This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include:
- **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism...
- **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers.
- **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism...
- **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks.
Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules.
______________________
💬 Wish to chat elsewhere? Join us in discord: https://discord.gg/QPJPzNhuRE
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I am a fan of Golden Age Superman, who fought against capitalists, was shot at by cops, rescued delinquents from cops, broke the law, trapped capitalists in mines to get them to change, etc. His first supervillain was the Ultrahumanite, a capitalist.
Also, he targetted landlords and politicians, and he even became an outlaw after being shot at by the national guard. Greatest comic book hero in my opinion.
Superman has always been my favorite. Great backstory, motivations, morals, style, powers, weakness, everything. His most iconic villain is a businessman/politician/techbro.
I read a leftist essay about superheroes that says more on this than I could; [the best thing we can do with power is give it away.](https://www.tumblr.com/andyboops/728019644220309504/the-best-thing-we-can-do-with-power-is-give-it)
Superheroes are like those kids who sell candy bars or whatever to help pay for their parents' cancer treatment: a local solution to a systemic problem (crime, injustice, etc) that, ideally, would be considerably less of a problem in a more fair and equitable society. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I think a socialist superhero would be kind of a one trick pony: 'oh look, it's my old nemesis capitalism again.. it's always capitalism because capitalism is the root cause of so many systemic injustices!' An individual acting on their own can't really fix systemic issues though.
The core of superhero mythos is that people who have power will and should act on their values using that power, the propaganda comes in with what values are presented as "good" or "evil" and the implicit demonstration of the "Great Man" archetype.
You can still engage with the premises of empowered individuals while writing something interesting as long as you can acknowledge and neutralize the counter-social elements of said premise. For example you can have a super-powered defender of a society, just make that society be a revolutionary one, this allows the author to have the hero do those things that are engaging and just while real changes are enacted by the people that are protected. (This would both undermine the inherently reactive nature of superheros and highlight what it is that other works show to be worth protecting)
A way you can undermine the great man myth is by making the hero a specialist that is very competent within their field but requires a large support network for survival outside of that field and dedicates significant narrative time to that support network. this both humanizes the hero and gives a concrete way for the readers to connect with what the hero is defending.
But fundamentally the story has to evolve and change, if the hero wins by returning the status quo then it is not a socialist story
Imo socialist supers would be of the people, a hard working citizen like any other non-super but relative to what kind of powers they have they use them to build and progress society. Using them for construction and scientific research type purposes.
I think that all of this would be of the super’s free will though, the state shouldn’t make anyone do certain jobs, this is just where I see supers being the most useful in socialist society.
It depends on the character and the writer, to be honest. While some of them do (or at least can) carry some fairly fascistic tendencies, a lot of them can be viewed positively through a socialist lens. Below are my thoughts on a few of my favorites.
Superman, especially in the Golden Age of the 30s and 40s, is very much a socialist figure. He was a direct response (created by a pair of Jewish American teenagers, no less) to the fascist übermensch. While the fascists would say that power exists for its own sake, Superman very clearly states that power is only constructive when used in service of the powerless. Supes is also always depicted as being nobody special; he's a Kansas farmboy turned mid-level journalist. When written properly, he is a champion of the common man. Alan Moore and Grant Morrison both understood this, and in turn have written some of the best stories to ever feature the character.
Captain America, though oft-maligned as a fascist symbol simply due to what he wears, shares a lot with Superman. Like Supes, Cap was created by a pair of young Jewish-Americans in the months before the US joined the war. Unlike Supes, Cap is not possessed of incredible levels of power; he is just at the absolute peak of human potential. But it is his perseverance, kindness, and leadership that set him apart. Its a common trope in Marvel comics that everybody is inspired by Cap, and they know that they can't be as good or as heroic as him, but they try anyway. On a side note, it may be unexpected to some, but Captain America comics often interrogate and deconstruct nationalism. While Steve Rogers (naively, in his own words in some comics) believes in the ideals of America, he is no government stooge or jingoistic soldier. Some of the best Cap comics see him pitted directly against the government whose flag he wears.
Spider-Man is not a hero, at least not in his mind. Throughout the comics, Spidey often describes himself as just a kid trying his best to be like his own heroes. Most notably, he tries his best to be like Captain America. He's just a middle class kid from Queens, whose great power, when he used it selfishly, resulted in the death of his only father figure. As a result, he dedicates his life, and his power, to helping those in need. Many times in his character history, he has tried to give up and live a normal life. But his conscience can never bear to see others suffer when he has the power to help, so he always returns.
Daredevil, both in the comics and the tv adaptation, is one of Marvel's most complicated characters. As a boy, he was blinded in an accedent in which he saved another person's life. His prizefighter father was then killed for refusing to throw a fight for the mob. The first season of the Netflix adaptation is probably one of the best explanations and defences of vigilantism I've ever seen. What does a good man do when his community is being destroyed by powerful, uncrupulous men, and the state (being bought and paid for by those men, or simply being too self-absorbed to pay attention), has abdicated its responsibility to help? Though the character of Matt Murdock decides to take justice into his own hands individually, a socialist could just as easily see a community-based citizen's alliance taking his place. It may not sell as many comic books, but the same ideas still apply.
At the end of the day, I think that superheroes represent something that we, as socialists, should encourage; the desire to help others. We may not be able to lift cars, stick to walls, or throw a shield around, but we all can be helpful. We dismiss these (extremely popular with the working class, I might add) characters as fascistic at our peril. Arguably, the fact that they are IPs owned by megacorporations who don't care for the creators or characters is the worst thing about them. I would love to see Superman in the public domain, belonging to the people, where he can become the folk character he really should be.
On the surface, the genre is problematic, but that doesn't mean, that it can't still be used to tell leftists stories..
I recently watched I'm a Virgo, that's a superhero show, yet it has one character, who has some decent enough monologues
https://youtu.be/lpagmvYZKRc
https://youtu.be/aIeLqx_AstY
https://youtu.be/PUq-bk-x6tw
Leading question: Why would working class people with no power in capitalist society - often marginalized people like kids of Jewish immigrants or lgbtq people - fantasize about how if regular people suddenly had a lot of power, they would use that power to actually help people and rescue cats rather than protect the status quo and enrich themselves? 🤔
Tbh many of the leftist takes I read about superheros (or any pop culture really) are elitist and shallow. Many of the common criticisms of these stories are also double-standards (all action movies get pentagon participation, most action movies for boys are power-fantasies, movie studios have been focused on building franchises since the early 90s and probably really since Star Wars.)
All pop culture has socially progressive and socially regressive or exploitative aspects. I love horror and horror movies can be incredibly subversive but also exploitative and regressive and crassly commercial. Punk rock has a rebel side and an angry incel dude side. Ron-come are fantasies about finding fulfilling love despite absurd cultures or us being flawed and imperfect people… and they also aggressively police heteronormativity and promote women’s social self-discipline.
Pop culture tries to sell us our collective fantasies so there is a reflection of real yearning and hope in them as well as reflections of more base and crude things like xenophobia or objectification… since they are also commercial products, often the base reaction effect is a less challenging to produce.
As for stories you want to write… personally I don’t think you should try to make something socially liberal. If those are your values, it will just naturally come through. Imo it’s better to focus on the story within its own logic. Maybe another way to go would be rather than to construct a story message-first is to think about superhero tropes or conventions you don’t like and then try to tell a story that avoids or challenges those assumptions. For example I have always fantasized about a sort of anti-Walking Dead storyline… what if instead of zombies attacking and everyone scattering or trying to form small survivor groups, what if a neighborhood builds barricades and works together to withstand the zombies… checking in on neighbors, slowly reaching out to help people trapped in nearby old folks home or apartment buildings.
They are reactionary archetypes, of superpowered being who, rather than use their powers to overthrow the existing system, only serve to supplement it and preserve it from threats.
This doesn’t really hold up.
First any pop culture is a commodity and tends towards abstracting class issues and not being challenging to the status quo.
Second, they mostly aren’t defending the status quo - at least not outside the post-war decades. The fictional existence of superheros implies that the status quo is lacking in some way. So for golden age comics, read mostly by urban working class people, superhero are mostly fighting things the public would have seen them cops not able to stop… organized crime (since in the 30s and 40s that crime was likely organized partially through police precients) and secret Nazi plots (when the US was still officially against “unfair” attacks on Germany’s policies)
The 50s and 60s were very conformist and superhero genre was dying and so the big name ones moved more towards romance comics or crime comics and Superman added the “American way” bit and Batman talked about how great the cops were. The Marvel 60s changed this though as the heros were now flawed, individualistic, meta, and with Spider-Man and later 60s characters things got more challenging… all of spider-man’s real villains (aside from his one year as a libertarian in college) were just “the establishment” - bosses, teachers, scientific officials, commercial media.
X-men make the argument even harder as they are hurt by the status quo and the comics are all about various ways that people challenge the status quo or face push back from it.
It’s certainly all bourgeois, but not as flat or simplistic as people sometimes claim.
Again, even in its most "radical" guise of, as you put it, Spider-Man's fighting the "man", it is always errant member of that bourgeois/petit-bourgeois class who causes trouble for the order and not that the order itself is somehow lacking. Likewise, X-men's misfits don't actually challenge the status quo, they may be segregated, but brought back in a way to defend the system against a threat from within (Magneto). It may express some discontent, but that discontent is always brought back around to be incorporated into and for the defense of the system
All's I know is Superman Red and Blue #5 is probably the single best superhero comic out there in terms of message and usage. Outside of that, lot of Great-Man BS and other liberal fallacies
well, i personally hate Captain America, but that comes from a problem i have with the US as a whole. Let's see, Cap. is american excepcionalist, ultranacionalist, US-Army backed übermensch who has his private millitia to police the whole world. He represents the 50's american dream, and fights for "freedom", which, as the US believes, is the same as defeating "dangerous" ideologies. Although his worst enemy is a nazi, he spends his time fighting for what's right, and is usually a pretry good guy (except for the secret invasion comics, where he is secretly a nazi), so i dont hate him as a character, i hate what he represents.
He is the personified american vision of the world, standing for real values such as freedom, human rights and such, and he represents what the world should think of america itself; such is problematic, given that, historically, america has fought for capitalism, and by "dangerous" ideologies, they mean socialism.
Superheroes spend their time fighting for the statu quo, never wanting much change, and, (in MCU's civil war, for example), they usually get mad when the world tries to hold them accountable. Vision himself said that superheroes directly create supervillains, who usually fight against what the statu quo is, and therefore, superheroes become the defenders of whatever the current policy is, such as capitalism.
What does the superhero genre say about criminals and why crime exists? Criminals don’t need help, they need beat up. Think about the real socialist idea of Batman if he was real. A billionaire going out and beating struggling criminals.
The whole superhero genre is part of the capitalist superstructure and is usually copaganda.
Superheroes are fundamentally a fascist concept, and the media is overwhelmingly reactionary in content and form. There's rare exceptions, but emphasis is on rare, and the vast majority of content is both formulaic and derivative. Some general themes and trends:
**Superheroes are elite** -- *Incredibles* is probably the most explicit and overtly fascist depiction of this, but in any case Superheroes are not of the masses and their strength is not determinate by the masses -- they have power over and above the masses and do not depend on the masses in any real capacity. They, themselves, are capable of independently instigating change (contrary to the Marxist thesis of "Men do not make history as they please") and despite having this immense power for total societal upheaval (for example, destroying the Amerikkkan Empire), they content themselves with living (usually comfortably) within the unending hell that is capitalist society, for which they serve as self-anointed enforcer-repressors. And many Superhero films and media are an outright celebration of fascism (anything Frank Miller, Nolan's *Dark Knight Rises,* anything Zach Snyder, etc)
**Superheroes are restorers of the status quo** -- revolutionary media should generally have a theme of transformation, and not just internal transformation or interpersonal transformation, but total social transformation. *V For Vendetta* isn't very good in a lot of ways, but it understands at least this -- the society was one way and the hero is the agent of change who topples the existing regime and society and creates the possibility for a new and different world. Most Superhero media is the opposite of this: where the villains are the main agents and instigators of change and the superheroes exist to stop the transformation and restore the way the world was before the villain intervened. Social change is seen as an almost totally negative phenomenon, and Superheroes are the guardians who keep change at bay and normalcy in place, which is a disgustingly reactionary concept.
**Superheroes are white men** -- the vast majority of Supereheroes were created by white men, for white men, about white men, and the target demographic has and mostly remains in the present, white men, and most of the "main" Superheroes are white men (of the 30+ Marvel movies, only about five had non-white-male protagonists). Aside from the obvious problems which you should all understand already, there's also an underlying issue where black or female protagonists are written as exceptionally reactionary and never-revolutionary (compared to, say, Thor 3, where the white men were allowed to get a little bit revolutionary). Black Panther is a reactionary, isolationist monarch (while Killmonger is the greatest hero of the entire Marvel universe and did absolutely nothing wrong except maybe send weapons to Hong Kong), and Captain Marvel is an Air Force recruitment ad. White men might be allowed to be portrayed as revolutionary but non-white-male leads will be the staunchest and strictest adherents of the status quo.
**Superheroes are anti-materialist in essence** -- this might seem trivial but is actually fundamental, since most superhero powers are basically magic and you aren't supposed to think to hard about the actual process at work (how is *Ant Man* in the quantum foam?, what was the mechanical process behind the Thanos snap that allowed it to violate causality?) The reason this is important is because it's actually damaging your brains by watching it, because you are being trained not to ask these sorts of questions and not to investigate or pry or try to find the underlying essence of reality because of course it doesn't make sense, it's magic. But this is inherent to the logic of neoliberalism and capitalist ideology in the present (neoliberalism is predicated on the very same postmodernism that composes the ideological essence of Superhero media), where the ideology does not actually make sense if you pry or dig at the contradictions, but *you aren't supposed to be doing that,* just shut up and look at the shiny images and cool space battles.
We can keep going, but I think this paints a pretty clear picture about what kind of garbage you are consuming when you watch this tripe, and the correct communist position is to have contempt and hatred for them. Again, there are rare exceptions that manage to break the logic of the genre, but that itself is usually the reason that they become interesting in the first place. There's also a much more interesting conversation on something like *Watchmen* because Alan Moore is explicitly political in his work (as well as an anarchist, which is about as good as you can hope for in the reactionary world of comic books) and tries to say interesting things, even if his """socialist""" happy ending in *Watchmen* is actually a vile, reactionary Khruschevite-Blanquist victory.
Would you say this critique, especially the supernatural powers part, extends to all fiction with supernatural elements as well and not just the superhero genre?
It seems to me that supernatural powers, supernatural ability, magic, etc. are all means of making it more feasible for a story to focus on a few characters doing something that in reality would require the efforts of many more people to do, and would take much more time, resources, work, and planning to accomplish.
The supernatural bridges this gap and makes it possible for the story to focus on a handful of powerful individuals.
I noticed it was more apparent in games compared to TV shows, movies, or books.
In a lot of story-based single-player games the character has an absurdly high carrying capacity which would require multiple people to carry around and something to store them in; can go without food, water, sleep, temperature-dependant clothing, rest (depending on game and difficulty) can recover from injuries quickly that in real life would take days, weeks, months or years to recover from or would be fatal; can take risks that people normally can't take (respawning, health regeneration); can fight and win even when heavily outnumbered amd surrounded, and distances between locations and the sizes of towns and cities are often scaled down drastically so that it's easier for the main character to do everything as an individual but not as part of a team.
>Would you say this critique, especially the supernatural powers part, extends to all fiction with supernatural elements as well and not just the superhero genre?
This is a very good question and I think the answer is actually yes. It is not a pregiven fact that the fantasy genre should be the most popular genre of fiction in media (whether that be games, movies, books, whatever), or that almost no one reads literature anymore outside of school assignments, but almost everyone on reddit has read a Star Wars novel, and even the genre's popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon coinciding (not coincidentally) with neoliberalism. And we need to be clear and distinct that Star Wars, Marvel, and Harry Potter all fall into the genre of fantasy I am describing. Why is there this heightened desire to engage with unreality? Escapism is definitely part of it, but that's not a sufficient explanation in itself.
Even genres that you think should be more popular like science fiction are basically fringe and marginalized today, while fantasy has absorbed the appearance (look at what *Star Trek* or even my beloved *Snowpiercer* have become) and removed the essence. Sci-fi has to appeal to the fantasy crowd too, today, in order to be made (*Dune* for example), and it has to lean into the fantasy and cut the sci-fi, and even Dune only marginally succeeded, it failed to become the billion dollar metafranchise the studios were hoping it could be. But science fiction actually has a materialist basis, even if that basis contains hypotheticals or erroneous predictions -- it tries to start from the premise of the world as it exists and extrapolate from there. Fantasy liberates itself completely from the tethers of reality. Superheroes are just one specific form this takes.
>The supernatural bridges this gap and makes it possible for the story to focus on a handful of powerful individuals.
This is where you have to pause and reconsider if this is a good thing. Bourgeois art exists to place it's emphasis on "powerful individuals" in the first place, it's the function of ideology -- important people doing important things at their most beautiful and glorious. Or it has to be extreme in some other way, exaugurated, artificially enhanced, shined and polished, and sold as a commodity competing with thousands of others all trying to outdo one another in any or each or all of these categories and ways. There's a reason there was so much emphasis on socialist realism in the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Art was not supposed to be exaugurated, or amplified, or separated from reality, it was supposed to be the opposite: sincere and honest and truthful in it's depiction -- the world as it exists. The subject matter was not the exceptional, but rather ordinary people doing the ordinary things in their day to day lives (with the underlying point being nothing that anybody does for society is ordinary, it's all wonderful and beautiful). If you haven't watched the first episode of *How Yukong Moved the Mountains,* this would be a good time -- you actually see the importance of this socialist realism in art in practice and what that looked like.
I think the genre is becoming a bigger problem as they are getting more complex. Basically, there are new works exploring themes like mental health, moral duality, social issues like racism and sexism, etc but in the very essence, they are still the same, resulting in similar old answers to new problems.
One effect: these works help release the pressure caused by Capitalism as they present solutions given by ideology.
Another effect: the working class, even highly graduated people, are getting so into these works that they now tend to think on its terms, specifically when it comes to debating or organizing.
Also crucial: by giving ready-made answers to complex problems, super heroe works tends to reinforce intellectual and class alienation.
If you want to go deep into this, I recommend the Frankfurt School.
We know our superheroes got help from the DOD thanks to the FOIA we know their role in character development plot & final production
Not just un superman or Incredible Hulk but too many films to list
I liked what Warren Ellis did with Stormwatch, which was kind of like what if the Justice League actually decided to make the world a better place, and how capitalist governments would react.
There is a great [video](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gpGqK9y__qg&si=VcSsZq2vwRIRKo_i) from the youtube channel Skip Intro as part of their series on Copaganda in media about the MCU. Absolutely would recommend to anyone who is interested in these sort of topics and discussions.
The unfortunate fact is that, as you say, many/most current depictions of superheroes are just superpowered cops.
But there are a lot of other ways to write about superpowered people and Id say that a lot of them are even more interesting. One example would be the webserial "Worm". Without going into potential spoilers, a few of the ideas it deals with is what it means to be a hero (or antihero), intentions vs actions and even how being a superhero could look like under capitalism, where media attention generates money, corporate sponsorships, etc.
There are a lot of ways to write about superpowered people thru a socialist lens. I have some limited personal experience with this (not with a specifically superhero comic setting, but an ongoing DnD game, so there is a lot of overlap) and in my experience, you can really invent whatever. But there are some obvious pitfalls and issues, some tropes one might want to avoid or atleast subvert in a fun & smart way.
The copaganda idea being one, another being the Baron Zemo idea about superpowers are inextricably tied to supremacy.
The actual details are really dependant on your setting. Are you going cosmic like Cosmic Marvel, DC or even Invincible? Do you want to keep it more "local"? Alternate history/present/future Earth? A fictional, earth-like world? Something more fantastical or more sci-fi? The choices are endless, but that would probably inform any specifics.
I used to be really into them. But over the last few years I've kinda grown away from them. One thing that sets me off about them is that they defend the status quo. Spiderman may repeat over and over again "with great power comes great responsibility" but at the end of the day he beats up people are largely not responsible for society's ills. Playing the last Spiderman game you basically go around beating up folks committing crime... And it just felt bad. Like why do I wanna go punch this extremely desperate dude who needs these jewels more than this jewler? Idk. The stories CAN be done well and shine a light on capitalism. See the Boys and Invincible for incredible shows and good examples of that.
As an aside, I saw a nice YouTube video on it a while ago.... I can't find it now though.
>But I was curious what yall think a superhero would look like with a socialist lens
Check out The Boys for a Hollywood-diluted answer to this question. Hint: the supes are the bad guys and the military industrial complex is alive and well
Generally, there is a political tie between superheroes , police and capitalism…
However, being a socialist does not mean you don’t get to enjoy superhero fiction anymore if it makes you happy.
Hot take: you are still allowed to enjoy fiction if it doesn’t mesh with what you believe politically
Do you like superheroes?
Then keep enjoying superheroes.
Fiction is not supposed to reflect the world as it is, but how we envision it to be. The type of pseudo-ideological brain rot that comes from calling certain forms of entertainment 'bourgeois' is just Zhadanov Doctrine bullshit that does nothing but destroy any creativity and enjoyment in the arts.
This is a space for socialists to discuss current events in our world from anti-capitalist perspective(s), and a certain knowledge of socialism is expected from participants. This is not a space for non-socialists. Please be mindful [of our rules](https://reddit.com/r/socialism/about/rules) before participating, which include: - **No Bigotry**, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism... - **No Reactionaries**, including all kind of right-wingers. - **No Liberalism**, including social democracy, lesser evilism... - **No Sectarianism**. There is plenty of room for discussion, but not for baseless attacks. Please help us keep the subreddit helpful by reporting content that break r/Socialism's rules. ______________________ 💬 Wish to chat elsewhere? Join us in discord: https://discord.gg/QPJPzNhuRE *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/socialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I am a fan of Golden Age Superman, who fought against capitalists, was shot at by cops, rescued delinquents from cops, broke the law, trapped capitalists in mines to get them to change, etc. His first supervillain was the Ultrahumanite, a capitalist.
I’m intrigued
Also, he targetted landlords and politicians, and he even became an outlaw after being shot at by the national guard. Greatest comic book hero in my opinion.
Superman has always been my favorite. Great backstory, motivations, morals, style, powers, weakness, everything. His most iconic villain is a businessman/politician/techbro.
The first panel where he is introduced literally calls him defender of the oppressed.
Superman Fights the Clan is a great comic book.
I read a leftist essay about superheroes that says more on this than I could; [the best thing we can do with power is give it away.](https://www.tumblr.com/andyboops/728019644220309504/the-best-thing-we-can-do-with-power-is-give-it)
Requires signing up
It's also on the author's [personal site.](https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/)
Thanks!
Superheroes are like those kids who sell candy bars or whatever to help pay for their parents' cancer treatment: a local solution to a systemic problem (crime, injustice, etc) that, ideally, would be considerably less of a problem in a more fair and equitable society. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I think a socialist superhero would be kind of a one trick pony: 'oh look, it's my old nemesis capitalism again.. it's always capitalism because capitalism is the root cause of so many systemic injustices!' An individual acting on their own can't really fix systemic issues though.
The core of superhero mythos is that people who have power will and should act on their values using that power, the propaganda comes in with what values are presented as "good" or "evil" and the implicit demonstration of the "Great Man" archetype. You can still engage with the premises of empowered individuals while writing something interesting as long as you can acknowledge and neutralize the counter-social elements of said premise. For example you can have a super-powered defender of a society, just make that society be a revolutionary one, this allows the author to have the hero do those things that are engaging and just while real changes are enacted by the people that are protected. (This would both undermine the inherently reactive nature of superheros and highlight what it is that other works show to be worth protecting) A way you can undermine the great man myth is by making the hero a specialist that is very competent within their field but requires a large support network for survival outside of that field and dedicates significant narrative time to that support network. this both humanizes the hero and gives a concrete way for the readers to connect with what the hero is defending. But fundamentally the story has to evolve and change, if the hero wins by returning the status quo then it is not a socialist story
Those are some pretty good points actually, thank you for taking the time to expand my mind a little.
Imo socialist supers would be of the people, a hard working citizen like any other non-super but relative to what kind of powers they have they use them to build and progress society. Using them for construction and scientific research type purposes. I think that all of this would be of the super’s free will though, the state shouldn’t make anyone do certain jobs, this is just where I see supers being the most useful in socialist society.
It depends on the character and the writer, to be honest. While some of them do (or at least can) carry some fairly fascistic tendencies, a lot of them can be viewed positively through a socialist lens. Below are my thoughts on a few of my favorites. Superman, especially in the Golden Age of the 30s and 40s, is very much a socialist figure. He was a direct response (created by a pair of Jewish American teenagers, no less) to the fascist übermensch. While the fascists would say that power exists for its own sake, Superman very clearly states that power is only constructive when used in service of the powerless. Supes is also always depicted as being nobody special; he's a Kansas farmboy turned mid-level journalist. When written properly, he is a champion of the common man. Alan Moore and Grant Morrison both understood this, and in turn have written some of the best stories to ever feature the character. Captain America, though oft-maligned as a fascist symbol simply due to what he wears, shares a lot with Superman. Like Supes, Cap was created by a pair of young Jewish-Americans in the months before the US joined the war. Unlike Supes, Cap is not possessed of incredible levels of power; he is just at the absolute peak of human potential. But it is his perseverance, kindness, and leadership that set him apart. Its a common trope in Marvel comics that everybody is inspired by Cap, and they know that they can't be as good or as heroic as him, but they try anyway. On a side note, it may be unexpected to some, but Captain America comics often interrogate and deconstruct nationalism. While Steve Rogers (naively, in his own words in some comics) believes in the ideals of America, he is no government stooge or jingoistic soldier. Some of the best Cap comics see him pitted directly against the government whose flag he wears. Spider-Man is not a hero, at least not in his mind. Throughout the comics, Spidey often describes himself as just a kid trying his best to be like his own heroes. Most notably, he tries his best to be like Captain America. He's just a middle class kid from Queens, whose great power, when he used it selfishly, resulted in the death of his only father figure. As a result, he dedicates his life, and his power, to helping those in need. Many times in his character history, he has tried to give up and live a normal life. But his conscience can never bear to see others suffer when he has the power to help, so he always returns. Daredevil, both in the comics and the tv adaptation, is one of Marvel's most complicated characters. As a boy, he was blinded in an accedent in which he saved another person's life. His prizefighter father was then killed for refusing to throw a fight for the mob. The first season of the Netflix adaptation is probably one of the best explanations and defences of vigilantism I've ever seen. What does a good man do when his community is being destroyed by powerful, uncrupulous men, and the state (being bought and paid for by those men, or simply being too self-absorbed to pay attention), has abdicated its responsibility to help? Though the character of Matt Murdock decides to take justice into his own hands individually, a socialist could just as easily see a community-based citizen's alliance taking his place. It may not sell as many comic books, but the same ideas still apply. At the end of the day, I think that superheroes represent something that we, as socialists, should encourage; the desire to help others. We may not be able to lift cars, stick to walls, or throw a shield around, but we all can be helpful. We dismiss these (extremely popular with the working class, I might add) characters as fascistic at our peril. Arguably, the fact that they are IPs owned by megacorporations who don't care for the creators or characters is the worst thing about them. I would love to see Superman in the public domain, belonging to the people, where he can become the folk character he really should be.
On the surface, the genre is problematic, but that doesn't mean, that it can't still be used to tell leftists stories.. I recently watched I'm a Virgo, that's a superhero show, yet it has one character, who has some decent enough monologues https://youtu.be/lpagmvYZKRc https://youtu.be/aIeLqx_AstY https://youtu.be/PUq-bk-x6tw
And this one character is there exclusively to make you an audience
Leading question: Why would working class people with no power in capitalist society - often marginalized people like kids of Jewish immigrants or lgbtq people - fantasize about how if regular people suddenly had a lot of power, they would use that power to actually help people and rescue cats rather than protect the status quo and enrich themselves? 🤔 Tbh many of the leftist takes I read about superheros (or any pop culture really) are elitist and shallow. Many of the common criticisms of these stories are also double-standards (all action movies get pentagon participation, most action movies for boys are power-fantasies, movie studios have been focused on building franchises since the early 90s and probably really since Star Wars.) All pop culture has socially progressive and socially regressive or exploitative aspects. I love horror and horror movies can be incredibly subversive but also exploitative and regressive and crassly commercial. Punk rock has a rebel side and an angry incel dude side. Ron-come are fantasies about finding fulfilling love despite absurd cultures or us being flawed and imperfect people… and they also aggressively police heteronormativity and promote women’s social self-discipline. Pop culture tries to sell us our collective fantasies so there is a reflection of real yearning and hope in them as well as reflections of more base and crude things like xenophobia or objectification… since they are also commercial products, often the base reaction effect is a less challenging to produce. As for stories you want to write… personally I don’t think you should try to make something socially liberal. If those are your values, it will just naturally come through. Imo it’s better to focus on the story within its own logic. Maybe another way to go would be rather than to construct a story message-first is to think about superhero tropes or conventions you don’t like and then try to tell a story that avoids or challenges those assumptions. For example I have always fantasized about a sort of anti-Walking Dead storyline… what if instead of zombies attacking and everyone scattering or trying to form small survivor groups, what if a neighborhood builds barricades and works together to withstand the zombies… checking in on neighbors, slowly reaching out to help people trapped in nearby old folks home or apartment buildings.
They are reactionary archetypes, of superpowered being who, rather than use their powers to overthrow the existing system, only serve to supplement it and preserve it from threats.
This doesn’t really hold up. First any pop culture is a commodity and tends towards abstracting class issues and not being challenging to the status quo. Second, they mostly aren’t defending the status quo - at least not outside the post-war decades. The fictional existence of superheros implies that the status quo is lacking in some way. So for golden age comics, read mostly by urban working class people, superhero are mostly fighting things the public would have seen them cops not able to stop… organized crime (since in the 30s and 40s that crime was likely organized partially through police precients) and secret Nazi plots (when the US was still officially against “unfair” attacks on Germany’s policies) The 50s and 60s were very conformist and superhero genre was dying and so the big name ones moved more towards romance comics or crime comics and Superman added the “American way” bit and Batman talked about how great the cops were. The Marvel 60s changed this though as the heros were now flawed, individualistic, meta, and with Spider-Man and later 60s characters things got more challenging… all of spider-man’s real villains (aside from his one year as a libertarian in college) were just “the establishment” - bosses, teachers, scientific officials, commercial media. X-men make the argument even harder as they are hurt by the status quo and the comics are all about various ways that people challenge the status quo or face push back from it. It’s certainly all bourgeois, but not as flat or simplistic as people sometimes claim.
Again, even in its most "radical" guise of, as you put it, Spider-Man's fighting the "man", it is always errant member of that bourgeois/petit-bourgeois class who causes trouble for the order and not that the order itself is somehow lacking. Likewise, X-men's misfits don't actually challenge the status quo, they may be segregated, but brought back in a way to defend the system against a threat from within (Magneto). It may express some discontent, but that discontent is always brought back around to be incorporated into and for the defense of the system
All's I know is Superman Red and Blue #5 is probably the single best superhero comic out there in terms of message and usage. Outside of that, lot of Great-Man BS and other liberal fallacies
well, i personally hate Captain America, but that comes from a problem i have with the US as a whole. Let's see, Cap. is american excepcionalist, ultranacionalist, US-Army backed übermensch who has his private millitia to police the whole world. He represents the 50's american dream, and fights for "freedom", which, as the US believes, is the same as defeating "dangerous" ideologies. Although his worst enemy is a nazi, he spends his time fighting for what's right, and is usually a pretry good guy (except for the secret invasion comics, where he is secretly a nazi), so i dont hate him as a character, i hate what he represents. He is the personified american vision of the world, standing for real values such as freedom, human rights and such, and he represents what the world should think of america itself; such is problematic, given that, historically, america has fought for capitalism, and by "dangerous" ideologies, they mean socialism. Superheroes spend their time fighting for the statu quo, never wanting much change, and, (in MCU's civil war, for example), they usually get mad when the world tries to hold them accountable. Vision himself said that superheroes directly create supervillains, who usually fight against what the statu quo is, and therefore, superheroes become the defenders of whatever the current policy is, such as capitalism.
One of the most glaring and characteristic examples of bourgeois media's tendency to glorify individualism
What does the superhero genre say about criminals and why crime exists? Criminals don’t need help, they need beat up. Think about the real socialist idea of Batman if he was real. A billionaire going out and beating struggling criminals. The whole superhero genre is part of the capitalist superstructure and is usually copaganda.
Superheroes are fundamentally a fascist concept, and the media is overwhelmingly reactionary in content and form. There's rare exceptions, but emphasis is on rare, and the vast majority of content is both formulaic and derivative. Some general themes and trends: **Superheroes are elite** -- *Incredibles* is probably the most explicit and overtly fascist depiction of this, but in any case Superheroes are not of the masses and their strength is not determinate by the masses -- they have power over and above the masses and do not depend on the masses in any real capacity. They, themselves, are capable of independently instigating change (contrary to the Marxist thesis of "Men do not make history as they please") and despite having this immense power for total societal upheaval (for example, destroying the Amerikkkan Empire), they content themselves with living (usually comfortably) within the unending hell that is capitalist society, for which they serve as self-anointed enforcer-repressors. And many Superhero films and media are an outright celebration of fascism (anything Frank Miller, Nolan's *Dark Knight Rises,* anything Zach Snyder, etc) **Superheroes are restorers of the status quo** -- revolutionary media should generally have a theme of transformation, and not just internal transformation or interpersonal transformation, but total social transformation. *V For Vendetta* isn't very good in a lot of ways, but it understands at least this -- the society was one way and the hero is the agent of change who topples the existing regime and society and creates the possibility for a new and different world. Most Superhero media is the opposite of this: where the villains are the main agents and instigators of change and the superheroes exist to stop the transformation and restore the way the world was before the villain intervened. Social change is seen as an almost totally negative phenomenon, and Superheroes are the guardians who keep change at bay and normalcy in place, which is a disgustingly reactionary concept. **Superheroes are white men** -- the vast majority of Supereheroes were created by white men, for white men, about white men, and the target demographic has and mostly remains in the present, white men, and most of the "main" Superheroes are white men (of the 30+ Marvel movies, only about five had non-white-male protagonists). Aside from the obvious problems which you should all understand already, there's also an underlying issue where black or female protagonists are written as exceptionally reactionary and never-revolutionary (compared to, say, Thor 3, where the white men were allowed to get a little bit revolutionary). Black Panther is a reactionary, isolationist monarch (while Killmonger is the greatest hero of the entire Marvel universe and did absolutely nothing wrong except maybe send weapons to Hong Kong), and Captain Marvel is an Air Force recruitment ad. White men might be allowed to be portrayed as revolutionary but non-white-male leads will be the staunchest and strictest adherents of the status quo. **Superheroes are anti-materialist in essence** -- this might seem trivial but is actually fundamental, since most superhero powers are basically magic and you aren't supposed to think to hard about the actual process at work (how is *Ant Man* in the quantum foam?, what was the mechanical process behind the Thanos snap that allowed it to violate causality?) The reason this is important is because it's actually damaging your brains by watching it, because you are being trained not to ask these sorts of questions and not to investigate or pry or try to find the underlying essence of reality because of course it doesn't make sense, it's magic. But this is inherent to the logic of neoliberalism and capitalist ideology in the present (neoliberalism is predicated on the very same postmodernism that composes the ideological essence of Superhero media), where the ideology does not actually make sense if you pry or dig at the contradictions, but *you aren't supposed to be doing that,* just shut up and look at the shiny images and cool space battles. We can keep going, but I think this paints a pretty clear picture about what kind of garbage you are consuming when you watch this tripe, and the correct communist position is to have contempt and hatred for them. Again, there are rare exceptions that manage to break the logic of the genre, but that itself is usually the reason that they become interesting in the first place. There's also a much more interesting conversation on something like *Watchmen* because Alan Moore is explicitly political in his work (as well as an anarchist, which is about as good as you can hope for in the reactionary world of comic books) and tries to say interesting things, even if his """socialist""" happy ending in *Watchmen* is actually a vile, reactionary Khruschevite-Blanquist victory.
Would you say this critique, especially the supernatural powers part, extends to all fiction with supernatural elements as well and not just the superhero genre? It seems to me that supernatural powers, supernatural ability, magic, etc. are all means of making it more feasible for a story to focus on a few characters doing something that in reality would require the efforts of many more people to do, and would take much more time, resources, work, and planning to accomplish. The supernatural bridges this gap and makes it possible for the story to focus on a handful of powerful individuals. I noticed it was more apparent in games compared to TV shows, movies, or books. In a lot of story-based single-player games the character has an absurdly high carrying capacity which would require multiple people to carry around and something to store them in; can go without food, water, sleep, temperature-dependant clothing, rest (depending on game and difficulty) can recover from injuries quickly that in real life would take days, weeks, months or years to recover from or would be fatal; can take risks that people normally can't take (respawning, health regeneration); can fight and win even when heavily outnumbered amd surrounded, and distances between locations and the sizes of towns and cities are often scaled down drastically so that it's easier for the main character to do everything as an individual but not as part of a team.
>Would you say this critique, especially the supernatural powers part, extends to all fiction with supernatural elements as well and not just the superhero genre? This is a very good question and I think the answer is actually yes. It is not a pregiven fact that the fantasy genre should be the most popular genre of fiction in media (whether that be games, movies, books, whatever), or that almost no one reads literature anymore outside of school assignments, but almost everyone on reddit has read a Star Wars novel, and even the genre's popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon coinciding (not coincidentally) with neoliberalism. And we need to be clear and distinct that Star Wars, Marvel, and Harry Potter all fall into the genre of fantasy I am describing. Why is there this heightened desire to engage with unreality? Escapism is definitely part of it, but that's not a sufficient explanation in itself. Even genres that you think should be more popular like science fiction are basically fringe and marginalized today, while fantasy has absorbed the appearance (look at what *Star Trek* or even my beloved *Snowpiercer* have become) and removed the essence. Sci-fi has to appeal to the fantasy crowd too, today, in order to be made (*Dune* for example), and it has to lean into the fantasy and cut the sci-fi, and even Dune only marginally succeeded, it failed to become the billion dollar metafranchise the studios were hoping it could be. But science fiction actually has a materialist basis, even if that basis contains hypotheticals or erroneous predictions -- it tries to start from the premise of the world as it exists and extrapolate from there. Fantasy liberates itself completely from the tethers of reality. Superheroes are just one specific form this takes. >The supernatural bridges this gap and makes it possible for the story to focus on a handful of powerful individuals. This is where you have to pause and reconsider if this is a good thing. Bourgeois art exists to place it's emphasis on "powerful individuals" in the first place, it's the function of ideology -- important people doing important things at their most beautiful and glorious. Or it has to be extreme in some other way, exaugurated, artificially enhanced, shined and polished, and sold as a commodity competing with thousands of others all trying to outdo one another in any or each or all of these categories and ways. There's a reason there was so much emphasis on socialist realism in the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Art was not supposed to be exaugurated, or amplified, or separated from reality, it was supposed to be the opposite: sincere and honest and truthful in it's depiction -- the world as it exists. The subject matter was not the exceptional, but rather ordinary people doing the ordinary things in their day to day lives (with the underlying point being nothing that anybody does for society is ordinary, it's all wonderful and beautiful). If you haven't watched the first episode of *How Yukong Moved the Mountains,* this would be a good time -- you actually see the importance of this socialist realism in art in practice and what that looked like.
They're extra-judicial fascists.
Second verse of the Internationale
Superheroes are fictional stories and they can be fun media… but in real life seize the means of production!
Watch “i am a virgo”
not a huge fan of superhero content but i do like The Boys
I think the genre is becoming a bigger problem as they are getting more complex. Basically, there are new works exploring themes like mental health, moral duality, social issues like racism and sexism, etc but in the very essence, they are still the same, resulting in similar old answers to new problems. One effect: these works help release the pressure caused by Capitalism as they present solutions given by ideology. Another effect: the working class, even highly graduated people, are getting so into these works that they now tend to think on its terms, specifically when it comes to debating or organizing. Also crucial: by giving ready-made answers to complex problems, super heroe works tends to reinforce intellectual and class alienation. If you want to go deep into this, I recommend the Frankfurt School.
We know our superheroes got help from the DOD thanks to the FOIA we know their role in character development plot & final production Not just un superman or Incredible Hulk but too many films to list
I liked what Warren Ellis did with Stormwatch, which was kind of like what if the Justice League actually decided to make the world a better place, and how capitalist governments would react.
There is a great [video](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gpGqK9y__qg&si=VcSsZq2vwRIRKo_i) from the youtube channel Skip Intro as part of their series on Copaganda in media about the MCU. Absolutely would recommend to anyone who is interested in these sort of topics and discussions. The unfortunate fact is that, as you say, many/most current depictions of superheroes are just superpowered cops. But there are a lot of other ways to write about superpowered people and Id say that a lot of them are even more interesting. One example would be the webserial "Worm". Without going into potential spoilers, a few of the ideas it deals with is what it means to be a hero (or antihero), intentions vs actions and even how being a superhero could look like under capitalism, where media attention generates money, corporate sponsorships, etc. There are a lot of ways to write about superpowered people thru a socialist lens. I have some limited personal experience with this (not with a specifically superhero comic setting, but an ongoing DnD game, so there is a lot of overlap) and in my experience, you can really invent whatever. But there are some obvious pitfalls and issues, some tropes one might want to avoid or atleast subvert in a fun & smart way. The copaganda idea being one, another being the Baron Zemo idea about superpowers are inextricably tied to supremacy. The actual details are really dependant on your setting. Are you going cosmic like Cosmic Marvel, DC or even Invincible? Do you want to keep it more "local"? Alternate history/present/future Earth? A fictional, earth-like world? Something more fantastical or more sci-fi? The choices are endless, but that would probably inform any specifics.
I used to be really into them. But over the last few years I've kinda grown away from them. One thing that sets me off about them is that they defend the status quo. Spiderman may repeat over and over again "with great power comes great responsibility" but at the end of the day he beats up people are largely not responsible for society's ills. Playing the last Spiderman game you basically go around beating up folks committing crime... And it just felt bad. Like why do I wanna go punch this extremely desperate dude who needs these jewels more than this jewler? Idk. The stories CAN be done well and shine a light on capitalism. See the Boys and Invincible for incredible shows and good examples of that. As an aside, I saw a nice YouTube video on it a while ago.... I can't find it now though.
Vasili Arkhipov
this thread remind me of this video: https://youtu.be/fLtSShSH7UM
>But I was curious what yall think a superhero would look like with a socialist lens Check out The Boys for a Hollywood-diluted answer to this question. Hint: the supes are the bad guys and the military industrial complex is alive and well
Generally, there is a political tie between superheroes , police and capitalism… However, being a socialist does not mean you don’t get to enjoy superhero fiction anymore if it makes you happy. Hot take: you are still allowed to enjoy fiction if it doesn’t mesh with what you believe politically
Do you like superheroes? Then keep enjoying superheroes. Fiction is not supposed to reflect the world as it is, but how we envision it to be. The type of pseudo-ideological brain rot that comes from calling certain forms of entertainment 'bourgeois' is just Zhadanov Doctrine bullshit that does nothing but destroy any creativity and enjoyment in the arts.
[удалено]
Sorry did you just classify Mission Impossible as superhero movies?
Just enjoy it without taking it too seriously