In American fiction, the default premise is ‘they fight crime’. That is to say, the default story is a story about police. The default story is the story of the people who use violence to enforce the will of the state.

Why is it that there are so many movies, TV shows, and books that invite us to imaginatively identify with the people who are responsible for deploying violence against us? Of course, that question is the sort that immediately answers itself.

Superheroes are not culturally unconnected to this phenomenon. It is utterly bizarre to think that, if you had god-like magical powers, you would mostly use them to stop muggings, robberies, and other sorts of low-level property crimes — aka, ‘fight crime’. Sure, superheroes often find themselves fighting against supervillains, but this is always treated as a state of exception — the normal course of affairs for Superman (a man who is immortal, infinitely strong and fast, can fly, is invulnerable, is nearly omniscient, and can shoot lasers from his eyes) is to go about Metropolis stopping muggings.

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

These are treated as our most accessible and commonly-held mythologies. Large sections of the increasingly-centralized media industry want us to think that, even if you were not effectively bound by any human laws, the most natural thing to do is to enforce the most petite bourgeoise forms of private property.

Crucially, even when these superheroes do find themselves in the state of exception — fighting against supervillains — they are always fighting to restore the status quo. Superman never attempts to end homelessness by carving vast cities into the Rockies, nor does he do away with dictators and war criminals. He certainly does not attempt to end capitalism. Nor, for that matter, did Cold War-era Superman attempt to end Soviet “socialism” — just as WW2-era Superman did not simply march into Berlin and end German fascism.

“Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan’. Even if the plan is horrifying! “— Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight