{"id":5242,"date":"2010-08-16T11:50:27","date_gmt":"2010-08-16T18:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reallifesuperheroes.org\/?p=5242"},"modified":"2010-08-16T11:50:27","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T18:50:27","slug":"vigilantism-and-the-superhero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/2010\/08\/16\/vigilantism-and-the-superhero\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigilantism and the Superhero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted: http:\/\/mysterio.startlogic.com\/WordPress\/?p=556<\/a>
\nBy Brad
\nAs a lifelong reader of comics, I feel like an aging punk rocker, horrified at how my private subculture has been appropriated by the mainstream media. Like an indy music hipster, —dude, I heard it first on vinyl, I don’t even own a cd player<\/em>— aging comic book readers like myself disdain comic book movies.\u00a0I read that when I was in high school. The movie totally ruined it.<\/em>
\nComics have become an accepted part, if not\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0most accepted part, of the American entertainment landscape. Mainstream comics, particularly as depicted in movies, are always dark and gritty. But it’s important to remember that transition didn’t happen until the mid-1980s with Frank Miller’s\u00a0The Dark Knight<\/strong>\u00a0and Alan Moore’s\u00a0Watchmen<\/strong>. Superheroes before that period, who were sometimes wanted by the law \u00e0 la Spiderman, were never seen breaking the law, but were depicted as trying to uphold it as private citizens. The genius of Watchmen and the Dark Knight is that they follow the thinking process of the classic superhero with two different conclusions. I liked the Watchmen movie, but it glossed over the main point of the comic:\u00a0the corrosive effects of vigilantism on a society<\/em>.
\nI’ve discovered people\u00a0who are wearing garish costumes and trying to fight crime<\/a>, but without the benefit of superscience, superstrength or really anything. This is so absurd and charming that one can’t help but support these costumed crusaders.\u00a0Superbarrio<\/em>\u00a0is my favorite of the Real Life Superheroes. It’s hard not to like this over-weight gentleman who puts on a\u00a0Lucha Libre<\/em>\u00a0wrestling mask and has sworn to protect the poor people of Mexico.
\nThese Real Life Superheroes hearken back to another age of comics when morality was presented in simpler terms. We can chuckle at these people and wonder if they’re doing this in earnest or as a form of cosplay. However, the sentiment of the superhero, to go beyond the rule of law and rid the streets of crime, has had expression in the Real World, that isn’t so wonderful.
\nBob Kane’s Batman chose his costume and persona in an effort to frighten criminals, who he called a “superstitious and cowardly lot.” The Ku Klux Klan wore their hoods and white sheets to appear as ghosts, to frighten and terrorize Blacks. Placing burning crosses on the property of Blacks was originally an affront to the deeply Christian beliefs of rural Blacks, whose religion and spirituality was their only real possession. It was only later that cross burning was rationalized as a some kind of internal Christian ritual.
\nThe Klan’s illegal actions were applauded and celebrated in D.W. Griffith’s\u00a0The Birth of a Nation.\u00a0<\/strong>It’s hard to imagine a film about the KKK being presented as the “good guys”, but the film was a blockbuster success. It was the Batman of its day.\u00a0 After his private screening at the White House, Woodrow Wilson even commented, “it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true”.
\nAt roughly the same time as the Ku Klux Klan, there was another costumed group, although this time not dedicated to racism, that decided to take the law into their own hands. On paper, the early\u00a0Bald Knobbers<\/strong>\u00a0sound like a decent bunch, similar in concept to Curtis Sliwa’s neighborhood watch group,The Guardian Angels<\/strong>. The Bald Knobbers were a secret society of men, who wore an odd, masked and horned costume, and were trying to uphold the peace. The Bald Knobbers were Missouri Republicans, who were loyal to the Union during the Civil War. In the lawless environment of post-war Missouri, they acted like an unaccountable police force. Unfortunately this group that was formed to protect the people of Missouri, drunk with power, applied brutality and murder not only to criminals, but those they felt who were immoral. They later attacked and murdered people for what they believed to be licentious and anti-Christian behavior.
\nDuring Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, more Americans got in on the illegal vigilante act, but this time with governmental approval.\u00a0The American Protective League,<\/strong>\u00a0which had around 300,000 members, was not a bunch of costumed crusaders, but a large snitch group, dedicated to disrupting Unions, Wobblies, anarchists, anti-war advocates, and other undesirables. These characters opened private mail, broke into people’s houses, riffling through desks and drawers and found 3 million cases of\u00a0“disloyalty.<\/em>” There was even a kid-friendly junior version with the Our Gang title,\u00a0Anti Yellow Dog League.<\/strong>
\nI thought of these things after watching the recent Batman movie. It does have an explicit desire to go beyond the perceived limits of law. Bruce Wayne uses technology to spy on\u00a0every single person<\/em>\u00a0in Gotham city. He knows it’s illegal and unethical — it’s clearly an unreasonable search and seizure — but does it anyway. The ends justify the means.\u00a0\u00a0Many people saw a connection<\/a>\u00a0between the Patriot Act and other erosion of civil liberties with the viewpoint of Batman. When the Soviets had a massive domestic spying network, complimented by legions of snitches, they probably thought they were doing the right thing too.
\nThe graffiti in The Watchmen comic reads, “Who Watches the Watchmen?<\/em>” Something to think about in these times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A blog on the history of Vigilantism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[115,144,247,259,312,978,1455,2544,2897,2979],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}