The Superhero Manifesto ... with a small aside about pants

I did make time during bar prep to go see Dark Knight. Predictably, it made me ponder my own obsession with Batman and why I still think he is the best superhero around. But I also thought about other superheroes and some of their powers and also some of their clear drawbacks – mostly a matter of pants.

Superman

I’ll admit to never being a huge fan of Superman as a superhero. I mean, he has superpowers and is nearly invincible. If I had superpowers and could act without consequence, I’d like to think I would save people too. But unlike most superheroes, I think the more interesting side of Superman is his alter ego, Clark Kent. The Clark Kent side isn’t usually very well explored in the movies – he just bumbles around wearing those magic glasses that somehow completely distort his face. But the early years – when Clark Kent wasn’t even an alter ego yet but was really all that existed – were explored in Smallville. He was more sympathetic after that because it turned out Clark Kent wanted want everyone wants when they’re fifteen – he just wanted to be normal and to do normal things. His special skills weren’t seen as a plus, but as the thing that kept him from being able to play on the football team. I think that’s something most people can relate to. We may not have woken up one morning with the ability to see through walls or start fires with our eyes or fly, but at some point most of us will discover hidden talents of some kind. And just like Clark Kent, many of us will hide or try to minimize those talents so that we, too, can be like everyone else.

Learning more about Superman’s early years also made me more appreciative of his true powers. In one of the first season Smallville episodes, Clark’s powers are transferred to another student during an electrical storm. The other student didn’t have the self control that Clark had been raised with and quickly used the powers in negative ways. When Clark transferred them back, he commented that the other student had not been given his two most important powers – his parents. Maybe what is impressive about Superman isn’t that he uses his superpowers for good, but that he doesn’t use them for evil.

Superman obviously hid his powers in the long run not just so that he could fit in but because he feared the world would try to exploit him for his skills. But why do the rest of us continue to hide? What do we think the consequences would be of showing our unique side?

The Hulk

The critical flaw in the character of the hulk isn’t his anger or his green skin or the fact that each movie based on his character is worse than the last. No, the critical flaw is that he has to wear pants. He has to wear pants when he’s Bruce Banner and human and those same pants need to somehow expand when he loses control and turns into the Hulk. I suspend disbelief as easily as the next person; I’m willing to believe that the army’s experiments turned Bruce into this monster; I’m willing to believe that anger somehow also turns him green. But I am not willing to believe that the pants stretch enough to stay on during one of his episodes. I’m a woman, I yo-yo diet just like most women, and I know the value of stretchy pants. But pants that can stretch when you grow from six to ten feet tall and your arms and legs bulge out and turn green? If there was a pair of pants that could do that, women would know about them.

I also don’t like it when the only thing a superhero has to fight is another person with the same superpowers, which was how this summer’s movie was structured. Superheroes need to represent a fight against something more profound than simply themselves. I understand the metaphors – that science is dangerous, that both are just sides to the same coin. But I couldn’t care less about one big green guy fighting another. Superheroes need to be symbols to be relevant and there’s nothing symbolic about green monsters.

IronMan

I didn’t know this character at all before seeing the movie this summer, so I don’t have as much to say. I did have some problems with a superhero who was basically just one really big weapon, and I thought the depictions of the Afghani people were downright insulting (although apparently he originally went up against the Vietnamese who were no doubt represented just as stereotypically). I like that Ironman doesn’t have innate super powers, but the power that comes from turning yourself into one giant, nearly impenetrable weapon, is a power I just can’t cheer for.

SpiderMan

I have mixed feelings about Spiderman. I think Peter Parker is the lamest of all the alter egos – he’s whiny and never really seems to come to terms with the sacrifices that come with the powers. He says he does, but then he continues to whine.

But I also believe the first of the Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies, coming out about nine months after 9/11, was a powerful movie, even if by accident. It was finished filming before the towers came down, but its images were no less powerful when it was released – Spiderman swinging from one tall building to the next was a reclaiming of the NY skies. In fact, there was a Spiderman trailer that was later pulled because it showed Spiderman weaving a huge web between the twin towers. I always thought they should have left the trailer in tact. What would have been better that day than having the planes caught up in a web, leaving everyone and everything intact? It would have been painful to see, but dreams often are.

I think one of the downsides of superheroes is that they always seem to be cleaning up the messes left behind by ordinary heroes. The police never seem able to fight crime on their own; the implication is that we need a superhero because ordinary heroes aren’t effective. But I think it’s more complicated than that. Superheroes are safe; they have powers and they catch planes in their webs without putting themselves at risk. The problem with ordinary heroes isn’t that their feats aren’t just as daring, but that as heroes they are more vulnerable; they rush into buildings and can’t swing themselves out when the center falls away.

Batman

Batman is, of course, my first love when it comes to superheroes. He offers the best of all worlds because he doesn’t actually have any super powers so his risks seem more daring and yet his batsuit offers such great protection that he never really gets hurt. The lack of super powers also makes Bruce Wayne the most interesting alter ego because he doesn’t just adapt to having powers beyond his control – he chooses the superhero life. He chooses to put on a batsuit and go out into the night to fight crime.

I believe that the best superhero is one that fills a need in society. That’s what was so brilliant about Michael Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay and the creation of The Escapist who killed Hitler. Society didn’t need an ordinary crime fighter because it was not an age of ordinary crime. But we do generally live in an age of ordinary, yet seemingly constant, crime. Batman fights crime and corruption. But Batman doesn’t just fill the image of a crime fighter. He is a crime survivor and he serves as an image of hope that good can come from the worst event possible; hope that man can lose his mind just a little and still make an important impact in the world; hope that we can overcome darkness – both outside and inside ourselves – and come out the other side, that we don’t have to lose ourselves completely as long as we are honest about needing to lose ourselves a little. There is no real Batman to save us from dark alley ways, but Batman is proof that even when the crime cannot be stopped it also does not have to be the end of us.

Bruce Wayne may seem like an odd person to look up to. After all, for the most part he’s emotionally unavailable, and he doesn’t just wear disguises half the time but all of the time because his playboy antics are just as calculated to hide him away as is the batsuit. But I don’t think superheroes need to be perfect to be admirable. That’s why I disagreed with the ending of Dark Knight and all the discussion about what kind of hero the city needed. First of all, Gotham didn’t need a hero that night, it had a hundred of them on each of the two boats. Ordinary, everyday heroes are the best kind. One perfect hero might be good for a little while but a hero that can inspire others to also do what they can might just change the world. But second of all, what the city “needed” and what the city “deserved” in terms of superheroes was really the same thing – not perfection, not the image of someone who they think could never fall, but someone perfectly capable of falling and picking themselves back up again. Not falling isn’t heroic because it just means you’re not jumping. We will all fall. We need heroes who can show us what to do in the aftermath.

Of course, the joker represents another side of what acts of violence can lead to. Whatever violence scarred his face, it was too much for him to overcome, and as often happens, violence begets violence. To have a really good superhero and a really good villain is to show two sides of the same coin, leaving the audience to wonder which side they would choose. The lesson from them all is that the line between hero and villain is not a matter of inherent skills or special powers; it’s a matter of choice. Whether the powers are biological, science gone awry, or simply the product of good training, powers can be used to help or to hurt. We all can be forces of good or evil. And heroism is really the act of making that choice.