BATMAN V SUPERMAN: MYTHOLOGY AND THE SUPERHERO

By Grant LaFleche

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: MYTHOLOGY AND THE SUPERHERO (PART 1)
Posted on April 18, 2016 by Grant LaFleche in Comics, Movies, Pulp Nation // 0 Comments

Author’s note: This is a three part look at Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, examining the themes and ideas of the film. Part one looks at mythology and how Batman v Superman is told. The second part looks at what the movie says about our relationship to violence and the final part examines the key philosophical ideas at the core of the movie.

PART ONE: MYTH AND STORYTELLING

By Grant LaFleche

Funeral pile of Patroclus
Funeral pile of Patroclus from the Trojan War.

Sing to me, O Muse! Sing to me of the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course, once he had plundered, the hallowed heights of Troy.

-Homer, The Odyssey

I love superheroes.

For as long as I remember, I have been attracted to the genre. As a kid, the colourful costumes, characters and simple moral tales of Superman, Wonder Woman, Thor or Spider-man were irresistible.

As I got older, while I still appreciated the simple good vs. evil stories that still dominate superhero comics and movies today, the more thoughtful, sophisticated story telling of Allan More, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller or Grant Morrison – stories that could provoke thought, express new ideas or had something to say about the world we live in – became infinitely more interesting.

In the right hands, superhero stories are a representation of a kind of mythological storytelling we don’t see much anymore, the kind that used to be popular in ancient Greece, when the men in sky were not Superman or Iron Man but Zeus or Apollo. These were grand, sweeping stories that explored human nature through epic battles and squabbles among the gods. Battles are titanic. Themes deep and broad. And while not “funny” in our conventional sense, they are endlessly entertaining.

My affinity for these stories, and that sort of storytelling explains, in part, why I liked Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice so much. Unlike the much more common place stories of the current (and fabulously entertaining) Marvel cinematic universe, or DC’s own TV properties of The Flash and Arrow – stories which turn on the simple “good vs evil” motif of the comics with stories that are largely rooted in the personal interactions of the characters rather than broader themes or philosophy – Batman v Superman uses a much older, more operatic, and mythological story telling style.

For me, the experience of seeing Batman v Superman for the first time was rather like my first viewing of the original Matrix movie. The style and spectacle of the movie was overwhelming to such a degree that it overshadowed a lot of what was going on behind the bullet time, kung-fu fights and general sense of unease the film’s central concept – that the world we live in is just a simulation – left the audience with.

It took repeated viewings for me to get my head around the more complicated, deeply philosophical ideas and themes the Wachowskis were playing with. There have been entire documentaries about what the Wachowski sisters were up to with the Matrix trilogy, so I am not going to dig into it here save to say the series is fairly brainy, and uses philosophy as the driver behind many of the characters, environments, plots and themes of the film. It’s just that, in the case of the first film, the viewer can miss them while their attention is focused on a guy who moves so fast he can dodge bullets.

The Matrix code.
The Matrix code.

Similarly, the style and spectacle of Batman v Superman can overpower the senses, overshadowing some very interesting ideas lurking beneath the throw down between two men in capes. In these three essays I am going to try to explore some of these ideas.

Batman v Superman strives – at times very successfully, at others less so ­– to explore ideas. It asks questions about our relationship to violence, about the intersection between that violence and politics, about the role of women and, most importantly, about the nature of justice itself.

The movie assumes the audience is smart enough to follow along. It is trying to do something different even if in the attempt it does, at times, sag under its own weight.

It’s also a bit of a weird film, particularly because of the reaction it created. People who didn’t like the film treated it as though director Zack Snyder had showed up at a critic’s family dinner and struck the critic’s elderly grandmother in the face.

With a shovel.

I don’t recall any other movie where bloggers and news sites were breathlessly reporting on day-to-day ticket sales or so quickly treating unsubstantiated rumour as truth (Snyder was fired, Suicide Squad was doing emergency shoots to make that movie more like Marvel movies, etc). Every flaw of the film was pounced upon with an over-the-top venom that has come to define, unfortunately, a great deal of a particular, entitled, online fanboy culture that treats anything they don’t like as a personal insult. These are often not considered criticisms, but attacks that boil down to “this sucks,” launched by people who, let’s face it, aren’t creating anything of their own. Pig piling upon the movie has become something of a sport, particularly in the de-professionalized universe of movie criticism.

The movie is not perfect, for sure, but it’s not the horrific affront to good taste many make it out to be. It is, in many ways, an excellent movie and to be honest, outside of Casablanca, I don’t think a perfect movie has ever been produced.

Casablanca – the only perfect movie ever made.
Casablanca – the only perfect movie ever made.

The attempt to establish a larger DC Comics movie universe to compete with Marvel’s, in one film, is dragged about like an anchor around the movie’s neck: Batman’s “Knightmare” vision of the future. Flash’s time travel warning. Diana Prince watching videos of future Justice League members. On their own, each of these pieces are fun and interesting, but within the context of an already sprawling epic, they feel oddly out of place.

Batman v Superman is not the only, nor first, film to commit this sin. Avengers: Age of Ultron, stumbles in the same fashion several times, most notably Thor’s trip to a magical pool in a cave. Indeed, both Thor movies and Iron Man 2, for instance, are uneven works precisely because they have to divert time away from their core stories to set up, in a fairly inorganic fashion, bits and pieces that pay off in future films.

Marvel has pulled much of its universe building off with clever post credit scenes, by patiently expanded their universe over several movies, and more seamlessly including these bits and pieces within the overall narratives. In Batman v Superman, they are little stories with in the narrative – almost like brief intermissions – that don’t entirely work.

This said, it doesn’t sink the movie. Its larger mythological style of storytelling works very well. A friend described Batman v Superman as a train that rattles considerably on the tracks at times, and I think that is an apt description.

Still, while there are some very thoughtful criticisms of Batman v Superman, much of it is mere emotional hand-wringing that manages, bizarrely, to miss much of what is actually going on in the story.

This may be, in part, because Batman v Superman is not told in the same fashion as the Marvel films or Marvel and DC television shows.

I noted before, those stories feel easier to digest because that is how we tell stories most often today. While there may be an overarching goal, or theme at work, that isn’t necessary and the stories ultimately turn upon how the characters interact with each other. It is telling, for instance, that in the Marvel films the villains (with the notable exception of Loki and, to a lesser degree, Ultron) are the least developed characters in the stories. These films get criticized because the Chitauri, or the Dark Elves, or Yellow Jacket, or Ronan are just evil guys whose schemes and motivations range from nearly non-existent to paper thin.

Those critics miss that those movies aren’t about the villains. They invest time in the heroes because the story is about them, and their interpersonal relationships. Saving the world is just the stage the story is told on. In a sense, the band of brothers vibe that makes so many of the Marvel movies to date work is really no different than what made, say, the TV show Friends work.

Friends…assemble?
Friends…assemble?

As a result, most Marvel films aren’t about anything else. The first Iron Man and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are perhaps the exceptions that prove the rule, (and I am expecting, so will Civil War) in that they both offer commentary on the war of terrorism, the international arms trade and the sacrificing of personal freedoms in the name of national security. The rest, however, don’t dig deeper beyond the relationships. Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, is hilarious and marvelously fun, and isn’t really about anything else.

Batman v Superman tries to do something entirely different. Rather than be about personal relationships, it adopts an entirely different method of storytelling and is about themes.

This is no different than how Homer told his stories in ancient Greece. Read the Iliad for example, which tells the story of part of the Trojan War. The story is about hubris, about violence and the consequences of the choices of we make. It is a grand, epic tale, but it is most certainly not about personal relationships or team building.

Consider, for instance, the death of Patroclus, the close friend of the Greek hero Achilles.

Patroclus is ultimately killed in battle against the Trojan army because of a choice Achilles made. (He refuses to fight because of a dispute with the leader of the Greek armies, and famously sulks in his tent). When Patroclus dies, Achilles’ flies into a rage, cutting a bloody swath through the battlefield until he too is eventually slain.

Now, to modern eyes Achilles rage over the death of Patroclus could seem unconvincing.

After all, we don’t spend a lot of time with the warriors. We don’t know very much about the history of their relationship, or what truly makes them so close. We don’t see them exchanging clever quips, or saving each other in battle.

The Fury of Achilles Painting by Charles-Antoine Coypel.
The Fury of Achilles painting by Charles-Antoine Coypel.

We know only that they are very close, that the death of one causes the other to go berserk, and that has direct consequences for nearly every character in the story.

One wonders if the internet had existed then, if fanboy anger would be directed at Homer for his “weak writing” of such a key relationship. Readers of Homer from ancient Greece until now, however, do not fret over this. Not because exploring the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles wouldn’t be interesting, but because that isn’t the point of the story.

The Iliad is concerned with the consequences of that bond, not how and why it formed. As a result, the events in the story turn on an epic, rather than personal, level. And the reader is no less invested in the story as a result.

In Batman v Superman is told the same fashion. The movie is not without its personal moments, but they are not as important as the larger, thematic elements.

Consider, for instance, one of the more common complaints about the film’s opening scenes: the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents and young Bruce falling into the cave beneath the Wayne family grounds.

Who at this point, asks the critics, doesn’t know Batman’s origin story? Beyond the comic books which have retold it endlessly, movie audiences have sat through it in both Batman and Batman Begins. It was featured in the Batman animated TV series and the animated movies Batman: Year One and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

“We get it already! Why show us again?”

This complaint only has merit on the shallowest of levels. Beyond that, however, it misses the point.

The murder of the Waynes in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
The murder of the Waynes in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

The murder of the Wayne’s isn’t really there to retell Batman’s origin. In a rather Homeric fashion, it establishes key themes and questions of the entire story.

Batman v Superman opens and closes with funerals. First, it is important for this particularly story that we know who Bruce Wayne’s mother is. By the end of the movie, you may think that reason is silly or corny (and we’ll get to that in part two) but it has to be established.

Much more importantly, however, is the thematic importance of those scenes.

The Wayne’s funeral is shrouded in gloom and darkness. The landscape is covered in thin or dying grasses and weeds on the cusp of a dark and craggy forest. Bruce falls into the cave and is swarmed by bats. Bruce’s voice over, and the action on screen, explains that in his dreams the bats lift him out of the cave and into the light, something Bruce calls “the beautiful lie.”

What is the beautiful lie? That the world is good.

From Bruce’s point of view, the world is a fundamentally unjust place where justice can be had only by the force of strength. Bruce is such a broken figure when the movie starts, that he assumes ill intent from everyone. There is no “light”. It doesn’t even exist within himself.

“We’ve always been criminals,” he tells Alfred, a significant statement considering later he tell us that he regards criminals as little more than “weeds.” By destroying Superman, Bruce is attempting not just to protect the world but to elevate himself, to finally rise above the criminality he is both part of and dedicated to stopping.

Batman’s point of view is easy to sympathize with, particularly if you have (as most people will at some point or another) suffered a tragedy not of their own making. Or just look around you. Our politics are marred by the corrupt and the self-interested. Corporate greed trumps other considerations in more circumstances than we wish to really think about. Criminals can commit heinous acts and escape justice. We wage wars, watch the hungry starve and allow the poorest of the poor to continue to suffer in a world of plenty.

The daily headlines and our own personal experience tells us that Bruce Wayne is right. The lie may be beautiful, but it is still a lie.

We don’t need to see years of Batman fighting the criminals of Gotham to understand his point of view. We see the montage of his parents’ murder. The ruins of Wayne Manor. The costume of an obviously dead Robin in a display case. A few touch points combined with our own experience, tells us all we need to know.

The movie ends as it opens. With a funeral – well, two funerals for the same person.

Superman’s is an American military procession, complete with flags and an artillery salute. Clark Kent’s funeral takes place in a simple Smallville cemetery, and the procession passes through a wheat field – a place where things grow. Both take place in the sunlight. Unlike the washed out, grim pallet of the Wayne’s funeral, Kent’s funeral’s are marked by vivid colours.

Superman’s funeral from Man of Steel #20
Superman’s funeral from Man of Steel #20

Tellingly, Bruce is at this funeral in the light – only the second time in the movie we see him in daylight. (The first being on the ground during the battle of Metropolis.) Standing in the sunlight, Bruce says to Diana that “men are still good.”

These funerals, and how they are presented, frames Bruce Wayne’s entire story arc. In terms of a larger theme, the film is saying that as explicable as Bruce Wayne’s world view is when the film opens – one we automatically sympathize with – he was wrong.

The light is beautiful, and it’s not a lie.

Far from being the cynical movie some claim, Batman v Superman’s basic premise is that the world is not corrupt, but a place where corruption exists. It says the world that it is worth saving, that people can be good, even if they need an example to follow.

Certainly, this is not the sunny, light motif of most superhero films from Superman: The Movie, through most of the Marvel films. Batman v Superman is criticized for being “joyless.” In this context, that mostly means “not funny.” The Marvel movies and, indeed past incarnations of Superman, are marked by humour sometimes bordering on camp. But the absence of clever quips does not make a movie without joy.

The story that moves from Bruce Wayne’s tragedy and darkness to a confirmation that Superman’s selfless heroism is, in fact, the superior world view and that the light is better than the darkness, is joyful on its own.

Part Two: Violence and Consequence

The unexamined life is not worth living.

-Plato, The Apology

In their most interesting incarnations, superheroes are much like the ancient tales of the Greek or Norse gods, which is to say they are tales about we mere mortals, but writ large.

Every time you read or watch a really good superhero story, you’re touching on something archetypal, that speaks to pieces of our deepest selves and asking questions about them we haven’t yet fully found answers for.

Superhero stories can be about nearly anything. Race relations. Sex. Politics. Violence. The environment. The justice system. But rarely do these stories question the fundamental, philosophical premise of the superhero, by asking “What, exactly, do we mean by justice in the first place?”

Only a handful of stories go this far like The Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen – and it seems we are getting a version of this kind of tale in the upcoming movie Captain America: Civil War.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is one of those stories. Unlike Civil War, which appears as though it will ask some timely questions about the intersection between power and politics, Batman v Superman digs into some basic ideas about what is right and what isn’t. It is less about what is happening now in 2016, than what has always been happening to human beings since there have been human beings to wonder about the nature of things.

Beyond the capes and bracelets and batarangs, the movie is asking a question Plato asked us in the Republic some 3,000 years ago.

What is Justice?

This is not as simple a question as it might seem, even if in most superhero comic books and movies it is treated as a foregone conclusion – one that rapidly falls apart once you examine those stories more closely.

Consider the excellent Christopher Nolan Batman films. Those movies seem to suggest that justice is stopping the corrupt by almost any means necessary. The “almost” being key. Batman will break bones, spy on an entire city of people (and then destroy the technology that allowed him to do that in a belated respect for people’s right to privacy) but he won’t use guns and, nominally, says killing the unjust. Except when Batman decides that killing is the only option to achieve his goals, then that rules gets tossed out the window.

The point is, even in those movies which pretend to have settled the question, haven’t settled it at all. The Donner Superman, The Burton and Nolan Batmans, even heroes in the current MCU, who claim that killing is bad and never done by a “hero”, feature those heroes employing lethal force. Justice, then, appears to be whatever the whim of the hero happens to be at that moment.

Batman v Superman avoids such hypocritical and shallow definitions by avoiding getting into a debate as naïve is “killing is always the wrong thing to do.” It is asking a much bigger and more difficult question that does require the audience to pay more attention, and think about what is happening on screen.

To understand why and how this question of justice is being asked in Batman v Superman, we need to go back to the source of used to pose it: Plato’s most famous work, The Republic.

Plato, Socrates, and what we don’t know

Plato was a Greek philosopher thought to have been kicking about around 428 to 328 BCE. His works, the Dialogues, took the form of a series of conversations between the street philosopher Socrates and a host of other characters who discuss broad philosophical concepts.

It is from these stories that we have the “Socratic method” of asking questions. Essentially, Socrates would lead you down a garden path and when you reach the end of it, you discover you didn’t actually know what you thought you knew. Socrates would be the dinner guest from Hades, slowly breaking down everyone’s preconceptions and showing you how wrong you are about just about everything.

The Republic is arguably Plato’s most important and well known book whose ideas still echo today.

The book’s central preoccupation is an attempt to define what justice is. The story features several explanations of justice, which Socrates promptly questions into oblivion before beginning his famous thought experiment about a utopian Republic where the answer may be found.

Both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman use the superheroes to explore the idea of justice presented in The Republic.

Superman and paying is what owed

It all begins, and it will all end, with Superman.

Much of the Man of Steel turns on a question of how Clark Kent should, or should not, use his powers. His Kryptonian father Jor-el wants him to be a bridge between an extinct alien culture and the cultures of humanity. He wants Clark to help humans “accomplish wonders.” His Earthly dad, Johnathan Kent believes his son was sent to Earth for a reason, but believes Clark has to discover that reason on his own and then decide for himself what do with that knowledge.

It is not a coincidence that when young Clark is picked on by bullies – boys he could easily crush if he so chose – he is reading a copy of The Republic. If you had not picked up on the overtly Platonic ideas in the film, this not very subtle clue gets you there.

Young Clark reading The Republic by Plato.

In both Man of Steel and in Batman v Superman, we see a particular part of the Republic debated by Johnathan – the idea that actions come with consequences, even if the action itself if the right or just thing to do.

Some critics of these movies often say that Superman doesn’t just do what is right, but he always knows what is right. In this simple formulation, “doing what is right” is stopping villains and helping people. This is regarded as Superman’s vocation and what he “owes” the world.

Superman is not so sure and even when Zod invades, he wrestles whether or not it is his place to save humanity. Later, in Batman v Superman, Clark’s mother Martha tells her son he doesn’t owe the world a thing and the he never did.

Many movie goers balk at the existence of this philosophical tension in Superman. Of course Superman “owes” the world, they say. His powers are there to be used for good and Jor-El, harkening back to his incarnation in the Donner films, specifically sets this mission out for Clark.

In the Republic, however, defining justice as what is owed to people is an idea found wanting.

The idea is put forward by Cephalus, and Socrates demolishes it by pointing out the law of unintended consequences with a thought experiment I will update here for a more modern context:

You and your friend are hunters, and before you head out on an expedition you ask to borrow your friend’s rifle. He happily obliges on the condition you return when he asks, a condition you agree you. After you get home, life gets busy and you haven’t returned the weapon to your friend. After some time goes by, your friend calls and insists you return his weapon. In the conversation you find that he has become depressed and is thinking about killing himself.

Would it be just to return the gun?

If as Cephalous, or Jor-El, or many Superman fans, you believe that justice is defined by giving what one owes, then returning the gun is the only possible just act. However, since you know your friend intends to kill himself, you keep the gun. In that case, doing the wrong the thing is actually the right thing.

In Man of Steel, Clark saves a school bus of children from drowning and is seen by all his friends. Johnathan at first admonishes his son for exposing his abilities because of a fear that others would discover what Clark can do and perhaps use Clark for ill purposes.

Clark asks if he should have done nothing and let the kids die. His father answers “maybe.” Not because Johnathan is a callus man, but because he is doing the math. “There is more at stake here than our lives Clark, or the lives around us,” he says. Clark has the power to change the world for good or for ill. He’ll only be able to do that when he is ready, which as a confused child he is not. From Johnathan’s point of view doing the “wrong thing” by not saving the kids on the bus could be the “right thing” because far more people could get hurt if Clark’s powers are misused.

Clark is not able to fully resolve this question in Man of Steel. No sooner does he find out where he is from, and what he can do, than Zod attacks. Superman decides fight for Earth against the invaders, but his fundamental question of “what is justice” is largely unanswered.

Still, Zod and his mission reflect another idea spawned from The Republic: a society based on eugenics. As in Plato’s hypothetical utopia, each Kryptonian is assigned a role in society at birth which they must fulfill for the betterment of everyone. Zod was bred to be a solider. Those who rule Krypton are similarly breed for their roles. Even as Krypton itself descends into chaos and ultimately dies, Zod cannot deviate from his pre-determined role.

General Zod, the product of Kyrpton’s republic

Scholars have long debated whether Plato believed Socrates’ eugenics fueled utopia would be the best way to organize society, or whether he was attempting to show that, in fact, it would not work. Man of Steel director Zack Synder gives us his answer to the question: a society run on that kind of eugenics is doomed to fail. Superman’s overt rejection of Zod’s (and to a degree Jor-el’s) vision by embracing choice over fate tells us a great deal about what Clark values.

Clark’s basic question of “what is justice?” lingers in Batman v Superman, once again taking the form of Johnathan Kent when Clark visits his grave. He remembers a story Johnathan told him of a flood that threatened the family farm. Johnathan and his father worked through the storm to divert the water and save the farm. Johnathan found out later that while he was eating his mother’s “hero cake” the diverted flood waters destroyed a neighbour’s ranch. Doing the “right thing” of saving the family farm, resulted in the “wrong thing”, destroying a neighbour’s livelihood.

Indeed, much of Batman v Superman sees Clark wrestling with this question. When he crosses international borders to save people he is hailed as a saviour by some, but regarded with suspicion by others who see the world’s security at risk. In our own world, when we want to travel elsewhere to help with a crisis, we need the permission of those we are going to help, or at least their governments. Superman asks no one’s permission in his attempt to pay what he “owes” the world. He is, as one commentator in the film puts it, just a guy trying to do the right thing – helping people is Clark’s obvious instinct – but each time there are unintended consequences.

While Superman wrestles with Cephalus’ idea of justice, Batman v Superman provides a possible alternative definition in the figure of Batman.

Batman and the strong

In the Republic, Thrasymachus suggests to Socrates that justice is ultimately the purview of the stronger person. Laws, from this point of view, are only effective in so much as they can be enforced by a powerful agent.

In Gotham City, Bruce Wayne is the strong man. He has the intelligence, wealth and technology to impose his version of justice on an entire city. The brutality of the emotionally broken Batman of the start of the film is a clear indication of the state of things: Justice in Gotham is Batman’s justice.

In this way, Bruce Wayne is Thrasymachus’s definition brought to life. Batman himself makes the matter plain when says he has learned the world only makes sense when you force it to.

This is particularly true of his attitude toward Superman, who he sees as a threat. Batman is not interested in compromise or negotiation. He accepts no advice and will heed no warnings, even from his most trusted adviser. He chooses to deal with Superman as he does anyone else because, as the strong man, Bruce alone gets to decide what is right.

Wonder Woman, Lex Luthor, and a magic ring

Another of Socrate’s sparing partners, Glaucon, takes Thrasymachus’ definition of justice a step further. He presents justice as an elaborate fiction, a mere social contract between strong parties to prevent themselves from being victims of injustice. More than that, Glaucon says justice, as a concept is naïve. The unjust man wins every time because he is willing to do the things the just man is not.

Given the state of human behaviour, it is sometimes difficult to argue that Glaucon is wrong. We often see the unjust prosper while the just suffer. And while there are elements of this argument in Batman, Wonder Woman presents the disillusionment one feels when it seems that Glaucon’s jaded view of humanity is correct.

Wonder Woman, believing that justice is a sham, is Superman’s true opposite number in the movie. Rather than struggle with a philosophical uncertainty while staying in the world, she retreats from it. “Man has made a world where it is impossible to stand together,” she says.

But Glaucon is most fully represented in the figure of Lex Luthor. Luthor is the unjust man who prospers while the just (Superman) doesn’t. Luthor is manipulating the world with ill intent behind the scenes and is loved while Superman saves the world with pure intention and is sometimes reviled.

Luthor’s world view is version of a story Glaucon tells Socrates about the Ring of Gyges. This was a mythological ring that made its wearer invisible and thus could get away with anything, rendering the social contract of justice moot. Glaucon argues this is why the unjust man always wins. The unjust man will always use the ring for his own selfish ends and even if you gave it to a just man, without the social contract to keep him just, he too would use it for unjust purposes.

“For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.” –Glaucon, The Republic, Book Two

Lex Luthor sets Superman against Batman to prove this point. Superman’s supposed nobility is merely a paper thin mask. Present Superman with the right pressures and he too will be an unjust man. Instead of a magic ring, he has to kill Batman to save his mother’s life. Like Glaucon, Luthor presents an argument that seems so convincing that Superman wonders if he is right after all, telling Lois no one can stay good in world like this one.

In the Republic, Plato rejects this argument by returning, in a way, to the previous idea of all actions having consequences. If just acts have consequences so do unjust ones. However, from Plato’s point of view, the consequences of unjust action may not be material in nature but damaging to one’s internal self, or soul.

Socrates, through Plato’s writing, regarded justice itself as inherently valuable and, by acting justly, a person can live what he called “the good life.” This is a life guided by reason and an internal harmony. This person, by mastering in their inner self, can promote stability in their community, which for Socrates was the city of Athens.

Luthor’s physical capture at the end of the film, therefore, isn’t really the consequence of his scheming. His shattered mental state is. Luthor is driven mad by his actions.

Which brings us back to Superman. In his final moments, Superman embraces the notion of justice as something that is, in and of itself, valuable. His philosophical conflict falls away as he does so, enabling him to act without hesitation. His purpose as a protector is clear. It doesn’t matter what his critics say, Superman is going to act to protect the innocent because that is a purpose that carries its own reward.

Unlike Batman, who believed in justice through strength, Superman sees justice as achieved through sacrifice. Unlike Luthor, who believes the unjust is always rewarded, Superman knows he is rewarded simply by being just. And in his action of confronting and stopping the monster Doomsday, he proves to Wonder Woman that justice is real.

As I noted in the first of these essays, Batman v Superman goes out of its way to demonstrate that Superman is right and the other three characters – Batman, Wonder Woman and Lex Luthor – are all wrong even if we feel intuitively at first this isn’t the case.

It’s not about Superman being mopey or grim. It’s about Superman navigating deep philosophical questions on the road to become a hero.

The movie’s rather clunky subtitle, The Dawn of Justice, is an obvious nod to the future Justice League films. But given the film’s heavy reliance on Platonic ideas to drive its themes, it might be a subtle nod to The Republic and the ideas that book contains.

Part Three: What is Justice?

Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone, ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard, he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot rail, hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea,some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook. So with the spear Patroclus gaffed him off his car, his mouth gaping round the glittering point and flipped him down face first, dead as he fell, his life breath blown away.

-Homer, the Iliad.

 

Considering how heavily the genre depends on the presentation of physical confrontation, it is a curious how little violence actually matters in the universe of comic book heroes.

Since the first comic books through to their modern cinematic adventures, superheroes largely exist in worlds where violence is an act without much consequence.

Sure, some heroes are created through violence – Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne adopt their vigilante identities as a result of the murders of their family members – but once those origin stories are complete, they can usually punch and smash their way through villainy without having to face the consequences of their choices.

This moral and ethical weightlessness of superheroing is so pervasive that even when the violence should shock us, it doesn’t.

Consider the ending of Superman 2, for example. Having tricked the Zod Squad and stealing their powers, Superman crushes General Zod’s hand and flings him across the Fortress of Solitude, where his body slams against a solid wall of ice before sliding into what appears to a bottomless pit.

Even though the Donner/Lester/Reeve Superman exists in an innocent world where violence isn’t particularly violent, there is very little chance Zod isn’t a heap of shattered bones, bleeding out somewhere in the basement of the fortress. Although this Superman is regarded and bright and sunny, and for many is the definitive iteration of the character, in the story he murders his nemesis after having rendered him powerless.

But it’s played as a gag. Superman tricked the villains, who get their comeuppance. Everyone cheers. I know I did. I still do. It’s a great scene.

We are so invested in the innocence of this fictional world, however, we don’t stop and ask the obvious question: “Hey, did Superman just straight up ice that guy? Nah, Superman doesn’t kill. He is going to go down there get him, right? No? Well, maybe Zod will just climb out there…any second now…just…yah, never mind. Superman killed him.”

When he returns to Metropolis, no one asks Superman what happened to Zod. Even the president doesn’t bother to ask what happened to the war criminal who nearly conquered the entire planet Huston. This doesn’t bother us because, ultimately, in that version of Superman’s universe, violence has almost no impact. When does it, it can be quickly forgotten or erased.

The same can be said of most superhero films. The Christopher Nolan Batman has a rule about not shooting anyone, but his code doesn’t fully extend to murder. He directly and indirectly dispatches several people, including most of the League of Shadows after he refuses to execute a murderer – who most probably also dies in the ensuing massacre. This act has few last repercussions in an otherwise weighty story.

Over in the Marvel universe, Captain America fought his way through World War 2 largely unscathed physically or mentally by the violence he certainly encountered on the battlefield. And given that his shield is indestructible and can he throw it enough force that it can stick into solid walls, there is a pretty good chance he has taken lives with it when he throws it at squishy human beings. He and his Avengers teammates kill many members of the invading alien army, but since they are alien monster clones, we’re not fussed about the body count.

These fictional universes are presented in such a way that the destruction superheroes exist to conduct barely send ripples out in the world around them, to say nothing of any internal, psychological impacts.

I presume the upcoming Civil War film will present the consequences of the Avengers actions as a major plot point, but even then any real-world sense of what violence does will likely be minimized. The heroes save nearly everyone in harm’s way and minimize any property damage because that is what superheroes do.

This is not to say these are bad movies that require more realism. They are often amazingly entertaining movies and I wouldn’t suggest they should be changed. They would cease being what they are if that happened. But it is to say they deliberately, because of the genre they inhabit, mute the impact of violent acts.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, like its predecessor Man of Steel, does not do this. Much to the chagrin of some movie goers, this is a world where indestructible gods fighting in a city can destroy that city. It is a world where war is real, civilians cannot always be saved in the nick of time and violence produces scars that run deep into the human soul.

While this is not a style of presenting violence utterly foreign to comic book superheroes, it is not common to the genre. It is, however, very reminiscent of Homeric storytelling.

In part one, I discussed how director Zack Synder uses the same kind of operatic, mythological storytelling Homer used in the Iliad and Odyssey to tell his story. Rather than a story rooted in personal relationships – the primary focus of the Marvel films – Synder is focused on broad themes and ideas.

His presentation of violence, regarded by his critics as wildly over-the-top for its own sake, is done the same fashion as Homer.

Readers of Iliad will note Homer’s often ghastly descriptions of battlefield violence. It is not enough for you to know people died. Homer isn’t satisfied at hinting at the destruction the battle between heroes caused. He wants you to see it. Feel it. Every broken bone. Every shattered body. Every organ pierced and drop of blood spilled.

Reading the Iliad can be a very uncomfortable experience. The war shatters everyone and everything it touches and Homer isn’t going to let you hide from it.

Consider this description of the death of Erymas in book XVI of the Iliad:

“Idomeneus stabbed Erymas in the mouth with the pitiless bronze, and the bronze spear passed clean through beneath the brain and split the white skull bone asunder; his teeth shook loose; both eyes filled with blood; blood burst from his nostrils and out his gaping mouth, and a black cloud of death encompassed him round.”

Good luck getting that out of your head.

Which, ultimately, is the point. Homer could have simply noted that Erymas was stabbed with a spear, and left it at that. Your imagination might fill in some of the rest. But Homer is interested in showing you the true, brutal cost of war. We recoil from this level of destruction because we are supposed to. One of the major themes of the Iliad is that all actions have consequences, violent actions especially so.

Both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman are criticized for the sheer scale of its violence, particularly the battle of Metropolis showdown between Zod and Superman.

In Superman 2, the battle is very much like the battle with the Chitauri in Avengers. Some property damage and a few explosions. Critically, the heroes get time to be heroic. In the Avengers, although New York is invaded by an alien army, the city remains standing. Promotional clips from Civil War show the death toll to be 74 people. This is superheroing at its most classic – a handful of heroes save a city from an army of thousands, with a minimum loss of life.

During the Superman 2 battle, the Zod squad stop their attack at points to give Superman a few moments to save bystanders, and quip about how caring is a weakness. There are time for speeches and poses, and the battle moves at an exciting, but measured pace. The violence is leisurely.

The Man of Steel of version of this fight is rather like being on the battlefield of Troy. Events are a blur. There isn’t time to do anything but fight. It is not that Superman doesn’t want to save anyone, he just can’t. This Zod has no interest in speeches and gloating. He wants to destroy humanity and Superman is in his way.

The city is leveled. The scale of the destruction becomes numbing, echoing 9/11 imagery – something that is even more evident from Bruce Wayne’s ground level view of the fight in Batman v Superman. It is in that perspective we see a friend of Bruce’s facing the moment of his inevitable death. Later one of his employees loses his legs.  Even before Bruce tells us the death toll was in the thousands, we know.

So why present the battle this way at all? Why show an American city reduced to rubble we know people are buried under? Is this a fetish for destruction porn? Surely the more classic superhero battles of Superman 2 and Avengers – where the heroes can save those in peril – are less shocking and more fun to watch.

Maybe so. And maybe that is the point. Violence is supposed to make us feel uneasy, frightened, angry and enraged. There are entire countries where people have no option but to accept catastrophic violence because they are surrounded by war. Metropolis, the proxy for America’s greatest cities, ends up looking like a Syrian city of the present day, shattered by war and reduce to rubble. That image is deeply unsettling in a society largely free from the impacts of full scale warfare.

The point behind the destruction in Man of Steel and Batman v Superman isn’t to revel in destruction, but rather to recoil from it, or at least consider what it means. In the real world, we have to live with the consequences. In this fictional universe, so do superheroes.

Superman’s final act of violence in Man of Steel is to kill Zod. Faced with no other alternative to stop the carnage, he

does the one thing he believes he shouldn’t, and Superman’s howl of pain after killing Zod drives home the point of the entire battle – we cannot commit acts of violence without it impacting others and our deepest selves.

The Synder Superman is wracked with guilt and remorse for killing Zod. The Donner Superman grins. The difference in how these films regard violence is absolutely apparent in these moments. Only one of them is truly honest.

By Batman v Superman, Clark is struggling to determine his place in a world keenly aware of his capacity to save or destroy them. We’ll explore that in the next part, but for now, it is worth looking at the internal impact of violence presented in the film.

While the Battle for Metropolis shows us what war does to a society, Synder explores what violence does to the individual person in the broken figure of Batman.

Bruce Wayne’s entire life has been violent. The murder of his parents was just the start. By the time we see him in Batman v Superman, he carries deep internal scars from years of crime fighting. He is prone to drinking heavily. He has become excessively brutal, even by the already violent standards of a man who dressed up like Dracula and throws muggers through windows. He brands criminals knowing his mark will mean they will be hurt or killed in prison. Killing might not be his first option, but he is willing to use lethal force. Unlike the Nolan Batman, Synder’s dark knight makes no hypocritical commentary about never taking a life. He will if he must, but unlike Superman, Batman shows no remorse. His belief that sometimes killing in necessary is reinforced by what he witnesses on the ground as Zod and Superman level the city.

Most telling are Bruce’s nightmares. He dreams of his parents’ murders, of a creature lurking in his mother’s crypt and of monsters swallowing the Earth. His inner world is in complete turmoil. Because of the violence in his life – the violence that created him and that which he regularly inflicts on others – the man is in a near permanent state of emotional trauma.

He gives every impression of having the same mindset of Captain Ahab from Moby Dick. A once obviously noble man who has become so scarred and so obsessed, he is unable to see the faults in his unflinching quest to seek justice. Alfred attempts to reason with Bruce Wayne, trying to make him understand that Superman is not his enemy. Ahab had his first mate, Starbuck, who like Alfred, is unable to convince his master of the futility of his quest:

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!” cried Starbuck, “that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”

“Hark ye yet again – the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the living act, the undoubted deed – there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ’tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

For Ahab, justice can only be found in the destruction of the whale. For Batman, it is the destruction of Superman. In either case, whale or Superman, the target of their wrath has come to symbolize everything that thwarts human intention – killing that target is their way of imposing order on a chaotic universe.

The most telling moment that shows just how deep Batman’s psychological trauma runs is found in the moment when he doesn’t kill Superman.

Yes, the “Martha moment.”

Critics have dismissed this moment as patently silly. It is by coincidence in comics lore that Clark and Bruce both have mothers named Martha, and to use that as the motivation for a Batman bent on murder to suddenly stay his hand is, they say, ridiculous at best.

However, there much more going on here. What happens in that moment runs deeper than Batman recognizing that Superman is a person, rather than just a threat to be eliminated. What happens in that moment speaks directly to the film’s attitude toward the consequences of violence.

As a journalist, I have interviewed soldiers who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. It can be an utterly debilitating condition. It can also be unpredictable. I have spoken to combat veterans who have episodes triggered by sights and sounds that, on the surface, appear to have little do with what the experienced at war. When they encounter something that is a direct reminder of the horrors they witnessed, it can be totally crushing.

A solider once told me that he has had PTSD episodes after walking past children that only superficially reminded him of the body of a child he saw in Rwanda. It took him years to recover.

So when Batman has the spear at Superman’s neck and is told he has to “save Martha”, he doesn’t just stop fighting and think “oh, your mom is named Martha too!? We’re BFFs!”

Bruce has an immediate, vivid recollection to his own mother’s murder. He stumbles backwards, seemingly in shock. He doesn’t seem to be aware that Superman and Lois are there. He is reliving the murder of his parents.

Bruce Wayne is having a PTSD flash back.

Far from being a trite moment, Synder has used a coincidence found in the DC Comics mythos to try and say something about what violence does to a person.

Few superhero movies approach this sort of commentary. Marvel shows us flashes of it through the eyes of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 and, more vividly, through Black Widow in the Age of Ultron. But neither character depicts just how far down the psychological rabbit hole emotional trauma can push a person as the figure of Batman does in Batman v Superman.

Although the movie presents us with epic fantasy, Batman v Superman puts the consequences of violence directly before the viewer and does what most other films in the genre don’t – it asks us to think about it.

OL:http://pulpnation.ca/2016/04/batman-v-superman-mythology-superhero/