Missing the point about superheroes

Claims that they are fascist. [Link]

I was reminded of this by Jor-El’s speech in “Man of Steel”:

You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.

How, though? Those watching him can’t fly, topple buildings or fire heat rays from their eyes. What else does Superman do other than these purely physical feats? The 1978 version of Jor-El warned: “It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history. Rather let your leadership stir others to.” Can you really inspire others with steel? At this point it’s interesting to reflect on the real-life leader who chose a name meaning “Man Of Steel”: Stalin.

Rebutted. [Link]

This reading of superheroes is common but wrong, a symptom of trying to impose political ideology on a universal, fictional myth. Superheroes do say something about the real world, but it’s something pretty uncontroversial: We want to see good triumph over evil, and “good” in this case means more than just defeating the bad guy—it means handling power responsibly.

The “fascism” metaphor breaks down pretty quickly when you think about it. Most superheroes defeat an evil power but do not retain any power for themselves. They ensure others’ freedom. They rarely deal with the government, and when they do it is with wariness, as in the Iron Man films, where Tony Stark refuses to hand over control of his inventions.

Indeed, superhero tales are full of subplots about how heroes limit their own power: hibernating once the big bad guy has been defeated, wearing disguises to live ordinary lives, choosing not to give into the temptation to ally with the villain or use their powers for profit or even civilizational progress. That’s because the creators of some of the most foundational superhero tales weren’t writing solely out of a power fantasy. They were writing out of a fantasy that a truly good people who find themselves with power might use that power only for good—and only in the face of extreme evil.

Consider the conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises where Batman refuses to show his real identity to take credit for saving Gotham City. Batman is regularly willing to trust others for help and does not see himself as the sole hero; the hero, the story seems to say, could be anyone. Like many others, Batman works to be an example of helping others while respecting the autonomy of society and individuals.Perhaps the optimism that an uberpowerful being like Superman would not overreach is unrealistic. Maybe it’s the same optimism that has helped certain world dictators to rise to power. But superhero myths themselves come from a good place. The belief that people are capable of real altruism is inescapable, human, and the farthest thing from inherently fascistic.

When superheroes do appear to flirt with fascism, it's as part of a subversions of the genre, as with Alan Moore's gritty, dystopian Watchmen. Similarly, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns reimagined Superman as a government lackey who gets in Batman's way. Both graphic novels comment on the dangers posed by superheroes with less-clear moral orientations than, say, Captain America—who, by the way, was originally created with the explicit intention of fighting fascists—but they don't damn the self-limiting superheroes that America has come to love. 

I remember reading somewhere about what a superhero's real power was:

Their morals. they are not heroes because they can beat you up or pick up a building, but because they do not abuse that power. They actually are better than us, more moral than us, they are not susceptible to corruption. They are there to inspire us to be better, and while yes, there is adolescent power fantasy there, it is all in the service of using power to do the right thing.