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Tweak says, "You are getting sleeeepy ..."

starwolf_oakley (starwolf_oakley) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-09-23 23:27:00

Entry tags:

publisher: wildstorm, title: the authority

runespoor7's post of Jason Todd talking to Mia Dearden led to a thread discussion about billionaire vigilantes beating up poor criminals.

A panel from THE AUTHORITY: TRANSFER OF POWER shows that at least a few comic creators are aware of this.

"The Authority" was always pretty "out there" for superheroes. But that's Warren Ellis and Mark Millar for you.

For more than a few superheroes, actually being a superhero can be seen as a case of Noblesse Oblige. Noblesse Oblige can be seen as "With great power comes great responsibility... and a really smug sense of superiority."

It came back to Batman, as these things do. After all, we never really go into detail about how "well-off" the Kents were from farming, or how much Clark Kent's Daily Planet take-home pay is. Some seem to think it ties into "Lonely Place of Dying," that since Tim Drake's family is wealthy, Tim isn't as "street" as Jason Todd.

Quotes from users via http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/987439.html?thread=27947311#t27947311:

runespoor7 said: "The fact is, 'Oh, Jason was lower class and her turned out badly, and then he was replaced by Tim, who came from a good family the same side of the streets as Bruce and who did very well as Robin' leaves a strange impression."

lynxara said: "In particular, confronting the class issues at work in the Batman stuff is impossible without coming to the conclusion that most of the characters involved are selfish monsters so steeped in white privilege that they've lost all grasp of reality."

icon_uk said: "Dick was suddenly an ethnic Romany with angst about the likelihood of him ending up in jail like so many of his kin."

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sistermagpie
2009-09-24 07:06 pm UTC (link)

Right, but where I'm just having a little trouble is that X-Men seems explicitly a metaphor for minority, where as superheroes really aren't, that I can see, a metaphor for class. But I don't really see superheroes as mapping onto a different economic class. They're in a special class due to their powers, yes. But their economic background seems to stay the same.

Like, it seems to me to come down to whether one can be whatever economic class one already is and also a super hero, and I think you can be. Where as in X-men being a mutant makes you a minority (though it doesn't make you a specific real world minority--a mutant can be white and also a mutant).

I do see what you mean about superheroes themselves being their own class and there I agree--but I think the original discussion was specifically talking about economic class.

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	grazzt 2009-09-24 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	I wasn't necessarily trying to argue that they were exclusive, just that sometimes the superhero class is more important to the themes/moral of the story than the character's actual socioeconomic class. Of course, if we're arguing this in terms of specifically economic classes, then you can ignore me freely, but I think this discussion is more interesting anyway. :P (Reply to this) (Parent)

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