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.
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