The tangled web of super-heroes
The Marvel Universe has social webs similar to our own, says Philip Ball. In other words, they're sexist and elitist.
In which society do powerful males form a dominant, elitist network while females are relegated to peripheral roles?
Comments
Scientifically the male has to take risks to protect the group. Females have the most important role taking care and feeding the siblings. They are also very fragile and physically unready during pregnancy, this happened for most part of the female adult life in the pase. It makes, therefore, perfect sense to have male super-heroes. In critical times, when the courage of one can make a difference for the group, to loose a man affects the group less than loosing a woman.
For the same reason, men can become delinquents more easily. Unfortunately for our genre, we are easily replaceable and, therefore, if some of us are caught in delinquency and killed or separated from the group the "pack" is preserved.
The story comparing two islands, each one with 100 persons. The first one having 99 women and one man and the second, 99 men and one woman. In the joke, it is said that, after one year, the first island can have over 150 people. The second will probably have less than the initial 100 because, due to the male aggressiveness, they might end up killing one another disputing the lonely female.
It is easy to understand that women and children have to be preserved by all means. What is a philosophical challenge is to consider the male as the most important figure and that women only have secondary importance.
This is a true reality of all times and the new information age cannot alter it. Heroes will always be needed, especially in difficult times, and they better be men.
Posted by: Petr Jan Svacina | August 24, 2007 10:42 PM
RE: The tangled web of super-heroes
I think that one must remember that these comics are commercial in nature, and then ask one's self for whom these comics are written.
The answer, is of course, 11 year-old boys.
Viewed this perspective, the analysis tells us less about culture than about the dreams of 11 year-old boys.
Do they want powerful women? No, they want women to like them. Women who do not need their help have no reason to like them.
Do young boys want to be special? (Hint: Fireman, cowboy, Jet Fighter pilot, Rock Star). It's not much of a step to dreaming about being a super hero.
Posted by: Lokki | August 27, 2007 05:09 PM
In the Marvel Universe there is no Captain America to ensure that good shall triumph over evil either - he was killed at the end of the recent Civil War series (unless he has been resurrected from the dead, another difference between our Universes)
Posted by: Pascal | August 28, 2007 04:17 PM
This is an extended joke, right?
If not, I don't know when I last encountered so many misconceptions in so small a space.
The Marvel Universe as we now know it did not exist before the 1960's. Far from being unplanned and unguided, it was from the outset under the control of Stan Lee (God), who has often been quoted as intending that the Earth of the MU should emulate the "real world," and that it would be populated with characters whose superpowers were often intrusions on their everyday lives.
The notion that villains are always thwarted, if only briefly, as a consequence of the strictures of the Comics Code Authority is fanciful and ahistorical. The CAC was taking aim at the crime and horror comics of the early fifties, in which evil routinely triumphed, often spectaularly. This was never an issue in the superhero comics, which by then had almost disappeared. As for the super villains not forming teams, a casual look at the superhero team comics will show that in fact they do so all the time. If the super villain teams fail to cohere and prosper, it's because the members are self-absorbed and nihilistic -- that's what makes them villains -- and thus can't be expected to play well with others; the Comics Code Authority does not have, and has never had, anything to do with it.
It's undoubtedly true that superheroes whose books sell show up in other books, usually to enhance the sales of those books, but sometimes, one suspects, just because the mix generates interesting stories. Such crossovers date at least to the forties, when Al Capp introduced the Dick Tracy clone Fearless Fosdick in the L'iL Abner strip. In the Marvel Universe, ultimately governed by economic realities as implacable as the laws of thermodynamics, it would be surprising if the most popular characters did not guest star in other MU books. The implicit idea that these associations are somehow under the control of the characters, rather than writers and editors, is beyond surreal.
The commentator who thinks the MU is for 11-year-old boys plainly hasn't spent any time in a comics store, and if he/she has actually read any of the comics under discussion must know some unusual 11-year-olds.
Posted by: John Niemeyer | August 29, 2007 06:22 AM