Are Superheroes Inherently Fascist

[CharlesPhipps]

I DO know of a few fictional works that framed the Reich as what it really was: a bunch of pulp-adventure-obsessed man-children trying to make their insane LARP setting real. JoJo Rabbit is the big recent one, but there are many others.


youtu.be/bmFVnt4yusU

The thing is that Hitler banned Pulp fiction as he considered it trash and he had delusions of eloquence and classical opera/mythology.

https://gizmodo.com/pulp-science-fictio ... sm-5960383

"But the German government deemed Harst too “intellectual” and pressured Verlag Moderner Lektüre, the publisher of Der Detektiv, to change Harst. Kabel refused to do so, and Verlag Moderner Lektüre ordered Kabel to kill Harst, which Kabel abruptly did in Der Detektiv #372, the pulp’s final issue. The American pulp comparison would have been the American government ordering the death of The Shadow."

"In 1935, the government passed a strict preventative censorship law which required that all magazines be submitted to the government for approval before publication. The pulp publishers’ response was to try their trick of twenty years’ previous: change the names of the pulps but not the content of the pulps. The government’s censors were not fooled, and the government, angered, put much greater pressure on the publishers. And then the government proclaimed 1936 to be “the Year of the German Jungvolk,” with the aims that all of the German children and teenagers who were not already part of Hitler Youth would join it, and that all youth dissidence and all causes of youth dissidence would be eliminated."

"Not every German pulp with fantastic content turned fascist. Up until their end, in 1939, both Tom Shark and John Kling remained as free as realistically possible of fascist content. (The lack of pro-Nazi ideology is what got Tom Shark cancelled, in fact–the German government ordered its cancellation on those grounds). "

[Jonathan101]

I DO know of a few fictional works that framed the Reich as what it really was: a bunch of pulp-adventure-obsessed man-children trying to make their insane LARP setting real. JoJo Rabbit is the big recent one, but there are many others.


youtu.be/bmFVnt4yusU

The thing is that Hitler banned Pulp fiction as he considered it trash and he had delusions of eloquence and classical opera/mythology.

https://gizmodo.com/pulp-science-fictio ... sm-5960383

"But the German government deemed Harst too “intellectual” and pressured Verlag Moderner Lektüre, the publisher of Der Detektiv, to change Harst. Kabel refused to do so, and Verlag Moderner Lektüre ordered Kabel to kill Harst, which Kabel abruptly did in Der Detektiv #372, the pulp’s final issue. The American pulp comparison would have been the American government ordering the death of The Shadow."

"In 1935, the government passed a strict preventative censorship law which required that all magazines be submitted to the government for approval before publication. The pulp publishers’ response was to try their trick of twenty years’ previous: change the names of the pulps but not the content of the pulps. The government’s censors were not fooled, and the government, angered, put much greater pressure on the publishers. And then the government proclaimed 1936 to be “the Year of the German Jungvolk,” with the aims that all of the German children and teenagers who were not already part of Hitler Youth would join it, and that all youth dissidence and all causes of youth dissidence would be eliminated."

"Not every German pulp with fantastic content turned fascist. Up until their end, in 1939, both Tom Shark and John Kling remained as free as realistically possible of fascist content. (The lack of pro-Nazi ideology is what got Tom Shark cancelled, in fact–the German government ordered its cancellation on those grounds). "

Nothing in that link you posted indicates that Hitler hated pulp or that the Nazi's banned it.

It just says that the Nazi's (and to a lesser extent, Imperial Germany before them) wanted the pulp that was published to be more pro-Nazi and pro-German and that everything had to be submitted to government censors for approval- the ones that suitably altered themselves were published without issue.

Hitler loved opera and mythology, but he also loved the cowboy novels of Karl May and Disney cartoons (at least until Disney started mocking him). I'm not aware of anything saying he hated pulp so long as it was ideologically correct or at least neutral.

[clearspira]

Umberto Eco is a survivor of Mussolini's Italy and his definition of fascism was the definitive one in a lot of circles but the irony is that fascism actually has a shifting definition by NATURE. That's due to the fact that the original fascist philosophy went through several shifts by its FOUNDERS. Mussolini created a somewhat rambling "Make Italy an Empire again" with an economic policy of absolute government control that Hitler had somewhat similar before altering it several times.

This is something that academics struggle with because they like things in neat tidy little boxes but Umberto Eco says that misses the point of fascism being an EMOTION-based philosophy. It is essentially not something that stands up against rigorous argument and in fact argues against it. If you want a short definition, it is, "A reactionary angry at the world philosophy that pledges allegiance to a single godlike figure, creates a tribalistic group it exalts, and argues that things were far better in a mythologized past."

Fascism is basically a name given to the preexisting extreme nationalism, cults of personality, and reactionary racism that has probably existed since time memorial. It's more a set of concepts than a coherent philosophy and inherently anti-intellectual because the whole point is, "I feel oppressed and want to lash out at everything until Leader makes everything better."

The thing is that Leftists with an ax to grind against superheroes are falling into the trap of wanting to lash out against popular culture. Superheroes are often viewed as tools of the Establishment, Pro-Cop, and traditionalist in their values. This is due to the Comics Book Code. However, this mostly refers to the very specific time of the 1950s and 1960s DC comics as Marvel went to a counter-culture direction and vaguely pro-hippie and college as Sixties. Before, comics were very Pro-New Deal and anti-Hitler.

Leftist Pacifist antipulps also claim they glorify vigilantism and violence, which they've associated with the KKK. Alan Moore, of course, drew a comparison with Hooded Justice and the KKK. Alan Moore, of course, is British and doesn't realize that black and Hispanic Americans ALSO have traditions of real life vigilantism and this is partially why they made the changes to Hooded Justice for the Watchmen TV series.

I greatly suspect that the people who hold the view that superheroes are fascist haven't actually read a mainstream comic book in twenty years. ''Traditionalist in their views'' is absolutely out of the window as they have been cosmopolitan for a LONG time. Years, bordering on decades at this point. And as for being pro-cop, the days of Batman having a red telephone hotline to the Commissioner of police is LONG gone.

Superheroes often create more problems than they solve nowadays to the point of being the direct cause of the danger - which in my opinion is actually a far more interesting topic of conversation. Would we all be safer if they just buggered off and left us to it? This seems to neatly describe a considerable number of superhero films in recent years.

In addition, if we are not sticking solely to American superheroes here, Shonen anime and manga is nothing alike in tone. Their heroes generally fight for their friends, family and honour - the honour of being a good person, the honour of doing the right thing, the honour of strength of courage. More often than not, it is actually the government who are the antagonists. This may be one of the reasons why Shonen is so much more popular than American comic books nowadays.

[ProfessorDetective]

I greatly suspect that the people who hold the view that superheroes are fascist haven't actually read a mainstream comic book in twenty years. ''Traditionalist in their views'' is absolutely out of the window as they have been cosmopolitan for a LONG time. Years, bordering on decades at this point. And as for being pro-cop, the days of Batman having a red telephone hotline to the Commissioner of police is LONG gone.

Well, yeah. NOW it's an secret encrypted cell phone specifically for Gordon.

[Winter]

To go over to The Boys and it's take on Superheroes, which certainly has played a part in this view of it as I pointed out before, one thing that I find so funny which I also pointed out is how the series ended up having a massive fascist and MAGA following despite being, itself, anti-fascist.

In fact the number of fans who were extreme far right where greater then those for the heroes Kripke claimed to have a larger following. In fact I was surprised how many far right following Kripke and Ennis have despite utterly loathing them. Now that's changed in recent years when these idiots finally realized they were being made fun of but Ennis' work is rather interesting to examine from this argument.

One issue I have with a lot of Ennis' work that is more focused on historical works which are usually well researched is he often buys into the lies about Nazi Germany. He presents the Nazis as this near unstoppable killing machine that might as well have lasers and super weapons that dwarf most of our tech today.

While it is true that the Nazis had some advantages over the Allies it was often a case of being very advanced but highly impractical, hard to maintain and not as effective as what the allies were using. The tanks were a good example of this as while the Nazis had some of the most dangerous tanks they were harder to produce whereas the tanks the Allies were using where less advanced but more practical.

Ennis has actually gotten angry when this has been pointed out to him, saying that such is either determined to re-write history, a card-carrying idiot, or a Nazi collaborator who wants to sucker card-carrying idiotic Allies into a trap.

This reminds me of Lindsay Ellis' point she made about how often Nazis fall in love with series that, unintentionally, glorify the Nazis. Things like Inglorious Bastards or American History X that are very much against the Nazis but end up making some part of the Nazis look cool and badass.

This isn't the intent of the filmmakers but as is often the case intent doesn't matter only consequences.

And that's the problem with shows like The Boys, as much as it stands against fascism it makes those who follow it out to be super dangerous, powerful and a little bit badass. Thankfully that's not the majority of the fanbase (I really love how in Death Battle fans of the Boys were expecting Homelander to lose and found it oh so satisfying). But the fact that it had such a large Extreme Far Right fanbase is kinda hilarious because this show is a meant as a take that to a genre the creators of this series hate only to have a larger EFR following then that which they hate.

[CharlesPhipps]

Nothing in that link you posted indicates that Hitler hated pulp or that the Nazi's banned it.

It just says that the Nazi's (and to a lesser extent, Imperial Germany before them) wanted the pulp that was published to be more pro-Nazi and pro-German and that everything had to be submitted to government censors for approval- the ones that suitably altered themselves were published without issue.

Hitler loved opera and mythology, but he also loved the cowboy novels of Karl May and Disney cartoons (at least until Disney started mocking him). I'm not aware of anything saying he hated pulp so long as it was ideologically correct or at least neutral.

The Pulps were mostly driven out of business except for the most die-hard Nazi ones and then they got banned too. The first part was a summary.

[CharlesPhipps]

To go over to The Boys and it's take on Superheroes, which certainly has played a part in this view of it as I pointed out before, one thing that I find so funny which I also pointed out is how the series ended up having a massive fascist and MAGA following despite being, itself, anti-fascist.

I agree but I think you're a bit overly harsh on them.

In college, I did an essay I wish I'd kept which was basically that fascists and anti-fascists have fundamentally different requirements from their media so they don't have a problem with liking the same things message wise.

Rather than try to recreate it, I actually will use Roger Ebert's review of THE CHAMBER which he utterly hated despite it being an anti-KKK movie.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-chamber-1996

"I have heard all of Cayhall’s clichés before, but they have pretty much disappeared from general use in America, and there will be some younger audience members hearing them for the first time. How will these words affect them? In both “A Time to Kill” and “The Chamber,” the Ku Klux Klan, with its secret meetings and ghostly costumes, is presented in a way that is technically negative but could seem thrilling. The films portray the Klan as criminal, racist and anonymous, but those have always been its selling points; it is not portrayed as boring and stupid."

In THE BOYS case, the Seven are humanized and portrayed as incredibly rich and successful. They do evil things but with the exception of the Deep, who has his own fans, none of them are really living a particularly uninteresting life. They're also more colorful and interesting than the Boys themselves who are a bunch of obsessive basement dwellers plotting their revenge on Voight. I'd argue that Kripke's version makes the Seven far more entertaining than the heroes who are still a fascist CIA death squad. Ennis' own Boys was far worse but he wasn't interested in general social critique so much as attacking the concept of superheroes period.

[clearspira]

To go over to The Boys and it's take on Superheroes, which certainly has played a part in this view of it as I pointed out before, one thing that I find so funny which I also pointed out is how the series ended up having a massive fascist and MAGA following despite being, itself, anti-fascist.

I agree but I think you're a bit overly harsh on them.

In college, I did an essay I wish I'd kept which was basically that fascists and anti-fascists have fundamentally different requirements from their media so they don't have a problem with liking the same things message wise.

Rather than try to recreate it, I actually will use Roger Ebert's review of THE CHAMBER which he utterly hated despite it being an anti-KKK movie.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-chamber-1996

"I have heard all of Cayhall’s clichés before, but they have pretty much disappeared from general use in America, and there will be some younger audience members hearing them for the first time. How will these words affect them? In both “A Time to Kill” and “The Chamber,” the Ku Klux Klan, with its secret meetings and ghostly costumes, is presented in a way that is technically negative but could seem thrilling. The films portray the Klan as criminal, racist and anonymous, but those have always been its selling points; it is not portrayed as boring and stupid."

In THE BOYS case, the Seven are humanized and portrayed as incredibly rich and successful. They do evil things but with the exception of the Deep, who has his own fans, none of them are really living a particularly uninteresting life. They're also more colorful and interesting than the Boys themselves who are a bunch of obsessive basement dwellers plotting their revenge on Voight. I'd argue that Kripke's version makes the Seven far more entertaining than the heroes who are still a fascist CIA death squad. Ennis' own Boys was far worse but he wasn't interested in general social critique so much as attacking the concept of superheroes period.

In my personal opinion I do not think that there is a bone of social critique in either version of The Boys. They are in fact everything that I consider wrong with modern entertainment. Between this and Joker, I would like to know why male rape was suddenly in vogue once again in 2024. I hoped we were starting to move away from this crap since MeToo, but no.

Watchmen is a better critique (the actual comic version of Watchmen, the tv series in my opinion is trying to be just as edgy as The Boys just in a different way) but even then it is too extreme to really take seriously. Half of everyone in it is a white supremacist or a homophobe.

I'm really not certain that any superhero critique or breakdown has ever 100% worked - mostly because there is nothing to actually break down. 9 times out of 10 they are just good people trying to help others. Normally what ends up happening in one of these ''superhero critiques'' is that someone purposely invents an asshole calling himself a superhero and then goes ''See! See! Look at this strawman of all superheroes that I invented, aren't they such monsters?''

Although I will say if you want to see this done halfway decently I will once again point towards Manga. What I like about ''My Hero Academia'' is that their Superman stand-in All Might was too good. He brought in an era of peace and prosperity for Japan that was basically hinged entirely upon his ridiculous levels of power stopping every problem before it began. Once he was forced to retire then society ended up worse than it was before him as it really could not cope without his ever-present hand and all he had actually managed to do was to drive the supervillains underground.

He also did very much reinforce the rules of society as opposed to trying to change them which, yes, could be a ''maybe'' argument for being authoritarian, but he himself just did what he did because he is a nice bloke. It causes him physical pain to see others in danger. This is what I call a complex character because he was misguided in his approach to heroism rather than a fascist. Which describes a lot of American heroes too imo.

[Winter]

I'm really not certain that any superhero critique or breakdown has ever 100% worked - mostly because there is nothing to actually break down. 9 times out of 10 they are just good people trying to help others. Normally what ends up happening in one of these ''superhero critiques'' is that someone purposely invents an asshole calling himself a superhero and then goes ''See! See! Look at this strawman of all superheroes that I invented, aren't they such monsters?''

I think the only time I've ever read a superhero deconstruction and or critique (or cape-punk as it's sometimes called) has been Superman vs. The Elite (which was a deconstruction of a deconstruction so I'm not sure that even counts) and Dreadnought.

Dreadnought and it's sequel Sovereign are interesting to me because it's feels like a direct response to The Boys. Some heroes are more interested in good publicity then actually doing anything, some are jerks or outright monsters who are heroes in name only and some are heroes but with dark secrets.

One story plot I remember in Sovereign was the big twist of how Valkyrja managed to stay alive for so long which was it was her sorta possessing her daughters every time she died. She doesn't completely takeover but the people her daughters were start to lose themselves as they become one with their mother's mind. And it's clear that Valkyrja doesn't like this and wishes it never had to come to this, even praising Danny for comforting her daughter who's she merging with.

And Danny herself is interesting as she is clearly a Superman Expy and a unique take on the whole Superman Expy thing.

We've all heard this one before, What If Superman Was Evil, and it got old really quick. This idea quickly lost it's traction and most got board with it and the ongoing issue with it is that in order for this to work, as you pointed out, the Evil Superman in question has to stripped of everything that makes him who he is in order for the argument to work.

Another interview in relation to The Boys highlighted why this happens. I can't remember if it was Kripke or Ennis but it was in relation to how someone like Superman couldn't exist. That anyone who had that many people praising him with that sort of power he would be a sociopath which was clearly more realistic.

One problem with this, in order to Homelander to be like this the series HAD to give him a shit childhood, where he never new real love and affection. It wasn't the praise he got or the powers he had that made him that way it was how he was raised because big shock treating a child like shit often creates problems with how they develop as adults.

And this kept happening. In order to make Superman evil he has shit parents or is naturally evil right off the bat.

Danny, as issues thanks in large part to her parents mistreating her which only got worse when she came out of the closet as a trangirl. And yet despite all that she's a hero. She does what she can to help others because it's the right thing to do.

The scene where she saves a plane, saves her father, spares her enemy, saves her friends or fights off mechs is not done because she wants to hear people praise her but because she feels she HAS to do something. When asked why she wants to be a superhero when she can just be a fire fighter which would be far less risky for her Danny feels that she cannot do that because she has the power to do more then that.

And yet there are those darker elements to her. The fact that she likes to fight, the fact that she enjoys being able to hurt people. That she breaks into someone's home to threaten them because they're causing her problems are all presented as bad and flaws she needs to overcome.

And yet, it works. I mentioned before how I would love to see Danny and her cast join the Marvel Universe, develop a father/daughter relationship with Captain America, be best friends with Miles Morals, hang out with Ms. Marvel all while needing to deal with Dr. Doom, Green Goblin and Magneto. Or be one of the few superheroes that J Johan Jameson gives a bit of leeway because he might be an asshole but he's no transpho.

But that then leads back to the issue that making a proper Cape Punk series is impossible because you need to change so much about these characters that it's impossible to make them a perfect expy of these characters because they just don't fit with these characters.

[CharlesPhipps]

One problem with this, in order to Homelander to be like this the series HAD to give him a shit childhood, where he never new real love and affection. It wasn't the praise he got or the powers he had that made him that way it was how he was raised because big shock treating a child like shit often creates problems with how they develop as adults.

And this kept happening. In order to make Superman evil he has shit parents or is naturally evil right off the bat.

Eh, in real life, we have ample examples of child actors being used and controlled until they become selfish self-destructive disasters before spiraling. I recommend Seanan Maguire's "Velveteen Versus" for example of how to depict a thoroughly horrifying Voight-like corporation without going overboard.

In my Supervillainy Saga books, you have heroes divided more along the types of politics. Fascists make their own superheroes with the Nineties full of antihero substitutes and extremist reactionary types working for the government. But there's a diversity of types among "heroes" and their fandom. The Punisher equivalent was raised up by his fans despite being a psychopathic asshole.

But there's a prettty big deconstruction of Homelander needing a bad childhood or tragedy in BRIGHTBURN by Mark Gunn (brother of James). He's just a kid driven insane by the power and revelation he's an alien.