“Fred 2:

Everything you say about big, controlling government being a defining, intrinsic aspect of liberalism is a plain, out and out lie.”

Isn’t welfare a liberal idea in which the government replaces fathers as providers for their kids?

That sounds like government control to me.

“Also, the blob-people of Wall-E are an extreme example of the results of corporatist control, so that’s another non-point on your part.”

Liberals don’t own corporations? Since when. A great example is Oprah, a liberal who owns a massive corporation that has great influence over aspects of American society. Like book sales, beef sales, and presidential campaigns.

As for Wall-E, Buy N Large and the global government had became synonymous in that futuristic world. So, the blob humans are living under-and dependent on-a “big goverment” system.

Wall-E’s director,Andrew Stanton, further delves into this topic in an interview with WORLD magazine:

WORLD: The depiction of humanity is pretty stark in this movie.

STANTON: Well, when I started outlining humanity in the story, I asked myself: What if everything you needed to survive—health care, food—was taken care of and you had nothing but a perpetual vacation to fill your time? What if the result of all that convenience was that all your relationships became indirect—nobody’s reaching out to each other? A lot of people have suggested that I was making a comment on obesity. But that wasn’t it, I was trying to make humanity big babies because there was no reason for them to grow up anymore.

Read the full interview here:

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14127?CFID=9866289&CFTOKEN=11233462

I agree that torture is never an option. Ever.

I totally see your point there. I’m sorry if I came across as endorsing those methods. You have given me alot to think about there, and I do think Io should reassess how I present my argument.

I’m not saying that I disagree at all and I’m also not saying that I think that V is right. I’m saying that he’s moral. As my later point about the Punisher was suggesting, morality can be the very basis for very violent and heinous actions, and I also used this point to talk about Willingham’s argument that superheroes needed a more moral outlook, involving a more obvious difference between good and evil.

I guess I was just trying to argue that moral purpose can be discovered through struggle and hardship, and combat (at least in the figurative sense). I don’t think that behaviour like V’s would work to offer someone the space to make sane, reasoned decisions and would rather result in mental and physical pain that would stay with the victim for a lifetime.

At the same time, I do take the torture scene as an analogy, not as a literal depiction of how to engage someone in a real, lived manner. I feel like Moore uses the scene as a way of individualising a collective process. It is for an extreme projection of the kind of ubiquitous violence that goes on at an everyday level, and that part of the process of finding freedom is to accept one’s status as being un-free. That identification of the forces and processes that define, or seek to define, the limits of one’s field of action are only overcome through accepting them in an act of self-consciousness, before they can be overcome. I’m not saying that I don’t think this is a brutal process, or that V is a villain, as I also see these conditions as a fundamental condition of life. Not a desirable or warranted condition, and by no means distributed universally, or equally, but in some ways an inescapable fact. As I don’t believe in the actual manifestation of divine forces upon the world, I can only see the pain and hardship that exists in the world as a product of human actions, and human interventions. In this sense I see torture scene as depiction of how people behave when brutalised. In the story it is individualised, but I was just trying to argue that a certain kind of brutality exists at an social level, and that it can produce the response of extremism, not as an aberration, but as a reasoned through response for defending oneself, or as a way of fighting against the broader forces that resulted in the founding brutality.

I’m not saying I fully endorse this, but I see it as less of a product of indoctrination, and more of a response to a situation. More of an internal product of a person than as an idea forced upon them from the outside. I’m not saying this justifies any of these outcomes. I also think that V is meant to be viewed as an idea or ideal, much like Batman is presented in ‘Batman Begins’. V is like a totem, or spirit that haunts the real world of the story. He’s the spirit of extremism that exists as a product of the everyday violence, much like Batman is supposed to be an embodiment of justice in a corrupt world. That’s why Evey decides against taking of his mask, as it would negate his embodiment of the idea she she’s him as representing. I’m not saying I think this is a good model for basing political action on, but I interpret Moore as crafting a story that deals with the origin of extremism in a brutal, but poetic way. Whether it works effectively…? After reading what you’ve said I see your point and am now more inclined to think maybe not.

Your real world example is a very good complication of this matter.

There is no excuse for the CIA torture. Torture should only be performed if there is a reasonable belief of an imminent threat and a reasonable belief that the subject has information that could prevent it. Jack Bauer type situations.

However, Jack Bauer situations simply do not exist in the real world, no matter how much conservative whackos want to believe otherwise. Even then, the torturers should be prepared to stand trial and not weasel their way out of responsibility just like Jack is on the show.

Rounding up Arabs who resent you blowing up their town and calling them insurgents and terrorists does not justify torture.

So, I agree entirely that left and right should get behind heroic heroes, but the context of the stated idea is offputting.

i’m not sure why anyone would reflexively object to his wish to associate a brighter and more positive flavor of superheroism with ‘the american way’ than has been the norm, lately. seems like whichever side of the left/right fence or the america’s-great-just-as-she-is/america-could-stand-some-improvement fence you happen to be on, you could see that as being a positive or hopeful thing. while you’re waiting to see what kind of stories the man’s actually going to write.

personally, i’m up for seeing a broader resurgence of, uhm, well…actual heroic values and struggles, internal and external, in superhero comics. just seems like it’s about time.

just my two cents.

Let’s say that they WERE Al Qaeda, and the CIA had them tortured not in order gain information but to teach them that freedom and democracy were preferable to blowing up innocent civilians — that is to say, that (like Evey) they were unthinking participants in an evil system and that a little old-fashioned “dunking the head in water until they almost drown” (REAL drowning, not the simulated version produced by waterboarding) was seen as the perfect way to make them see the light. That would have been okay, then? Because that’s where your argument seems to lead.

I don’t buy it for a second. There’s no “moral ambiguity” whatsoever in the situation scripted by Moore. V uses physical and (Moore hints) sexual assault to brainwash an innocent civilian. Period, full stop. Hell, V was LESS justified than the CIA, insofar as the Agency at least thought (wrongly) that these guys might have knowledge that could prevent a terrorist attack, whereas V simply knew that his worldview was right and that psychologically and physically torturing a young girl was therefore justified in order to make her see the light that only he possessed. Is tortured justified if you know you’re right, then, even in the absence of any potential physical threat from the subject being tortured? If Dick Cheney had tried such logic out in public, how many minutes do you think it would have taken for Congress to file articles of impeachment?

Damn, that’s one messed-up argument you have there.

2) I stopped reading most mainstream comics because the characters were so miserable that I didn’t want to spend any time with them.

3) I don’t think the country is falling apart. The idea that there was ever one, true, monolithic “America” is an historical illusion.

4) Belgians make okay comics but great beer.

Now everybody get back to work.

I think the example of “V For Vendetta” is an interesting one. I’m quite sure that at the time it was written Moore was influenced by Anarchist politics, so although it is fair to read the characters ambiguously I think V is very much meant as an actual hero.

The particular torture scene is perhaps the most important one of the story, and I think to characterise such a situation as producing extremism, whilst not incaccurate, misses something.

The point I would make is to reference the notion of the Master/Slave dialectic as employed by the German philosopher Hegel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master-slave_dialectic#Death_struggle). In this concept the stuggle for recognition between two conscious minds takes the form of a “death struggle”. This is a struggle in which both Master and Slave fight for recognition from the other and as such only achieve self-consciousness through this struggle with another being.

In this scene, Evey is forced by V’s wager to confront her imprisonment, her lack of freedom. She achieves her self-consiousness, and therefore her freedom to truly choose who she wises to be, in the face of her imprisonment. Her choice of death rather than compliance is a sign she has accepted her own imprisonment in a “system”, and the beginnings of her finding how to take her freedom for herself, rather than assume it as a given. It mirrors Socrates decision to face execution in ancient Greece rather than punishments such as exile, as this would mean he would have abandon the beliefs he held and the Athens that he loved.

In this sense. Evey is not a victim, but discovers through her subjection to brutality, that it is others who would make of her a victim. Her willingness to embrace death is not a sign of compliance, or resignation, but the first awakenings of her consiousness to the real power over her own life and death she possessed all along. She moves at this moment from the victim rescued by V at the beginning of the story, from an object of a male heroes story, to a being ready to asume her full subjectivity.

This is where I think that V is actually one of the most moral heroes in any fictional story, as he put Evey into situation where she picks her moral commitments over her own life. I’m not saying I condone this, but it is a powerful message (somewhat lost in the movie due to too much kung-fu and Portman’s atrocious accent ) I also think that this is ultimately the message of the story, not anything critical of the “system” from a simple Leftist perspective, but closer to a Feminist story about the ubiquitous brutality faced by women everyday.

It’s also a tale about the nature of Evil, but not that evil is a form of extremism, but that Evil is everywhere, and as such is the base foundation of life, not a violent exception. Hannah Arendt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt) oultined this idea in her analysis of Nazi Germany when she coined the phrase Banality of Evil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_Evil). In the context of the V story, the real evil is not the actions of the “extremist” characters, such as V, but those that allow the everyday perpetration of violence by the state and other mass-representative institutions to continue. It is the detached, and supposedly objective, bureacracy of the state that allowed the systematic violence of the Holocaust to continue in Arendt’s view, because the violence occurs in the peripheral vision, and at arms length, of those who actually run the system that perpetrates it. In Moore’s V, Evey is awakened to this notion of Evil by V, who engages her in a forced recognition of these levels of systematised violence.

In the story is V brutal…? Yes… Is it a villainous brutality…? Not so sure.

I also like this idea of the Banality of Evil as an idea that could unite the far left and the far right against the Libreral/Conservative moderates. I find a distrust of the organised state to be a key idea in both forms of “extreme” politics.

I also think that vis-a-vis Willingham’s initial contention about morality, or lack thereof, is implicitly flawed. Not because it is about a continuum of superheroes ranging from the morally pure to the morally incorruptable, but the problem is that he misidentifies the heroes that do not share *his* definition of morality as somehow possessing none.

The characters who behaves in a manner that may not seem morally justified, or morally correct, or could be identified as possessing some kind of “lack” in the space of their character should be, may be exercising another form of morality altogether, and one that it feels like, is simply not recognised by Willingham.

(See above V contention for how that may play out…)

For example, take the Punisher. Does he not possess one of the most stringent, and rigid moral codes of any hero in the medium…? He kills, sure, but he does so because his “victims” have broken a moral code he deems to to higher that the prohibition upon killing. In some senses, I feel like he’s the most *heroic* of all hereos, because he not only defends a higher morality, but does so in the name of the institution of the family. I mean even his name… “Punisher”… he isn’t called the executioner, he’s higher in the moral world than that. He punishes, he carries out punishment, on those who have trangressed a moral boundary or written law, he doesn’t wait for them to face trial, or be sentenced and then stick a needle in their arm whilst they’re strapped to a chair… he finds them and delivers a judgement upon them based upon his own internal commitment to a moral ideal…

V isn’t a hero, and V FOR VENDETTA is a deeply flawed work. Best example: Evey’s torture, which should by all right have either permanently repulsed her or turned her into into a Patty Hearst-style brainwashed zombie. This action on V’s part should’ve been the point where he really WAS revealed to be one of the story’s villains, indeed that the cast was composed almost EXCLUSIVELY of villains, save for one victim (Evey). Instead, Moore chokes at the clutch, unwilling to acknowledge the full moral dimensions of the story that he was telling — which still, mind you, would have been an entertaining story. Instead, the final third of the book basically runs off the rails because of Moore’s need to present V in a good (or at least “better”) light. Mind you, Alan Moore has always sucked at story endings.

Probably not the answer that you wanted… but then, you’re operating from a shallow, flimsy definition of “conservatives” to begin with. Which kind of conservative are you talking about? Paleo-cons? Neo-cons? Social conservatives? Libertarian conservatives? Rockerfeller conservatives? There are a wide number of factions within the basic philosphical framework, and each disagrees with the others on a wide variety of subjects.

Come on — if I were to state that all liberals were research-lab-bombing ALF terrorists who spit on U.S. servicemen for kicks, how accurate would I be? Obviously not very, despite the fact that there ARE liberals who aren’t too far from conforming to this stereotype. (I spent six years in Seattle; I’ve met a few, believe me.) Likewise, there are some pretty nutty conservatives out there. (I grew up in Arizona; again, I’ve met my share.) Should the outliers define the whole? The answer in both cases is obviously “Hell, no.”

Were there any series besides Astro City that did the Reconstruction thing in response to Watchmen?

What I CAN comment on is the tendency of art to imitate life. Perhaps comics reflect the nation’s psyche. 60 years ago we were coming out of a just war fought against fascists who committed genocide. We were right to feel assured of our moral superiority. But now? How can anyone argue in any seriousness that moral clarity and courage are “American” traits in comics? Are they “American” traits at all? We’re torturing people. We’re locking up people who may not have tried to hurt a single American soul. Yet nearly half the country evidently believes they deserve that treatment.

I mean, it’s been over 60 years since we were in a declared war. Since WWII we’ve been in a state of nearly perpetual military conflict, yet no war has been declared. It’s because they were and are morally ambiguous wars of choice. Excuse us for not buying into this “American Exceptionalism” bullshit the right is pushing these days. We’ve seen too much of what goes on around here to put any stock in it. Maybe that’s why the comics aren’t bright and cheery. Maybe that’s why we may have flawed heroes and villains whose villainy spawns from a reasonable grievance.

I remember someone decrying the change from “Casablanca”, in which the lead puts duty before love, to “The English Patient”, in which the lead chooses the opposite. What do you expect? The latter was made during a time in which the people choosing to go to unnecessary wars make billions from the dying. The “My country, right or wrong” attitude needs to go.

I’ve always been curious about conservatives and “V for Vendetta”. V is a terrorist. Yet he fights a righteous battle. How do conservatives reconcile these facts?

Jack, I agree regarding Fred’s “corporatist control” claims. Liberals wanting government to tell you what doctor to see? Not true. But in any case, that’s what the insurance companies tell you already.

“I love dark superheroes and dark, gritty stories. And I hope MArvel keeps doing exactly what they’r doing. Love it! ”

Frankly, I’m enjoying books like Invincible Iron Man, X-Men Worlds Apart (Storm’s mini-series) and Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel precisely because they’re more hopeful, yet challenging. Like gangsta rap music, the once daring “grim and gritty” trend in comics has gotten stale.

“I also love the mutlculturalizing going on at DC. Oh no! Firestorm’s not Ronnie Raymond anymore! I cared so much for that character! Boo Hoo! All cops and firemen aren’t white males. So superheroes should reflect that diversity if they expect to keep a lot of their readers.”

There are two flaws with your argument.

First, you don’t have to be White to snub the new Firestorm viewed the new Firestorm as a half-hearted attempt at diversity by DC. Such fans would prefer publishers to create NEW non-White superheroes.
Blogger Rich Watson expounds on this point in his commentary on the recent DC/Milestone merger:

“Something else about this deal bothers me. DC executive vice-president Dan DiDio insists that it’s not about wanting to diversify the DCU, but it’s about bringing great material into the DC universe, and being able to add value to everything we do. Well, that sounds all nice and noble, but riddle me this: why is it that whenever DC decides to throw a bone to readers of color, they put their best efforts into making legacy characters connected to pre-established ones? Green Lantern II (John Stewart). Mr. Miracle II. Steel (originally one of the replacement Supermen and who is still considered part of the Superman family). Mr. Terrific II. Jakeem Thunder (successor to Johnny Thunder). Firestorm II. And to go beyond black characters, there’s Atom III (an Asian-American), Question II (a Latina), and Batwoman II (a lesbian).

Remember Muhamamad X? Skyrocket? Orpheus? Chances are you don’t. These were original heroes of color created within the DCU but were given little chance to shine for very long and now linger in superhero limbo. Sure, someone could use them again, but it’s so much easier to buy someone else’s characters, especially when they come with their own built-in fanbases. Typical corporate mentality.”

Read the rest of the blog post here:

http://www.popcultureshock.com/blogs/milestone-does-not-belong-within-the-dcu/

Second, the increasing racial diversity in DC Comics hasn’t caused a massive increase in comic fans of any race. Black consumers, for example, don’t have a CLUE that DC’s more diverse comics exist because of poor marketing and distribution. Writer Christopher Priest explains in greater detail:

http://www.digital-priest.com/comics/adventures/chips3.htm

So, this racial diversity debate in comics is more complex than it is often portrayed.

“In fact, you could even argue that liberalism lends itself to moral heroism even more than conservatism. Why? Because it demands that you do the right thing because it is the right thing to do – not because it’s traditional or because God or your dad told you to. Look at “Twelve Angry Men” for a brilliant example of liberal moral clarity.”

One major part of modern liberalism is that government should be really large to solve our problems. But wouldn’t that stifle people’s desire to be self-sufficient? Do we REALLY need the government to tell us what food to buy our kids or what doctor to go to?

Also, wouldn’t a large government also promote laziness and ignorance rather than a thrist for adventure and knowledge? The humans turned blobs in the hit film “Wall-E” are an extreme version of this idea.

And if the government is expected to handle every problem, then wouldn’t superheroes be considered unnecessary?

Just something to think about.

The difficulty lies in the fact that many people have allowed themselves to be polarized about everything. The “If you’re not with us you’re against us” type of thinking thats been hammered into our collective heads
over the past couple of generations. My only issue with Willingham is why did he decide to announce his
chance of heart in such a “Hollywood celebrity-like” way. If you’re going to chance the way you do things
just change the way you do things, period. Don’t make a big song and dance about it. Willingham has
always been a sort of self-imposed lightning rod if i remember correctly.