with the 19 difference between what have become the two classic archetypes: Superman 20 and Batman. As the two very first incarnations of the superhero figure, they 21 established templates that have not only survived as the two most popular 22 and recognizable icons of superhero fiction, but have been copied, plagia- 23 rized, and parodied countless times across many different media. This is not 24 only because they were the first two popular icons clearly identified as 25 “superheroes”: costumed crime- fighters operating outside of the law in a 26 never- ending fight for justice, aided by either supernatural physical powers 27 (Superman) or enough wealth to make the massive effort and expense feas- 28 ible (Batman). It is also because they embody two quite specific and com- 29 plementary modes of philosophical thought. 30 This difference in the source of their superpowers also establishes an 31 important distinction between the political views they represent: Super- 32 man is an alien being from another planet whose powers are naturally his. 33 Existing on Earth as a powerful god among men, he quite obviously 34 represents an ideal of transcendence: a provocative incarnation of a goal 35 to which humanity can aspire, but which can never be fully attained. In his 36 stories, Superman quite literally exists as a beacon for normal humans to 37 point at in excitement and admiration: “It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s 38 Superman!” As pointed out so gleefully in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, 39 Vol. II (2003), it is not a question of Clark Kent ever becoming Superman. 40 Rather, he exists in a pure state of Being, his masquerade as the “bookish 41 reporter” functioning not only as a disguise but as “Superman’s critique 42 on the whole human race.” 43 The relationship between billionaire Bruce Wayne and his alter ego 44 Batman, on the other hand, is quite different. After the traumatic loss of 294_06_Zizek and Law.indd 103 26/11/14 13:34:31 104 D. Hassler-Forest his parents, Wayne decides to perform the role of Batman, which is often 1 presented as his “more authentic” self: only by putting on the Batman suit 2 and mask can he truly be who he is, facing his past tragedies and inner 3 fears by cathartically punishing criminals. His identity therefore comes to 4 exist in a state of continuous fluctuation between these two states, locked 5 into a perpetual state of Becoming. In this state of permanent flux, he is 6 never entirely the masked vigilante, nor completely the playboy billionaire 7 who is presented as even more of a performance than his secret and more 8 violent self. While Superman thus represents a relatively pure state of 9 Transcendence, Batman/Bruce Wayne maintain a model of Immanence.
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