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Hyper-Normative Heroes, Othered Villains: Differential Disability Narratives in the Marvel

Cinematic Universe

By Kelly Kane

Given the escapist nature of stories, which are notable for not being constrained by concerns with realism and which have widely been regarded as “low-brow” or inane, many writers and fans of the genre have argued that such stories need not be held to strict standards of cultural (Gavaler 2015, 76). The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a sprawling franchise that includes over 20 films (e.g. ) and over 10 television series (e.g.

Daredevil) all within the same story framework, has brought widespread awareness of and appreciation for superhero stories even among audiences who might not have traditionally engaged with such media in the past. The MCU is arguably the most important benchmark of

American popular culture in the last decade, with its entry : Endgame ranking as the highest grossing film ever released as of this writing (Tartaglione 2019). The MCU’s wide helps it to set many cultural trends and allows it to act as an introduction of sorts to the world of superheroes (e.g. McMillan 2019). Although these films and shows are only one part of the broader superhero canon, they nevertheless set trends followed by other superhero franchises

(e.g. the D.C. Cinematic Universe, named for the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and even define the very comic books they adapt (e.g. Baby Groot becoming part of the “Guardians of the

Galaxy” comic canon only after appearing in the MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy; Duggan,

Kuder, and Svorcina 2017). These stories’ role as a cultural benchmark then invites interrogation and further examination.

However, these stories’ appeal occurs not merely in spite of the relatively unchallenging subject matter, but because of the escapism offered through the Marvel franchise. Superhero

2 stories are straightforward and familiar, which can contribute to their problematic portrayals of character appearances. In fact, social psychologists David Pizarro and Roy Baumeister (2013) assert that superhero stories are a form of “moral pornography” because “much like the appeal of the exaggerated, caricatured sexuality found in pornography, 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 moral decision-making, portraying the 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, 2013, 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 the moral course of action. 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 characters include , a self-described “agent of chaos” (Lee,

1962, 1) and , leader of the “ Mutants” (Lee and Kirby, 1963, 8).

Pizarro and Baumeister (2013) 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

3 simplified moral conflicts, then by necessity they rely upon these overt signals of villainy. Many surface-level markers have lost their popularity in superhero stories: the film version of Magneto simply leads a “” with no mention of evil, and MCU Loki claims to be motivated by the good of his realm rather than a desire for destruction (X-Men: Last Stand;

Thor). However, one especially troubling visual symbol has persisted: that of disability and its portrayal marking a character’s morality or lack thereof.

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 the popular belief that natural selection prioritizes a selfish system of morality, evolutionary psychology has discovered that humans demonstrate a bias toward trusting and helping one another (De Waal, 2008), and even a “truth bias” wherein they are inclined to believe all assertions as true unless given reason to disbelieve those assertions (Vrij and Baxter, 1999, 27). 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 (2013) 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 (Pizarro and Baumeister, 2013, 27).

As disability scholars David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder discuss in their analysis

Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (2000), disability has been

4 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, 1972, 285).

Within American and similar Western cultures, standards of masculine beauty emphasize smooth skin, large muscles, broad shoulders, short but thick hair, and narrow waists (Murnen and

Karazsia 2017). The MCU frequently portrays masculine superheroes such as conforming to these beauty standards, depicting the character with enormous musculature and smooth skin (Punisher). Punisher’s evil , by contrast, demonstrates characteristics that are more traditionally feminine (e.g. he self-describes as “pretty”) and less traditionally beautiful (e.g. he incurs facial scarring) by Western standards.

One can even see such shifts manifest within the design of a single MCU character.

During : The First Avenger, Bucky Barnes is portrayed as a heroic sidekick to protagonist Captain America. In this film, Bucky’s appearance adheres closely to Western ideals of masculinity, including short hair, smooth skin, and a nondisabled body. However, when

Bucky reappears as the antagonist in sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, his appearance has moved away from these traditional ideals: he now has shoulder-length hair, bodily scarring, and a highly visible prosthetic arm. The third film Captain America: then hybridizes Bucky’s appearance with moderate-length hair and a de-emphasized prosthesis, reflecting his morally ambiguous role in that film. Thus, the obvious signal of normative

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American masculinity then becomes synonymous with the literal goodness of Bucky’s character.1

Although empirical investigation of disability has definitively refuted the assumption of the physical body as a reflection of morality, superhero stories nevertheless demonstrate bias against the moral character of disabled individuals. One reason for this persistent prejudice derives from implicit biases in the system of moral judgment. Evolutionary psychologists David

Buss and Douglas Kendrick (1998) 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 principle 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 often make snap judgments to avoid individuals perceived as physically unusual, including those with - normative physicality or gait (e.g. individuals with wheelchairs, visible scarring, or mobility impairments). Humans not only can but should overcome this immediate to avoid disabled individuals—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 and systemic ableism, both of which act to exclude disabled individuals from

1 For a discussion of feminine beauty standards and adaptations of DC superheroes, please see the chapter in this volume on ’s portrayal of Dr. Poison.

6 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 MCU 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 (2014) traces the history of the major superhero comics lines, and notes that Marvel, more so than its competitor companies such as D.C. and Dark Horse, has frequent representation of disabled heroes among its headliners. Alaniz notes that D.C. has occasional disabled heroes such as the , but that Marvel has a wide plethora of disabled characters including A-list heroes such as , Iron Man, and . One possible explanation for this discrepancy is the relative influence of Greek mythology, which informs the mythos of the D.C. universe, and Norse mythology, which informs Marvel to a similar degree. The ancient Greek pantheon values physical perfection and features dozens of nondisabled and beautiful gods, with the arguable exception of Hephaestus. However, the ancient Norse pantheon includes amputees such as Tyr, visually impaired deities such as Odin and Hodr, and even selectively mute trickster Loki. Ancient Greek philosophy emphasized that

“what is beautiful is good,” whereas ancient Norse philosophy was far more likely to regard disability as a signifier of honor and sacrifice earned through surviving injury (Mitchell and

Snyder 2000, 42-43). To a large extent, Marvel narratives have also embraced disability as ubiquitous, for all that their portrayals of disability are not always positive.

However, Mitchell and Snyder (2000) problematize the “symbolic manipulation of bodily exteriors” that literature so often employs when portraying disability (59). To treat disability as a metaphor is to remove its potential to localize the fictional character within a community of disabled individuals. To localize disability within the individual is to avoid troubling the social

7 order that creates disability through privileging certain types of abilities and experiences over others. In short, disability as a metaphor rather than a social identity is a deeply comfortable type of portrayal: it affirms the existing social order and offers no challenges to existing stereotypes.

This type of portrayal is, in its own way, as comfortingly unrealistic and as immediately gratifying as pornography.

These metaphorical portrayals all fail to engage with disability as a social category and as an individual identity, thereby ignoring its context. Historian Brian Cremins (2016) points out that contemporary consciousness has partially moved away from other problematic parallels of physical appearance and internal character such as racist depictions of characters of color as always evil. Nevertheless, problematic connections between bodily disability and moral character have stubbornly persisted. Even relatively positive metaphors, such and Avengers depicting one-eyed characters (Odin and Nick , respectively) as more discerning because of their lack of connection to worldly cares, nevertheless fail to engage with disability as a social identity through casting it solely as a literary device. ’s missing eye does not change his aim with distance weapons (e.g. Captain Marvel) or piloting software. Instead, it recurs in the films largely in metaphorical lines such as Fury’s commenting on the of a friend with “I just lost my one good eye,” (Avengers) and gloating over a defeated villain with “If you want to stay ahead of me, Mr. Secretary, you need to keep both eyes open” (Captain America: Winter

Soldier). One character in Avengers even questions the lack of accessibility in Fury’s multi- monitor computer console, and Fury’s assistant simply answers that he must turn his head more often to compensate. The franchise thereby emphasizes that Fury’s missing eye is only a metaphor for his discernment and ability to see details that others have missed, rather than a truly integrated part of his character or even an accurate portrayal of that disability.

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This treatment of disability as metaphor persists throughout the MCU. In Captain

America: Civil War, superhero incurs a permanent spinal injury while fighting on behalf of his best friend Iron Man. Later on, rival superhero Hawkeye2 blames Iron Man for the fight when he declares “You gotta watch your back with this guy. There’s a chance he’s gonna break it.” The film then equips War Machine with a fantastical prosthesis that essentially nullifies his disabled experience through giving him the same range of motion as his nondisabled teammates, entirely without side effects or need for maintenance. The MCU films thus present disability as a metaphor for inner morality and characterization. War Machine has few experiences of being a disabled man through his spinal injury, but is instead emotionally

“disabled” by the to his social standing he has incurred through his friendship with Iron

Man. Nick Fury’s partial blindness recurs not as visual difference, but as a metaphor for his “sight” because he has concealed his blind left eye with an eye patch.

These and other MCU portrayals use disability not as an identity or a social category, but rather as a physical manifestation of qualities or phenomena that otherwise would remain abstract. Avengers does not problematize Fury being forced to use an inaccessible computer console, instead flippantly dismissing this feature of his workspace. Captain America: Civil War offers no discussion of War Machine’s disabled identity (e.g. how it intersects with his identities as a black man and a veteran) or comment on ableism, instead employing the trope of “hiding” his disability as quickly as possible through the prosthetic (Alaniz 2014). The MCU thereby offers no critique of ableism or inaccessibility, instead continuing to localize disability as a problem with the body and the individual.

2 Although is often portrayed as deaf or hard of hearing in Marvel comics (e.g. Fraction and Aja 2014), there is thus far no discussion of this disability in Marvel movies or shows. The on-screen adaptation of the character is not portrayed as using hearing aids, sign language, or other signifiers of deafness, leaving his disability status ambiguous at best.

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Other metaphorical uses of disability abound. Thor: Ragnarok uses Thor’s partial blindness to analogize him to his deceased father Odin, and in the process fails to examine the way that the loss of an eye could affect his fighting style or ability to pilot spaceships. Iron Man does not discuss Tony Stark’s injury in the context of identity or access, but rather as

“proof that Tony Stark has a heart.” In each of these cases, the social context of the disability is subsumed to its use as a literary device. In the most egregious cases of disability being only a metaphor, disability itself becomes a marker of moral judgment from higher powers, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Several of these metaphors directly connect disability to morality through differentiating the outcomes for disabled heroes and disabled villains. Generally this motif features disabled heroes who experience “cures” for their disability that render their experience once again nondisabled, whereas villains are more likely to develop permanent and more likely to be killed once they are disabled. Nowhere is this dichotomy more explicit than in the Captain America film series.

In Captain America: The First Avenger, wise mentor Abraham Erskine tells future hero

Steve Rogers that he will undergo a fantastical transformation, describing it thus: “The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great; bad becomes worse.” At the time,

Rogers has been barred from the Army because of asthma, arthritis, partial deafness, a congenital heart defect, and other chronic illnesses. However, the serum acts to “cure” these disabilities, and the film makes explicit that this change comes about because Rogers is a virtuous and self- sacrificing defender of justice worthy of the physical ideal of Captain America. According to

Erskine, this is because Rogers is “not a great soldier, but a good man.” When the megalomaniacal Johann Schmidt is treated with the same serum, he incurs a disability where

10 none previously existed. The transformation renders him the physically deformed , absent a nose and most of the skin on his face. With the line “bad becomes worse” played over an image of Schmidt transforming, the film makes clear that this change has occurred because of the serum’s ability to amplify one’s moral character in one’s physical form. Thus, Captain

America: The First Avenger juxtaposes the morality of Captain America and Red Skull through casting Captain America’s hypernormative physicality as proof of his moral superiority and Red

Skull’s non-normative appearance as proof of his moral bankruptcy. The manifestations of “bad” and “good” are thereby located within the body itself, and reflected in physical appearance.

This specific metaphor, of outward physical appearance reflecting inner morality, presents direct contrast between heroes and villains. In the television show , both protagonist Jessica Jones and antagonist Alisa Jones are involved in the same car accident when their minivan crashes and they are dosed with phantasmagorical chemicals. Jessica Jones, the altruistic private detective, emerges unscarred and normatively attractive, with smooth skin and flowing hair. Alisa Jones, the impulsive and often-enraged serial killer, incurs extensive facial scarring from the same accident; she also loses all her hair and her appearance is thus rendered far less normatively feminine. Like Captain America and Red Skull, they have approximately the same superpowers, set apart only by the protagonist’s normative beauty and the antagonist’s lack thereof. Alisa eventually dies, while Jessica lives.

The same dichotomy persists throughout the MCU. In Captain America: The Winter

Soldier, both hero and villain narrowly escape the same collapsing building.

As of the sequel Captain America: Civil War, Falcon is as normatively beautiful as ever whereas

Crossbones is extensively scarred. Reinforcing the stereotype of disabled individuals as seeking self-destruction, Crossbones self-immolates within minutes of appearing on-screen following his

11 injury (Alaniz 2014, 98). Both protagonist Daredevil and the unnamed antagonists of Madame

Gao’s empire become blind after chemical exposure; Daredevil retains an unscarred appearance while the evil minions have visible facial scarring (Daredevil). Daredevil survives the show, while several of the evil minions are killed. Thus, the MCU implicity invites the viewer to judge individuals based on their appearances, and to assume that individuals who are less normatively beautiful are less moral.

Even when the MCU portrays heroic characters as disabled, it often does not fully embrace the disabled experience. Many disabled MCU heroes fall into the curious space that

Mitchell and Snyder (2000) describe wherein a protagonist’s disability is simply stated to exist, and then has an inexplicable lack of impact on the individual’s life any time it is not convenient for purposes of characterization or literary device (56). Sami Schalk (2016) defines this phenomenon in MCU and related portrayals as the “superpowered supercrip,” a character from whose superpowers operate in direct contrast with the individual’s disability, thereby acting to remove the influence of disability on the character’s personal narrative (74).

The superpowered supercrip is a subset of the stereotype of disabled individuals as

“overcoming” disability through hard work and willpower, one that denies the experiences of disabled individuals through suggesting that they must change their own bodies and minds rather than ask that environments accommodate them as they currently are (81). In the case of the superpowered supercrip, the disability experience is acknowledged but then denied through use of speculative powers that give the ostensibly disabled character the lived experience of a nondisabled person.

Daredevil is perhaps the most notable superpowered supercrip in the MCU. The heroic

Matt Murdock becomes blind as a child when exposed to harmful chemicals, but trains himself

12 to use his other senses to compensate for his lack of sight to the point where he is more skilled at spatial navigation than most sighted individuals by the time he becomes Daredevil (Smith 1998).

Alaniz (2014) points out that Daredevil exists in a strange state of being whereby he functionally acts as a sighted person throughout his comic appearances, and yet also champions blind individuals through co-opting his prostheses—dark glasses and a collapsible cane—as the tools of his superheroism (69). Daredevil’s portrayal varies greatly from one comic series or screen adaptation to another, with some relatively nuanced depictions of access and ability status

(Daredevil 2003) and some deeply problematic depictions of negative stereotypes that blind individuals fake disability to gain unneeded benefits () or misinformation indicating that blind individuals can “feel” colors (Smith 1998, 3).

However, the lived experience of Daredevil in the MCU is not that of a blind person; the

Daredevil television show largely fails to engage with ableism, simply hand-waving the protagonist’s navigation of environments with poor accessibility (e.g. the New York City subway) through suggesting that his “radar sense” acts the same as sight. The show often overcompensates for Daredevil’s disability through simply adding a new to his repertoire any time blindness would otherwise change his lived experience, until eventually he can play pool unassisted, read handwriting through running his fingers over a surface, and use distance weapons against his opponents. Thus, Daredevil’s superpowers always act to ensure that his lived experience is that of a nondisabled person, setting his disability aside any time it is not convenient for use as a metaphor and localizing it within his body rather than calling upon society to change. As Alaniz (2014) argues, that the very introduction of disability into a narrative transgresses hypernormative societal definitions of embodiment. This transgression

13 represents a “problem” that must be “resolved,” often at the expense of the individual character

(135).

Perhaps the most excruciatingly self-aware moment in the show occurs in the episode

“Nelson . Murdock,” when Daredevil’s best friend finds out about the character’s superpowers. Angry at the deception Daredevil has been perpetrating, Foggy angrily demands

“How many fingers am I holding up?” and Daredevil correctly answers “One.” It is, of course,

Foggy’s middle finger. The Daredevil series portrays its protagonist (among other deceptions) pretending to be unable to find his way around to lure a love interest into helping him and miming helplessness when confronted by law enforcement in the midst of illegal activities. It thereby plays into the deeply ableist fear of disabled individuals as secretly “faking” in order to gain undeserved advantages (Alaniz 2014, 140). Daredevil portrays its protagonist’s superpowers as the product of his specialized training and strength of character, extensively flashing back to a younger Matt Murdock learning to use his powers with the help of mentor

Stick. It also thereby falls into the stereotype of blind individuals as possessing compensatory advantages that mean they do not need disability-accessible environments or prostheses (e.g. any change at all to the infamously inaccessible New York subway system, Patel 2019) when these individuals can instead focus hard and nullify their disabilities that way.

These types of portrayals are specifically problematic in that, like all supercrip narratives, they suggest that disability can be “overcome” through willpower alone. As Schalk (2016) points out, implicit in these narratives are both the low expectations underpinning the assumption it is extraordinary for any disabled individual to engage in activities like getting married or earning money, and also the high expectations that underpin the assumption any disabled individual can have a family or a job through willpower alone rather than the breaking of societal barriers

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(74). Like the system justification inherent in the “what is beautiful is good” bias, this type of narrative comfortably assures ableist society that the problem lies not in the many barriers standing between disabled individuals and full participation in society, but within the disabled individuals themselves. These narratives present a single blind individual able to play pool as implicit proof that all blind individuals should be able to play pool if they try hard enough, rather than calling for adaptations to pool tables that would make it easier for visually impaired users to play. However, even in the absence of compensatory superpowers, Marvel heroes will often

“overcome” disabilities through self-discipline alone.

In addition to discussing the superpowered supercrip, Schalk’s (2016) analysis delineates the glorified supercrip. The glorified supercrip narrative is a depiction of a disabled individual engaged in extraordinary feats such as climbing Mount Everest or winning a Nobel Prize. This narrative tends to focus on the personal characteristics of the individual, such as determination and willpower, that helped ensure personal success. These portrayals often make mawkish appeals to common humanity that implicitly cast most disabled individuals as Other through holding up a single individual who has achieved extraordinary feats of mental or physical prowess (Schalk 2016, 77). The glorified supercrip narrative implicitly casts disability as a personal failure through suggesting that anyone who cared enough to do so would be able to overcome all societal barriers against disabled individuals to win a chess competition or the

Paralympics. In doing so, it frequently overlooks other privileges afforded to the disabled individuals—who are often wealthy, white, and male—that can account for their success as much as the “willpower” to “overcome” their disabled status.

This glorified supercrip narrative drives much of the plot of Season 2 of the television series . In the episode “The Dragon Dies at Dawn,” protagonist Danny “Iron Fist” Rand

15 breaks his leg during a fight; subsequent episodes portray medical professionals such as doctors and physical therapists assuring Iron Fist that the injury is permanent. However, Iron Fist refuses physical therapy and drug therapy alike, insisting instead that he can train himself to regain all his extraordinary skill at martial arts through meditation and effortful exertion of will. The subsequent narrative arc focuses on Iron Fist’s willpower, dwelling on scenes where he pushes through exhaustion to continue training and ignores pain to accomplish his goals. It thus localizes the success of this training (Iron Fist does regain the ability to fight with swords and with his fists) within the individual himself. In the process, this glorified supercrip narrative neglects much of the same intersectionality that all such narratives do. It fails to recognize that

Iron Fist, an extremely wealthy white man with a full-time romantic partner willing and able to act as caretaker, has privileges that most disabled individuals lack. (For instance, 29% of disabled Americans were living in poverty as of the 2014 census; Denavas-Walt and Proctor

2015.) Iron Fist does not acknowledge that the protagonist’s “overcoming” relies on his ability to avoid working or doing anything other than training for several hours a day, failing to examine the ways that his intersecting privileges contribute to his disability experience.

Furthermore, these glorified supercrip narratives derogate the very systems and prostheses that help actual disabled individuals navigate in reality. Supercrips, including those in the MCU, frequently reject therapy and systemic forms of assistance. Too often, the MCU portrays this rejection as a signifier of personal strength. Not only does Iron Fist portray Danny as heroic and self-disciplined for refusing physical therapy, but Daredevil specifically contrasts

Daredevil’s ability to fight ninjas with other blind characters’ use of canes and assistants in a way that implies Daredevil is the only one with the alleged strength of character not to need navigational assistance. While Punisher contains a sympathetic mental health professional who

16 is himself disabled and not a supercrip, it also portrays the character as ultimately unable to help his clients in any meaningful way. Agents of , by contrast, simply portrays psychologist

Andrew Garner as a murderous who uses his therapy appointments as an opportunity to manipulate his clients into evil. Consistently, the MCU presents mental health services as useless at best and sinister at worst.

Perhaps the most egregious motif of valuing individual willpower over the support of others comes in Marvel’s consistently negative portrayal of support groups. Jessica Jones,

Punisher, , and Iron Fist have minor recurring roles for support groups, all of which are portrayed as unethical and ineffective. Jessica Jones attends a group meeting for survivors of mind control only long enough to mock its members as pathetic before setting out on her own, allegedly more heroic, path of violent revenge. In spite of her series-long struggle with trauma,

Jones rejects all forms of treatment and states “screw therapy” and later “it’s called whiskey” when asked if she could benefit from professional assistance (“AKA It’s Called Whiskey”).

Jones instead demonstrates an attitude that therapy is an indulgence and a form of weakness; she crudely rejects the suggestion that she join the support group, stating “Like I’d waste my time circle jerking with a bunch of whiners” (“AKA 99 Friends”). The specific assertion that group therapy is a “circle jerk,” or a form of meaningless self-indulgence, is repeated by two other characters during the series, reinforcing the show’s contempt for the support of others (“AKA

The Kumbaya Circle Jerk”). By the end of the season, Jones has used violence to defeat the supervillain who harmed her, but has made no meaningful effort to seek healing or help for her trauma or her resultant alcoholism. Instead she regards both conditions as hopelessly unfixable, an assumption the show itself does not directly contradict. This attitude persists through the

17 related shows: Punisher, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist all depict support group leaders using their groups to engage in unethical or even illegal behavior.

Social psychologist Mikhail Lyubansky argues that this consistent portrayal of mental health professionals as incompetent serves a specific purpose within superhero stories: that of justifying the heroes’ violent revenge against villains (182). After all, if mental health assistance is a valid alternative to murder or physical assault for individuals with Dissociative Identity

Disorder ( Walker, Iron Fist), violent expressions of Post-Traumatic Stress

Disorder (Lewis Wilson, Punisher), or unspecified mental disabilities (Alisa Jones, Jessica

Jones), then the entire profession of superhero vigilantism is rendered invalid. Lyubansky suggests that mental health professionals must be portrayed as “immoral and corrupt” or else

“emasculated and ridiculed for being unable to do their job” for superhero stories to function

(181). The alternative would be acknowledging the potential for restorative justice and humanizing the villains of such stories to the point where the entire process of having a man in a cape beat strangers unconscious for acts of petty theft becomes downright morally questionable.

Therefore, the superheroes cannot possibly rely upon the assistance of trained professionals, but must “overcome” disability alone, or else the entire narrative of simple moral judgment comes under threat.

These supercrip narratives, whether they feature superpowered supercrips or glorified supercrips are consistently only available to the superheroes in Marvel adaptations. Disabled , even within the same works, often receive very different treatment. The disabled hero often has the disability removed or nullified, but disabled villains are often occur as embittered who seek to destroy the nondisabled world, a specific stereotype that Alaniz

(2014) describes as a villain “possessed of traits straight out of the ableist’s worst nightmare:

18 malformed, malevolent, mighty” (57). In , villain also uses a cane due to an unspecified mobility-related disability in his , but develops a “cure” for all disabilities a chemical known as . Killian describes himself as embittered and jealous toward Iron Man because of Iron Man’s perceived physical perfection, and Killian states that he wanted to take his own life because of this bitter jealousy. Although Killian and several other minor antagonists initially regrow limbs or remove disabilities through Extremis, all of them eventually die from its side effects. Iron Man also takes the Extremis chemical, however, and develops a cure for his own cardiac injury that neither creates side effects nor results in his death.

Similarly, Ant-Man and the Wasp portrays the antagonist as villainous only to the extent that she is embittered through her experience with chronic pain. She specifically states that her experience with pain causes her to break laws. When her mentor pleads with her, saying

“People are getting hurt,” Ghost responds “Everything hurts” and refuses to be stirred from her course of action. The moment Ghost receives a magical cure for her disability through Pym particles, she becomes a sympathetic character who selflessly helps the heroes as they evade law enforcement. These villains and others within the MCU experience not just anger but a desire to destroy the nondisabled as a result of their disability, reinforcing the stereotype of the disabled individual as the bitter loner (e.g. Mitchell and Snyder, 2000). In some cases, these disabled characters do not rise above the status of mere set pieces used to develop the narratives of nondisabled heroes.

Of course, not all characters within any story can possibly be well-rounded and agentic.

This lack of development for minor characters only becomes problematic to the extent that it reduces certain characters to nothing more than stereotypes rather than allowing them to have demographic characteristics in addition to their minor roles. The unagentic disabled character

19 plays into another ableist stereotype: that disabled individuals are helpless, sometimes even to the point of being less than human (e.g. Wolbring 2008). This type of character prevents awareness of the ways that society-wide dehumanization of disabled individuals can actively prevent their expression of agency (Alaniz 2014).

For instance, in Iron Man 3, several disabled veterans appear only long enough to receive an Extremis cure and then die as a result. The camera focuses on their disabled bodies, lingering on shots of one woman’s residual limb rather than showing her face or other individuating characteristics, emphasizing that they are props rather than humans. Their deaths drive the plot forward, and most of them never speak a single line onscreen. The audience is invited to feel pity for these individuals as they are shown strapped down and screaming, and to feel fear as one by one they suffer catastrophic explosions due to the Extremis side effects. This framing reinforces the ableist construction of disability as pitiable but also fearsome and loathsome (Mitchell and

Snyder 2000). By contrast, the nondisabled minor character Ho Yinsen also speaks only two lines in Iron Man 3, but he is framed as likeable and sympathetic: the camera lingers on Yinsen’s face as Iron Man sweeps by with barely a word of acknowledgement, and one of his lines

(“Another time, perhaps…?”) makes humorous allusion to his future friendship with Iron Man.

Even Yinsen’s death in Iron Man emphasizes his individual agency, de-emphasizing the bodily reality of his fatal wounds. Even nondisabled minor villains receive greater humanization, as when an unnamed guard at an AIM facility humorously states, “The people who work here are so weird,” before quitting his job on the (Iron Man 3). Thus, the disabled characters’ role does not need to be limited to their use as props to drive the plot, but the problem persists.

Arguably more problematic still is Guardians of the Galaxy’s mockery of its only known disabled character. The film contains an extended joke where the audience is invited to laugh

20 along with the heroes as they barter for minor character’s prosthetic leg simply for the sake of depriving him of said leg. Upon finding out that Star-Lord has stolen the prosthetic, protagonist

Rocket says “I thought it’d be funny[…] what’d he look like hopping around?” (Guardians of the Galaxy). At no point does the film offer any individuating information about the character outside of the prosthetic, nor does it condemn the heroes’ actions. This motif of protagonist

Rocket hoarding unneeded prostheses returns more than once. In Avengers: Infinity War, Rocket offers up the cybernetic eye (that renders Thor a supercrip) with an explanation about having stolen it in order to collect on a gambling debt, in spite of not needing the eye himself. Later, he attempts to purchase Bucky Barnes’s prosthetic arm simply for the sake of owning it himself. In neither case does the film condemn these actions, outside of the brief look of disgust that Bucky directs at Rocket after hearing his offer. The MCU does not actually show the original owner of the prosthetic leg “hopping around,” nor does it offer any consideration of the immediate threat to Bucky’s life if he were to be deprived of his arm mid-battle. Instead, the tone of this running joke mocks and dismisses the actual need for prostheses as mobility aids. The implied message here, that disabled characters exist to be gazed upon—and mocked—by Rocket and an assumed nondisabled audience, momentarily acts to objectify even a relatively complex character such as

Bucky.

However, these stories are not just fictional but fantastical. The Marvel Cinematic

Universe, like the comics that inspired it, imagines the impossible. These are stories in which the dead rise, gods walk the earth, humans fly, and sorcerers travel back in time. It nevertheless matters that they imagine impossibly effective prostheses and disability-nullifying superpowers, because the MCU acts as such a foundational cultural artifact for the contemporary United

21

States. Viewers know that MCU depictions are fictional, but that does not prevent such stories from influencing their perceptions of what is right and what is true (Appel and Malečkar 2012).

Social psychologists studying the impact of stories have overwhelmingly found that

American individuals derive stereotypes as much from fictional media as from human interaction, if not more so. Melanie Green and Timothy Brock (2000) gave a group of participants either a story which contained a stereotypical depiction of a schizophrenic man as dangerously violent, or a story which contained no direct mention of schizophrenia (704).

Participants who read the story with the negative stereotypes about schizophrenia rated mentally disabled individuals as more dangerous, and supported involuntarily institutionalizing those individuals more, than participants who read the story unrelated to schizophrenia. Fictional works including the show Twenty-Four and the novel State of Fear have been used to support arguments during Congressional and presidential debates (Vaughn, Childs, Maschinski, Nino, and Ellsworth 1181; Leggett, 2005; Bradner and Jaffe, 2015). Much of what contemporary

Americans know and think they know has been learned from mass media such as television.

Journalist Manohla Dargis may have said it best: “movies get into our bodies, making us howl and weep, while their narratives and visual patterns, their ideas and ideologies leave their imprint.” Not only do immediate portrayals of stereotypes reinforce these stereotypical beliefs, but they build up over time. If disabled individuals are only shown as virtuous overcomers or embittered villains, then the harmful stereotypes that bar disabled individuals from participating fully in society through failing to provide access will continue to gain new life. Even superhero stories, with all their and glamor, have the potential to be more than moral pornography.

Marvel comics can and do grapple with disturbing questions of morality and personal identity, and the MCU is beginning to do the same. For instance, Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity

22

War both portray Bucky Barnes as competent and sympathetic without his prosthetic arm, neither minimizing nor fetishizing his amputation but rather focusing on the character as a human individual whose disabilities contribute to but do not define his narrative. gives complex agency to disabled protagonist while resisting and even interrogating the supercrip narrative, as in the moment when Sousa talks about his coworkers’ tendency to applaud him as a “war hero” for his disability in the absence of any information about his actual service record (“The Blitzkrieg Button”).

Nevertheless, the MCU must do better. It must cast disabled actors to play disabled characters, allow disabled characters to have narratives not defined by disability, and break the stereotype of physical beauty as indicating inner goodness. The groundwork has already been laid for characters such as Bucky Barnes and Daredevil to become positive disability icons.

Marvel only needs to embrace these characters’ disabilities in order to transform these narratives beyond the stereotypes they currently enforce, and to start breaking those stereotypes down.

23

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