Underlying themes

I'm not one to ban old books for racist or maybe-racist content: if we block the past, the risk of repeating it grows exponentially. Yes, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Robinson Crusoe and Huckleberry Finn display black people in rather unfavorable light. But that's how they were displayed back then.

If we block the popular culture of the past, we're sort of erasing history as we do it. And if we refuse to acknowledge that our history wasn't all sunshine and lollipops we run the risk of repeating it. What I'd much more rather see is people reading these books, Ten Little Nigger Boys still on the cover of the now Then There Were None and people actually discussing these things in their cultural context.

There's a movie out with just such a theme now: Django Unchained. I haven't seen it yet, but I can make a few educated guesses: it's a Tarantino movie, so it will be an overfluous splatter fest with a perverse liking to violence. I hope it will be a good story that forces people to think as well, but we'll see. No matter the presentation, the point is very much valid: cultural products are this are necessary if we are to remember the lapses in humanity that have happened before.

I think that even more important than having these sort of overt cultural products that point fingers and use light-up billboards is discussing the underlying themes in those that aren't as self-evident. As a case example, I'll use everyone's favorite dead guy at the moment, J. R. R. Tolkien.

You know, the guy that wrote this.

... and this.

Mr. Tolkien wasn't exactly a writer as such: he was an academic, a linguist and a historian (mostly in literacy), and very good at both. Tolkien is mostly the father of much of modern fantasy literature, both in good and bad. Tolkien was a good writer, although his focus in building worlds and languages made his stories a bit huge. The influence he had was in how he took classic folklore, changed it, and sometimes added completely new parts. For example, the pointy-eared, lithe and graceful elves of today are the work of Tolkien (much of their being has been taken from folklore fairie, though), as well as the short, stout and gold-greedy dwarves (again, a bastardization of old folklore, but the combination in itself is basically Tolkien's).

So, while giving us much of the loved, liked and known tropes of high fantasy, Tolkien also gave us the bad ones. The webcomic, Order of the Stick, had a pretty good strip on this some years back, on color-coded dragons: read it here. The point that the comic underlines and I'm trying to make is that Tolkien's work made all of fantasy monotone black and white: everything was based in very, very deep-set stereotypes. I'll throw around some examples to prove my point.

Elves are good: the first children of the Ilúvatar, a shining example of right about everything. They are the epitome of good and justice. Dwarves are greedy, taciturn and haughty: basically good by proxy, but often too proud and greedy for the good of anyone. Hobbits are magnanimous, have a penchant for food and rest but are basically good. Orcs and goblins are bad, period. Honestly, the only defining characteristic orcs and goblins have is that they're evil, serve evil lords, and want to kill all the good guys. That's it.

But harken, I hear you cry, humans are creatures of changing morals and many themes in the books. Sorry, nope. A character is either good or bad, and most of the time this is defined by one's race. The Eastlings and Southlings, people that are mostly defined as being strange, foreign and just not very much like us are, by default, evil.

I'm not saying what Tolkien did was wrong. I am saying that it built tropes that have hurt fantasy literature as a genre and made it very, very difficult to do anything different (for quite a while). I also think his stereotyping hurt his own writing, but that's a personal opinion.

If these things - innate racism, tropes, stereotypes - cannot be discussed, our culture is driven into an evolutionary cul de sac. Until then, the discussion is necessary.

I believe in Batman

A lot of the 20th century pop culture revolves around vigilantism. To sharpen the focus, almost all of - at least the early - comics deal with the subject. I don't mean the newspaper strip comics, but the "real deal": (more-often-than-not) superhero comics and other such that come with the titular character's name usually printed on the front.

About like this.

Of course, the naming policy only became as it is somewhere around what's now known as "the Golden Age of Comics", going on from about the 1930's to the beginning of the 1950's. During this time, the world first met most of the comic book heroes (and a lot of the villains) that are still the most well known of the lot today, such as Superman, Batman, Captain America and Wonder Woman.

Back then, most of the comics weren't named after their main characters: Batman first showed his cowl in Detective Comics, while Superman began his career in Action Comics. The idea to name comics after the characters came during the later half of the Golden Age, when it was felt that characters such as Superman had grown bigger than the Detective Comics. Of course, there was the other thing, too.

As the Golden Age enveloped the second world war, most - if not all - comic book characters made their way into the happy world of propaganda (heck, even Donald Duck made fun of the japs and Hitler). Captain America was even born for this purpose only, and has had a bit of an uphill struggle to lose that mark ever since. While the original series of Action Comics kept it's boyish charms and direction, Superman flew off to embrace the stars, stripes and bald eagles to punch in the face of evil everywhere.

It made sense to make the super heroes fight the war: they were immensely popular among young boys, and if the boys thought it was cool to fight in the war like Superman, the homefront battle was halfway won. It also fit the vigilante status of the stiff-collared heroes like Superman to take the fight to the enemy if it was needed. It was, indeed, usual for the early age superheroes to be unquestionably good - to uphold the virtues everywhere. Superman, for one, is the ultimate boy scout and has kind of held on to that status all the way to today, despite some a bit grittier takes on him.

This is kind of why I like Batman better. Batman began as almost the same kind of moral absolute as the Man of Steel, but he's come a long way. Batman still doesn't kill, but he does what he needs to to uphold what he feels is right. The title of this post derives from the last Batman movie, the Dark Knight Rises, wherein Batman becomes the symbol of a Gotham that might be able to free itself yet from the ire of opressors, murderers and lunatics.

Seeing the movie again made me think about what Batman actually stands for, and here's my take. Do what you think is right, if you can unquestionably say that it is right, no matter the cost. This is what vigilantism as a thought is about, isn't it - the law is flawed, and thus there must be a force above the law, able to do what must be done.

This holds some very deep inherent flaws, pondered upon in Alan Moore's Watchmen (to give a comic book example, thus staying in only one source material). While the philosophical question of ultimate moral actor above the law is interesting, I don't find it plausible - human beings are not fully rational, and therefore are unable of ultimates. But, on a more everyday level, I find Batman a good thing to stand by. I believe in doing what I think is right, if I can hold it to the light. I don't believe in vigilantism, nor holding one's self above the law.

But I do believe in Batman.