week 7 tues

Vigilante Justice, Comic-book Superheroes, Representation and Critical Thinking

vig·i·lan·te    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (vj-lnt)
n.

1. One who takes or advocates the taking of law enforcement into one's own hands.
2. A member of a vigilance committee.

Comic-book superheroes are useful for showing us how the monster/hero dichotomy is deeply rooted in representation, unfounded assumptions, and context. By contrasting the idealized representations of vigilante superheroes with those of historical vigilantes, we can see just how easily representation can be used to totally shape or alter perception, and thus shape belief.

Iconography and Representation: What graphic or representational elements make the superhero "heroic"? How are readers seduced into accepting and embracing the superhero's intrinsic heroism?

    1) Idealized facial features: classic Anglo-Saxon good looks, fetishism of facial features (strong jaw, small nose, thick hair etc.)
    2)  Idealized athletic body.
    3) Costume and graphic symbolism      
    4) Symbolic/illusionary action on 2D medium: action as heroism

Assumptions: What assumptions i.e. "implicit reasons") always justify the superhero's right to violence?  Assumptions:

    1) The hero immediately recognizes the difference between justice and injustice, good and evil even when others don't
    2) The hero's violence is categorically different than the monster's violence
    3) The monster-villain is inherently evil; evil exists outside of social or political/historical context; the monster-villain has no right to violence
    4) The legal system (government, police, courts etc) is inadequately equipped to recognize or deal adequately with evil; the superhero is justified.

Contextualized Hero/De-contextualized Monster-Villain: In contrast to the monster-villain, how does context justify the superheroes' right to violence? In what ways is the superheroes life contextualized and the monster-villain's life simply "evil"?

    1) The hero must contain elements of monstrosity; monstrosity is part of being a superhero
    2) The hero's life is usually, inherently sympathetic; his or her parents are dead; said parents and their culture are inherently good, just etc.
    3) The monster-villain's violence (context) justifies the superhero's violence, but the superhero's violence never justifies the monster's violence
    4) The monster-villain is inherently evil regardless of context: the monster acts violently without pretext or cause because he has no context; his victims are always innocent and never deserving
    5)  In contrast, the hero's victims are never innocent or justified.

Problems with the Vigilante as Superhero: Note how quickly we can invert the entire vigilante iconography by exchanging the idealized representation for another set of representations taken from history. Here are images of real, historical vigilantes. Note that in each case or set of cases, the "vigilante" believed the Assumptions listed above, and this belief justified, in his own mind, his violence:

Timothy McVeigh

Without Sanctuary also Lynching 2

http://www.americanlynching.com/pic1.htm    The Negro Holocaust

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