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Image source: http://collider.com/avengers-age-of-ultron-images/
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“Dada haath thakte mukh kyano?” is a popular Bengali saying
that roughly translates as why waste your words when you can simply beat the
other person up. This quasi-rhetorical line of encouragement seems to snugly
fit into the designs of the modern global American culture of anti-intellectualism,
of not thinking, just doing.
Mythology, science fiction, superhero films, or any kind of
didactic narrative in general has always basked in the comfort of a populist
skepticism against ambition and intellect. If ever it prescribes intelligence,
it does so in too humble, less-than-moderate portions. The perfect example
would be Bruegel’s Fall of Icarus. Superhero films, like science fiction, also
exemplifies the same anxiety that intellect and ambition disturbs social
equilibrium, and therefore must ultimately be evil. The ideological machinery
finds it easier to break, demolish, and flatten out, rather than to engage in
any discourse with, any radical subversive voice.
Take the two Norse half brothers for example – Thor and
Loki. Raised in the same household, they are diametrically opposite. In the
Beginning of Thor (2011), Thor is vain, burly, strong, brutish, indulging in
revelry, but also virtuous, obedient, and familial; and learns the value of
humility and duty by the end of the film. Loki, on the other hand, is
intelligent to the point of being sly. He is also a little restless, arrogant,
jilted, ambitious, and has the gumption to realize his ambitions; hence
dangerous, and ultimately evil. By the end of the film, he is cast into the
abyss by Thor and by the end of The Avengers (2012), he has ended up in a pile of
rubble in Tony Stark’s skyscraper. He has been committed to this ‘rightful
place’ by none other than the Incredible Hulk, the suprememost example of
mindless brute force.
By almost a rule of thumb, all villains worth their salt are
extremely intelligent (read deviously cunning), verbose, ambitious, brave in
not-a-foolhardy way, and in the end fallible to self-pride and vanity. In the
final confrontation between Hulk and Loki, Loki is exasperated by the lowliness
of a ‘dull creature’ like Hulk and chooses to silence and neutralize him with a
speech about his superiority. But the regal aristocratic Loki thoroughly
underestimates the zealous unthinkingness of a smashing-class-superhero like
Hulk, and is repeatedly pummeled into the ground the next second. The scene robs
the beauty in evil and makes brute force and dumb goodness pose in the borrowed
robes of that beauty.
Superheroes are the perfect emissaries of the superfast
advertisement-span American culture, devoid of the virtues of slowness. Advertisements
tell us never to stop, never settle, to move on, to imagine life as a
constantly mobile, sped up, jittery existence, as if anything else is
tantamount to death. The message of superhero films are also dangerously close,
and sometimes the same. Superheroes tell us to stop thinking, and just do it (Nike
runs by the same motto). Thinking is for villains, the likes of Joker and Loki.
Even when they do think, like Tony Stark does in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015),
it is bound to end up horribly screwed and threaten the existence of the ‘world
as we know it’.
I am in no way endorsing the humanity-annihilating or
enslaving schemes of Loki or the chaos-fetishism of the Joker; I don’t think
that they would be even hypothetically fun. What I am trying to get at is an
argument for the importance of thought, and intelligence. At the risk of
essentialising, I think what superhero films do is undermine the importance of
thought, of intelligence, of dialogue, of discourse and put all weight on blunt
action, unilateral goodwill, and forceful enforcement of the state ideological
machinery and status quo that would produce more and more zombie-like citizens
to fuel the state apparatus. We should be more supportive of intellect. We
should have more faith on words, on thought, on conversation. Perhaps we should
not just keep moving, but take it slow, think more, do less.
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