Superheroes and Excess, an Oxymoron: A Review Essay

 Superheroes and Excess, an Oxymoron: A Review Essay

 

Eric Berlatsky

 

Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds. Superheroes and Excess:  A Philosophical Adventure. New York:  Routledge, 2022. 288 pp. ISBN:  978-1-1383-0453-6. US $160.00. https://www.routledge.com/Superheroes-and-Excess-A-Philosophical-Adventure/Brassett-Reynolds/p/book/9781138304536

 

Jamie Brassett and Richard Reynolds’ new book Superheroes and Excess (Routledge, 2022) has the significant benefit of bringing together two topics/discourses that have rarely, if ever, been previously wed. The concept of “excess” is, of course, a slippery but important one, particularly in philosophical circles, as the editor’s note in the introduction, invoking the names of Gilles Deleuze and Georges Bataille, among others, in order to define and clarify the term. Brassett, Reynolds, and other contributors assert confidently (and no doubt correctly) that “excess” is an integral element of the superhero genre--as superheroes inevitably have an “excess” of power, skill, size, strength, speed, and often morality, when compared to the “ordinary” human populace. It might likewise be said that superheroes “exceed” the law, as they frequently operate as vigilantes (breaking the law), even though they are typically understood to be in support of the “justice” that the law is purportedly meant to represent. Excess has also been used (perhaps paradigmatically by Bataille, but also through the Kristevan abject and the Freudian excremental) to that which exceeds the boundary of the body, or the unitary subject, or both. Science fiction’s collection of monsters and aliens (frequently oozing themselves or oozing out of someone else’s less gelatinous body) is representative of such excess, and insofar as the superhero genre grows out of SF, this abjected version of excess finds a home in the world of the superhero as well (particularly in the various heroes and villains whose bodies stretch, disappear, burst into flame, etc.). In addition, the economic sense of “excess” as that profit which is beyond need, or the expenditure of money far beyond the sensible, might easily be applied not only to billionaire superheroes themselves (Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark as the most paradigmatic examples) but also to the corporations/movie studios who spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make superhero films that bring in billions in excess profits.

All of the above iterations of the term “excess” (and others) are elaborated upon by the editors in the introduction and conclusion and are fruitful lines of inquiry for interrogating the figure of the superhero and the narratives that surround them in whatever media. Indeed, when the collection’s contributors clearly address the idea of excess (in any of its many iterations), the book succeeds in approaching the idea of the superhero from new perspectives and promises to push the field in fruitful directions. At the same time, there are disappointing moments in the collection when some contributors fail to clearly articulate the ways in which their chapters define excess and its relationship to superheroes. In these cases, the chapters fail to build upon the fascinating architecture articulated by the collection’s editors.

Fortunately, many of the chapters do fulfill the promise of the book’s concept, and it is only fair to discuss these first. The first chapter, by Anna Peppard, is one such, as it takes on both the physical excesses of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Silver Age Fantastic Four and their relationship to the Cold War, in particular the idea that communism was “exceeding” its national boundaries and needed to be “contained” through U.S. national policy and, in the comics, through the intervention of the FF. As Peppard discusses, the model of excess and containment itself “spilled over” from the realm of international politics into conceptions of gender and its relation to the monstrous. Peppard argues that monstrousness typically revolves around the conflict between the body and the mind (in Cartesian fashion) and the degree to which the body “exceeds” the control and the rationality of the mind. Likewise, the body’s unruly and chaotic nature (18) is typically associated with women and femininity (particularly through the premise of uncontrollable fluids as in menstruation and lactation), while the controlling rationality of the mind is (misogynistically) understood to be masculine. Peppard contrasts the unruly chaotic bodies of the Human Torch and the Thing (therefore in some way feminine, despite ostensibly being men) and the more contained and container-like (and therefore masculine) bodies of the Invisible Girl/Woman and Mr. Fantastic. Peppard is not blind or inattentive to the ironies within this characterization, noting the ways in which, despite her seemingly masculine powerset, Invisible Girl/Woman is nevertheless rendered subservient and feminine in a number of other ways. Peppard’s turn to a discussion of the villain, Sandman, an even more uncontainable and unruly body, allows for an even more fascinating discussion of the excesses of monstrous bodies and the role the FF play in the metaphorical “containment” both of communism and the feminization it brings with it.

Brassett’s chapter on the Marvel mutant Legion, is also fully engaged with the philosophical concept of excess, and productively so, borrowing liberally from Deleuze and from the concept of the musical “fugue” as discussed by Deleuze and frequent partner Felix Guattari. Legion, aka David Haller, the son of Professor Xavier, the leader of the X-Men, is excessive, as Brassett explains, because of the cornucopia of personalities (each with its own mutant power), contained within his body. Brassett explores how Haller’s lengthy project of organizing his disparate powers and personalities under “one” metapersonality, project, or banner embodies the struggle between the singular body and “self” that we all purportedly possess and the conflicting personalities, ideas, and perspectives within all of us that threaten to exceed it. Brassett discusses the ways in which the repeated return of personalities or “themes” in Haller’s personality can be linked to the metaphor of the fugue, and how the fugue, though frequently understood to be organized around variations from a primary melody, can also be understood very differently if a “repetition” is taken to be the “primary” or if no iteration is accepted as the “primary” just because of chronological precedent. Brassett applies this logic to Haller’s mind in order to elucidate the ways in which comics that focus on Legion can be said to re-evaluate the nature of the subject not as singular, but as many--and thus excessive (thinking of the self as the swarm of bees, rather than each bee itself as an individual) (43). Particularly, through a reading of Simon Spurrier’s X-Men:  Legacy, Brassett examines the idea that the attempt to bring our multiple selves under some kind of authoritarian order may be just as dangerous as allowing our “excess personalities” to anarchically run amuck and that leadership and control are far from synonymous.

Brassett’s Deleuzian focus on multiple subjectivities is mirrored later in the volume by Scott Jeffery’s discussion of superhero comics’ predilection for incessant repetition. Jeffery cites Deleuze in order to assert that while repetition might initially be understood merely as a reproduction of sameness, in fact repetition is precisely that which introduces difference:  “‘difference is not the difference between different forms, or the difference from some original model; difference is that power that over and over again produces new forms’” (144). As Jeffery asserts, even if a story is reprinted with precisely the same words and pictures, its introduction into a new context makes it, in some sense, new, giving it new meaning as it implicitly comments on its new surroundings. Even beyond this, however, Jeffery focuses on the frequent repetition of, for instance, superhero origin stories (discussing Spider-Man’s, in particular) (146) and how each retelling introduces new elements, characters, contexts, and perspectives. For Jeffery, as for Brassett, multiplicity and difference are values in themselves, opening up the world to “radical imagination” reflective of that world itself and which asserts “a kind of morality unique to the genre…one that speaks for…the potential of becoming…” (156). While, occasionally, Jeffery brings this assertion in proximity to questions of ethics, morality, and “diversity” in a more social and political sense (particularly through the brief discussion of Into the Spider-Verse) (156), these assertions are unfortunately tentative at best. In Jeffery’s chapter, convincing in many ways, the morality and ethics of “difference” seems to mean something more metaphysical than prosaic questions or racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender diversity, the most significant weakness in a compelling essay that builds on Brassett’s observations.

This weakness is countered by Lorraine Henry King’s very strong essay on Black Panther and its confrontation with a history of public discourse that defined Black men, and particularly Black male bodies as “excessive,” or beyond or outside of “civilized” white society. As King points out, superhero narratives have historically been built on male physical strength and powerful masculinity wedded to moral authority. In the racial and racist history of the United States, however, the physical strength of Black men has never been discursively attached to morality. Instead, powerful Black masculinity has been feared and defined as a threat to racial purity and particularly white femininity. As such, argues King, a film like Black Panther is not simply a shift of the overwhelmingly popular superhero archetype to include Black characters and Black actors, but is actually an attempt to intervene in the discursive construction of Black masculinity and to counter the definition of Black masculinity as itself “excessive.” Beyond this, King discusses Panther’s resistance to the frequently used filmic spectacle of dead Black male bodies, and its exploration of Black skin as a superhero costume. All in all, King’s essay’s roots in the social and political impact of media representations serves as a powerful reparative to those essays in Superheroes and Excess that tend toward more abstruse metaphysics.

Another very strong chapter is Tiffany Hong’s on Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta’s Vision miniseries (itself one of the influences on Marvel Studio’s television show, Wandavision). In the series, the synthezoid/android Vision builds a family for himself and moves them into a bourgeois suburb. Perhaps the most obvious pathway for analysis of the series is as a metaphor for race relations, as the Visions are not welcomed to the neighborhood, but Hong is almost completely uninterested in this interpretive possibility. This is unfortunate simply because her examination of the phenomenological and narratological elements of the story might well dovetail into valuable political or sociological insights if given the chance. Instead, Hong focuses on the ways in which the Visions’ perceptions exceed that of ordinary humans (through their capacity for infallible memory, physical manipulation of bodily density--including phasing through matter--and the ability to turn on, or shut off, their emotions) and the ways in which these excessive powers are reflected through the storytelling elements of the comic. This becomes a fascinating discussion of the interaction of form and content and the “multimodal treatment of android interiority” (103) though what insight it might give into human experience, whether social, political, or otherwise, is not always clear.

As in Peppard’s essay, Hong’s engagement with the idea of gender is perhaps most persuasive, as she (like Peppard) discusses the ways in which the Visions’ powers (especially as used by Vision’s wife, Virginia) comment productively and critically on stereotypical understandings of women as uncontrollable and chaotic bodies, and as an “overdetermined locus of interpenetrative possibility” (109). Nevertheless, it is not always clear if Hong sees the series’ depiction of Virginia “as a site of failed womanhood” (because of her inability to procreate) as itself a misogynist depiction--or if she sees the series as implicitly critiquing misogynist notions of femininity (or a little of both). That is, while Hong does an excellent job of teasing out some of the implications in the series, she is not always willing to draw more definitive conclusions about what these implications ultimately mean. Her discussion of the contradictory and incommensurate voices of the Scarlet Witch and Agatha Harkness as narrators suggests that there is room for an understanding of the series as Brechtian in its effort to make the readers question whatever “truths” its narrative offers, but Hong also implies that most readers may never interrogate those “truths” given the series’ “affective closure” (aka happy ending) (113).

Geoff Klock and Mitch Montgomery’s chapter on the final (?) Hugh Jackman/James Mangold Wolverine film, “Logan,” returns to familiar terrain for Klock (in particular his seminal book How to Read Superhero Comics and Why?). As in that book, Klock and Montgomery invoke Harold Bloom’s idea of “the anxiety of influence” and propose that “Logan” serves to “strongly misread” previous superhero films, X-Men films, dystopic films, Westerns, and select films from the directors’ and actors’ filmographies, in order to pioneer a “new” form of superhero film, rooted more in realism, relationships, and closure than in special effects, spectacle, and open endings that serve as advertisements for sequels. For Klock and Montgomery, the film opens itself up to the “excess of tradition” (128) in order to create something truly new. While I am skeptical of the idea that “Logan” is immune to the tyranny of the sequel and that it somehow delivers a message of acceptance and adaptability of which previous X-Men or superhero films were incapable, the argument is built upon compelling close readings that reveal elements of the film, and the genre, that are not immediately obvious. In this, the chapter does what good criticism should, making me wish to return to the film both for pleasure and for intellectual consideration.

Like Klock, Richard Reynolds’ essay follows an influential book Super Heroes:  A Modern Mythology, a very early contribution to the academic study of superheroes from 1994. “Superheroes at the Vanishing Point” is not as clearly a direct descendant of the earlier work as Klock’s chapter is, though Reynolds’ deep and wide knowledge of the superhero genre and his capacity for insightful close readings remain intact. In this chapter, Reynolds looks most searchingly at the MCU’s Infinity Saga films, particularly “Iron Man,” “Avengers:  Infinity War,” and “Avengers:  Endgame.” In these films, Reynolds traces the superhero genre’s tendency to locate new “planes of action,” pushing toward new frontiers and beyond typical viewpoints. He compares the superhero genre, then, to the Western, and to space travel films like “The Right Stuff.” Taking the Avengers both far into outer space and back and forth in time, argues Reynolds, is a new kind of “frontier” or Western film that restlessly seeks to push “beyond the vanishing point” of the genre. Likewise, Reynolds is keen to explore the superhero genre’s interest in contrasting scales, juxtaposing the secret identity (a “normal” person) with the abnormal alter ego, as well as prosaic settings (Starlord’s origins on 1970s/1980s Earth and the mixtape that it engenders) with the outré and bizarre (the outer space and distant planets that Starlord explores with the Guardians of the Galaxy). Reynolds acknowledges that time travel and space flight are more typically seen as part of the science fiction genre and that superheroes might be understood as an offshoot of science fiction, but this does not prevent their particular power to gesture beyond the limitations of the present and “deliver their audience from a collective anxiety about their future…” (242).

All of the above is to indicate that the collection has many insightful and useful essays that more than make up for the weaker ones, which I will try (and perhaps fail!) to cover in less detail. John McGuire’s essay on the ways in which 1980s Captain America comics challenge and critique the excesses of the Reagan Era does not live up to its promise both because its close readings of that era fail to account for many elements of their critique (for instance, J. M. DeMatteis’ introduction of a childhood best friend of Steve Rogers’, Arnie Roth, is ignored in the chapter, despite the obvious relevance in critiquing Reagan-era AIDS policies), and because of its seeming ignorance of important history of the character. McGuire discusses the anti-U.S. government elements of the 1980s Cap comics as if the critique of U.S. presidents and their policies had not been part of the series for some time. The introduction of Richard Nixon as the “surprising” head of the Secret Empire in Captain America #175 (released in May 1974) and Captain America’s subsequent decision to disassociate himself from his country by dropping his superhero identity in favor of another (Nomad, the Man Without a Country!) is ignored here, despite its role as obvious precedent to and influence on the 1980s stories McGuire analyzes. McGuire’s argument that 1980s Cap comics make an effort to present an alternative patriotism to that based on capitalistic excess and neoliberal “free markets,” seems accurate, but his implication that this was something new to Reagan-era Cap, his substantively incomplete discussion of the comics’ engagement with Reagan’s policies, and his unwillingness to engage with the recent history of Cap, leaves the chapter somewhat disappointing.

Also disappointing is Lillian Céspedes González’s chapter on Image Comics, which relies on a survey of 55 seemingly random people (a substantial percentage of whom knew nothing at all about said comics) to define what “excess” means and whether or not 1990s Image successes like Spawn and Witchblade fit the definition as proposed. The premise of this chapter eluded me almost completely, as if one wanted a truly representative view of Image’s excesses from the “people on the street,” surely one would need to survey more than 55 people, and have some kind of scientific way of determining if those people are representative of anything in particular. Likewise, if one wanted a comics reader’s or connoisseur’s understanding of the importance of Image (a definitively important publisher for creator’s rights), why would 20 percent of the people surveyed be all but ignorant of the publisher, the genre, or the industry? Thus, the methodology of this chapter, as well as its conclusions (understandably tentative at best given the methodology), never coalesce into a convincing argument about the comics or the company.

Equally frustrating is Derek Hales’s essay “Design Fictions from Beyond:  A Pataphysics of Objectile Excess,” the title of which is indicative of the dense jargon to be found within. Hales’s goal in the chapter seems to be to simply list or identify a number of objects in superhero stories that qualify as “pataphysical”--parodically beyond or outside of normal physics (if I understand correctly), or “sublime” (beyond description), particularly through the prism of Lovecraftian heuristics in which creatures and objects are too horrible, large, monstrous, indistinct, multidimensional, or etc. to beggar description. It certainly makes sense to bring a discussion of such objects and creatures into a book about superheroes and excess, but what point Hales is making about them other than to point them out is beyond my capacity to determine. There does seem to be some hint at the idea that such fictional designs or creatures serve the purpose of “futuristic design” and to perhaps inform the design of objects in the present, but while my eyes were alert to this claim and any insights derived from it, I was continually stymied by the convoluted syntax, impenetrable jargon, and opaque argument of the chapter. Perhaps the chapter itself was meant to be understood as pataphysical, in which case it succeeds admirably, but it does not succeed in more conventional ways.

Joan Ormrod’s chapter on Wonder Woman (“Too Many Wonder Womans”) has the great benefit of being much more readable, though it too is disappointing in some ways. Ormrod discusses the fact that Wonder Woman (like most superhero IP’s) is a character with many different versions, not just the comics, film, and television “versions”--but the many different versions within each of these media and others (video games, prose fiction, etc. etc.). Ormrod is particularly interested in how the character appears in the “Super Hero Girls” DC animated television franchise, which has had, to date, two distinct iterations. The first placed several of DC’s superpowered women, both heroes and villains, in a high school setting, in which the characters were “aged down” and took on many of the trappings of stereotypical femininity. The reboot made the heroes and villains antagonists once more, rather than classmates, and re-introduced elements of the more violent and stereotypically masculine superheroics of more recent comics and films. Ormrod discusses the details of these series, as well as the fan response, in order to make the point that neither of these “versions” can be (or should be) considered “original” or “primary” and that one’s relationship to the narrative is largely dependent upon one’s own wishes and expectations, as well as which version the audience member watches first and is therefore “original” to them. While this is true as far as it goes, and although Ormrod does engage with the gendered implications of each version of “Super Hero Girls,” she does not discuss the “value” of each series in any context other than “what the audience wants” and “what the audience likes.” This is frustrating given the relatively obvious feminist critique some other critics have made (and which Ormrod references briefly). That is, it is worthwhile considering the political, social, or ideological messages of these shows apart from their relative and supposed “authenticity.” Surely Ormrod is right that there is no way to judge one or the other of these shows as “better” simply because they are closer to the “true Wonder Woman” (the idea of which seems like a chimera), but one can surely judge them “better” or “worse” by other criteria, an idea studiously ignored here.

In addition, it seems odd that Ormrod ignores the one version of the character that might have some claim to authenticity, the 1940s comics version of the character as written by creator William Moulton Marston and drawn by H. G. Peter. The Marston/Peter comics have received much critical attention for their strange and daring combination of BDSM, lesbianism, polyamory, mythology, and Nazi-punching, all in the context of a comic book meant for children! While Ormrod is far from obligated to revisit this terrain at any length, if there is a Wonder Woman that could be defined as both “authentic” and “excessive,” it is the original version, an idea that should at least be engaged in any discussion of the later versions. Excess, as a concept, is indeed lost, for the most part, in this essay, and is confined to the initial notion that perhaps there are “too many” versions of Wonder Woman. In fact, however, Ormrod takes the opposite position, that there is nothing excessive here at all. Rather, for Ormrod, the presence of multiple Wonder Women is neither a problem nor a concern, as we should simply take each as we find her. Given the degree to which this asks us to avert our critical eyes, Ormrod’s essay stops short of providing real insight, although her fundamental notion that multiplicity is itself a good (or at least not bad) factor is not far from the claims of Brassett and Jeffery, as discussed above.

As with most edited collections, then, this one can only be judged by the strengths and weaknesses of its individual essays. In this case, there are more strong essays than weaker ones, and most of the weaker ones nevertheless contain something of value. More than anything, the book opens up the superhero genre to fresh critical terrain and many vectors to follow, as its conclusion indicates. I am hopeful that these vectors will be followed by these and other scholars and yield additional insights.