Or: Are we holding real people to superhero standards?
SPOILER ALERT: Some light spoilers for Captain Marvel and multiple superhero movies follows.
I recently saw Captain Marvel and thought it was a perfectly fine movie, but I was frankly a little underwhelmed. It felt like all of the characters could’ve used more development, especially (and unfortunately) Carol Danvers. It’s not a good sign when your main character (and the first female superhero to headline an MCU movie) feels underdeveloped and devoid of personality. My biggest criticism, though, was that the retconning was clumsily done and introduced a number of plot holes that they didn’t bother to really acknowledge. They didn’t even explain why Fury never used the souped-up intergalactic pager that Carol gave him “for emergencies” before Infinity War. An alien invasion or extinction level event from a murderous robot didn’t qualify as an emergency? Imagine having seen Captain Marvel before Age of Ultron; Fury mysteriously takes off after saying he’s going to do “something dramatic”, so you get your hopes up that he’s going to call in Carol Danvers and instead he brings in a Helicarrier. Major disappointment.
But I digress. One thing that surprised me about Captain Marvel was how confined the sexism was. Based on the commercials and trailers, I was expecting the movie to focus more on the constant challenges Carol faced on account of her being a female who was constantly partaking in stereotypical male pursuits like baseball, kart racing, and being a fighter jet pilot. Instead, the instances of sexism seemed relatively constrained to the villain (duh), one notable jerk, and a few extremely brief flashback scenes. If anything, the movie seemed notable for how progressive the heroes were. After all, SHIELD was willing to entrust their most valuable and powerful artifact to a female scientist and two female test pilots.
Okay, but Captain Marvel takes place in the 1990s. That’s not exactly the stone age of gender relations.
That’s a completely fair point, random disembodied voice, but it got me to thinking about other superheroes in other MCU movies. There have been dozens of superheroes over 20+ films with all sorts of character flaws ranging from alcoholism to extreme narcissism to selfishness to thievery to Black Widow’s mysterious “red on her ledger”(and she’s by far not the only “superhero” who we know has murdered innocents in the past). And yet, despite all of these various character flaws, I struggle to come up with any examples of sexism, racism (excluding against fictional alien races), or homophobia among any of the heroes.
Wow, that went from fun superhero movie escapism to depressingly serious fast.
I know, but hear me out. I’m absolutely not trying to say that this is a problem that needs to be fixed. I don’t want Spider-Man: Far From Home to see Peter dealing with the fallout from some homophobic tweets he made when he was younger or for Black Panther 2 to involve T’Challa lecturing Nakia about how she needs to be a homemaker. Superhero movies are obviously fantasies and the superheroes themselves are supposed to represent unattainable ideals that we strive for as mere mortals. I completely understand why filmmakers wouldn’t want to have a storyline with their superhero grappling with such a hot-button topic in the real world and I think I probably prefer that they don’t.
Having said that, it is unrealistic….
Wait, realistic? Really? You’re talking about walking and talking trees, a talking raccoon, giant green monsters, gods that can summon lightning, and a man who can play 18 and shoot 18 and you’re worried about realism?
Sure, I get that it’s an odd comment when talking about superhero movies, but I stand behind it. As fantastical as superhero movies can be, I believe we still look for ways we can relate to superheroes and to find the humanity in them (even when they’re not human). Tony may be a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, but he still struggles with guilt, the weight of responsibility, relationships, and PTSD. Peter Parker has always been a fan favorite, in part, because of his relatable struggles to balance his romantic life, job, school, and yes, superhero responsibilities. No matter how seemingly detached from reality certain movies may get, there is still that thread of realism that connects those heroes to us. Thor may be a god, but his entire first movie was all about how brash and over-confident he was and how he had to learn humility. Peter Quill might hang out with a talking raccoon, but he also has daddy issues. Stephen Strange is a master of the mystic arts but is still a bit of an insufferable jerk to those close to him and needs to learn that he doesn’t know everything.
Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were both soldiers in WW2, when the military was still heavily segregated. They were likely born around 1920, which is 30 years before the civil rights movement really took off. It’s pretty incredible that both characters have such progressive views on race, gender, and sexual orientation. Likewise, Hank Pym and Nick Fury were both likely born in the 1950s at the latest, which also puts them in a cohort which is likely to have some “old fashioned” ideas. Furthermore, all four characters listed above served in the military, which has a reputation for skewing conservative. The data is a little messy, but polling shows that Americans aged 65+ are roughly split on the idea of same sex marriage. I can’t imagine what the polling looks like for 90+ year olds like Steve and Bucky. Things look even worse for Cap and the Winter Soldier when looking at public opinion of interracial marriage going back that far.
Wait a second, Tony is totally sexist. You mentioned yourself that he’s a playboy and he’s totally a dick to Pepper.
In Tony’s defense, he’s pretty much a dick to everybody. The playboy aspect is an interesting point, though. The movies make it pretty clear that, at least before going steady with Pepper, Tony quite enjoyed sleeping around. Even dating Pepper wasn’t enough to stop him from leering at “Natalie Rushman” (aka, Natasha Romanov) when she was interviewing to be his new assistant. But is a healthy sex drive inherently sexist?
The Merriam-Webster definition of sexism is: “prejudice or discrimination based on sex” and/or “behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex”. By that definition, it’s hard to find any concrete evidence of sexism on Tony’s part. He never questions the qualifications of Natasha Romanov as a master spy and hires Maria Hill after the fall of SHIELD to help coordinate the Avengers. He even turns control of his company over to Pepper when he makes her CEO, which is hardly the actions of somebody who has “attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex”.
Okay, fine, so maybe it would be more realistic if Bucky balked over living in Wakanda or refused to bake a gay wedding cake. Would that make you happy?
No, not at all. As I mentioned before, I completely understand why these hot button topics are left out and I think the movies would almost certainly suffer if they were included.
So what’s your point?
My points is this: Superhero movies have become more and more popular and taken over Hollywood over the past couple of decades. There are college students now who don’t know of a world before X-Men and Spider-Man (the original with Tobey Maguire), two of the movies which I believe started the modern trend of good superhero movies.
I’m old enough to remember when giant Hollywood blockbusters came in a number of different shapes and sizes. One year it might be robots from the future, another year it might be dinosaurs running rampant, yet another year it might be aliens from space. Now? It’s incredibly rare for there to be a year without multiple superhero movies in the top 5 for highest grossing.
I wonder if the incredible popularity and longevity of these superhero movies, with their selectively flawed heroes, is subtly causing younger people to have a distorted view of the ways real life people are flawed.
In other words, and to hearken back to the sub-heading: Are we holding real people to superhero standards?
There have been a number of prominent examples recently of celebrities and politicians who have gotten into trouble due to actions from their past. MSNBC host Joy Reid came under fire for homophobic comments on her old blog. Fox News host Tucker Carlson has likewise been attacked for comments he made in the past on a radio show. Kevin Hart lost his opportunity to host the Oscars after old homophobic tweets surfaced. Liam Neeson was criticized for his reaction to a friend of his getting raped decades ago. James Gunn was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 after old controversial tweets of his resurfaced. Ralph Northam, the governor of the state that I live in, has come under fire for pictures of him in blackface in his 1984 yearbook. Not even death can prevent somebody from getting into trouble, like with what happened when an old John Wayne interview was unearthed.
I want to make it abundantly clear that I’m in no way trying to excuse any of the above behavior, only to point out how recently the tolerance for it seems to be decreasing and the punishments increasing. You don’t have to go far back at all to find prominent Democratic politicians going on record as opposing gay marriage. Tony Stark himself, Robert Downey, Jr., appeared in blackface in 2008 for the movie Tropic Thunder and it wasn’t even the most controversial aspect of the movie at the time.
Part of this is no doubt due to changing social norms as things that were once deemed acceptable are now increasingly seen as unacceptable. I just wonder if our superhero movies have played some small role. We’re comfortable forgiving and rooting for thieves and murderers, just so long as they’ve never had a sexist/racist/homophobic/etc thought.
Although maybe the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction. Ralph Northam still remains in office, refusing calls to step down. The most recent Spider-Man: Far From Home trailer has an interesting exchange between Peter and MJ where he comments that she looks pretty and she retorts, “And therefore I have value?”, leaving Peter hanging before acknowledging that she was messing with him. I don’t want to make too big a deal of it, but it does show a willingness to address some subtle subconscious sexism by Peter, while also poking fun at those who might overreact to it. Perhaps most striking of all? James Gunn was recently reinstated as the director for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 movie after previously having been fired.
Maybe the window of acceptable character flaws is cracking open a tiny bit more both in real life and on the big screen.
As long as we can all agree to keep Captain America flawless.
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