Captain America, the Nationalist Superhero: an Expression of American Military Conflicts Through Popular Culture
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Captain America, the Nationalist Superhero: An Expression of American Military Conflicts Through Popular Culture Madeline Hunter Senior Honors Thesis New York University Department of History Mary Nolan, Advisor Marilyn Young, Second Reader Contents Introduction 3 What is a “Nationalist Superhero?” 10 Conception and Pre-Publication 20 Captain America and World War II 25 The Decline and Cancelation of Captain America 35 Captain America, the Avengers, and Falcon in the 1960s 44 Civil War in the 2000s 50 Conclusion 54 Bibliography 56 2 Introduction The United States of America is a nation of war. The country was founded out of the Revolutionary War of 1776 and was built through a multitude of subsequent armed conflicts. America has expanded its territory and influence through a vast number of struggles both within and beyond its borders, creating a vast state that stretches beyond its continental boundaries. These many engagements have kept the United States involved in conflict for approximately 193 of her 240 years as a nation-state.1 This development by conflict has had a substantial impact on the culture of the people living within the country. It has created a society that constantly positions itself as a hero and its adversary as the villain, an entity that needs to be righteously beaten into submission for the greater good. This attitude is not unique to the United States, but what is exceptional is how it manifests in the culture of the country.2 This hero-villain complex of an infinite good and a total evil is transmitted to average Americans though the lens of popular culture. It appears in a variety of platforms, one of the most notable is that of comic books and superheroes. Superheroes take on the same role as the nation; they are portrayed as having superhuman power. Villains are beyond humanly comprehensible levels of evil, posing a threat to the safety of humanity, which only the superhero, or nation, can solve. Many superheroes have been offered up as the symbol for the United States, they provide a pop culture medium for the nation’s armed conflicts. The most prevalent and widely accepted to fill this position is Captain America. 1 Calculated from 1776 to 2016, taking into account all armed conflicts that engaged the United States. This does not include the entire Cold War, but factors in military activities that required arms on the part of the United States. 2 Robert Jewett, The Captain America Complex: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism (Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press, 1973) 9-27. 3 Captain America is a Golden Age comic book character who was created in 1940 as a piece of propaganda. His creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, were appalled at the United States’ inaction in the crisis happening in Europe in the late 1930s and early 1940s.3 Captain America was the agent through whom they attempted to urge the American people towards supporting the European war effort against Nazi Germany. When Captain America Comics was officially released in early 1941, people were beginning to take interest in what was happening abroad. Despite their efforts, Captain America had little impact on the decision to join the war as the United States was forced into the war in December of the same year when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Although they did not accomplish their intended goal, Simon and Kirby continued to write Captain America and it was wildly successful during and directly after the Second World War. American total-war sentiments contributed greatly to this initial success. The comic sold millions of copies within the United States and was read by children and adults alike, creating a pop culture icon that spanned generations and could be widely associated with the country as a whole. The comic’s international success was heavily reliant upon the soldiers who took Captain America comics abroad with them to the front lines. Soldiers found elements of the superhero that resonated with their own conflicts, and it was their interest that lead to the creation of a European audience and later an Asian audience as they served overseas.4 3 The term “Golden Age” in comics refers to comic books written from the mid-1930s until the early 1950s. This was the time when modern comic books were initially written and first put into publication. The most notable Golden Age comic book superheroes are Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Wonder Woman. Shirrel Rhoades, “History of the Comic Book World ” in A Complete History of American Comic Books (New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2008) 1-8, 21-25. 4 Jean-Paul Gabilliet, trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen, Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books (Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2010) 21-27. 4 Captain America’s very rapid ascension into American culture was maintained for almost a decade before a steep decline in post-war sales caused the comic to temporarily stop production in 1950.5 Captain America Comics was brought back for less than a year, May 1954 to September 1954, after the Korean War, but failed to regain its World War II readership. The American public had seemingly lost interest in a super soldier.6 This was due to a variety of factors, particularly the fall in public support for active combat wars and the shift in enemy presentation that no longer produced a person or concise physical entity to paint as the villain. During World War II, the ultimate villain was Hitler and the Red Skull, who was created by the Nazis and Hitler and led the sub-Nazi organization Hydra.7 In the revival comics that were published during the early Cold War, Captain America did not have a named archrival. It appeared that the superhero-villain correlation between warring states was a World War II phenomenon until the resurgence of Captain America in the 1960s. During the Silver Age of comic books in the 1960s, Captain America came back in a variety of comic books.8 His resurgence was heavily tied to his role in the Avengers, a comic book that 5 Ibid., 41-45. 6 The term “super solider” is used in the Captain America comics to describe Captain America because he serves as a soldier, yet his abilities are above and beyond a normal service man’s. It is a kin to the terms superhero and superhuman, which are also used to describe the character. 7 The Red Skull is a character in the Captain America comics that was created by the Nazis in a similar manner to how the United States created Captain America. The key difference between the two characters is that the Red Skull was created from a corrupt man, and that moral and ethical corruption was magnified in his creation as superhuman. The Red Skull went on to lead the sub-organization Hydra, a force that outlives its Nazi creator and seeks world domination. 8 The Silver Age of comic books was from the mid-1950s to 1970 and took place after a gap of significantly less activity in the early to mid-1950s. This was a period of commercial and 5 combined old, staple superheroes like Captain America with newer creations such as Falcon, the first major African-American superhero. Captain America had to once again bridge the generation gap, but in a new way. He had to entice a new audience as well as reclaim his original readership, both of which were in an America that did not patriotically take to war like the America of the 1940s. This new America was in the midst of the Cold War and was about to begin the Vietnam War after a less than victorious war in Korea a decade prior. Captain America was a super soldier in a country that was increasingly disenchanted with conflict. Through his work with Falcon and the Avengers, Captain America became a pop culture icon that could once again be the nation- state superhero. This rhetoric was the driving force behind the revitalized character of Captain America throughout the Cold War, from 1964 onward until the early 2000s and the beginning of the War on Terror. Yet again the American public changed its voice on war and was divided. In 2001, just after the terror attacks of 9/11, public sentiment in favor of war was incredibly high, but it quickly receded and the United States was left with a public that was increasingly divided. There were those who believed in interventionist policies and thought that the United States should exhaust all measures to protect itself from the unknown terrorist. Whereas the other side argued that liberties and personal freedoms would be trampled in such an effort.9 In this new arena of national and international politics, the character of Captain America was again reimagined, but not in the artistic advancement that created a new high in the comic industry, which was especially successful for the superhero genre. Rhoades, 1-8, 69-75. 9 Mark D. White The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2014) 178-188. 6 traditional way. At this time Captain America and Iron Man chose sides, each representing one of these arguments.10 This major disparity within the American public contributed to the comic Civil War, in which superheroes from the Marvel Universe take sides and have their own war about how to deal with the new millennium’s split social and political climate.11 In this conflict Iron Man leads the portion of the superhero population that wants to adapt to the new age and compromise with governments, giving up rights in order to theoretically maintain a safer world.