Super Heroes, pt 2

Iron man, who is Marvel Comics’ Batman equivalent, operates in a similar manner but has a different motivation. While Batman is driven by a desire for revenge, Iron man (Tony Stark) is driven by a desire for redemption. Stark, a billionaire genius, owns a multi-national conglomerate centered on defense contracts and arms dealing. After being kidnapped by a terror group in the Middle East, Stark is confronted by the reality that the arms his company makes and distributes are causing more harm than good. Tony stark puts his exceptional engineering skills toward building a suit of armor to make him nearly invincible. Stark uses this suit to fly across the world and attack the terror cell that held him and destroy their arms cache. What is particularly interesting to me about the Iron Man story is what Tony stark chooses to do with the suit he has invented. Rather than distribute the suit to American soldiers to keep them alive and further the defense of American interests, he chooses to keep it to himself and to personally fight America’s enemies as well as his own. This self-centered approach speaks to Stark’s motivation. He is more concerned with personally righting the wrongs he and his company committed that he is in administering justice and enforcing peace.

This is illustrative of some of the larger issues I find with super heroes as a genre of popular media. With the exception of Superman, who I still don’t quite understand, all super heroes are motivated by a deep personal emotional need, usually some form of guilt. Their actions are devoted to suppressing the guilt, not to actually making the most meaningful contributions to solve the problems they claim to fight. The popularity of the self-centered, vigilante super hero is also reflective of one of the self-centered, vigilante gun culture that has permeated the United States.