The Superhero movie is both a protest against and an example of the takeover of everything by an all-encompassing, mediocre and corrupt technocracy.
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In the 1980s, marketers believed that Americans were in the mood to buy transparent products.
This was the “clear craze”.
At its height, in the early 1990s, the clear craze represented the marketing of purity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_craze
The clear craze was a marketing fad from the late 1980s to early 2000s, often equating transparency with purity. Inspired by Ivory‘s “99 and 44/100 percent pure” campaign for bath soap, and by low-calorie or “light” beverages, sodas were redesigned in the 1980s and 1990s as being free of artificial dyes, such as the caffeine-free and preservative-free Crystal Pepsi. Personal hygiene products were then relaunched as clear dye-free gels, and many electronics have transparent cases.
Since the development of plastics, there was always the odd transparent product that was designed to showcase its internal mechanics.
Since the introduction of Plexiglas in the late 1930s, devices have been made with clear shells to expose the electromechanical components inside. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, a 139 Pontiac Deluxe Six engine with a clear Plexiglas body was on display.[1][2] Peaking in the 1960s and 1970s, transparent-shelled devices fell out of fashion until the clear craze in the late 1980s. Following the breakup of the Bell System in the mid 1980s, a surge of manufacturers began creating phones, many of them transparent and having flashing neon lights when the phone rings.
The clear craze was grafted onto the diet craze of the 1980s in the marketing of low-calorie beer.
A trend of “light” beer with fewer calories started in the 1960s. Then, color was identified in the marketing industry as a “tool for visual persuasion” toward a product’s purity and health consciousness. Ivory soap was adapted from its classic milky solution and its slogan of “99 and 44/100 percent pure”.[4] This led up the clear craze starting in the 1980s. To showcase the reduction of calories or artificial flavors, many companies released clear versions of their products.
However, the transparency of the beer was linked to its “lite”-ness, not to its healthiness.
It was in the soft-drink market of the early 1990s that the clear craze came into its own in terms of the marketing of purity.
The clear cola market was entered by Crystal Pepsi on April 13, 1992[5] featuring no preservatives or caffeine, although the existing Pepsi also did not have preservatives, and a caffeine-free version was already available.[4][6]Coca-Cola soon responded with Tab Clear.[7] In August 1992, Coors announced Zima, a clear, carbonated malt beer and in 1993, Miller released Miller Clear to mixed reviews.
However, it turned out that Americans considered transparent things to be quirky novelty items.
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Why did marketers believe that purity (or, at least, its appearance) would be a selling point in the early 1990s?
At the time, marketers explained that the USA was emerging from the HIV-AIDS pandemic, and Americans (supposedly) yearned for purity.
(At least, that’s what some guy on the PBS NewsHour explained back then.)
Historically, pandemics brought in their wake a new emphasis on cleanliness and purity.
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One can see a precursor in this kind of hygiene-oriented design in the aftermath of the 1918 “Spanish flu” influenza pandemic.
In architecture, there was a shift toward modernist minimalism that emphasized light, fresh air, and openness.
https://slate.com/business/2020/04/coronavirus-architecture-1918-flu-cholera-modernism.html
The 1918 influenza pandemic also inspired minimalism in furniture design that would promote hygiene.
https://time.com/5827561/1918-flu-art/
With this impulse in mind, architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus School in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. The Bauhaus aimed to bridge art and design, training students to reject frivolous ornamentation in order to create art objects that were practical and useful in everyday life. Marcel Breuer, who started at the Bauhaus in 1920 and eventually taught there, designed furnishings that historians believe were influenced by the flu. In contrast to the heavy, upholstered furniture that was popular at the time, Breuer’s minimalist pieces were made of hygienic wood and tubular steel, able to facilitate cleaning. Lightweight and movable, works like the designer’s bicycle-inspired Wassily Chair and Long Chair met modern sanitary needs by being easy to disinfect and rid of dust build-up.
“The rise of modern architecture and design in the 1920s was inextricably linked to the prevailing discourse on health and social hygiene,” says Monica Obniski, curator of decorative arts and design at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.
The pandemic also altered home design.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/subway-tile-design-in-epidemics
- Closets were added and expanded to replace hard-to-clean armoires.
- White kitchen tiles and linoleum replaced wallpaper and wooden floors.
- Powder rooms—or half baths on the ground floor of a house near the front door—are also the result of the attempt to prevent the spread of infectious diseases in the early 20th century.
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Yet, the clear craze did not catch on in the wake of the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
In fact, just the opposite seemed to happen.
The 1990s were characterized by the aesthetics of darkness.
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In 1989, “Batman” was released into theaters.
It had the dark gothic theme typical of director Tim Burton’s films.
The aesthetics of the 1989 Batman film seemed to have been inspired by the post-punk “goth” fashion that emerged in London in the 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fashion
During the emergence of the goth subculture in 1980’s London,[13] many genres of music played a large role in establishing the fashion trends – fashion spelled out the music an individual would listen to. Because of its origins, the major music inspirations during the early emergence of the goth subculture were similarly English bands. Some bands who have influence gothic fashion over the years include bands like Bauhaus, The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, and Siousxie and the Banshees[14]
The Batcave Club was a nightclub in London, between 1982-1986, that hosted live music and paid homage to all things goth. The interior, as described by Kelly Rankin, included cob-webbed ceilings and a real coffin at the entrance. She says that “The Batcave became iconic because it aided the progression of this movement”.
Within the mainstream media, there were only a few hints of goth fashion.
Nevertheless, the dark aesthetics that characterized goth fashion became a counterpoint to the generic nothingness of the 1990s pop culture.
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What’s strange about the Batman franchise is that Hollywood seems to be stuck in the 1990s.
Rather than a passing fad that exists on the margins, the gothic Batman aesthetic has persisted, even while it has altered and evolved and has gone mainstream.
In fact, it seems to have become ever more dominant within the cinematic culture at large.
Remarkably, for a dark genre that seems to have taken over the American film industry, from the very beginning of the franchise, the various takes on Batman were bizarre.
Granted, that strangeness might be inherent to the Batman universe.
But the strangeness was extreme from the beginning.
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For example, Tim Burton’s 1992 “Batman Returns” has the earmarks of a Nazi propaganda film, with obvious anti-Jewish motifs that have nothing to do with the Batman universe.
Where did such fascistic themes come from, especially considering how Tim Burton films typically show sympathy for outsiders and a disdain of conformity (for example, 1990’s “Edward Scissorhands”)?
The supervillain Penguin has an obvious physical resemblance to Nazi propaganda images of the Jewish financier.
In the Batman comics, the Penguin is portrayed as an underworld kingpin who disguises himself as a respectable businessman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_(character)
The Penguin is a Gotham City mobster who fancies himself the number one “Gentleman of Crime”. He is most often seen wearing a monocle, top hat, and tuxedo while carrying his signature umbrella. The character appears most times as a short, fat man with a long nose.
The Penguin owns and runs a nightclub called the Iceberg Lounge which provides a cover for his criminal activity.
According to his creator Bob Kane, the character was inspired by the advertising mascot of Kool cigarettes in the 1940s; a penguin with a top hat and cane. Cocreator Bill Finger thought that the image of high-society gentlemen in tuxedos was reminiscent of emperor penguins.
However, the Penguin in “Batman Returns” was a dweller in the sewers, not a wealthy criminal with business interests.
It seems that the Penguin of the comic books was broken up into two characters in the movie:
- A deformed sewer-dwelling criminal pariah known as The Penguin.
- The ruthless businessman Max Shreck who broke the law, but was no kingpin.
One can see the fission of a famous character into two main characters in the sequels of franchises.
For example, Captain James T. Kirk of “Star Trek” was broken into the two main characters Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Commander Will Riker for “Star Trek: TNG”.
Hence, Picard and Riker are strangely in sync with one another in so many scenes, such as when they are simply walking around.
Kirk = Picard + Riker
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Another answer that helps to explain the racism of “Batman Returns” might found in the bat as a motif in vampire movies.
In a sense, “Batman Returns” is a crossover movie that taps deeply into one strain of the vampire genre.
This reflects the tendency and necessity of commercial filmmakers to cannibalize and recycle EVERYTHING.
It also reflects the tendency of inspired artists like Tim Burton to tap into the collective unconscious and boldly combine elements and images from adjacent genres (for example, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”).
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One variant of the vampire movie is the creepy, exotic foreigner who brings over vermin (rats) and pestilence in his wanderings.
This cinematic genre stretches back a century to the 1922 film “Nosferatu”.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220303-nosferatu-the-monster-who-still-terrifies-100-years-on
It was exactly 100 years ago, in March 1922, that Berlin’s movers and shakers attended the premiere of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror, and saw the nightmarish Count Orlok springing bolt upright from his coffin. Those unsuspecting viewers could well have witnessed the first great jump scare in the history of horror movies. They had certainly witnessed its first great monster. An unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – hence the Count’s name-change from Dracula to Orlok – this silent masterpiece pioneered techniques and established horror tropes that have been used ever since. But the creation of the iconic Orlok, played by Max Schreck, is its supreme achievement. He is, says Cristina Massaccesi, in her guide to Nosferatu for the Devil’s Advocates horror history series, “the Ur-Vampire, the father of all undead creatures lurking in the darkest recesses of a cinema screen”.
He is also one of the few monsters to be instantly recognisable, even in silhouette. Murnau makes spine-tingling use of his shadow – and once you see the outline of Orlok’s domed, bald head, his pointed ears, his hunched shoulders, his stick-thin body and his snaking talons, you know who’s on the prowl. Then you see his gaunt, chalk-white face. More animal than human, Orlok has huge bushy eyebrows, sunken eyes, a beaky nose, and a rodent’s incisors in the centre of his mouth (far odder than the sharp canines possessed by later screen vampires). As Kevin Jackson says in Constellation of Genius, his survey of 1922 in the arts, Orlok “must be the strangest and most hideous leading man in all cinema”.
This portrayal of the vampire as a big, foreign nocturnal rat has been criticized as anti-Jewish.
Indeed, in the annals of European xenophobia, there is a historical association of Jews with unclean, cunning rats that can survive anywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Architecture_of_Doom
(Inglourious Basterds | Christoph Waltz’s Iconic Opening Scene)
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Again, the name of the actor who played the vampire Count Orlov in the 1922 film was Max Schreck.
And again, Max Shreck is the name of Christopher Walken’s ruthless businessman in 1992’s “Batman Returns”.
So, the vampire theme — and, with it, the undercurrent of racism — does seem to carry over from “Nosferatu” to “Batman Returns” in direct and obvious ways.
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However, a closer analysis of the making of the 1922 film shows how the filmmakers — who had no history of racism — were focused on embodying a generalized fear of foreign contagion.
That fear of contagion has been explained as being at the heart of the human disgust response (by the psychologist Paul Rozin).
Some commentators have condemned this “vermin-like creature” as an anti-Semitic caricature. J Hoberman, a film critic who specialises in Jewish representation, notes in a 2020 essay for Tablet magazine that Orlock is an “ancient, tremendously powerful creature, a sort of humanoid rodent given an imposing hooked nose, who communicates with his minions in a mysterious code, which includes several Hebrew letters as well as the Star of David”. On the other hand, Hoberman argues, Nosferatu may project a primal fear of “foreign contagion” which isn’t specifically fixated on Jewishness. “Nosferatu’s script was written by a Jew, Henrik Galeen,” he wrote. “The cast included several Jewish actors… [and] there is no suggestion that Murnau or Grau, who weren’t Jewish, were anti-Semitic. Indeed, the love of Murnau’s life, poet Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele, killed in the war, was the son of a Jewish banker.”
Rather than racism, the filmmakers might have been tapping into the trauma of WW1 and the 1918 influenza pandemic that followed.
Others have theorised how the abominable, ratty design of Orlok had to do with the traumas of the war – a conflict that Grau described as a “cosmic vampire” – and the subsequent Spanish flu epidemic: in the hold of a ship bound to Germany from Transylvania, the Count is accompanied by plague-carrying rats.
However, there were various vague connections in the Victorian mind between Jews, vampires, and contagion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Disease
The novel’s representation of vampirism has been discussed as symbolising Victorian anxieties about disease. The theme is discussed with far less frequency than others because it is discussed alongside other topics rather than as the central object of discussion.[86] For example, some connect its depiction of disease with race. Jack Halberstam points to one scene in which an English worker says that the repugnant odour of Count Dracula’s London home smells like Jerusalem, making it a “Jewish smell”.[87] Jewish people were frequently described, in Victorian literature, as parasites; Halberstam highlights one particular fear that Jews would spread diseases of the blood, and one journalist’s description of Jews as “Yiddish bloodsuckers”.[88] In contrast, Mathias Clasen writes parallels between vampirism and sexually-transmitted diseases, specifically syphilis.[89][m] Martin Willis, a researcher focused on the intersection of literature and disease, argues that the novel’s characterisation of vampirism makes it both the initial infection and resulting illness.
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Another type of vampire movie portrays the vampire not as repulsive, but as irresistibly attractive.
This is the image of the vampire as a suave, aristocratic gentleman that was personified in the Hungarian-American actor Bela Lugosi in the 1931 film “Dracula”.
Lugosi’s accent, as mentioned by Newman, was heard by the world in 1931, when he starred in Tod Browning’s Hollywood film of Dracula. Ever since, when we think of vampires, we tend to think of him: his Hungarian lilt, his oiled black hair, his bow tie, and his wonderfully swishable cape. Lugosi’s suave, seductive Dracula would influence countless other actors, from Christopher Lee in the Hammer films to Adam Sandler, who voices Drac in the first three Hotel Transylvania cartoons. But if Lugosi’s romantic interpretation of Dracula is the most influential, Schreck’s repulsive Orlok casts his own shadow across the genre. “There are two main strains of cinematic vampires,” says Professor Stacey Abbott, author of Undead Apocalypse: Vampires and Zombies in the 21st Century. “You have the Bela Lugosi tradition of the attractive, alluring vampire, but Orlok set the template for the macabre, pestilence-ridden vampire who is associated with disease and plague. He’s who you turn to when you want to really capture the monstrosity of the vampire.”
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To be sure, the very first vampire novel was all about an aristocratic vampire committed to an eternity of seducing — and exsanguinating — women.
It was John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, published in 1819.
Polidori got the idea of the novel from a short tale told by his friend Lord Byron.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampyre
“The Vampyre” is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.[1]The Vampyre is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasyfiction.[2] The work is described by Christopher Frayling as “the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre.”
Polidori’s description of Byron’s brief tale is the high concept of his own novel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragment_of_a_Novel
According to John Polidori, Byron intended to have Darvell reappear, alive again, as a vampire, but did not finish the story. Polidori’s account of Byron’s story in a letter to his publisher in 1819 indicates it “depended for interest upon the circumstances of two friends leaving England, and one dying in Greece, the other finding him alive upon his return, and making love to his sister.”
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The next famous vampire novel that followed Polidori’s did not come out until 1872.
It was Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” and was set in the southeast of Austria (Styria).
This time, it was about a FEMALE aristocratic vampire (sort of) seducing and killing young women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmilla
Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897) by 26 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72), the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein (Carmilla is an anagram of Mircalla). The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The novella notably never acknowledges homosexuality as an antagonistic trait, leaving it subtle and morally ambiguous. The story is often anthologised, and has been adapted many times in film and other media.
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Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” came out 25 years after “Carmilla”, and was heavily influenced by that predecessor.
Interestingly, both La Fanu and Stoker were Irishmen.
In fact, the emergence and rise of a parasitic foreign aristocracy might have been an unspoken theme in “Dracula” — whether the author knew it or not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula#Genre
Dracula became the subject of critical interest into Irish fiction during the early 1990s. Dracula is set largely in England, but Stoker was born in Ireland, which was at that time a British colony, and lived there for the first 30 years of his life. As a result, a significant body of writing exists on Dracula, Ireland, England, and colonialism. Calvin W. Keogh writes that Harker’s voyage into Eastern Europe “bears comparison with the Celtic fringe to the west”, highlighting them both as “othered” spaces. Keogh notes that the Eastern Question has been both symbolically and historically associated with the Irish question. In this reading, Transylvania functions as a stand-in for Ireland. Several critics have described Count Dracula as an Anglo-Irish landlord.
In this case, “Dracula” would be an inverted “Big House” novel.
The Irish Big House novel was typically written by wealthy English landlords in Ireland, who wrote fondly of the peculiar and amusing Celtic peasantry in whose midst they dwelt in luxury.
.https://www.themodernnovel.org/movements/bighouse/
The Big House novel
The Big House novel is a peculiarly Irish phenomenon and is based on an Irish reality, namely the big house where the landlord (often English) lived, surrounded by the poor Irish peasants. The novel, as written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was about the situation that then prevailed. However, it continued on into the twentieth century, well after the big house had all but ceased to exist, at least as a social phenomenon. There were several early exponents, mainly though certainly not exclusively women. The best-known may well be Maria Edgeworth and her best-known big house novel is undoubtedly Castle Rackrent, published in 1800 and set in 1782. Nineteenth century novelists in this genre include Somerville and Ross, particularly their Big House at Inver, Charles Lever, William Carleton, particularly his The Squanders of Castle Squander and Lady Morgan.
By the 20th century, the Irish had taken over the Big House novel and subverted it every which way.
Stoker and La Fanu might have unknowing been pioneers of this literary maligning of a parasitic foreign aristocracy.
In the twentieth century, while there have certainly been conventional big house novels, there have also been ones that aim to mock or subvert the concept. Though, of course, not a novel, Brendan Behan‘s The Big House, originally a radio play and later a stage play, even has the big house as a character. Aidan Higgins‘ first novel, Langrishe, Go Down shows the decline of the big house culture, a theme that will be found in other twentieth century big house novels. John Banville‘s Birchwood shows the decline of the inhabitants of the big house, with lunacy, chaos and death to the fore. Elizabeth Bowen‘s Last September takes this one step further, by having the big house symbolically burned down at the end. Other novels in this genre include Molly Keane‘s Loving and Giving, Good Behaviour and Time After Time, Padraic Colum‘s Castle Conquer, Joyce Cary‘s Castle Corner and A House of Children, based on his own upbringing, Mervyn Wall‘s Leaves for Burning, Julia O’Faolain‘s No Country For Young Men, David Thomson‘s Woodbrook, Jennifer Johnston‘s How Many Miles to Babylon?, William Trevor‘s Fools of Fortune and Thomas Kilroy‘s The Big Chapel. Paul Murray‘s An Evening of Long Goodbyes blows the idea apart.
And what would it be like if it were an Irishman who was the landlord of an English official?
Surely, that would be the stuff of comedy.
(Irish RM trailer)
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One more theory might help to explain the relationship between the theme of seduction and the vampire as aristocrat in literature.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault asserted that there was a shift in the modern world away from the display of brute force by authorities toward careful regulation.
Foucault called this modern mode of governance “bio-power” because it was all about refined population control.
Bio-power had a dual focus on regulating the forces of production at the macro level and the intricacies of re-production at the micro level.
.https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/histofsex/section11/
Foucault has suggested that the two major forms of bio-power are the discipline of the body and the regulation of population. Sex has become such a preoccupation in the modern world because it deals with both these forms of bio- power.
In contrast, the old regime was all about blood in terms of the spilling of blood as a source of power and on the legitimacy of aristocratic pedigree (bloodlines).
Foucault characterizes the transition between the right of death and power over life as a transition from a “symbolics of blood” to an “analytics of sex.” Previously, blood was taken as a symbol of power. Blood lines and purity of blood were all important, the right of death was exercised by spilling blood, and so on. Now, power is exercised through sex. This interest in sexuality has rendered possible unprecedented knowledge, power, and control over a population. This transition was far from smooth, and Foucault identifies a symbolics of blood lingering in the racism of the Nazis and their demands for racial “purity.” In psychoanalysis, sexuality is also read as being born out of earlier laws based on blood ties.
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This theory deserves a little more articulation to explain its relevance to the modern vampire genre.
Again, bio-power consists of modern disciplinary practices over individuals and the regulations of entire populations.
Sexuality lay at the intersection of the regulation of individuals and the collective.
This was at variance with traditional governance in European societies, which consisted of a policy of (benign?) neglect punctuated by occasional violent suppression.
- The traditional European order was akin to slash-and-burn agriculture in its annual harvest of taxes, its impulse to colonize new territory, its relative indifference to maintenance, and its periodic bouts of destruction.
- The modern state is more like an aggressively micro-managed factory farm.
.https://iep.utm.edu/fouc-pol/#H7
Where discipline is about the control of individual bodies, biopolitics is about the control of entire populations. Where discipline constituted individuals as such, biopolitics does this with the population. Prior to the invention of biopolitics, there was no serious attempt by governments to regulate the people who lived in a territory, only piecemeal violent interventions to put down rebellions or levy taxes. As with discipline, the main precursor to biopolitics can be found in the Church, which is the institution that did maintain records of births and deaths, and did minister to the poor and sick, in the medieval period. In the modern period, the perception grew among governments that interventions in the life of the people would produce beneficial consequences for the state, preventing depopulation, ensuring a stable and growing tax base, and providing a regular supply of manpower for the military. Hence they took an active interest in the lives of the people. Disciplinary mechanisms allowed the state to do this through institutions, most notably perhaps medical institutions that allowed the state to monitor and support the health of the population. Sex was the most intense site at which discipline and biopolitics intersected, because any intervention in population via the control of individual bodies fundamentally had to be about reproduction, and also because sex is one of the major vectors of disease transmission. Sex had to be controlled, regulated, and monitored if the population was to be brought under control.
However, under the velvet glove of modern regulation lies the old brutal iron fist of state power — which reveals itself when regulation falters.
In particular, the harsh spectacles of blood and gore that were so common in the traditional world persist most openly in the modern use of military force in foreign policy.
There is another technology of power in play, however, older than discipline, namely “sovereign power.” This is the technology we glimpse at the beginning of Discipline and Punish, one that works essentially by violence and by taking, rather than by positively encouraging and producing as both discipline and biopolitics do. This form of power was previously the way in which governments dealt both with individual bodies and with masses of people. While it has been replaced in these two roles by discipline and biopower, it retains a role nonetheless at the limits of biopower. When discipline breaks down, when the regulation of the population breaks down, the state continues to rely on brute force as a last resort. Moreover, the state continues to rely on brute force, and the threat of it, in dealing with what lies outside its borders.
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The old order of blood and the new order of population control (and economic productivity) are incompatible.
Perhaps in psychological terms this contradiction would trigger deep cognitive dissonance when they collided in literature.
The mixing of the two social orders, ancient and modern, in literature would inspire in the modern reader a mix of horror, revulsion, and fascination.
The image of the aristocratic vampire as seducer would intersect in the most dissonant way between the old politics of blood, bloodlines, and death, and the new order of bio-power.
Earlier in Western history, such an image might have had little emotional resonance at all.
Umberto Eco illustrated in “The Name of the Rose” that the murder mystery would have made no sense and for people in the Middle Ages.
Likewise, the vampire novel would have seemed nonsensical in an earlier period.
For example, the eastern European folktales of vampire seem more like simple zombie stories than elaborate semi-tragic tales of undead aristocrats.
For a modern person, the nobility no longer commands respect, and is instead viewed as a quaint romantic relic (“Downton Abbey”) or a decrepit , if pitiable, fossil (“Brideshead Revisited”).
Similarly, the Christian view of sexuality, like the attitude toward the accumulation of wealth, was that it was a distraction from the true goal of salvation.
Of course, material possessions and sexuality are daily existential realities in any society, but in Europe of old they were not topics of public discussion.
Today, money and sexuality are front and center in all things, be they academic disciplines, advertising, social media, journalism, and so on.
Modern life involves the public celebration of worldly fruitfulness — which is more in line with the ethos of the Old Testament than the New Testament.
However, unlike any section of the Bible or any other ancient literature, the realistic portrayal of violence has been pushed back to the margins where sex and material acquisition once dwelt.
For example, the 1986 movie “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is much less violent than many television shows.
In fact, the worst of the violence in the movie is off-camera — much the way violence is offstage yet vivid and real in the most horrific Greek tragedies.
But because the film involves the realistic depiction of a prolific serial killer, the movie was initially banned in the UK and given an X rating in the USA.
That’s very different from American and British society of yesteryear, when the fighting of animals was a common spectacle.
For instance, a century ago in rural America, one might find the local mayor and the local clergy at a dog fight.
That kind of blood sport has been pushed off into the margins of society, while the discourses and images of sex and money have moved from the periphery to the focus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry:_Portrait_of_a_Serial_Killer
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Only rarely in the modern world do we glimpse the spectacles of violence that were central in the ancient world.
For example, the film critic Roger Ebert complained that Mel Gibson’s 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ” was the most violent movie that he ever saw.
A more accurate criticism is that the film’s violence was REALISTIC.
The realistic portrayal of the Stations of the Cross is a part of traditional Christianity that has been edited out of modern consciousness.
In contrast, a John Wick film is much more violent, but it is patently unrealistic.
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Again, as incompatible as the old and new orders may be, the two orders still exist in the modern world, with the old brutal sovereign power ensconced in international relations.
In fact, the two orders quietly intermingle in domestic policy in the form of biological discrimination.
While it was stated that the old brutal order has been relegated to foreign policy, it still exists within the modern state in the form of racial policy that picks winners and losers.
For Foucault, there is a mutual incompatibility between biopolitics and sovereign power. Indeed, he sometimes refers to sovereign power as “thanatopolitics,” the politics of death, in contrast to biopolitics’s politics of life. Biopolitics is a form of power that works by helping you to live, thanatopolitics by killing you, or at best allowing you to live. It seems impossible for any individual to be simultaneously gripped by both forms of power, notwithstanding a possible conflict between different states or state agencies. There is a need for a dividing line between the two, between who is to be “made to live,” as Foucault puts it, and who is to be killed or simply allowed to go on living indifferently. The most obvious dividing line is the boundary between the population and its outside at the border of a territory, but the “biopolitical border,” as it has been called by recent scholars, is not the same as the territorial border. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault suggests there is a device he calls “state racism,” that comes variably into play in deciding who is to receive the benefits of biopolitics or be exposed to the risk of death.
That is, the mixing of the old aristocratic culture that emphasized purity of blood and the new governing model of population regulation results in “racism”.
Foucault does not use this term in any of the works he published himself, but nevertheless does point in The Will to Knowledge to a close relationship between biopolitics and racism. Discourses of scientific racism that emerged in the nineteenth century posited a link between the sexual “degeneracy” of individuals and the hygiene of the population at large. By the early twentieth century, eugenics, the pseudo-science of improving the vitality of a population through selective breeding, was implemented to some extent in almost all industrialized countries. It of course found its fullest expression in Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, Foucault is quite clear that there is something quite paradoxical about such attempts to link the old theme of “blood” to modern concerns with population health. The essential point about “state racism” is not then that it necessarily links to what we might ordinarily understand as racism in its strict sense, but that there has to be a dividing line in modern biopolitical states between what is part of the population and what is not, and that this is, in a broad sense, racist.
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This new order of bio-power might sit uneasily even in the USA, which is often considered the most modern and most Western of countries.
The new order might not even exist in technologically modernized non-Western societies like Japan (or, at least, not in the standard way it exists in the West).
For example, take the case of the Frenchman who wrote of his travels around the world.
In the USA, he discovered a society saturated by public images of sexuality.
Later, he discovered that Americans are actually quite prudish and squeamish.
In contrast, in Japan, the public realm is devoid of traces of sex.
And yet Japan has long been a sexually permissive society, in which promiscuity serves as a safety valve in a highly regimented social order.
- In America, sex is seemingly everywhere in public — but not so much in private.
- In Japan, sex is invisible — but its going on all over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#Transition
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Interestingly, in contemporary Japan, dog fighting is not only largely legal, but is considered a family outing.
Many Japanese proudly consider dog fighting to be one of their great traditions.
Blood is still front and center in Japan.
In fact, in Japan, even membership in organized-crime groups is legal, and these groups exist openly, with their own offices (although their crimes are certainly illegal).
https://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/09/japanese-dogfighting-494843.html
But neither JAWS nor any other group has made a concerted effort to ban dogfighting—for two reasons. The first is the perception that it is a Japanese tradition. The “dog men,” as dogfighters are called, say it’s part of their country’s cultural history, much like whaling or dolphin hunting. Enough members of the parliament agree with them to block changes to the law, Yamaguchi says.
The other reason is dogfighting’s deep ties to the yakuza. “In Japan, anything to do with dogs is run by gangsters,” Oliver says. “In the old days, they made money from prostitution and gunrunning, but now they make a huge profit in the pet business.”
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After director Tim Burton was replaced in the Batman franchise, sexuality became more of an obvious theme.
Director Joel Schumacker’s 1995 “Batman Forever” and 1997 “Batman and Robin” veered into campness.
That’s especially strange in terms of how the wholesome clear craze was expected to be the legacy of the HIV-AIDS pandemic.
However, to be fair, camp is part of the traditional Batman universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_Batman_franchise
Again, it’s a vampire thing, too.
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However, Batman goes full nihilistic darkness with the beginning of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy in 2005.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_in_film#The_Dark_Knight_Trilogy_(2005%E2%80%932012)
The Dark Knight Trilogy consists of Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), all directed by Christopher Nolan. Collectively grossing over $2.4 billion at the worldwide box office, the trilogy has been ranked among the greatest ever made.
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The critic A.O. Scott writes about the progression of the Batman movies from fun to grimness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/movies/the-batman-review.html
The Batman — not just any Batman! — is less the enemy of this state of things than its avatar. On television in the 1960s, Batman was playful. Later, in the Keaton-Clooney-Kilmer era of the ’80s and ’90s, he was a bit of a playboy. In the 21st century, through Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy and after, onscreen incarnations of the character have been purged of any trace of joy, mischief or camp. We know him as a brooding avenger, though not an Avenger, which is a whole different brand of corporate I.P.
But going back to the clear craze of the early 1990s, Batman in any form was not supposed to happen because of the jitters of the HIV-AIDS crisis.
The psychological theory is that in the aftermath of pandemics, purity becomes popular, and that deathly trauma inspires a shift toward peace and harmony.
If anything, the 1990s should have been a clean-cut, wholesome Superman decade.
https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Squid_(Watchmen)
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It could be that Americans were not deeply disturbed by the HIV-AIDS crisis, which killed over 700,000 Americans over a 40-year period.
After all, more Americans than that died from Covid over a two-year period — and throughout the pandemic there was a stubborn sense of normality in the USA.
It could be that AIDS only reached an emotional crisis level in certain high-risk groups and communities.
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It might be worth noting that tattoos took off in popularity in the mainstream during the 1990s.
Middle-class Americans were swearing off tobacco in the 1990s, and tattoos were becoming the healthier, salubrious symbolic replacement for telegraphing one’s coolness.
But not much earlier, getting a tattoo was (falsely) considered a high-risk activity in terms of contracting HIV-AIDS.
Did this aura of danger in fact enhance the status of tattoos in the 1990s?
Likewise, did a film industry traumatized by loss embrace darkness as a result, rather than embrace the wholesomeness, transparency, and hygiene that the clear craze represented?
Moreover, like tattoos, did this darkness represent a new sense of lighthearted creative indulgence, rather than mourning?
In any case, the tendency in film and popular culture was toward increasing darkness.
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So, why did Superman lose his cinematic monopoly to Batman?
It was the Superman franchise that preceded all the other current superhero films with the launch of “Superman” in 1978.
The Superman franchise movies were the only superhero movies until “Batman” came out in 1989.
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Superman and Batman seem to be the two iconic superheroes in the American imagination (with Spider-Man as a strong third contender).
But now, even Superman has gone Batman in a turn toward darkness.
Indeed, perhaps all Superhero movies have become dark Batman movies (and superhero movies come to dominate American cinema).
It’s like the 1990s never really ended.
Like the title of the 1995 film, it’s been “Batman Forever”.
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What led to this Batman-ification of everything?
The first film in the Batman franchise came out in 1989.
It was in November of that year that the Berlin wall was torn down.
The first few Batman movies were dark but goofy, and one would expect that the franchise would become more and not less optimistic with time.
After all, in the American view, human history had finally culminated in the Americanization of the world.
Instead, the Batman franchise only became darker and darker.
And then, like gangrene, this gloom spread through all superhero movies — which themselves have seemingly taken over mainstream cinema.
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To understand how superhero movies have become so dark one must first understand how Superman and Batman comprise a dualism.
That is, the relationship between Batman and Superman and all the other superheroes can be understood through the young Nietzsche’s theory of ancient Greek tragedy.
The book in which Nietzsche explained this theory is his 1872 “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music“.
For the Greeks, tragedy represented an affirmation of life in the face of the inherent meaninglessness of the universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Tragedy
Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism and nihilism of a fundamentally meaningless world. The Greek spectators, by looking into the abyss of human suffering and affirming it, passionately and joyously affirmed the meaning of their own existence. They knew themselves to be infinitely more than petty individuals, finding self-affirmation not in another life, not in a world to come, but in the terror and ecstasy alike celebrated in the performance of tragedies.
Nietzsche distinguished between an Apollonian world of order versus a Dionysian world of flux and change.
Originally educated as a philologist, Nietzsche discusses the history of the tragic form and introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.
- Dionysian: reality as disordered and undifferentiated by forms.
- Apollonian: reality as ordered and differentiated by forms.
Nietzsche claims life always involves a struggle between these two elements, each battling for control over the existence of humanity. In Nietzsche’s words, “Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was checked and destroyed…. wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god Apollo exhibited itself as more rigid and menacing than ever.” And yet neither side ever prevails due to each containing the other in an eternal, natural check or balance.
Tragedy united the Apollonian and Dionysian by combining dialog with music, respectively.
Nietzsche argues that the tragedy of Ancient Greece was the highest form of art due to its mixture of both Apollonian and Dionysian elements into one seamless whole, allowing the spectator to experience the full spectrum of the human condition. The Dionysian element was to be found in the music of the chorus, while the Apollonian element was found in the dialogue which gave a concrete symbolism that balanced the Dionysian revelry. Basically, the Apollonian spirit was able to give form to the abstract Dionysian.
Prior to the development of tragedy, Greek cultural life was split between the Apollonian forms (like statues) and Dionysian excess (the drunken revelry of festivals).
In a sense, there were only the two gods, Apollo and Dionysus.
The pantheon of the various gods was merely a manifestation of the Apollonian principle of form, order, and individuation.
Before the tragedy, there was an era of static, idealized plastic art in the form of sculpture that represented the Apollonian view of the world. The Dionysian element was to be found in the wild revelry of festivals and drunkenness, but, most importantly, in music. The combination of these elements in one art form gave birth to tragedy. He theorizes that the chorus was originally always satyrs, goat-men. (This is speculative, although the word “tragedy” τραγωδία is contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = “goat song” from tragos = “goat” and aeidein = “to sing”.) Thus, he argues, “the illusion of culture was wiped away by the primordial image of man” for the audience; they participated with and as the chorus empathetically, “so that they imagined themselves as restored natural geniuses, as satyrs.” But in this state, they have an Apollonian dream vision of themselves, of the energy they’re embodying. It’s a vision of the god, of Dionysus, who appears before the chorus on the stage. And the actors and the plot are the development of that dream vision, the essence of which is the ecstatic dismembering of the god and of the Bacchantes‘ rituals, of the inseparable ecstasy and suffering of human existence.
Under the influence of the rise of philosophy, tragedy died.
After the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles, there was an age where tragedy died. Nietzsche ties this to the influence of writers like Euripides and the coming of rationality, represented by Socrates. Euripides reduced the use of the chorus and was more naturalistic in his representation of human drama, making it more reflective of the realities of daily life. Socrates emphasized reason to such a degree that he diffused the value of myth and suffering to human knowledge. For Nietzsche, these two intellectuals helped drain the ability of the individual to participate in forms of art, because they saw things too soberly and rationally. The participation mystique aspect of art and myth was lost, and along with it, much of man’s ability to live creatively in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life. Nietzsche concludes that it may be possible to reattain the balance of Dionysian and Apollonian in modern art through the operas of Richard Wagner, in a rebirth of tragedy.
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Likewise, there are only two superheroes, Superman and Batman — and all the other superheroes are expressions of Superman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Literary_analysis
Superman has been interpreted and discussed in many forms in the years since his debut, with Umberto Eco noting that “he can be seen as the representative of all his similars”.
According to Wikipedia, Superman is the prototypical superhero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#The_superhero_archetype_2
Superman is considered the prototypical superhero. He established the major conventions of the archetype: a selfless, prosocial mission; extraordinary, perhaps superhuman, abilities; a secret identity and code name; and a colorful costume that expresses his nature.[212] Superman’s cape and skintight suit are widely recognized as the generic superhero costume.
What is it that Superman and Batman represent?
Superman and Batman form a different dualism than that of Apollonian form and Dionysian flux.
Superman represents the ideal of America, and Batman is the reality.
- When Americans look at Superman, they see what they want to be.
- When they look at Batman, they see what they are.
(“Nixon”, 1995, JFK portrait scene)
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The historian Page Smith once distinguished between the United States and America.
America is the ideal of what the country should be, and the United States is the reality.
Ideologically, America as an ideal is quite distinct from the ideals of other societies.
That means that there is some limited validity in the notion of “American exceptionalism”.
American exceptionalism is the idea that the USA is profoundly unique among the nations and has a special historical destiny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations.[2] Its proponents argue that the values, political system, and historical development of the U.S. are unique in human history, often with the implication that the country is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.[3]
Political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset traces the origins of American exceptionalism to the American Revolution, from which the U.S. emerged as “the first new nation” with a distinct body of ideas.[4] This ideology is based on liberty, equality before the law, individual responsibility, republicanism, representative democracy, and laissez-faire economics; these principles are sometimes collectively referred to as “American exceptionalism”,[5] and entail the U.S. being perceived both domestically and internationally as superior to other nations or having a unique mission to transform the world.[6]
On one hand, in terms of political culture, the USA would seem to typical among the family of English-speaking countries (the “Anglo-sphere”).
For example, it has been endlessly pointed out by high-school civics teachers that the American form of government is 95% derived from the British form of government.
On the other hand, the USA does diverge in its political culture and ideals even from these other Anglo-phone countries.
In fact, American political culture differs so much from these other Anglo-phone countries to the point that these countries are somewhat alienated by the USA (for example, Canada).
This would suggest that, contrary to what many Americans believe, the USA has no special mystical destiny to convert and transform the world to its own unusual value system.
In fact, Americans are weird even to have this feeling of being exceptional.
Most countries have no such sense of being extremely special.
Again, all of this might mean that the American ideal would be incompatible as a potential donor ideology to other countries.
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The distinctiveness of American ideals does not mean that the USA is radically different from other countries in terms of the reality of American history.
The USA is very similar to other countries in terms of the actual history of the USA.
Indeed, Page Smith wrote that the United States as reality is really just like any other country.
Every country’s history is all about the will to survive and the relentless pursuit of prestige, money, and power — and the United States is no different.
And here the USA does have something to offer the world — namely, the means to attain those worldly goods.
The United States is a font of new technology and methods for people in other countries to attain more and higher status, class, and power.
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Again, Superman as an ideal of America was the “mother” of all superheroes — including Batman, who is the reality of the United States.
The history of Superman as the original superhero illustrates this (literally).
Superman’s mission evolved over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Literary_analysis
An influence on early Superman stories is the context of the Great Depression. Superman took on the role of social activist, fighting crooked businessmen and politicians and demolishing run-down tenements.
A.C. Grayling, writing in The Spectator, traces Superman’s stances through the decades, from his 1930s campaign against crime being relevant to a nation under the influence of Al Capone, through the 1940s and World War II, a period in which Superman helped sell war bonds, and into the 1950s, where Superman explored the new technological threats.
There were multiple iterations of Superman as a character that ranged from villain to hero as he was developed by the writer Jerry Seigel and the illustrator Joe Shuster.
Originally, Superman was conceived as a supervillain who was created when an unscrupulous scientist experimented on a homeless man.
Later, Siegel and Shuster invented Superman’s Clark Kent alter ego for comic relief, basing Superman and Kent on two very different old Hollywood staples.
The concept of superheroes having dual identities is widely considered a fundamental breakthrough in the genre.
Originally a crime fighter as a superhero, Superman became overtly political with the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
.https://www.ohiohistory.org/origin-story-the-creation-of-superman/
As time passed they started to include stories of Superman fighting off anti-Semitic people. With Hitler’s rise in Europe with his anti-Semitic words and the negative stereotypes of Jewish people, pushed Siegel and Shuster to make a hero that defended the weak. They often would portray Superman protecting the weak and those who were mistreated. He was a hero the world needed as World War II began in Europe. Shuster and Siegel worked hard to tell stories of hope that would cheer people on as things looked hopeless, even as they struggled to keep the rights to create those stories.
This inspired other artists and writers to create superheroes like Superman.
It was stories liked this that inspired other Jewish artists to create their own comics about protecting the persecuted. One of those men was Jack Kirby. Along with his partner, Joe Simon, Kirby created Captain America in 1941.
Batman was likewise created by a Jewish writer (Bill Finger) and a Jewish illustrator (Bob Kane).
Again, the argument here is that Batman is (comparatively) the “reality-based” version of Superman, in that he has no inherent superpowers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman
The original Captain Marvel was likewise modeled after Superman, but as a kooky parody.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(DC_Comics)
He was later renamed “Shazam” by DC Comics because Marvel Comics had developed its own Captain Marvel.
In 1958, DC Comics went even further than a parody in creating a reverse mirror image or anti-Superman in the form of Bizarro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro
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What ideal does Superman represent?
According to DC Comics, Superman stands for “truth, justice, and hope”.
https://www.dccomics.com/characters/superman
According to the Heritage Foundation, Superman used to fight for “truth, justice, and the American way” — but in 2011 Superman officially renounced patriotism.
But the bigger picture is that Superman represents those values as a man of ACTION in the realm of FANTASY.
In contrast, the British literary detective stands for those same values as a man of THOUGHT in the fictional portrayal of REALITY.
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Detective fiction is like an invasive species that originated in the USA and flourished in the UK.
The first detective story was written by Edgard Allan Poe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detective_fiction
Detective fiction in the English-speaking world is considered to have begun in 1841 with the publication of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, featuring “the first fictional detective, the eccentric and brilliant C. Auguste Dupin“. When the character first appeared, the word detective had not yet been used in English; however, the character’s name, “Dupin”, originated from the English word dupe or deception. Poe devised a “plot formula that’s been successful ever since, give or take a few shifting variables.”
In applying the scientific method to solving problems in the social world, the detective story was a model of Enlightenment virtue.
Poe referred to his stories as “tales of ratiocination“. In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. “Early detective stories tended to follow an investigating protagonist from the first scene to the last, making the unraveling a practical rather than emotional matter.”
The first detective novel was written by the British writer Wilkie Collins 27 years after Poe’s first detective story.
T. S. Eliot called Collins’s novel The Moonstone (1868) “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels… in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe”,[27] and Dorothy L. Sayers called it “probably the very finest detective story ever written”.[28]The Moonstone contains a number of ideas that have established in the genre several classic features of the 20th century detective story:
- English country house robbery
- An “inside job“
- red herrings
- A celebrated, skilled, professional investigator
- Bungling local constabulary
- Detective inquiries
- Large number of false suspects
- The “least likely suspect”
- A rudimentary “locked room” murder
- A reconstruction of the crime
- A final twist in the plot
Because the detective is unknowingly the culprit in “The Moonstone”, that novel is also cited as the classic example of self-surveillance — which is supposedly an element in the genre.
That kind of self-conscious self-surveillance might be found in hybrids of the detective novel and other genres that also descend from gothic literature.
The major literary genres that were spawned from gothic literature include:
- the detective novel,
- horror,
- romance, and
- science fiction.
The horror-detective novel:
(“Angel Heart”, 1987, trailer)
The science fiction-detective novel:
(“Blade Runner”, 1982, “RACHEL: You know, that Voight-Kampff test of yours … did you ever take that test yourself?”)
https://clip.cafe/blade-runner-1982/that-voight-kampf-test-of-yours/
Gothic literature was itself was part of an inward turn in the Western tradition related to Protestantism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
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Like superhero comics, detective fiction became popular because society was rapidly urbanizing.
The new problems of a complex society demanded a new kind of hero — and new forms of wish fulfillment.
.https://www.novelsuspects.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-detective-fiction/
A brief history of detective fiction
Detective fiction can be traced back to the 1800s, around the time of the Industrial Revolution. Before this time, most people lived in smaller towns and worked and socialized in closer circles, so people knew everyone they came into contact with for the most part. But with the rise of industrial jobs, more people began moving to cities, which lead to interacting with more strangers on a daily basis, a heightened sense of suspicion and uncertainty, and yes, more crime. It was around this time too where police forces were first established. London’s police force came to be in 1829, and New York City got its police force in 1845. With more people living in cities and crime rates on the rise, the setting was right for detective genres to flourish.
The difference between the USA and the UK is that the superhero movie took over America and detective fiction conquered Britain.
There is a notable paucity of British superheroes and a surplus of British fictional detectives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:British_superheroes
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Which detectives are the equivalent of Superman and Batman?
Apparently, the two most popular detectives are the intimidating Sherlock Holmes and Peter Falk’s beloved Lieutenant Columbo.
Holmes and Columbo do not completely align with the dualism of ideal and real the way that Superman and Batman do, respectively.
The proper dualism for Holmes and Columbo might be the distinction between the elite and the popular.
But that’s complicated.
Saying that Columbo represents a democratic ideal is like saying Dr. Anthony Fauci is a man of the people.
Clearly, Fauci is from the people in his origins and for the people in his vocation, but as a leading infectious disease expert he is a member of the scientific and professional elite (in fact, at their apex).
Columbo is also comparable to the disheveled and ascetic philosopher Socrates, who interrogated the most esteemed men of Athens and politely punctured their reasoning.
In fact, it might be more than merely an analogy because Columbo might be the American equivalent and direct descendant and avatar of Socrates.
After all, in every episode of Columbo, one is already learning what one knows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamnesis_(philosophy)
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The spirit of Lieutenant Columbo lives on in the TV franchise “Law & Order” which was revolutionary in that it refuted the American bias that the display of wealth is a sign of virtue.
- “Law & Order” — Everyone in Manhattan is guilty of something.
- “Criminal Intent” — Smart people are extremely dangerous.
- “Special Victims Unite” — Men are dangerous and guilty.
Nevertheless, this skepticism of respectability remains a heterodoxy in American life.
The orthodox belief for Americans is the widespread equation of morality with status, wealth, and power.
After all, it is normal for hard-working people to hope that the reward for their labors will be in this life, and not merely in the afterlife.
However, among highly educated, urban Americans — some of whom are wealthy Democrats — there is a skepticism of conventional success as a marker of ethics.
For example, “Law & Order” is the only television show that the linguist and radical public intellectual Noam Chomsky watches.
Along these lines, the “Democratic Socialists” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be the prime target audience of “Law & Order”.
The value system of the over-educated, romantic “tenured radical” is more like that of upper-middle class Catholic France.
There are at least three different types of symbolic boundaries based on three types of capital.
- Moral boundaries:based on honesty, work ethic, personal integrity, consideration
- Socioeconomic boundaries:based on people’s social position indicated by their wealth, power and professional success
- Cultural boundaries:based on education, intelligence, manners, tastes, command of high culture
Moral boundaries are of tremendous importance in both the USA and France — even though they are interpreted differently.
American upper-middle-class men rely on socioeconomic criteria such as power, success or wealth when it comes to draw “symbolic boundaries”.
In contrast, French men of that same class tends to privilege cultural boundaries more than socioeconomic characteristics.
.https://elenapougin.com/2019/10/23/review-michele-lamonts-money-morals-and-manners/
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Who do Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson correspond to?
Holmes and Watson respectively correlate with Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy on “Star Trek”.
Like the comparison of Columbo with Socrates, the analogy of Holmes and Watson with Spock and McCoy goes back to the philosophy of Plato.
To explain the human soul, Plato uses an allegory of a chariot pulled by two winged horses.
- The charioteer represents the rational part of the mind.
- One horse symbolizes honor and conscience.
- The other stands for physical appetite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariot_Allegory
“First the charioteer of the human soul drives a pair, and secondly one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore in our case the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome.”
The Charioteer represents intellect, reason, or the part of the soul that must guide the soul to truth; one horse represents rational or moral impulse or the positive part of passionate nature (e.g., righteous indignation); while the other represents the soul’s irrational passions, appetites, or concupiscent nature. The Charioteer directs the entire chariot/soul, trying to stop the horses from going different ways, and to proceed towards enlightenment.
Obviously, Spock is rational and McCoy is compassionate.
However, in “Star Trek”, Spock and McCoy are subordinate to Captain Kirk — who is a man of passion, appetite, and ambition.
Thus, contrary to Plato, in “Star Trek”, the charioteer turns out to be physical desire and the two winged horses it guides are rationality and conscience.
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Perhaps since the Industrial Revolution and the Romantic Era of the 19th century, reason (in the form of technology) has increasingly been seen as the tool of the emotions.
That is, in the modern world, volition or will is increasingly seen as the core of the personality, and human rationality is seen as either merely instrumental or even a retrospective illusion.
But perhaps it was always like this — and Plato knew that reason is never in the driver’s seat of the mind.
For whatever reason, Plato might have written a deceptive analogy that he himself did not believe in.
(His clue for the reader that he does not actually believe in something is supposedly when he gives it a mythical twist, such as a reference to the fictitious continent of Atlantis — or to winged horses rather than to just plain old horses.)
That is, willpower rather than reason or conscience is to be seen as the faculty that in all times and places is in control of the personality.
After all, the word “volition” means conscious choice or decision.
It has at its root the Latin word “volo”, which means to wish, or want, or intend — plus the word for action.
Thus, desire and action — and not reason — are at the heart of “free will”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/volition
From French volition, from Medieval Latin volitiō (“will, volition”), from Latin volō (“to wish; to want; to mean or intend”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *welh₁- (“to choose; to want”)) + -tiō (“suffix forming nouns relating to some action or the result of an action”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-tis (“suffix forming abstract or action nouns from verbs”)).
In practical and sociopolitical terms, every society is run by driven high-achievers, and not by brainiacs or saints.
For example, the Catholic Church held sway over kings and peasants — but the clerical hierarchy was infiltrated and dominated by the nobility.
Likewise, the Communist Party ruled over both administrators and workers — but those Party members evolved into classic politicians and bureaucratic managers rather than revolutionary intellectuals (like Lenin).
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If Sherlock Holmes symbolizes intellect and Dr. Watson embodies conscience, then who represents the appetite in the mysteries written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?
That (dis)honor might go to Sherlock Holmes’ brilliant archnemesis, Professor Moriarty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Moriarty
He shows a fiery disposition, becoming enraged when his plans are thwarted, resulting in his being placed “in positive danger of losing my liberty”. While personally pursuing Holmes at a train station, he furiously elbows aside passengers, heedless of whether this draws attention to himself.
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There is abundant speculation regarding on whom the character Moriarty is based.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Moriarty#Real-world_role_models
What is rarely noticed are the similarities between Professor Moriarty and Arthur Conan Doyle (Irish origins, same schools).
As the quintessential writer of detective fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle was himself a mastermind behind criminal mysteries.
The supervillain Moriarty rather than the superhero Holmes might have been Doyle’s alter ego.
On the one hand, an alter ego can be a very different alternative self from the normal self — especially if the alter ego is either a darker, evil, shadow self or a heroic, superhuman self.
On the other hand, in literature, an alter ego can be a realistic character who represents the author and is conspicuously similar to the author.
Moriarty was both similar to Arthur Conan Doyle’s background and a reverse mirror image of Conan Doyle’s healthy, moral, and thoroughly honorable personality.
Arthur Conan Doyle was the ultimate charioteer in this triad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter_ego
An alter ego (Latin for “other I”, “doppelgänger“) means an alternative self, which is believed to be distinct from a person’s normal or true original personality.
A distinct meaning of alter ego is found in the literary analysis used when referring to fictional literature and other narrative forms, describing a key character in a story who is perceived to be intentionally representative of the work’s author (or creator), by oblique similarities, in terms of psychology, behavior, speech, or thoughts, often used to convey the author’s thoughts.
The point is that again it is the will — in the form of the Conan Doyle (Moriarty), in this case — that is in control of reason and conscience.
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What reality does Batman represent?
Every Superhero is an ordinary person who has at least one superhuman ability.
They wear a disguise to hide their human identity.
For example, Spiderman has exceptional strength, speed, and agility because he was bitten by a radioactive spider — and, uniquely, he can climb walls.
However, Spiderman’s webbing is a technology that Peter Parker devised.
In this way, Spiderman is half superhero, half technology.
In contrast to other superheroes, Batman has no superhuman talents.
In fact, Batman is not even Batman when he puts on his outfit, he is still just the billionaire Bruce Wayne with lots of technology.
The only super-ability that Bruce Wayne possess is superior technology thanks to his phenomenal wealth.
In a way, Batman is somewhat of a strange superhero with too much money.
And that, in a nutshell, is the United States as a reality.
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In fact, even the American ideal of liberty and democracy (“liberal democracy”) can be seen as a form of technology.
What Americans refer to as “democracy” is a sophisticated form of “social technology”.
“Freedom” is a useful method of organizing society in order to increase productivity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_technology
Social technology is a way of using human, intellectual and digital resources in order to influence social processes.
Closely related to social technology is the term social engineering. Thorstein Veblen used ‘social engineering’ in 1891, but suggested that it was used earlier.[16] In the 1930s both ‘social engineering and ‘social technology’ became associated with the large scale socio-economic policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet economist Yvgeni Preobrazhensky wrote a book in which he defined social technology as “the science of organized production, organized labour, of organized systems of production relations, where the legality of economic existence is expressed in new forms.” (p. 55 in the translation of 1963[17])
American society can be seen as an open-ended, improvised form of social engineering aimed at solving catastrophic problems rather than creating a centralized, pre-planned utopia.
Karl Popper discusses social technology and social engineering in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies[18] and in the article “The Poverty of Historicism”,[19] in which he criticized the Soviet political system and the marxist theory (Marxism) on which it was based. Eventually he combined “The Poverty of Historicism” series in a book “The Poverty of Historicism” which he wrote “in memory of the countless men and women of all creeds or nations or races who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny”.[20] In his book “The Open Society and Its Enemies“, Popper distinguished two kinds of social engineering, and the corresponding social technology. Utopian engineering strives to reach “an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a dictatorship” (p. 159). Communism is an example of utopian social Technology.
On the other hand, there is the piecemeal engineer with its corresponding social technology, which adopts “the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good” (p. 158). The use of piecemeal social technology is crucial for democratic social reconstruction.
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A classic example of the difference between material and social technology would be the construction of the pyramids in ancient Egypt.
Today, we gaze at the pyramids and wonder how they were constructed.
Yet historical texts from the ancient Greeks confirm that the Egyptians used simple material technology like ramps, levers, and sheer manpower to build the pyramids.
The Egyptians might have had simple material technology.
However, their social technology was so super-sophisticated that they could mobilize their entire society for long-term construction projects.
In a sense, that is the exact opposite of American society, in which the material technology is complex but the social technology is simple (money).
In fact, it could be that as material technology grows more complex in the USA, the social technology — in the form of social cohesion — erodes further.
In that case, the landing of a man on the moon and the project behind it represented one giant leap for material technology — but a small step backward for the American social order.
In contrast, the construction of the pyramids in ancient Egypt saw no innovations, advances, or breakthroughs in material technology.
Indeed, the conservative ethos of ancient Egypt seems to be to keep everything frozen in place in line with a changeless universe (where every day is a cloudless summer day).
Yet the building of the pyramids not only reflected abundant social technology, but contributed to it further.
That is, the pyramids were built when the pharaohs were strong — and, in turn, the public’s awe at the pyramids would have fed the monarch’s power.
The pyramids were originally covered with limestone and marble and capped with gold, all of which was later stripped away.
For Egyptians in small villages, to even hear of such a wondrous structure would have served to cement the rule of a pharaoh, as well as to united a far-flung country.
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Superman is a symbol of the American ideal, which is “liberal democracy”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberalpolitical ideology that operates under an indirect democraticform of government. It is characterised by elections between multiple distinctpolitical parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified (such as in the United States)[1] or uncodified (such as in the United Kingdom), to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract.
Batman is the reality, which is technology and capitalism (Wayne Enterprises).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.
Crucially, both democracy and capitalism are to be understood as forms of social technology.
That is, democracy is not transcendentally above and beyond technology, and capitalism is not identical to the material technology that it utilizes.
However, insofar as capitalism can be seen as a tool of democracy, then capitalism is much more a classic form of technology.
Indeed, the American public conceives “capitalism” ambivalently, as an economic system that both sustains and threatens democracy.
In this way, capitalism is seen as a form of technology that can potentially underpin or undermine democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#Relationship_to_democracy
The relationship between democracy and capitalism is a contentious area in theory and in popular political movements. The extension of adult-male suffrage in 19th-century Britain occurred along with the development of industrial capitalism and representative democracy became widespread at the same time as capitalism, leading capitalists to posit a causal or mutual relationship between them. However, according to some authors in the 20th-century, capitalism also accompanied a variety of political formations quite distinct from liberal democracies, including fascist regimes, absolute monarchies and single-party states.[36]Democratic peace theory asserts that democracies seldom fight other democracies, but critics of that theory suggest that this may be because of political similarity or stability rather than because they are “democratic” or “capitalist”. Moderate critics argue that though economic growth under capitalism has led to democracy in the past, it may not do so in the future as authoritarian régimes have been able to manage economic growth using some of capitalism’s competitive principles without making concessions to greater political freedom.
However, this popular interpretation of American capitalism at the service of American democracy might involve a certain amnesia.
As the historian Eric Hofstadter has observed, the American political system has always been conceived by Americans as subordinate to the values and needs of capitalism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Political_Tradition
Hofstadter’s introduction argues that the major political traditions in the United States, despite contentious battles, have all “shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition … [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man”.
Rather than focusing on political conflict, Hofstadter proposes that a common ideology of “self-help, free enterprise, competition, and beneficent cupidity” has guided the United States since its inception. Through analyses of the ruling class in the US, Hofstadter argues that this consensus is the hallmark of political life in the US.
Hofstadter’s critique is not radical — in fact, Hofstadter’s assertion is consonant with the views of American conservatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Boorstin
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Importantly, America cannot serve as a destiny nor as model for the world because American “democracy” and American “capitalism” are not really democracy or capitalism.
That is, both the economic and political structures and ideologies in the USA are of mixed types — and are under constant reconstruction.
In other words, because America as a model is a moving target, it is difficult to emulate.
It has been periodically noted — and then quickly forgotten — that “capitalism” in the USA is really a mixed economy, and it is constantly evolving.
Likewise, Americans unknowingly use the word “democracy” as shorthand for a mixed form of government that was necessary in order to stabilize society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_government
Mixed government (or a mixed constitution) is a form of government that combines elements of democracy, aristocracy and monarchy, ostensibly making impossible their respective degenerations which are conceived as anarchy, oligarchy and tyranny. The idea was popularized during classical antiquity in order to describe the stability, the innovation and the success of the republic as a form of government developed under the Roman constitution.
The ancient Greeks had a notion of history as cyclical in nature.
One of their models of political history involved a predictable pattern of tacking back and forth between bad and good versions of government.
However, the general direction of this evolution was toward greater participation — and greater vulgarity.
A polity begins as a noble monarchy, and eventually finds its culmination in mob rule.
Then the cycle begins all over.
There is an underlying logic to how this historical political process plays out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis
The political doctrine of anacyclosis (or anakyklosis from Greek: ἀνακύκλωσις) is a cyclical theory of political evolution. The theory of anacyclosis is based upon the Greek typology of constitutional forms of rule by the one, the few, and the many. Anacyclosis states that three basic forms of “benign” government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy) are inherently weak and unstable, tending to degenerate rapidly into the three basic forms of “malignant” government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy).
A mixed form of government was advocated by some Greek thinkers as an antidote to this fatal cycle.
One can find the logic of this three-part mixed form of government in the British model involving:
- monarch and
- a parliament divided between
- an elite and
- a common chamber.
That is, since the Norman invasion and the signing of the Magna Carta, the British had a hybrid government that consisted of:
- a (Roman) god-like king who wielded immense power, but
- he governed by consent (in the Germanic communal tradition).
But within this Latin-German hybrid form of government, the ancient Greek triune model of government persisted.
The one, the few, and the many would rule simultaneously.
This model was carried over to the American model of government in the relationship between an independently elected president (not a prime minister) and Congress.
However, the Americans innovated in their commitment to establishing an independent judiciary.
The judiciary would be an aristocracy of the few that would balance the powers of a democratized legislature and a monarchical presidency.
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American social technology in the form of “democracy” and “capitalism” is highly advanced and can provide a useful model for other countries to emulate.
However, other countries have innovated to produce other social technologies.
For example, the economist Branko Milanovich has stated that the great economic success story of the past generation is China’s “state capitalism” — and not American liberal capitalism.
State capitalism might be of more interest than liberal capitalism to developing economies (like India).
Milanovich has stated that the Chinese model has not been studied adequately, so it remains uncertain how to apply it to other societies.
Chinese capitalism does seem closer to the classic Japanese model of development.
South Korea seems to have developed rapidly by adopting the Japanese model — and has more recently shifted to the American model.
Meanwhile, Japan seems to be stagnating.
It could be that different models of development are more or less appropriate depending on a country’s level of development.
The point here is not economics, but psychology.
People tend to fixate on a particular model of development in terms of a one-size-fits-all universal applicability.
Forms of social technology can be dogmatically worshiped, almost like a cargo cult.
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What is not technology?
After all, if everything is technology, then nothing is technology.
Things that exist outside the realm of usefulness that are the purpose for useful things are not technology.
For example, art, religion, political action, and science can be useful, but they are also valued in themselves.
Consumption and entertainment exist primarily so that people can recuperate and be nourished so that they can labor more in the future.
In this in a way, consumption is a form of technology — but it is usually taken for granted as an end in itself.
In fact, increased consumption is how American society evaluates itself as successful or not.
So one problem is that in the USA, everything becomes technology.
But there is a good side to this.
In fact, it could be argued that America has only one true historical potentiality, which is to create new technology, both social and material.
America is all about inventing stuff.
But that’s not a preexisting mystical destiny.
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But there is another problem.
Again, the USA is not about excellence outside of technology.
The problem is that even American social and material technology might be mediocre.
There has been a lot of talk about innovation and how its disrupting everything.
However, there might actually have been less substantial technological innovation going on in the past decade than in the prior to that period.
That means that America is failing at its sole historical mission of creating great new technology — both material and social.
Here, we can use the example of junk food to help to explain what is meant here by “technology” and mediocrity.
In France, having a meal is a ritual that has value in itself, and it should ideally involve wine and conversation and last about two hours.
In contrast, American fast food is designed to be served immediately and eaten with one’s hands (while driving).
In the eyes of the French, this kind of reduces humans to draft animals like oxen who are being fed food as a fuel as quickly as possible so that they can labor more.
This seems to be especially true of the educated professional classes in the USA.
They often very carefully regulate their diet and exercise in order to optimize their energy levels for work.
But this American approach to food as technology is doubly perverse in the case of fast food.
This is because it is not healthy and diminishes long-term performance.
Thus, fast food is exemplary of:
- the takeover of everything by technology (in this case, food as dehumanizing fuel), and
- how it has also become mediocre, dysfunctional, and degraded as a technology.
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And so the interpretation here is that superhero movies are an example of a mediocre technocracy — and a critique of that technocracy in the ever-darkening mood of those films.
This raises issues about interpretation.
When an anthropologists writes about a culture, he or she is translating that culture for an audience in a different culture.
That is, the anthropologist is explaining to outsiders what the people he is studying mean or intend by their actions or communication.
However, the study of superheroes movies is a different kind of interpretation.
This is because it assumes that the superheroes represent something unconscious.
Even the artists, writers, actors, and directors involved do not consciously know what their artwork represents.
Like dreams, popular commercial art forms do not explicitly state what it is that makes them emotionally resonate with the public.
Moreover, popular culture can be seen at times to present a critique of the social order — even if it is only an unconscious critique.
In fact, when artists are unknowingly and unconsciously engaged in a social critique, it might be all the more powerful, unrestrained, and creative.
In fact, popular culture might even involve self-critique — and self-criticism — of popular culture itself.
Superhero movies might unconsciously offer a critique of technology’s appropriation of non-technology.
But the superhero movie it itself the prime example of that appropriation.
To understand this, one has to study and compare various superheroes.
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The quirks of superheroes are therefore important.
For example, in terms of superpowers, Superman is the opposite of Batman.
Batman has no super-abilities, whereas Superman possesses all of the major super-powers.
But Superman is also the opposite of all the other Superheroes in that while they usually have only one big talent, he has only one big vulnerability — namely, cryptonite.
There is also the issue of identity.
Superheroes hide their ordinary, prosaic, imperfect “backstage” self when they don their costumes and assume their “onstage” self that has one main superpower.
In contrast, when Bruce Wayne puts on the mask and cape, he is still an ordinary man — only now encased in expensive body armor.
Contrary to Batman, Superman does not wear a mask because as Superman he is being his true self — which is a god from another planet.
In fact, Superman’s disguise is when he puts on a pair of glasses and pretends to be Clark Kent.
(Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) – Superman and Clark Kent Scene)
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One other obvious difference between Batman and Superman is that Batman is named after an animal.
Indeed, it’s fairly common for superheroes like Spiderman to be named after a species of fauna — much the way that modern sports teams are often named after species of animals.
Superman diverges from other superheroes in this way.
Yet Superman embodies all superheroes in that he is their ultimate embodiment — which is evident in his name.
But the use of an animal as an emblem has deeper roots from a sociological perspective.
It has been argued that in the earliest religions, a particular plant or animal was worship by a clan as a representation of the clan itself — although the clan did not know this.
In other words, a society’s object of worship is secretly a representation of society itself.
According to Durkheim, through worship of the sacred, a culture becomes spiritually aware of its own existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elementary_Forms_of_the_Religious_Life
In summing up, then, we must say that society is not at all the illogical or a-logical, incoherent and fantastic being which it has too often been considered. Quite on the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life, since it is the consciousness of the consciousnesses. Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther ; at every moment of time, it embraces all known reality ; that is why it alone can furnish the mind with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them. It does not create these moulds artificially ; it finds them within itself ; it does nothing but become conscious of them.
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There is a related but distinct sociology of religion that traces how the modern world has become increasingly disenchanted because of the growth of science.
In fact, for Weber, all sorts of modern forces were arrayed against religious faith.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/emile-durkheim-religion-sacred
Durkheim shared Weber’s view that modern society was one in which traditional forms of religion were in terminal decline. Weber saw modernity in terms of the rise of secular, rationalised and bureaucratic social systems. Durkheim described it as an age in which the influence of the old gods of traditional religion was being replaced by new, more scientific ways of understanding the world.
Weber was a pessimist in terms of his prognosis for religion in the modern world.
But Durkheim was optimistic that new forms of the sacred would emerge in this modern world.
Arguably what is most important, though, is not what Weber and Durkheim shared in terms of their beliefs about the inevitable decline of traditional religion in modern society, but what they disagreed about. While Weber saw the rise of a soulless, rationalised society (“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart”), Durkheim believed the society of his day to be in a transitional moment in which the old gods might have faded, but new forms of the sacred were emerging. Religion might be dying, in its traditional forms, but sacred passions were not. We might, in Durkheim’s terms, be living in a more secular age, but not in a desacralised one.
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There is one frequently overlooked footnote to Weber’s gloomy sociology of religion that might be relevant to the rise of the superhero movie.
Weber observed that economic and social forces in modern societies have the kind of god-like power over modern man that natural forces once had over archaic man.
In the ancient world, these mysterious, powerful, inexorable natural forces were often represented as spirits or gods in polytheistic religions.
Could these overwhelming societal forces manifest themselves as divine beings in a future religion?
Perhaps they already have manifested themselves — not as gods, but as comic book supervillains.
- Comic books heroes might represent the different aspects of the social order and the modern self and value system, and
- the supervillains would represent modern problems and crises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series)
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Again, Batman represents the reality of the United States as having only a purely technological legacy for humanity (and this includes the social technology glibly referred to as “democracy”).
Then what do Batman’s enemies symbolize?
Batman’s foes represent the problems and dysfunctions of technology.
Notably, Batman’s nemeses, like the caped crusader himself, generally have no inherent superpowers and must rely on technology.
To understand these villains and how they represent perversions of technology, it is helpful to distinguish between “instrumental rationality” versus “value rationality”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_and_value_rationality
“Instrumental” and “value rationality” are terms scholars use to identify two ways humans reason when coordinating group behavior to maintain social life.
Every society maintains itself by coordinating instrumental means with value rational ends.
Together they make humans rational.
These two ways of reasoning seem to operate separately.
- Instrumental rationality recognizes means that “work” efficiently to achieve ends. Efficient means are recognized inductively in heads or brains or minds. Instrumental rationality provides intellectual tools—scientific and technological facts and theories—that appear to be impersonal, value-free means. This is determined by expectations as to the behavior of objects in the environment and of other human beings; these expectations are used as “conditions” or “means” for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends.
- Value rationality recognizes ends that are “right,” legitimate in themselves. Legitimate ends are felt deductively in hearts or guts or souls. Value rationality provides legitimate rules—moral valuations—that appear to be emotionally satisfying, fact-free ends. This is determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other form of behavior, independently of its prospects of success; … … the more the value to which action is oriented is elevated to the status of an absolute value, the more “irrational” in this [instrumental] sense the corresponding action is. For the more unconditionally the actor devotes himself to this value for its own sake, … the less he is influenced by considerations of the [conditional] consequences of his action.
An example of value rationality would be when a person does volunteer work, or goes to an art museum, or goes to church — without any expectation of extrinsic reward because these activities have value in themselves.
An example of a corruption of value rationality is when a celebrity does community service, or a professor goes to a symphony concert, or a politician goes to a religious event — in order to raise or rehabilitate their public persona and media profile.
Again, Batman’s foes represent various perversions of instrumental rationality — that is, the technical methods to accomplish a goal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Batman_family_enemies
- The Penguin is a straightforward criminal. He is a sane but evil man rationally engaged in the pursuit of wealth through crime. “Unlike most of Batman’s rogues gallery, the Penguin is completely sane and in full control of his actions, giving him a unique relationship with Batman.”
- Ra’s al Ghul, as an eco-terrorist seeking to bring balance to the world, embraces mass murder to attain a righteous goal. “Raʼs al Ghul is an international criminal mastermind whose ultimate goal is a world in perfect environmental balance. He believes that the best way to achieve this balance is to eliminate most of humanity.“
- The Riddler is obsessed with puzzles. Insofar as puzzles are entertainment, they are an end in themselves (value rationality); but puzzles are educational, and can also serve to hone practical problem solving (instrumental rationality). The Riddler stages crimes that involve a puzzle that challenges the public or investigators, but the puzzle serves as a ruse to accomplish the crime (instrumental rationality); at other times, the Riddler engages in crime as a form of puzzle solving (value rationality) “The character’s origin story recounts Edward Nigma’s fascination with puzzles from a young age. After a teacher announces that a contest will be held over who can solve a puzzle the fastest, Nigma sets his sights on winning this, craving the glory and satisfaction that will come with the victory. He breaks into the school at night to practice the puzzle until he is able to solve it in under a minute. Due to this he wins the contest and is given a book of riddles as a prize.”
- The Joker is irrational, and neither his methods or his goals make sense. “The Joker commits whimsical, brutal crimes for reasons that, in Batman’s words, ‘make sense to him alone’.”
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What does Spider Man personify?
- If Superman symbolizes the ideals of America, and
- Batman represents the technological means to attain worldly goals, then
- Spider Man embodies SCIENCE, and his enemies represent the corruption of science.
Science is value rational insofar as it is engaged as an end in itself, much like religion, art, or altruism — but science can serve the needs of technology.
Spider Man and most of the supervillains that he fights against are typically unintentional victims of accidents during scientific experiments.
The new superpowers are of benefit to society in the case of Spider Man, but in the case of the villains, it’s all about scientific research gone wrong.
Although they have been technically enhanced, the fact that their transformation was not deliberate severs the connection to purposive instrumental rationality and technology.
That is, their new powers were neither a goal nor meant to be a means to some nefarious premeditated end.
In fact, so many villains in Spider Man’s world were good (if difficult) men who were frustrated with a corrupt status quo that had trapped them prior to their transformation.
This lends a tragic aspect to the villains that can deepen the audience’s engagement with the characters.
But it also underscores the alienation and disconnection that the villains once experienced with the “greedy” industry that had ruined their lives and stymied their ambitions.
Again, this diminishes and attenuates their relationship to instrumental rationality and technology.
Also, so many of the animal totems in the Spider Man franchise — spiders, octopuses, vultures, chameleons, lizards, scorpions, jackals, cats, and even goblins and hobgoblins — are either trickster animals who hunt by stealth rather than by the chase, or are scavengers.
Their relative passivity in not being active hunters detaches them somewhat from active, instrumental reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Spider-Man_enemies
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Again, what’s with the “Batman-ification” or darkening of the Spider Man movies?
It’s been said that the great crisis of the 20th century was the industrialization of science.
Science has become a conveyor-belt, factory-like activity.
In other words, science has not only become subsumed under technology in the role it has been assigned in modern society, but research has itself become technology in its practice.
If it is true that current scientific and technological progress is stagnating, the colonization of science by technology might be one reason.
There are supposedly more working scientists in the world today than there have been throughout all of history combined — and yet the great scientific breakthroughs seem to be a thing of the past.
Again, a classic Batman supervillain is a scientist frustrated by the corruption and petty politics of the military-industrial-university complex.
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The Superhero movie is both a protest against and the perfect example of the takeover of everything by the military-industrial-university-entertainment complex (technocracy).
- Superman symbolizes American ideals (of truth, justice, and hope) and
- Batman represents the reality of the United States as a technocracy, and
- the current gloom in superhero movies reflects:
- the full subordination and subsumption of the ideal (Superman) to technology (Batman), as well as
- the resulting mediocrity.
Thus, the proper role of technology at the service of values has been inverted.
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A microcosm of the inversion of the roles of values to technocracy is found in Silicon Valley propaganda, with tech companies:
- telling their workers that they are living fulfilling, meaningful, beneficial, “disruptive”, and creative lives through constant, tireless labor, and
- telling the public that if their lives will be fulfilling, meaningful, beneficial, “disruptive”, and creative if they purchase the latest tech product.
This corporate and governmental “gaslighting” or “brainwashing” of is exactly what the 1960s popular critique warned against.
The protests of the 1960s was against governance by experts who secretly manipulated all aspects of society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_a_Counter_Culture
The Making of a Counterculture … chronicled and gave explanation to the European and North American counterculture of the 1960s. The term “counterculture” was first used by Roszak in this book.
The Making of a Counter Culture “captured a huge audience of Vietnam War protesters, dropouts, and rebels–and their baffled elders. Theodore Roszak found common ground between 1960s student radicals and hippie dropouts in their mutual rejection of what he calls the technocracy–the regime of corporate and technological expertise that dominates industrial society. He traces the intellectual underpinnings of the two groups in the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Goodman.“
The critique of the technocracy finds its origins in the elite university — which is heart of the technocracy.
For example, the Beat Generation of the 1950s was a precursors to the Hippies of the 1960s.
.https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/counterculture/
The Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a group of American post-World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, including the cultural phenomena they documented and inspired. Central elements of Beat culture included the experimentation with drugs, alternative forms of sexuality, interest in Eastern religions (such as Buddhism), rejection of materialism, and idealizing exuberant means of expression and being.
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature. Both Howl and Naked Lunch became the focus of obscenity trials. The publishers won the trials, however, and publishing in the United States became more liberalized. The members of the Beat Generation developed a reputation as new bohemian hedonists who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity.
Many of the foundational members of the Beat Generation were students at Columbia University.
Origin of the Beats
The origins of the Beat Generation can be traced to Columbia University, where Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Hal Chase, and others first met. Classmates Carr and Ginsberg discussed the need for a new vision to counteract what they perceived as their teachers’ conservative, formalistic literary ideals. Later, in the mid-1950s, the central figures of the Beat Generation (with the exception of Burroughs) ended up living in San Francisco together.
Complicating matters, this anti-technocratic attitude finds a conservative counterpart in an academic classicism that emphasizes the liberal arts.
Indeed, the left-wing counter-culture might be an unconscious expression of this traditionalism.
The idea of the great books emerged at the same time as the modern university.
The idea made its way into universities after 1900 as part of a backlash against the research model, led by proponents of what was called “liberal culture.” These were professors, mainly in the humanities, who deplored the university’s new emphasis on science, specialization, and expertise. For the key to the concept of the great books is that you do not need any special training to read them.
It’s not an accident or a misfortune that great-books pedagogy is an antibody in the “knowledge factory” of the research university, in other words. It was intended as an antibody. The disciplinary structure of the modern university came first; the great-books courses came after. As Montás says, “The practice of liberal education, especially in the context of a research university, is pointedly countercultural.”
Hence the protests of professors in the humanities against pragmatically oriented research of the modern university — which is deeply intertwined with the military-industrial complex.
However, the traditional liberal arts and modern scientific research both share the same exact focus on rigorous critical inquiry.
In contrast, the original mission of universities like Harvard was to train the next generation of religious clergy.
So, the modern research university is actually not so different from stodgy old academic traditionalism that celebrates “The Great Books”.
The real divide is between the religious mission of universities in the past with modern secular research — whether it is in the STEM subjects or the humanities.
In the creation of the modern university, science was the big winner. The big loser was not literature. It was religion. The university is a secular institution, and scientific research—more broadly, the production of new knowledge—is what it was designed for. All the academic disciplines were organized with this end in view. Philology prevailed in literature departments because philology was scientific. It represented a research agenda that could produce replicable results. Weinstein is not wrong to think that critical theory has played the same role. It does aim to add rigor to literary analysis.
Moreover, much of the support for the liberal arts has been because STEM subjects have historically been expensive to teach (laboratories, instructors in great demand in the private sector, etc.).
In contrast, the lecture courses of the liberal arts are (were?) relatively cheap (indeed, a cash cow in the case of law school).
That is, modern universities have funded the liberal arts not out of a deep reverence for tradition, but because they were comparatively inexpensive.
However, the calculus might be changing as fewer students choose them as their major.
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The point is that within academia, the technocracy and the countercultures that oppose it — whether radical or conservative — are not so different.
In fact, the technocracy and the countercultures are identical with one another.
Something like this has been asserted about the new commercial and consumer capitalism of the 1960s and the 1960s counterculture.
The central values of the 1960s counterculture — such as spontaneity, creativity, rebellion, and freedom — both influenced and had their origin in the advertising industry and the postwar shift to consumer capitalism.
.https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/259919.html
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The greatest concern in the 1960’s counter-cultural critique was the manipulation of desires through propaganda and advertising.
A classic example of cool-blooded, rational technicians finessing public opinion can be found in Germany’s long-serving leader Angela Merkel.
Merkel was able to rule for so long because whenever she was faced with a crisis, she would radically change her positions in order to seem hip and cool and progressive.
For instance, Merkel is pro-nuclear.
However, after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, Merkel vowed to permanently close Germany’s nuclear power plants.
Likewise, Merkel was strict on immigration.
In 2015, Merkel tried to comfort a Palestinian girl who expressed her fears of imminent deportation to an impoverished Middle East.
Merkel’s efforts to calm the girl and explain the necessity of a strict immigration policy only made the girl more upset — and also creeped-out the the German television audience.
Merkel soon thereafter confirmed her openness to foreign immigration.
The effects of Merkel’s policy reversals are not simply that she adopted policies that she knew would be disastrous in order to burnish her popularity.
The greater problem is precisely that her long rule did produce the kind of remarkable stability that a conservative technocrat values so highly.
That kind of smoothed-over, artificial “stability” only serves to foster a moribund society, economy, and political culture — as in the cautionary tale of a stagnating Japan.
Perhaps that kind of static stability ultimately leads to a Soviet-bloc scenario, in which governments that seemed permanently entrenched suddenly crumble overnight.
That line of thought leads to a rather disturbing conclusion….
Although it is fashionable to predict that the USA is headed toward another civil war, the USA might actually be profoundly stable — in fact, perhaps more stable than any time in its history.
Instead, it is rather Germany and Japan that might be headed toward a dire crisis and day of reckoning.
In any case, it might have been better for Merkel to have opened public debates on immigration and nuclear energy rather than do a sudden about-face in policy.
To her credit, Merkel did engage in a rational public discourse during the worst days of the Covid pandemic — although as a scientist explaining concepts, not as a debater.
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The concept of “technocracy” seems to be flexible enough to be applied to almost any political faction.
Technocracy is usually associated with rational management.
This was the goal of the Progressive movement in the early 1930s.
The progressivism was a reform movement that sought to replace corruption with science.
For example, instead of elected mayors, towns and cities would be run by an appointed manager.
Also, progressives sought to shatter business monopolies.
President Theodore Roosevelt was a classic example of a progressive who sought to break up large conglomerates that stifled competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
The Progressive Era (1896–1916) was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States of America that spanned the 1890s to World War I.[1] The main objectives of the Progressive movement were addressing problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption. Social reformers were primarily middle-class citizens who targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives in office, a further means of direct democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of monopolies through methods such as trustbusting and corporations through antitrust laws, which were seen as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors. They also advocated for new government roles and regulations, and new agencies to carry out those roles, such as the FDA.
One finds an updated version of the Progressive movement in the figure of Ralph Nader during his heyday of the 1970s, when he crusaded for:
- consumer protection,
- environmentalism, and
- government reform.
The critique of progressive reformers like Nader is that governance in the USA is dominated by corrupt “iron triangles” comprised of:
- politicians,
- bureaucrats, and
- special interests (business and labor).
For instance, one criticism of the US Forest Service is that it should be renamed the US Lumber Service because it caters to the logging industry.
- Fees for logging on public lands are supposed to go toward road construction;
- but those fees goes entirely to road construction on public lands used by loggers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics)
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The point here is that progressives who believe in rational management are accused of being technocrats — but progressives have their own critique of technocracy.
Moreover, the technocracy of the iron triangle is not based on rational management and open debate, but on secretive negotiations.
Complicating matters more, the iron triangle is a legacy of the New Deal.
The New Deal brought social harmony and economic growth to the USA by uniting big business, big government, and big labor.
Republicans like Eisenhower in the 1950s consolidated rather than abolished the New Deal.
(This is when small-town small businessmen — who were outsiders in the New Deal — turned away from conservatism and toward right-wing populism.)
Another wrinkle is that all of the above might suggest that a “Green New Deal” might be more problematic than its advocates would imagine.
That is, environmentalism and the New Deal would make an odd couple.
Yet another wrinkle is the figure of President Joe Biden, who, as a man of the New Deal, is a dinosaur who values inclusive coalitions that work in secret.
“Democratic Socialists” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes consider this to be patronage and the essence corruption.
But Biden is also an outsider from the Democratic Party’s establishment since the 1990s, which champions deregulation — albeit with strong social investment.
Unlike during the 1950s, right-wing populists today don’t have so much of a problem with Joe Biden, who represents yesteryear’s New Deal technocracy.
Today, the right-wing populist considers the quasi-libertarian policies of the Democratic establishment — such as free trade with China — to be treason.
So, each outsider political faction seems to demonized an insider faction that is in power as an “evil” technocracy.
Indeed, perhaps because they are the ultimate outsiders, “Democratic Socialists” just might conceive everyone else to be an evil technocracy.
But socialism is often perceived as being the ultimate rationalistic, centralized technocracy.
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It seems that every faction in American politics has its own discourse on a version of technocracy against which it is opposed.
At the same time, this faction is itself conceived as a technocracy by another.
The historical pattern might be for this anti-technocratic agenda to find its origins in elite circles and then filter down into society.
For example, the anti-technocratic agenda of the 1960s counterculture found its origin in elite academia of the 1950s, and went mainstream in the 1970s.
But one finds a similar mainstreaming of anti-technocratic sentiment among conservatives.
Perhaps most famously, there was President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, which warned of a “military-industrial complex”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
During this period, this sentiment is reflected within elite intellectual circles across the political spectrum.
Attempts to conceptualize something similar to a modern “military–industrial complex” existed before Eisenhower’s address. Ledbetter finds the precise term used in 1947 in close to its later meaning in an article in Foreign Affairs by Winfield W. Riefler.[14][18] In 1956, sociologist C. Wright Mills had claimed in his book The Power Elite that a class of military, business, and political leaders, driven by mutual interests, were the real leaders of the state, and were effectively beyond democratic control. Friedrich Hayek mentions in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom the danger of a support of monopolistic organization of industry from World War II political remnants.
Just near the end of the Cold War, the diplomat George Kennan made an prediction about the persistence of the military-industrial complex.
In order to justify defense spending in a post-Soviet age, it would eventually create a fake Cold War.
In a self-fulfilling process, by antagonizing foreign powers, it would eventually manage to create a new Cold War.
George F. Kennan wrote in his preface to Norman Cousins‘s 1987 book The Pathology of Power, “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military–industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
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Thus, during the 1950s, across the political spectrum among the American elites, there was a wariness of a technocracy generally — and, more specifically, of a military-industrial complex.
However, within mainstream America, it was the left-wing who were early adopters of fear of the technocracy.
It started with a countercultural fringe in 1960s who sought to change society through psychological transformation (free love, psychedelics, music festivals).
By the 1970s, the hedonistic trappings of the counterculture (sex, drugs, and rock and roll) are cynically appropriated by the mainstream more generally .
The critique of the technocracy persists — but in hopeless form — in 1970s Hollywood paranoid thriller that postulated a hidden government.
.https://www.imdb.com/poll/ZKnWXbZ_pzg/
The genre was so common that it was spoofed.
(“Winter Kills”, 1979, original trailer)
Within the mainstream, the critique that finds its origins in the far-left counterculture finds its eventual home on the far right.
In the 21st century, the critique of the technocracy has become the right-wing fantasia of the “deep state”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_the_United_States
The deep state is a widely discredited conspiracy theory which claims the existence of a clandestine group of actors who exercise power from within high levels of government, finance, and industry in the United States.
A common perception is that the idea of the “deep state” originated in a right-wing fringe and then migrated to the mainstream.
https://www.newsweek.com/deep-state-conspiracy-theory-trump-645376
This is true, but only in the 21st century.
The long view is that the idea of the deep state:
- originated in various elite circles in the 1950s, then
- entered the mainstream in the far left in the 1960s, and then
- assimilated into the mainstream in bastardized form in the 1970s, then
- popped up on the far right, and finally
- wound up on Fox News.
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But the critique of the deep state goes back even further in American history to the creation of a post-election “spoils system” — in which the victory replaces government staff with his own supporters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
In politics and government, a spoils system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice in which a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its supporters, friends (cronyism), and relatives (nepotism) as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a merit system, where offices are awarded on the basis of some measure of merit, independent of political activity.
The spoils system finds its first systematic example in the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828.
The term was derived from the phrase “to the victor belong the spoils” by New York Senator William L. Marcy,[1][2] referring to the victory of Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, with the term spoils meaning goods or benefits taken from the loser in a competition, election or military victory.
This aggressive new patronage system wreaked havoc on the federal civil service.
The Jackson administration aimed at creating a more efficient system where the chain of command of public employees all obeyed the higher entities of government. The most-changed organization within the federal government proved to be the Post Office. The Post Office was the largest department in the federal government, and had even more personnel than the War Department. In one year, 423 postmasters were deprived of their positions, most with extensive records of good service.
What the Wikipedia entry does not mention is that Jackson ideologically justified the spoils system.
.https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3544
Nowhere was the Jacksonian ideal of openness made more concrete than in Jackson’s theory of rotation in office, known as the spoils system. In his first annual message to Congress, Jackson defended the principle that public offices should be rotated among party supporters in order to help the nation achieve its republican ideals.
Performance in public office, Jackson maintained, required no special intelligence or training, and rotation in office would ensure that the federal government did not develop a class of corrupt civil servants set apart from the people. His supporters advocated the spoils system on practical political grounds, viewing it as a way to reward party loyalists and build a stronger party organization. As Jacksonian Senator William Marcy of New York proclaimed, “To the victor belongs the spoils.”
However, to some extent Jackson’s gutting the civil service of elites and replacing them with ordinary people was limited and fake.
The spoils system opened government positions to many of Jackson’s supporters, but the practice was neither as new nor as democratic as it appeared. During his first 18 months in office, Jackson replaced fewer than 1,000 of the nation’s 10,000 civil servants on political grounds, and fewer than 20 percent of federal officeholders were removed during his administration. Moreover, many of the men Jackson appointed to office had backgrounds of wealth and social eminence. Jackson did not originate the spoils system. By the time he took office, a number of states, including New York and Pennsylvania, practiced political patronage.
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However, at least in its rhetoric, Jackson’s spoils system had the radical intent of the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s.
Alarmed at the rise of a bureaucratic state soon after the Communist Revolution, Mao pursued various policies to undermine it.
In the case of the Cultural Revolution, things quickly degenerated into anarchy and civil war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
Launching the movement in May 1966 with the help of the Cultural Revolution Group, Mao charged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society with the aim of restoring capitalism. Mao called on young people to “bombard the headquarters“, and proclaimed that “to rebel is justified”. The youth responded by forming Red Guards and “rebel groups” around the country. A selection of Mao’s sayings were compiled into the Little Red Book, which became a sacred text for Mao’s personality cult. They held “denunciation rallies” against revisionists regularly, and grabbed power from local governments and CCP branches, eventually establishing the revolutionary committees in 1967. The committees often split into rival factions and became involved in armed fights known as ‘violent struggles‘, to which the army had to be sent to restore order.
The Cultural Revolution was characterized by violence and chaos. Death toll estimates vary widely, with roughly 250,000 to 20 million people perishing during the Revolution.
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Preventing the rise of an entrenched elite — as well as the formation of a centralized state — might also be purpose of elaborate gift-giving rituals among the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
The abundant resources of the region create economic surpluses that could undermine tribal life and its profound social cohesion.
Importantly, surpluses were not only given away, but ostentatiously destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader’s wealth and power. Potlatches are also focused on the reaffirmation of family, clan, and international connections, and the human connection with the supernatural world. Potlatch also serves as a strict resource management regime, where coastal peoples discuss, negotiate, and affirm rights to and uses of specific territories and resources. Potlatches often involve music, dancing, singing, storytelling, making speeches, and often joking and games. The honouring of the supernatural and the recitation of oral histories are a central part of many potlatches.
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In sum, the darkening or “Batman-ification” of the superhero movie is the superhero movie making a critique of itself — which is a self-critique of the technocracy.
In particular, the ideals of American society (embodied in Superman) have been subsumed under technology (Batman).
However, there can be dual ideals in society — an official ideal that promotes the functioning of society, and the greater ideal that society serves.
As the poet Charles Bukowsky said, above and behind every ideal there is a secret hidden ideal.
But the relationship between these two ideals is not that of the perfect Platonic form like the idea of a circle versus the actual flawed thing.
Rather, these two ideals are two very different things.
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The relationship between these two ideals is comparable to that between “manifest” and “latent” functions in social institutions.
For example, the manifest function of a rain dance within an indigenous culture is to produce rain during a drought.
In contrast, the latent function of the rain dance that skeptical outside observers would find obvious is the promotion of social cohesion during a crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_and_latent_functions_and_dysfunctions
“…the “manifest” function of antigambling legislation may be to suppress gambling, its “latent” function to create an illegal empire for the gambling syndicates. Or Christian missions in parts of Africa “manifestly” tried to convert Africans to Christianity, “latently” helped to destroy the indigenous tribal cultures and this provided an important impetus towards rapid social transformation. Or the control of the Communist Party over all sectors of social life in Russia “manifestly” was to assure the continued dominance of the revolutionary ethos, “latently” created a new class of comfortable bureaucrats uncannily bourgeois in its aspirations and increasingly disinclined toward the self-denial of Bolshevik dedication (nomenklatura). Or the “manifest” function of many voluntary associations in America is sociability and public service, the “latent” function to attach status indices to those permitted to belong to such associations.” “
The relationship between society’s manifest ideal and its latent ideal finds an analogy within the discipline of political science.
Political scientists must learn political theory in order to function within their fields like public policy.
But that kind of basic, local political theory is distinct from political philosophy, which stands outside and above political science (at least for the philosopher).
Likewise, on closer inspection, popular culture exhibits latent ideals above and behind manifest ideals.
- Hence, Superman is obviously the manifest ideal of American liberal democracy.
- But it is easy to forget that Superman is not Clark Kent in disguise, but rather the benevolent space alien Kal-El — the son of a Kryptonian scientist father and an astronaut mother.
- In this way, Kal-El is similar to Sherlock Holmes, who is the manifest ideal of the aristocrat as scientific investigator dedicated to public service.
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It should be noted that within society, there are a plurality of ideals, some of which are covert.
For example, the dominant ideal of happiness in the USA might be the display of success as a sign and culmination of a virtuous life — in particular, owning a house.
That version of the American dream would be a legacy of secularized Protestantism.
Materialism is one would expect from a democracy because democratic cultures reflect the mentality of the ordinary person.
But the American dream of achieving a material goal that is grandiose is probably not suited to 90% of people.
That is, the ordinary person might be tempted and transfixed by the fantasy of owning a giant house and giant truck.
However, they would not be happy in either the pursuit or the attainment of those goals.
So often, they are really nice people trying hard to appear to be individualistic high-achievers.
Their real goal is to simply fit in — and there is nothing wrong with that.
They might be better off being content with what they have and living moderately and responsibly — in line with Buddhism and the original Christianity.
However, ten percent of the population is only happy when they are striving for the summits of accomplishment.
One can find this elitist notion of happiness in ancient Greek philosophy.
First, happiness is a goal that stands outside of technological ways to attain things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness
In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 BCE, Aristotle stated that happiness (also being well and doing well) is the only thing that humans desire for their own sake, unlike riches, honour, health or friendship. He observed that men sought riches, or honour, or health not only for their own sake but also in order to be happy.
Second, this is happiness as fulfillment through action in which a worldly goal is being pursued, and not happiness a state of being attained by proper attitude.
For Aristotle the term eudaimonia, which is translated as ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’ is an activity rather than an emotion or a state.[43] Eudaimonia (Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a classical Greek word consists of the word “eu” (“good” or “well-being”) and “daimōn” (“spirit” or “minor deity”, used by extension to mean one’s lot or fortune). Thus understood, the happy life is the good life, that is, a life in which a person fulfills human nature in an excellent way.
Third, the active life is a rational life.
Specifically, Aristotle argued that the good life is the life of excellent rational activity. He arrived at this claim with the “Function Argument”. Basically, if it is right, every living thing has a function, that which it uniquely does. For Aristotle human function is to reason, since it is that alone which humans uniquely do. And performing one’s function well, or excellently, is good. According to Aristotle, the life of excellent rational activity is the happy life.
Finally, this rational active life is not for everybody, and the alternative is to lead a more limited simple ethical life (for example, Buddhism and Christianity).
Aristotle argued a second-best life for those incapable of excellent rational activity was the life of moral virtue.
The argument here is that this rational active life is, in fact, not appropriate for most people.
For most people, the best life is that of modest, reasonable small-town living with one’s circle of family and friends (much like Clark Kent growing up in Smallville).
This should be the proper manifest ideal of American life.
For example, the billionaire investor Warren Buffett lives in a relatively modest house in Omaha, Nebraska.
Arguable, if every billionaire and millionaire in America lived like Warren Buffett:
- there would be much greater social cohesion in the USA;
- Americans would live more within their means; and
- millionaires and billionaires would actually be happier.
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Warren Buffet would then be the exemplar of the manifest ideal of American life.
The rational active life would be the latent ideal of society pursued by few.
That is, the unspoken, tacit purpose of the American way of life would be to produce a few rational men of action like Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Nader.
Also, the latent goal would be to produce great scientists and artists.
These latent elitist goals are very necessary to avoid society getting “stuck in place” because of the moderation and reasonableness of manifest goals.
In particular, the materialism of the ordinary person makes them easily tempted by the consumerist values of the technocracy.
Society needs to learn to accept societal projects that are not designed to increase material productivity and that have value in themselves.
For example, there is a popular notion that society can avoid stagnation by engaging in a grandiose infrastructure project.
Actually, that would worsen exacerbate stagnation.
For example, fusion power is touted as a potentially safe, clean, and cheap form of energy.
However, these material utopian expectations only lead to critics complaining that “fusion power is always five years away”.
Instead, research on fusion power should be pursued because it has value in itself.
The proposal is that the world would invest $10 billion per year in fusion power research, and this would increase by five percent every year — without any foreseen practical benefit.
It would be the modern equivalent of a sacrifice to the gods in order to avoid spiritual stagnation.
It could be that Americans simply would not understand this.
We would then turn out hopes toward Eurasia as a source of permanent funding for pure research on fusion power.
Even the least developed countries of Eurasia could contribute to funding research that explicitly might not have any practical payback.
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(“Unbreakable”, 2000, Comic Book Store scene)
