Superheroes in Action

First Published: 21 March 2006

Heroes – from Arjuna to Rustam to Gilgamesh to Dirty Harry – have always been important to human societies. In the wake of the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, though, our society’s conception of heroism has come into question. With all our disillusionment, can we still expect our heroes to be perfect or infallible? After all, especially in regard to the Iraq situation, those whom we were meant to look up to seem to have failed us. Established authority structures, having manipulated the public trust, are no longer the heroic bastions of ethical and physical protection they once were.

Superheroes, distinguished by their immortality, represented the ideal of a messianic figure who resolved for society its problems and traumas. This was the ideal that birthed Superman in the 1930s, the era leading up to World War II, with its own, real, super-villains. However, by the 1960s, which saw the advent of Spiderman, the validity of this idea had begun to crack. The emotional and intellectual freedom of that era allowed individuals to question their established authority structures – like a government that enforced conscription – and whether they really needed someone else to solve their problems.

Contrasting the messianism of Superman, Spiderman represented the need to take responsibility for one’s own traumas and failures, which, just as Spiderman came to understand, are a result of one’s own actions. This conceptualization was and is indicative of a burgeoning, yet eternal, hope that we can overcome our own traumas, not through the intervention of a mighty and perfect Superman but rather with the inner, agonized strength of an imperfectly human Peter Parker.

Superman was a model of perfection for an unquestioning society who sought solace in the notion of a savior who would not only restore the balance of the physical world, but also the ethical balance that seemed to have tipped askew. For that generation, the Allies represented the forces of Good, who, like Superman, had to prevail against the Evil that seemed about to overrun the world.

Though the rhetoric seems not to have changed in our times, the innocence that buttressed it has gone. Disenchanted, we shun the manteau of the distressed damsel and no longer look to Uncle Sam to save us or our ideals. Rather, we are more certain of our own power to effect change.

In a society like this, there seems little room for an omnipotent Superman who swoops down to save the day. The essential appeal of that ideal was its vicarious empowerment. The essence of our present times, on the other hand, is actual empowerment: we have it, we know it, and we don’t want others to fight our battles. This is the spirit that Spiderman embodies: recognizing his own hand in his trauma, he sets out alone to restore himself to the ethical pantheon that is the province of the innocent.

Spiderman represents, thus, our own fallibility and, more importantly, our perseverance in spite of it. We have, as a society, been through the trauma of a proverbial adolescence and no longer pine virginally for Prince Charming to rescue us, but rather accept responsibility for our actions and seek rectitude on our own merits. Like Peter Parker donning the mask of Spiderman, we transform ourselves into powerful and capable beings in charge of our own destinies. Assuming that mask, then, is not an escape into a false reality, but is rather a recognition of the true, inner nobility that inheres in us all and inspires our greatest actions.

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