Philosophy of Identity: Lady Thor or Just Thor?

The long anticipated first trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder dropped yesterday, thereby reigniting the 2014 fury over the appearance of a female Thor in Marvel Comics. Reactions at the time – as they are now – range from “A woman can’t be Thor” to “Feminism is ruing everything” without ever having read the storyline. Basically, the great controversy revolves around whether a woman possessing the powers of the original, well-known Thor can be called Thor. In effect, what’s being asked is whether ‘Thor’ is a name of a particular person or a title. One critic wrote in 2014, “Get your own identity. Thor’s a dude. One of the last manly dudes left.” Many comic book fans were as upset by a female being Thor as they were a black man becoming Captain America.

 

First, why does this even matter? Why are people so upset over some fictional characters? For one thing, once people are beset by tradition it’s difficult for them to see through any other lens. For the Marvel comic book hero traditionally known as Thor, he has particular characteristics and a particular personality. The traditional Thor possesses the traditional attributes of what is considered masculine, so to buck that trend is bound to make misogynists upset. The other reasons for disliking the idea of a female Thor are non-existent. When Eric Masterson of Earth-616 became Thor no one had a problem with this, though supposedly because Masterson was faking it best he could and himself knew he wasn’t the ‘other’ Thor. But when Dargo of Earth-8710 was called Thor despite not being the ‘real’ Thor, still no one cared. A controversy over Thor’s name only came about when a female became involved.

 

So, Thor is indeed a name. However, the well-known fictional comic character’s full name is Thor Odinson. Last time I checked there are many people in the real world whose name is Thor and bear absolutely nothing in common with the fictional hero. But, you don’t see anyone complaining about this. It’s not like Jane Foster upon becoming Thor called herself Thor Odinson. She never did that. Keep in mind that during the original storyline in which Jane becomes Thor and worthy of wielding Mjolnir, Thor himself was unworthy of holding Mjolnir. If we take into account that the inscription on Mjolnir says, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the powers of Thor.” Being that many people have wielded Mjolnir, Squirrel Girl among them, the pronoun ‘he’ doesn’t seem to be of particular importance. What’s important is that they be worthy. Considering Thor Odinson becomes unworthy, regardless of the reason, he fails to be the super-powered Thor, meaning ‘Thor’ must be a title and not referring to a particular person. For the time Thor Odinson was not worthy of Mjolnir, he was not really ‘Thor.’ It appears someone can be called Thor without being Thor Odinson, just like it makes sense that someone can be called Iron Man without being Tony Stark, which is exactly what happened in the comics when Stark’s bodyguard Rhodey stood in as Iron Man when Stark wasn’t capable. And as Jane did not, no one else in the comics ever referred to themselves as Thor Odinson when possessing the powers of Thor. For Pete’s sake, even Thor Odinson calls Jane ‘Thor’ during the original storyline knowing he’s unworthy of the title.

 

It might be worth noting that, yes, traditionally Thor is a man’s name, but that’s simply tradition and a lot of traditions don’t exactly have objective origins. There’s no reason Thor can’t be either a male or female’s name, as is the case with names like Pat or Sam. In the comics, when Jane tells other characters to call her Thor (not Lady Thor) it shouldn’t be a big deal. She’s referring to the title, not to being Thor Odinson. Of course that would be ridiculous. Or would it? In another Marvel comic universe, if Jane Foster had been more of Donald Blake type figure who didn’t know she was Thor Odinson until becoming worthy of Mjolnir again, would all the fan-boys still be upset? I would like to think not, but it’d be foolish to underestimate misogynists.

 

And misogyny is the problem here. As comic books have long been the domain of little boys struggling mightily to be ‘men’ (until the last decade when women started reading them) said ‘men’ will fight tooth-and-nail to hold on to what vestiges of culture they think belong to them. So, logic or reason is not going to easily be found among such fanboys. None of them are going to stop and think, “Hmm, can Thor be a title like Captain America, Iron Man, or Batman?” Honestly, so many damn people have been Batman in the comics and some never bothered to correct other characters when called ‘Bruce’ while they were wearing the cowl. But a woman going by the name of Thor, suddenly there’s a problem. GTFOH. 

(Some critics even went so far as to simply state turning Thor into a woman was crappy retconning but those same people didn't have shit to say about the reveal that Mjolnir was sentient during the same storyline.)

On Villains and Villainy

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” – Gerald Seymour in Harry’s Game

When I first heard the Joker movie with Jaoquin Phoenix was being made, I admit I was disturbed in the slightest. Critics of pop culture have long criticized what has seemed like a gradual and unnecessary decent into what seems like an anything-goes mentality for entertainment’s sake. The inundation of sex, drugs, and violence in pop culture appears to be on one hand merely for the sake of titillation yet on the other hand a reflection of the Western world’s dark underbelly it seems the average citizen doesn’t want to concede exists nor accept their explicit or implicit role in.* It is, however, the glorification of the villain that has troubled me the most when it comes to pop culture. I can name countless movies, not to mention countless musical artists, whose villains and villainy outshine their protagonists.

[Perhaps the same can be said for the world at large.]

To be clear, I prefer my villains to be complicated, for their motivations to be more than evil simply because that’s who the villain cannot help being. Certainly, the new Joker movie is a reflective character analysis in this regard. Even the long string of Marvel movies were part of a story arc that centered around stopping a ‘mad’ Titan, Thanos, from wiping out half the life in the universe. His murderous methods aside – which we assume are wrong – it’s difficult to say what’s wrong with Thanos’ motivations for those of you who are aware of them. I think it’s fair to want interesting villains – the world is not black-and-white after all – but we’ve reached the point where in America’s culture at least, we’re literally rooting for the bad guy.

Case in point; at last night’s WWE’s Hell In A Cell Pay-per-View (I apologize for still keeping tabs on professional wrestling at my age), a character called The Fiend did not win the championship match and fans in the audience were audibly upset. This Fiend character is very popular among the internet wrestling community to the point that fans would rather see him crowned champion than have a face (good guy) retain the gold. I agree that the character is interesting and that the heel (bad guy) needs to win on occasion to maintain the delicate and eternal dance between good and evil alive for the sake of storytelling, but for a crowd to nearly riot when the heel doesn’t win indicates something is possibly wrong with either the Western psyche, the current rules of society, or perhaps a matter of definitions. (It is possibly all of these.) I can point to actual current events to make my case.

The election of Donald Trump to President of the United States in 2016 couldn’t make my point clearer, being of the opinion that Donald Trump is clearly a villain. Why; what has he done that is so wrong? I could name a number of things and not be nearly exhaustive: Asking foreign powers to interfere in U.S. elections, accepting the word of despots over his own intelligence community, cavorting with said same despots, backing out of treaties with traditional allies and treating them with contempt, rolling back environmental and civil protections, coddling white supremists and stoking xenophobia, ignoring the U.S. Constitution (this is perhaps because he’s clearly never read it), embezzling from his charities, doing nothing about gun violence, and generally acting like a third-grade schoolyard bully. While I understand the frustration of many modern American voters with the federal government, I was aghast to find out a large swath of the U.S. thought Donald Trump was the answer. In my opinion, I can’t say Donald Trump has never done any good as U.S. president – even a broken clock is right twice a day by accident – but does the good outweigh the bad? No, because all things considered, the person in question wouldn’t be a villain. Inevitably, then, we’re forced to think about what exactly makes someone a villain.

What is a villain? The definition of ‘villain’ is broad throughout various dictionaries, meaning anything from the antithesis of the protagonist in fiction to generally someone doing harm to others in reality. In either case, a villain is typically breaking the law. They are considered dangerous or have behaved heinously towards any given person or group of people. A villain is often considered immoral, and therein lies a problem.

To some people, Donald Trump is a hero, a freedom fighter even. He is a protagonist to all those who feel they’ve been ignored, stepped on, or otherwise aggrieved by the federal government. The current president of the U.S. doesn’t play by the established laws, traditions, or unwritten social contract. This makes him a terrorist to some (in that word’s broadest sense) and a hero to others who feel that the current laws, traditions, and unwritten social contract need to be revised or reset to reflect some unspecified glory somewhere in America’s history. (Possible interpretation: When they felt more entitled.) So if a villain can also be a hero, there must either be something wrong with our definition or perhaps there is no such thing as a villain, objectively speaking.

It’s easy to contend there is something wrong with the definition. Scores of English words are too broad in their definition to be of much use or are outright confusing; ask anyone studying the English language. I contend that in modern U.S. culture, the definition of ‘villain’ is so ambiguous as to be vague to the point that many people would not know when they are behaving as a villain. (I’m not sure which is worse, a villain who knows they’re a villain or one who doesn’t know they’re a villain.) It also seems wrong to label anyone who offends us or that we simply don’t like as a villain, but that does seem to be the manner in which many Americans now operate.

Do villains exist, objectively speaking? Not if all cultures are relative, something we have to assume if not all cultures can agree that murder is wrong. (There’s always a caveat.) Villains can exist within a given culture, certainly, as there is no doubt that people have existed that have flouted the laws of a society they are seemingly a part of. Again, though, this allows a villain to be a hero to society’s downtrodden or any one outside of a society that would like to see that society fail. So it’s hard to say villains actually exist anymore than we can now say heroes exist. Now we can see that heroes merely prop up the rules of society, and this would make them villains in someone’s eyes somewhere.

My original feelings towards the Joker movie have to be misgiven. After all, what does his nemesis Batman do but prop up the rules in Gotham City? Imagine Batman having grown up in 1930’s Germany; what would he have been but a Nazi superhero come WWII? Thank goodness he’s not, but Batman must be seen as a villain by some law enforcement agencies; there are procedures for catching and detaining criminals and subsequently putting them on trial. When this sense of fairness is broken can we agree this is something villainous? In the Joker movie, the central figure that is Arthur Fleck is driven insane by a thousand unfair psychological cuts, so can we blame him for the anarchy that ensues?  Can we blame a mass shooter who goes on a rampage because they think they’ve been treated unfairly?

Hopefully you are saying ‘yes’ because you agree that murdering innocent people, people who have not directly affected the shooter, are being murdered and we have to agree this is wrong no matter what society we belong to. Breaking two fairness rules – making two wrongs – does not result in a right, correct? Unfortunately, any given mass shooter or lawbreaker will have sympathizers. (To say nothing of laws that should be broken either because they are apparently unethical or quite ridiculous.) It would make more sense for a mass shooter to only kill the people that have affected them assuming the punishment fits the crime against them and we’ve never seen that.

If we invoke this rule of fairness which we, Western culture, seem to have forgotten as of late it might be easier to gauge who the villains are when the doctrine of fairness is broken. Given the current impeachment inquiry regarding Donald Trump, his proponents can argue for an investigation into the Bidens ad nauseum, and I’d be okay with that, but so should there just as well be an investigation into Trump as well. The fact that Donald trump obstructs justice in a manner that most of us cannot violates the fairness doctrine. I think it therefore reasonable to construe him as a villain. Then again, his proponents see this ‘unfair’ characterization as exactly what’s wrong with current American culture (despite these same people not wanting to do anything about solving the problem of mass shootings, which I view as villainous). I can’t imagine asking a Donald Trump supporter what they think made Obama such a villain because it seems like their definition is going to wind up being arbitrary. In fairness, though, I am willing to hear them out. Villains on the other hand hear no one out and simply assume they are entirely in the right.

Not Another Comic Reboot!

I just read the news that Marvel, the comic book company, is planning to end the Marvel Universe (all of them) as we know it in 2015 with their Secret Wars mini-series. I admit that I have long loved the idea of superheroes as they provide a particular means for telling fantastic stories. I have long loved characters like Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk and Iron Man because I identify with them on some level (notice there are no DC comic book characters on my short list, which is not to say I’ve never enjoyed DC comics). But I stopped reading comic books years ago as comic book writers and other story tellers started going in for reboots more often as they apparently became displeased with what they’ve tried to give readers. As I lamented some time ago, why can’t the story ever be the story? I became particularly enraged by these storytelling misfires when the movie Spider-Man 3 re-wrote the story of Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben’s death for absolutely no good reason. With Marvel’s latest news – which DC Comics has already tried with mixed results several times – I am enraged again.

As is ever the case, story tellers often begin a story with no ending in mind and this is perhaps the most cardinal sin in all of writing, regardless of the medium. As it pertains to comic books, it’s as if writers take on a hero, change a few of their previously essential plot points in order to get readers interested enough to buy the hero’s latest adventures and coast until the hero’s readership dies off (again). This is the essence of what Marvel is trying to do this year, but on a grand scale. Their hopes for destroying all their comic universes and combining all those universe’s best elements are ambitious to say the least, only you can’t help but wonder what is going to happen as soon as the editors decide, you know, we don’t like what we’ve done. Cue the reboot and find a way to undo what we did with Secret Wars back in 2015! You don’t need a crystal ball to figure this one’s a’ comin’. It’s like placing a bet on whether Wolverine, Marvel’s most popular character who was killed off in 2014, will ever be seen again. I’m sure Secret Wars will rectify that mistake.

I am quite sick of it. You don’t see anyone re-writing The Lord of the Rings or see Peter Jackson deviating too much from the original book’s lore in his LOTR movies because the story was written right the first time. (Which immediately makes me wonder how long before 50 Shades of Grey gets rebooted. Oh, wait, that was already a reboot of Twilight. Sigh.) I am seriously pleading with comic book writers to decide on what they want to do with a character, from start to finish, and be proud of what they’ve written, so proud that they don’t want their stories altered. Constantly altering characters deprives their stories of any impact, as demonstrated by Peter Parker regaining his secret identity despite the events of Marvel’s Civil War mini-series. I want to be able to feel that the things that happen to a character, although I know they are fictional, are real and that it matters and will be remembered. Am I asking too much?

The current state of comic books would be enough to make the government in Orson Welles’ 1984 proud.

Things That Don't Make Sense in Comic Books

As I am in the process of writing a superhero novel, I am trying to steer clear of some of the more ridiculous plot point that seem to haunt superhero comic books in general. Here’s my list of things that don’t make sense in comic books…

If Bruce Banner, a brilliant physicist, is at all disturbed by the fact that he turns into the Hulk every time he gets angry, don’t you think he’d find a way to keep himself from getting angry? There are plenty of legal or even illegal drugs that would help.

Why doesn’t Batman kill the Joker? While Batman may think the act of killing is inherently wrong, his belief that it would make him just like the Joker is incorrect. He is nothing like a homicidal criminal who kills untold numbers of people for fun; he would be killing to stop hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people from dying at the Joker’s hands. One, or even a few criminals, stopped with lethal force does not make the executioner the same as the people they kill. And why bother putting the Joker in prison? He’s just going to escape. Why not give Joker the death penalty?

What’s the point of a character dying if they’re going to come back to life later? The ‘death of’ trope is abused so often these days that it might as well be pointless. What’s the point of a whole bunch of heroes mourning Captain America or Superman when they know that – chances are – they’ll be back in just a few months?

Why don’t superheroes ever use their powers properly? For example, Thor can easily send any difficult enemy into another dimension with his hammer, so why has he only done it once (to Juggernaut)? Why doesn’t Superman ever use his super speed to prevent an enemy from landing a punch? Argh! And why don’t superheroes ever get tired during a fight? Even world class boxers need a rest between rounds.

Why would a non-super powered criminal take on a superhero? If you’re a ninja assassin for The Hand, are you really going to fight Wolverine? If you’re a bank robber, are you really going to shoot at Superman when he arrives? Better yet, if you’re going to be a criminal, why not move somewhere where there are no superheroes?

Regarding Superman, why would a yellow sun give him powers? Our Sun only appears yellow due to the way light scatters in our atmosphere; if you’re in space, the Sun appears white. A better explanation would be that our Sun gives Superman his powers due to what our Sun is made of. I guess comic book writers don’t do much research.

Speaking of gaining super powers, why do incidents that would kill anyone else (like radiation exposure) give some people incredible abilities? (At least this didn’t make sense until Marvel Comic’s Earth X series.) Moreover, why do people always decide to become a hero or villain after gaining super powers? If I suddenly found I could turn invisible, I probably wouldn’t announce it to everyone.

Why do so many superheroes and super villains know each other “off the record,” in their private lives? For example, Spider-Man knew several of his foes before they were villains, like Norman Osborn, Curt Connors, and Eddie Brock. And believe me, that’s just the (really) short list!

Speaking of Spider-Man’s, his spider-sense warns him of impending danger. So why didn’t it warn him not to get married?

Why do allegedly brilliant scientists always use themselves as test subjects? And given how often an experiment goes wrong, why do they always experiment in a heavily populated area?

With a few notable exceptions like Batman and Iron Man, most anyone with a load of money or access to resources is a super villain. Why?

How come civilians never die when there is a huge city battle? There’s got to be some collateral damage they’re not telling us about.

Why do almost all non-Earth beings look exactly like humans? Even Marvel’s Inhumans look really, really human!

…Feel free to come up with your own list and share, share, share. Maybe our collective ire will make comic book writers a little less lazy.