When comic-book superheroes were new to their tights, they could be counted on to act as avenging angels.
These public servants beat up criminals only as a last resort and always worked toward a greater good. Keeping Gotham City and other burgs safe for law-abiding citizens, they were all about justice. Theirs was a bright and shiny heroism.
Some were born super (extraterrestrial Kal-El, a.k.a. Clark Kent), some became superhuman as a result of tragic loss (Bruce “Batman” Wayne witnessed his parents’ murders). Some had supergreatness thrust upon them (young Spider-Man was an accidental hero). All were in some way called upon to devote their lives to protect and defend. (Many of them are celebrated in a three-part series premiering at 8 p.m. Thursday on Bravo.)
Even when they turned darker, as Batman did on film in the ’90s, they remained altruistic crime fighters.
Not so today’s heroes. Born of graphic novels, these guys could not care less about civility, service or justice. They delight in torture, immersed in fits of what cultural scholars call “hyper-masculinity.” These bone-crunching heroes make Spawn’s old moral relativism look like kids’ stuff. The sexism is explicit.
The cartoon hero of the moment is darker than Hellboy’s worst nightmare, more brutal than a battalion of X-Men.
“Sin City,” based on Frank Miller’s graphic novels, is a medley of dismemberments, beheadings and eviscerations at the hands of perverse heroes. Where Batman was not allowed to kill and never fired a gun, these avengers revel in brutality.
As the pockmarked brute Marv (Mickey Rourke) says in “Sin City,” he doesn’t like killing, he enjoys inflicting the pain that comes first. He’s a hulking cartoon come to life, overmuscled and shimmering in liquid black and silver.
“There’s a kind of vindictive violence injected into the narrative,” says Ann Hetzel Gunkel, professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies at Columbia College in Chicago. “The apocalyptic tone tells us something about where we’re at as a culture.”
Violence without consequence
There are no real consequences to the violence in the gothic novel-style films. The eye-popping depictions of killing and maiming – artfully achieved onscreen – are there for voyeuristic enjoyment rather than any sort of statement about violence or heroism.
No surprise, says one pop-culture professor. The same reflex that altered the old Westerns and gangster flicks is at work on comic-book heroes, according to Syracuse University’s Robert Thompson.
“The Western used to be the great American epic, the celebration of the hero as the noble bringer of civilization to the new world,” he says. “Today, look at HBO’s ‘Deadwood.”‘
That cable hit, steeped in moral ambiguity, seems light-years removed from the certainties limned by John Wayne and Gary Cooper.
Pop culture responded similarly after politicians were disgraced by Vietnam and Watergate. In 1969, the hit novel “The Godfather” championed not the moral authority of establishment leaders – politics and the church were viewed as just another racket – but the nobility of a family of gangsters. “The Sopranos” follows suit; the killer is lovable even in his loathsomeness. Again, authority is taken down a peg.
“Once all the ambiguity poured in,” Thompson says, “it was tough for comic superheroes to survive without having ambiguity of their own.” The unalloyed goodness of Superman seemed passé in an era of moral relativism.
Virtue as compromise
The optimistic spin on this trend says it is a sign of the audience’s maturity: Pop culture has taken a step toward the realization that life is not black-and-white, that virtue can be a compromise.
Conveniently for cultural historians, the switch occurred at about the time black-and-white TV sets converted to color. It made for a dandy metaphor for the audience becoming more sophisticated, no longer accepting “black-and-white” characters. The audience applauded a new kind of conflicted or psychologically burdened hero, one colored by a Crayola box of nuances.
The less generous spin says audiences simply like the cathartic release of violence in entertainment. Gunkel, for one, rejects the notion that audiences are more willing to accept gray areas: “If that were true, a variety of heroic types would be portrayed, including those showing sensitivity and compassion, not just the hyper-violent, hyper-masculine type.”
Increasingly pop culture defines heroism in terms of violence and domination.
Where does that leave us? Is the audience so sophisticated that good and evil no longer hold meaning?
Defenders of the traditional comic book heroes say Superman has never been more relevant.
“I don’t think 9/11 has put the clock back to 1950,” says producer Kevin Burns, “but we are now more aware of notions of evil, that there are such things as heroes.”
Burns, a comic-book creator and former film studies teacher, produced this week’s tribute to superheroes airing on Bravo.
“Ultimate Super Heroes,” “Ultimate Super Villains” and “Ultimate Super Vixens” helps put the new blood-soaked heroes in perspective. The series is a clip celebration with commentary by comic creators, filmmakers and actors. Timed to coincide with the final “Star Wars” release, and with a nod to Luke Skywalker, the series skirts the more troubling issues to worship favorite icons.
“Theirs is the eternal battle of good versus evil,” Adam West intones as narrator, campy humor intact.
Bravo’s series ignores the pulp-fiction killing machines of the moment. Burns thinks the old superheroes bear new scrutiny. In the post-9/11 world, he said, Americans are more open to the notion of Superman, which he casts as “a story of death and resurrection.”
Psycho-killer “heroism”
Meanwhile, in “Sin City,” when Marv wakes up next to a dead hooker, he goes on a killing spree to avenge her death. The level of mayhem is appalling and the storytelling haphazard, although the visuals are clever and the translation of graphic novel to screen is masterful.
Despite the film’s technical accomplishment, the psycho-killer “heroism” on display is disturbing.
“The idea that you could put torture in the hands of your protagonist in a movie or TV series is something 9/11 has made more palatable to people, especially if your enemies are terrorists,” Thompson s 1/4ays.
Television’s “24” and “Alias” reflect this shift, with Keifer Sutherland and Jennifer Garner, respectively, playing protagonists who kill without guilt. Their popularity suggests the American public has an appetite for an increased tone of militarism in the wake of 9/11.
Throughout television and film, video games and graphic novels, our entertainment tends to show more extreme behavior.
Yet Gunkel believes “Sin City” goes even further. While the film has aspects in common with “neo-noir” works like Ridley Scott’s classic “Blade Runner,” depicting a hero who is not unblemished, it is more troubling.
“Now masculinity means engagement in extreme violence and a willingness to degrade others,” she says. “Our definition of masculinity has become more and more extreme, linked to imposing, if not grotesque, body image.
“I find this profoundly disturbing.”
Other observers warn against making too much of graphic novels’ darkness.
Gary Edgerton, co-editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television and a professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., downplays the importance of the torturing hero. “Sacred and profane tendencies in pop culture have been around since the postwar era,” he says.
To him, “Sin City” is simply “‘Naked City’ (Jules Dassin’s 1948 noir classic) with arty pretensions.”
Burns, who profiles 60 characters in Bravo’s three shows, likewise dismisses “Sin City” as a cult phenomenon, noting that the anti-hero has been in our culture since “Bonnie and Clyde.” For him, Superman and Batman remain the true “Rorschach tests of our society.”
Superman and Batman each have a new movie coming out in the next year. They battled thugs in the ’30s, crime syndicates in the ’40s, communism in the ’50s, corrupt politicians and inner demons in the intervening decades. They may be ready to fight capital-E evil post-9/11.
Still, dark graphic novels are gaining ground. Look in any bookstore – whole sections are devoted to the once underground fare.
“It’s not simply a matter of presenting violence but presenting it as decontextualized, so the violence becomes a form of enjoyment,” Gunkel said.
The images are fascinating, whatever their meaning, and maybe that’s the problem.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
