As it happens, I do know the writer’s take on Superman. He doesn’t like him much.
I follow Phil Sandifer’s blog fairly closely. He writes a lot about Doctor Who and about comics by people like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. I think that he has a lot of interesting, insightful, and often challenging things to say. But I will admit, sometimes he comes across as almost a parody of the caricatured “academic leftist.” He was, in fact, an academic (he has a PhD in English, focusing on film and media studies) before he decided to become a full-time writer.
So I think his objections to Captain America do come from the idea of putting forth a blond, blue-eyed, “Aryan” type as the ideal American, and from the idea of “America” itself as a standard for the world to rally around. As he says in his follow-up, it’s not 1941 anymore, and the very phrase “Captain America” means something different today than it did then.
As for Superman? Well, in his review of Man of Steel, he essentially said that since Clark Kent was raised by Kansas farmers with middle-American values, we should logically expect Superman to be a narrow-minded, racist, homophobic religious fundamentalist. So you know where his political sympathies lie.
I thought about linking to Sandifer’s post on Man of Steel, but I’m not really trying to start a board war or anything like that. Sandifer’s not for everyone, but he can be a very interesting read.
Not exactly breaking news. Those of us old enough know that Captain America’s world was destroyed by Vietnam and Nixon. (And, to a much smaller extent, civil rights and the urban riots.) He quit, took a new identity, came back, partnered with the Falcon, and got tossed around the Marvel universe for decades. In the silly Bush-era Civil Wars brouhaha, Cap was the symbol of real American values - against the government, so he went underground. An underground rebel Captain America is interesting in a way reminiscent of the Revolution War days - and phony in a bigger way, as the Revolutionaries were public and put their lives on the line - and I gather that he’s put in a similar position in the new movie.
Saying that the government has gone bad and needs real American values is problematic for a number of reasons. Half the population had never agreed with that political standpoint. The writers have never been able to invent a slate of “real” American values for Cap that are consistent. No real world government of either party ever lives up to those values, so Cap can’t be a representative of any government, which makes him a different character than what he was created to be.
But. If you start with the premise that he fighting against the establishment who have perverted real American values, his status is almost negated *unless *he is portrayed as a member of that establishment who is rebelling against like individuals. Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King in the 60s successfully challenged the establishment, but as outsiders fighting a place on the inside. It’s easy to imagine any number of characters today to do that role. Not Cap, though. Cap has to be an archetypal insider or he is nothing at all.
What’s interesting is that you could replace “Captain America” with “Superman” almost all the way through that. DC has an alien with all of Superman’s powers - J’onn J’onzz [John Jones!!!] - but who looks alien. He’s a minor character because he represents nothing that we care about. (The Hulk doesn’t look like us and is a major character, but has the role of misunderstood monster. You can’t imagine Hulk giving a speech at the UN.) Superman looks like the insider’s insider - and has to. Steel and the other black Supermen have roles, but started out really as nothing more than super-powered versions of Shaft, community insiders.
We say that the culture has changed. It has in multiple important ways and new characters are desperately needed to represent those changes. What hasn’t changed is the insider establishment. If you need an insider to comment on that, you’re forced to use a white male. And what’s really deep down interesting about Cap - that Sandifer and the critic he’s commenting on don’t get - is how profoundly transcultural the underlying ideal of superior American values are. It’s what has drawn all those tens of millions of immigrants to America. It’s why Superman as an immigrant is so primal. Is there today a contradiction with representing those ideals with a white male face? Yes, and no. No because it’s utterly critical today to make the statement “we’re not all like that.” Being a white male is not inherently “racist and xenophobic.” The duty of all white American males is to fight that stereotype with every ounce of our powers.
I don’t know if the Cap movie does any of this. I don’t even know if I’m going to see it. Doesn’t matter. There’s a concept somewhere out there near Cap that’s correct, whether the execution succeeds or not. Replace Cap with a new Cap if you want. Just don’t get all upset if the new Cap winds up looking like Katniss Everdeen.
Phil Sandifer is a racist piece of shit. You cannot be a decent human being and think “It’s okay to have a perfect and flawless character, but only if they’re not white.”
I’m against these overhauls, and I say this as someone who would far prefer to go watch a movie about a superheroine than a superhero. I’d be pissed if we got a Secret Six movie and they replaced Scandal Savage with a guy, and I see no reason not to extend the same courtesy to fans of other characters.
If you make too many changes in a superhero’s origin story, then it is no longer the same superhero.
Captain America is a product of WWII ideals about what the archetypical soldier should be and look like. The amount of contortions and handwaving that one would have to go through for him to be anything but a waspy white guy invalidate the whole concept of Captain America.* He has to be a waspy white guy. There is no other reasonable option. And that is okay.
Now there are other superheroes who’s basic backstories would allow them to be other races/ethnicities. Peter Parker was a nerdy kid who was into photography, being raised in a working-class neighborhood by his aunt and uncle, who got bit by some kind of mutant spider, right? There is nothing there that would preclude him from being any race/ethnicity at all. I’ve heard there’s been discussion of a black Spiderman and a lot of people think it’s a horrible idea. I see no issues with that. (If they made him Korean, he could be Peter Park. )
The Joe Louis comparison doesn’t work. Joe Louis was already wildly famous so they used him for propaganda. Steve Rogers was a nobody.
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