The Hero as Terrorist ...
It was inevitable that the real-world issue of terrorism would manifest itself in popular culture, beyond the clichés of Arab Terrorist #2 (Although, sadly, there's still lots of that, too). 24, one of the most popular recent TV shows in memory, dealt with it viscerally, its hero, Jack Bauer, often engaging in anti-terror tactics which, in the real world, many of us would find repugnant; Frank Miller, who wrote some of the most memorable and gritty Batman stories of the modern era, proposed a "Batman fights Al-Qaeda" comic which, thankfully, seems to have fallen by the wayside and been resurrected as his own project on some indie publisher. (No one objected to Batman fighting terrorists -- and indeed, he's doing a bit of that now in Batman Inc., but many feared the reactionary streak that Miller's exhibited from time to time.) And there have been myriad others examples of the War on Terror being translated into a pop-culture context, many as explicit as Bauer, others more implicit, such as the Homeland Security angle on Fringe. Terror, and anti-terror tactics, have become a reality to the American mind, and popular culture has reflected that.
But then, there was a curious phenomenon that happened along the way: sometimes, with varying degrees of success, the heroes became terrorists. In their way, anyway. At least in any cases worth discussing, they weren't willy-nilly harming innocents, but they were up in arms fighting guerrilla wars against some sort of authority.
Perhaps the most striking, and occasionally contrived, version of this was Marvel Comics' Civil War comic book event, where a dubious government action divided superheroes into antagonistic factions -- some siding with the government, some opposing. The comics took strains to try and equally weight the argument, but let's face facts: the anti-government forces got all the cool heroes: Wolverine, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Spider-Man (eventually) and Capt. frigging America. Capt. America's traditional function in a comic book is to denote who the good guys are. The pro-authority side got Iron Man (famously a recovering alcoholic billionaire) and Henry "Ant Man" Pym (famously a disgraced superhero who was kicked off the Avengers for beating his wife. Sure, they got Reed Richards, too, but his own wife and brother-in-law went over to Cap's side, and his best friend, The Thing, told both sides to go hang and went off to France for the best single issue in the whole damn story. The point of the whole thing seemed to be "the man always wins, but hey. All the cool kids distrust authority. Which? Message I can get behind, actually.
Eventually, the whole thing wound down and only Black Goliath died (but now his nephew has taken over the role, and he's just "Goliath." See earlier blog post.) Oh, and Capt. America got shot. But he's better now. And eventually, even though authority won, everyone was more or less on the outside, because the Green friggin' Goblin effectively took over the government. (It gets weird. There should be charts.) Point being, pretty much every superhero in the Marvel Universe was effectively labeled a terrorist, until Capt. America came back from the dead and pulled everybody together to kick ass.
I'm not sure why writers Mike Millar, who wrote Civil War, and Brian Michael Bendis who wrote the last part of that, called Dark Reign, saw fit to cast Marvel's heroes in the light of being terrorists. Maybe they were trying to understand what would drive someone to that extreme. Maybe it was simply the idea that, in this day and age, being labeled a terrorist seems the most insurmountable thing imaginable. But the Avengers and the other Marvel heroes weren't the only ones struggling with life on the terrorist side of pubic opinion. As pointed out ably by Annalee Newitz, Harry Potter and friends become "terrorists for justice" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (and is certainly labeled "Undesirable No. 1" by the Voldemort-controlled Ministry), and on Fringe, Olivia Dunham and her team are viewed as terrorists in a war that might only exist in one person's head when they invade an alternate universe to retrieve a kidnapped Peter Bishop.
It's an interesting bit of semiotics, used with varying degrees of success: on the one hand, if a hero -- whom the audience is assured has noble intentions through dramatic irony -- has to use terrorist tactics to achieve his goals, is he still a hero? And if she's not really a terrorist, but is labeled as such, does that stigma brand her? Their thorny questions, that when handled well, make one see shades of complexity in the world, or at least see that few actually see themselves as villains. Of course, Harry Potter's not going around blowing up train stations.
This is perhaps handled most poorly in the TV show V, which I'll admit to still being fond of. Writes Charlie Anders:
"While watching last night's V episode, something sort of clicked into place for me, about why the new series just isn't quite working: our heroes are creating a resistance group, rather than a public-relations campaign. Seriously, twice during last night's episode, someone asked a really simple question: 'Name one bad thing the Visitors have done since they got here.' And both times, Erica looked like she'd just been asked the capital of Lithuania. This shouldn't be a hard question to answer."
Indeed, and in pondering that question, it suddenly seems clear that the heroes of "V" need a Julian Assange more than they need terror-weapons, politician denouncements of his being a terrorist and awkward sex scandals aside. But in examining this question, Anders hits on the heart of the matter:
"You run a resistance against a successful invasion — which this isn't... yet, anyway," says Anders. "You run a resistance against a government that's turned despotic. You do not run a resistance movement against people who claim to come in peace but are actually up to something nefarious but nebulous. It's the wrong set of tactics. Blowing shit up and killing people is not going to win the PR war."
This is the realization that Capt. America comes to at the end of the Civil War, and eventually, when he's proved right about a lot, he gets rewarded by being America's new top cop. After, of course, the Green Goblin is ousted. And Harry Potter is fighting a suddenly despotic regime that is persecuting people and spreading murder and oppression. And Olivia Dunham might be labeled a terrorist in the alternate universe, but really, she has no interest in waging war against an alternate Earth, and indeed, makes it clear that she believes both Earth's can be saved (a sentiment echoed separately by Peter Bishop.
And perhaps, the realization and actualization of limits to that line of thinking may be what separates a hero from a monster. And make no mistake -- going all the way back to ancient Greece -- that line can be thinner than one might think.
But then, there was a curious phenomenon that happened along the way: sometimes, with varying degrees of success, the heroes became terrorists. In their way, anyway. At least in any cases worth discussing, they weren't willy-nilly harming innocents, but they were up in arms fighting guerrilla wars against some sort of authority.
Perhaps the most striking, and occasionally contrived, version of this was Marvel Comics' Civil War comic book event, where a dubious government action divided superheroes into antagonistic factions -- some siding with the government, some opposing. The comics took strains to try and equally weight the argument, but let's face facts: the anti-government forces got all the cool heroes: Wolverine, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Spider-Man (eventually) and Capt. frigging America. Capt. America's traditional function in a comic book is to denote who the good guys are. The pro-authority side got Iron Man (famously a recovering alcoholic billionaire) and Henry "Ant Man" Pym (famously a disgraced superhero who was kicked off the Avengers for beating his wife. Sure, they got Reed Richards, too, but his own wife and brother-in-law went over to Cap's side, and his best friend, The Thing, told both sides to go hang and went off to France for the best single issue in the whole damn story. The point of the whole thing seemed to be "the man always wins, but hey. All the cool kids distrust authority. Which? Message I can get behind, actually.
Eventually, the whole thing wound down and only Black Goliath died (but now his nephew has taken over the role, and he's just "Goliath." See earlier blog post.) Oh, and Capt. America got shot. But he's better now. And eventually, even though authority won, everyone was more or less on the outside, because the Green friggin' Goblin effectively took over the government. (It gets weird. There should be charts.) Point being, pretty much every superhero in the Marvel Universe was effectively labeled a terrorist, until Capt. America came back from the dead and pulled everybody together to kick ass.
I'm not sure why writers Mike Millar, who wrote Civil War, and Brian Michael Bendis who wrote the last part of that, called Dark Reign, saw fit to cast Marvel's heroes in the light of being terrorists. Maybe they were trying to understand what would drive someone to that extreme. Maybe it was simply the idea that, in this day and age, being labeled a terrorist seems the most insurmountable thing imaginable. But the Avengers and the other Marvel heroes weren't the only ones struggling with life on the terrorist side of pubic opinion. As pointed out ably by Annalee Newitz, Harry Potter and friends become "terrorists for justice" in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (and is certainly labeled "Undesirable No. 1" by the Voldemort-controlled Ministry), and on Fringe, Olivia Dunham and her team are viewed as terrorists in a war that might only exist in one person's head when they invade an alternate universe to retrieve a kidnapped Peter Bishop.
It's an interesting bit of semiotics, used with varying degrees of success: on the one hand, if a hero -- whom the audience is assured has noble intentions through dramatic irony -- has to use terrorist tactics to achieve his goals, is he still a hero? And if she's not really a terrorist, but is labeled as such, does that stigma brand her? Their thorny questions, that when handled well, make one see shades of complexity in the world, or at least see that few actually see themselves as villains. Of course, Harry Potter's not going around blowing up train stations.
This is perhaps handled most poorly in the TV show V, which I'll admit to still being fond of. Writes Charlie Anders:
"While watching last night's V episode, something sort of clicked into place for me, about why the new series just isn't quite working: our heroes are creating a resistance group, rather than a public-relations campaign. Seriously, twice during last night's episode, someone asked a really simple question: 'Name one bad thing the Visitors have done since they got here.' And both times, Erica looked like she'd just been asked the capital of Lithuania. This shouldn't be a hard question to answer."
Indeed, and in pondering that question, it suddenly seems clear that the heroes of "V" need a Julian Assange more than they need terror-weapons, politician denouncements of his being a terrorist and awkward sex scandals aside. But in examining this question, Anders hits on the heart of the matter:
"You run a resistance against a successful invasion — which this isn't... yet, anyway," says Anders. "You run a resistance against a government that's turned despotic. You do not run a resistance movement against people who claim to come in peace but are actually up to something nefarious but nebulous. It's the wrong set of tactics. Blowing shit up and killing people is not going to win the PR war."
This is the realization that Capt. America comes to at the end of the Civil War, and eventually, when he's proved right about a lot, he gets rewarded by being America's new top cop. After, of course, the Green Goblin is ousted. And Harry Potter is fighting a suddenly despotic regime that is persecuting people and spreading murder and oppression. And Olivia Dunham might be labeled a terrorist in the alternate universe, but really, she has no interest in waging war against an alternate Earth, and indeed, makes it clear that she believes both Earth's can be saved (a sentiment echoed separately by Peter Bishop.
And perhaps, the realization and actualization of limits to that line of thinking may be what separates a hero from a monster. And make no mistake -- going all the way back to ancient Greece -- that line can be thinner than one might think.
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