BvS UE comments on the brutal impact of postmodernism upon classic superhero mythology
This article for BvS is by far the most challenging of the lot to write, although I do feel confident in its most basic interpretation. The thesis here is arguably a stretch. But the basic ideas fall well within what we see take place on screen. And while I could probably make the same fundamental points without using the terms “modernism” and “postmodernism,” BvS’s deconstruction is more satisfying to me in those terms. For me it makes Bruce’s existential crisis in the film more relevant to the real world.
I’ll first attempt to define postmodernism and modernism in layman’s terms. Then I’ll tie the concepts in to what Snyder had said he is doing with BvS. Finally, I’ll discuss the implications that I see for these ideas within the film.
A disclaimer: I am certainly no expert on the subject of modernism and postmodernism! Postmodernism is an incredibly complex and dense subject. If you think I’ve missed some important aspects, or have gotten some things wrong, etc., please comment. I may have!
Postmodernism
It seems that the term “postmodernism” is rather ‘loaded’ for a lot of folks, especially those that hold politically conservative views. As such it might be described as a trigger word, or buzzword. For its critics the term elicits extremely negative associations associated with liberal politics based in cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and ultimately Marxism and nihilism. And there are indeed many thinkers from the postmodern school of thought that are radically leftist in their political philosophy. For more moderate thinkers, for better or worse postmodernism can provide a potentially useful framework by which to interrogate and challenge assumptions and belief systems that serve to maintain traditional social order at all costs (i.e., continue to keep the powerful in power no matter what).
Postmodernism truly is a big can of worms. But as I’m going to apply it here, the most basic definition of postmodernism that I see as a non-expert–or at least the one that I personally draw from it–transcends both political left or right views. I’ll try my best to explain.
Postmodernism reflects greater awareness about a few things that are valuable for literally anyone to understand in order to think as freely and independently as possible. (However please note: this is not a succinct summary of postmodernism!) The first is that all popularly held notions about “universal truth” or “absolute truth” are undeniably shaped to a tremendous degree by the culture and period of history in which they are generated. The second is that society’s recognized experts in positions of authority (government, education, scientific research) support certain beliefs and assumptions; and that sort of ‘sanctioning’ by experts normalizes those ideas and thereby makes them socially acceptable. This serves a function, whether performed consciously or unconsciously, to preserve the established social order. Individuals that think and act outside of these norms are of course marginalized. Thirdly, knowledge, as it is socially sanctioned by experts in positions of authority, is therefore a tool that society uses, and a form of social power and control–and possibly the most effective one of all. Society’s generation of “great lies” as they are sometimes called becomes discernible precisely for the manipulations that they are through this understanding.
In the language of the 1960s the postmodern position could be simplistically reduced to “don’t trust the man,” or the “establishment.” It goes farther than that though. Postmodernism suggests that logic, reason, science, objectivism, and so forth will only reveal whatever is possible to perceive through the lens of any particular observer’s culture and place within history. And furthermore that beliefs are ultimately nothing more than mental and social “constructs” that are ever evolving. Therefore there is no such thing as “universal” or “absolute” truth.
Now whether the developers of this school of thought became far too radical in their conclusions is fair to debate. Personally I believe it is an over-reductive conclusion that absolute or universal truth do not exist at all simply because all beliefs are culturally and historically bound.
But the real value in the following three fundamental insights is the awareness and potential empowerment it can bring to grasp that
1) all thought is powerfully conditioned and shaped by the forces of the society in which it arises,
2) society engineers its belief and values system in order to maintain a social, economic, and political power structure, and
3) society does this through knowledge–information, ideas, beliefs, assumptions, etc.–that ultimately become propaganda with which to manipulate and control the masses.
Personally, I see this happening on both the extreme political right and left. And that is why I suggest that perhaps the core tenets of postmodernism that I identify transcend the two sides of the political spectrum.
Postmodernism is a revolutionary reaction, a paradigm shift, in thought towards what is sometimes called “modernism.” (Postmodernism is so-named because it arose after, and in reaction to, modernism.) Modernism is essentially Enlightenment humanism, a faith born in the Italian Renaissance that science and reason can reveal objective and therefore “universal” or “absolute” factual truth or reality.
The following graphic shows a sample of contrasting assumptions of modernism and postmodernism. (Apologies for a lack of credit to whoever created it, I found it on Google uncredited.)
One result of this paradigm shift from modernism to postmodernism is a rebellion or mistrust toward the institutions that maintain society and in knowledge itself.
BvS’s Superman Represents Modernism Under Assault by Postmodernism
Now what does all this have to do with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in BvS? Well, BvS is a deconstruction of superhero mythology. In my article BvS is a Watchmen-like Deconstruction I define the term deconstruction as “the act of taking apart of an ideal or stereotype in order to show how it is constructed, and by virtue of that process dispelling illusions it creates. It’s akin to showing how a magic trick works.”
Superhero mythology arose (circa 1938) culturally as a reflection of a reassuringly stable, dependable, modernist worldview. However postmodernism and it’s radical relativism has progressively gained ground since it first appeared at the start of the previous century; and it is fair to say that at least through the lens of mainstream academia and entertainment media it currently dominates and organizes our worldview. By the same token, there continues to be an ongoing tension in our present day culture regarding the ideals of modernism vs. postmodernism in the political and social values arena.
Here is what Zack Snyder has to say about his project of applying a Watchmen-style deconstruction to BvS, and what he said regarding Superman:
[Watchmen is]… all about the ‘why’ of superheroes: the political why, the religious why, the philosophical why… Once you’ve absorbed that material, there’s no way it doesn’t resonate with you, especially when you’re dealing with characters like Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman… In some ways… (BvS) will be, I hope at it’s really best, the impossible version of ‘Watchmen’.
… I would argue that [Superman is] the godfather in every genre of comic book. And to make him work is to legitimize that whole world… In some ways for me to do a stylized Superman movie is to do all the movies that have been made. Because all Superman movies that have been made exist in some sort of weird stylized world where everyone’s like ‘apple pie and Chevrolet’, and it’s like… the American Dream in a weird way… The thing I find interesting is being able to release the character from that world, that stylized world where he’s been stuck and shackled. And bring him to our world and see what he does…
The “apple pie and Chevrolet… American Dream” stylized world that Superman was born from in 1938, is indeed that of modernism. Golden Age and Silver Age comic Superman certainly reflects a culture with absolute faith in American ideals. Even forty years later 1978’s Richard Donner film Superman basks in nostalgia for Superman as that refreshingly uncomplicated ideal, a near perfect being who harbors no doubts about the legitimacy of the values he stands for.
Again, this reflects the American culture in which Superman the character was born.
Interestingly, in the earliest Superman comics by his creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster Superman was quite aggressive–indeed even murderously ruthless–as an advocate for the poor and abused. (Note: even as a social(ist) crusader this early Superman reflects modernist ideals that simply happen to be politically liberal, i.e., regardless of which end of the political spectrum he exists as a symbol for virtues that are framed as absolute or universal truth.) But shortly thereafter Superman became the Big Blue Boyscout that he is best known as to this day (for contemporary audiences owing mainly to Donner’s hugely popular 1978 film). Superman might even be considered a mythic exemplar of American exceptionalism. The motto for the 1950’s Superman television show was that Superman is a champion for “truth, justice, and the American Way.” And as such his moral compass is unerring.
In Snyder’s films MoS and BvS, however, Superman occupies our current postmodern world. He is not as self-assured. It’s harder for him to exist, essentially. Superman–who was born as a construct of modernism, let’s not forget–seems to feel vaguely uncertain, anxious, and uncomfortable in a postmodern world. He’s a stranger in a strange land.
And indeed, Superman’s identity as a member of an extraterrestrial civilization is arguably most prominent as a story element in both MoS and BvS. When such a character is brought into our real (postmodern) world, the fact that he is an alien from another planet is probably the most remarkable thing about him. Arguably even more so than possessing super powers. (I’ll delve into that in my analysis of Man of Steel.)
By having the super powers of a god Superman is fundamentally different from the rest of humanity. But having an extraterrestrial origin also underscores his sense of never feeling quite at home or completely connected. But that slight uneasiness we sense in him may also symbolically reflect that this character that represents modernist idealism must somehow find a way to adapt to postmodern reality.
I wouldn’t say that Batman in BvS represents postmodernism itself, in its totality. But I do think that a sense of fatalism or nihilism that is often associated with the postmodern worldview is expressed by Batman. In BvS Superman finds himself in struggling to justify his (archetypal) existence in Batman’s sinister, dark, grim, and noir-ish world.
Lex Luthor Expresses the Disturbing Effects Wrought by the Clash of Modernism and Postmodernism?
Many viewers were taken aback by BvS’s portrayal of Lex Luthor as a shrill, deranged, unhinged, psychopath who appears to progressively decompensate psychiatrically throughout the film. The character bears some similarity to a version in the comics (Superman: Birthright). But this Luthor is a far cry from the commanding, self-possessed, suave, captain of industry that many fans expected. This Lex seems to have verbal tics (apparently with the suggestion of Tourettes Syndrome?), and perhaps possibly what would have been diagnosed during his childhood as Asperger’s Syndrome. Lex tells us that his father was at least physically abusive if not more so (mentioning his father’s “fists and abominations” towards him). He evidently has an unresolved trauma history from that and was left deeply disturbed by it. Whatever else, Lex Luthor is unambiguously anti-social and narcissistic.
Lex Luthor rambles much of the time about Nietzchean themes–even when we first meet him. I’m going to avoid getting bogged down by going down the rabbit hole of the complicated subject of what Nietzsche might potentially symbolize in the film. I will simply assert that for this particular thesis Nietzsche may be said to represent the results of damage from the collision of modernism and postmodernism. Suffice it to say that Nietzsche stands on the threshold of modernism and postmodernism, in a sense bridging the two schools of thought. For our purposes here it is important to note that Nietzsche experienced at least one known episode of acute mental illness (perhaps a manic episode) requiring hospitalization; and that he suffered from depression as well. At the risk of oversimplification, Lex Luthor represents the ‘freakout’ or meltdown in the collective consciousness from the radicalism of postmodernism upending the stability of modernism–which still continues to this day.
The Martha Moment Interpreted Through the ‘Postmodernism vs. Modernism’ Lens
I often ask myself why on earth does BvS take such an enormous gamble as to use the so-called infamous ‘Martha moment’ as the dramatic crux of the film? BvS has a visionary, and some would say even genius, director. The film hired an Oscar winning screenplay author in Chris Terrio. Ben Affleck–whose character’s story BvS essentially belongs to–as executive producer, and himself winner of two Academy awards (Best Screenplay for Good Will Hunting and Best Picture for Argo) and one of Hollywood’s hottest directors at the time, surely must have had input the story and script as well, at least during filming.
Zack Snyder, Chris Terrio, and Ben Affleck is an immensely talented brain trust for something so critical as this highly controversial scene.
Did all three of these tremendously gifted artists fail to foresee see the inevitable criticisms of the scene? Obviously this is my own biased opinion (I love BvS), but I’m willing to entertain that they did not. I think the scene may be intended to force the viewer to engage in a particular way, which I think is posed by the film as an open ended question: are we forced to “make sense” of what is truly happening in that scene by connecting dots and making inferences? Are we being forced to envision and extrapolate and think beyond more than what is shown on screen?
I think the answer is yes. In my opinion while the film does fundamentally leave the question open-ended, it also basically forces a choice of interpretation. And I offer two sub-arguments in support of the assertion that the Martha scene nudges us to move beyond the confines of what we are shown on screen. The first is that BvS has film noir elements. The second is that those noir elements reflect the film’s project of showing the collision of modernism and postmodernism; and then, as such, BvS forces us to process the ‘Martha’ event by extrapolating context in order to “make sense” of what has happened in the scene, and by so doing we are challenged and pushed to shift outside standard, traditional Hollywood cinematic narrative which is to simply to sit back and passively receive/accept information.
Below is a list of common noir genre conventions, with notes regarding whether they appear in BvS:
- Urban environment ✓
- Rain-soaked streets ✓ (and even during the daytime it’s always threatening to rain)
- Seedy taverns, diners, and run-down buildings ✓ (the latter for sure!)
- Claustrophobic interiors ? (perhaps not so much visually, but maybe overall claustrophobic atmosphere psychologically/emotionally, especially in terms of compact content and brisk pacing?)
- Flickering street lamps ✓ (lighting flashes fulfill this function)
- Neon signs ✓ (lighting flashes)
- Scenes appear dark as if lit for the night, with many dark shadows ✓ (story takes place mostly at night)
- Oblique and vertical lines, especially in regards to lighting (hmm… not particularly)
- Shadows (eh… not really)
- Films done in black and white (nope)
- Narration, especially flash-back narration ✓ (Bruce, prologue and epilogue)
- Criminal underworld ✓ (‘above the law’, i.e., lawless, military-industrial complex)
- Hopelessness ✓
- Corruption ✓
- The “heroes” tend to be morally ambiguous, alienated from society, and
have a fatalistic outlook. ✓ - Characters torn by psychological conflict ✓
- The Femme Fatale ✓ (Diana comes pretty close to this… on the one hand, she does not ultimately betray Bruce and in fact rescues him… on the other hand, for the first two acts it is very much in question whether she will even ally with Bruce)
I’m not asserting that BvS is, flat-out, a neo-noir. However I do suspect that with Batman as it’s main star (one of whose monikers is “the World’s Greatest Detective”), BvS does intentionally include a noir aesthetic. Film noir expresses a sense of cultural doubt, anxiety, and alienation with respect to what is essentially a full-blown transition of American culture into to postmodernity after WWII. Typically in film noir the plot is rife with twists and often is never resolved. That is because the greater point is simply to show to that world (i.e., society, culture) is not reliable, stable, and reassuring at all; it is in fact confusing and dangerous. The world is full of danger and uncertainty to navigate.
As mentioned, in BvS Superman represents classical superhero mythology, with Superman the poster child for sunny, reassuring traditional modernist ideals. In BvS Superman is placed in Batman’s dark, threatening postmodern present day real world in which his “great lies” are threatened to be exposed. For the first two acts of the film, Batman and Superman are pitted against one another as enemies by Lex Luthor, with Luthor representing the mental instability that results from the collision of modernism and postmodernism. A noir-ish aesthetic is therefore certainly fitting for this project.
The second sub-argument is that the noir-ish confusion of the story is used in such a way that is forces the viewer, like a noir detective, to connect dots, infer, surmise, etc., what is really taking place in the film. To cipher out the real messages of the story, as conveyed through its symbolism.
How does the Martha scene force the viewer to think beyond the most immediate information to apprehend what is really going on? When Clark says “You’re letting ‘m kill Martha… Find him… Save Martha…” this jolts Bruce into a recovered memory of his mother’s death through which he achieves insight into the lifelong destructive effects of that psychologically buried trauma. But many critics of the scene take issue with the fact that Clark seems to randomly say “Martha” to Bruce instead of “my mother.” Is this how people normally refer to their mother? By using their first name? In my opinion it is fair to contend that, no, that is not how people normally speak. In which case the use of Martha as randomly spoken does seem painfully contrived for the purposes of the story.
Some other possible explanations I have seen include that Clark unsuccessfully tried to gurgle out “Kent” after “Martha,” that some people refer to their parents by their first name (Clark calls her “mom” elsewhere in the film), and that Bruce wouldn’t help Clark if he simply said “my mother” whereas a stranger he would. None of these is satisfying to me. They don’t feel quite right.
I think it is fair to criticize the use of “Martha” instead of “my mother” if it was randomly spoken by Clark. That could even be considered downright bad writing.
However!…
I also suspect that the film invites to consider a very distinct possibility that use of the name “Martha” was in fact not random. Rather, could it be that “Martha” is uttered intentionally by Clark precisely in order to elicit the psychological breakthrough in Bruce that we see it have?
For this to make sense we must surmise the following, none of which is directly shown in the film: 1) Daily Planet reporter Clark has researched Bruce Wayne by then, and knows that their mothers share the same first name, and 2) Clark grasps that it was traumatic for Bruce to witness his parents being killed during childhood. And he realizes the destructive effect that trauma has had on Bruce over the years.
Again, these things aren’t shown in the film. But BvS places superheroes in our real, actual world. And in the real world, the truth of many if not most relatively complex situations is not at all easy to detect on the surface level. I would argue that in fact usually it is just the opposite.
And in a sense this is the core problem at the heart of postmodernity. There are always deeper layers of meaning and truth waiting to be uncovered. In real life we are required (more often than not) to creatively and intuitively ‘connect the dots’, infer, and surmise in order to grasp deeper levels of reality. The deeper “truth” often isn’t conveniently sitting on the surface of our perception like low hanging fruit. We have to work to think beyond the immediate situation to understand the deeper reality, which often isn’t obvious at all. And we certainly cannot trust for the deeper reality to arbitrarily be handed down to us by the powers-that-be! The postmodern worldview demands that you must question what you are arbitrarily told by society is “truth” or “reality.” Here that social ‘authority’ is the conventional narrative style of Hollywood cinema that fills the empty vessel of the viewer’s brain with information as the viewer sits back and is ‘told’ through standard conventions what the story is.
The fact that the Martha scene does not do that, as we have noted, is reflected through overtones of the noir genre in which the film’s plot isn’t ever satisfactorily resolved, there is no happy ending, no inherent fairness to life, individuals are ultimately helpless against larger social forces, and there is no absolute truth that is easy to understand. And the world remains an ever confusing and undependable place. With the Martha scene the film’s narrative, the dialogue, etc., aren’t what you depend upon to “get” what the film is actually trying to say.
As Bruce says to a battered, beaten Clark, “My parents taught me a different lesson… The world only makes sense if you force it to.” And in the pivotal scene of the film, we are literally forced to make sense of what is happening. Our sense of uncritical, passive reception as viewers is as as heavily brutalized by the movie as Superman is by Batman in their fight. The film demands that we engage with it by using our critical faculties and as active participants. And we are encouraged to think creatively and independently.
The Snyderverse 