The Marvel Juggernaut: With Great Power Comes Zero Responsibility

The tendency for a certain fan element to interpret a critique of their favorite intellectual property as a personal critique is a common phenomenon amplified by social media echo chambers.  When AVENGERS: ENDGAME overtook AVATAR as the highest grossing film of all time (not adjusting for inflation), back-patting ensued, as though the “winning team” weren’t owned by the same multi-billion dollar company as the “loser”.  Swaths of people cheered on a manufactured conflict driving engagement and further enriching those already perched at the top.

Disney is a leviathan.  It doesn’t need public defense beyond basic consumption.   It’s currently in the process of placing recently-acquired Fox titles into its vault so it can control access to repertory cinema.  Screens that once played classic titles have little choice but to exhibit the most popular franchise properties in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars.  The reality goes beyond the argument that blockbusters earned their place in cinema’s artistic spectrum; a genre with the force of a monopolistic corporation behind it flourishes at the expense of others.

With this near-absolute domination comes the massive power of pop culture influence.  Can products built for mass audiences present artistic challenges?  Martin Scorsese opines:

“The most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption.”

Disney’s original hesitance to acquire Marvel’s catalogue reinforces this view. “A handful of executives around the table objected. Marvel was too edgy, they said. It would tarnish the Disney brand,” recalls Disney CEO Bob Iger in his memoir The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company.  Disney’s brand, which endured for decades, condenses into a simple soundbite: family friendly.  It’s evident in the regressive imagery and messaging found within Marvel’s latest offerings.

A recent visual trend suggests that the franchise seeks to evoke an idealized decade remembered for the patina of a white picket fence fantasy that obscured the rot of systemic racism and other forms of violent discrimination.  It’s rather stunning how the filmmakers took the most rebellious form of Steve Rogers—long hair, filthy costume, living as a fugitive from the law and unafraid to speak truth to power and, between AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME, reduced him to a khakis-and-flannel-clad square, slow dancing with Peggy Carter from the safe haven of suburbia.  The Disney+ series WANDAVISION will reportedly feature Wanda Maximoff and her paramour living in a simulacrum resembling a “50s sitcom”.  Another upcoming series on the streaming service, THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER, will trade in Bucky Barnes’ signature flowing locks for a return to his World War II-era regulation cut.

Due to the clout of its ubiquity, AVENGERS: ENDGAME merits a deeper look.  Its fundamental ideology is libertarian-conservative.  Superheroes fight, but only up until the point they want to quit.  They’re rewarded with the domestic tranquility of the heterosexual nuclear family (at the expense of the less conventional concept of “found family”).  Every female character receives sub-par treatment, especially Natasha Romanoff—a childhood abuse victim incapable of bearing children, sacrificed in favor of a “family man” who commits (racially selective) extra-judicial murder without consequence.  Untold trillions lost as collateral damage in the ensuing aftermath of Thanos’ cosmos-wide “snap” are forfeit for the lives born in the five year time skip, a moral quandary weighed by one billionaire on one planet.  What do such ethical questions even matter when the Avengers act with the unilateral righteousness of US Interventionism, and one hero chooses to play God with time travel technology?

The story quashes the political nature of its chief protagonist, Steve Rogers—created by two Jewish men to combat the rise of pro-fascist sentiment in a pre-war, isolationist America.   Favoring a bigoted past over a present more aligned with Steve’s values, Marvel takes a vocal political force—a tireless fighter against oppression—and reduces him to milquetoast, Pleasantville made manifest.  Adding insult to injury, Peggy Carter spectates this regressive resolution to Steve’s arc.  She’s wordless, existing only for Steve’s gaze, her independent life overwritten to be his prize and a means to an end: the complete neutralization of an anti-fascist.  Is it mere coincidence that Marvel Comics recently edited an Art Spiegelman essay to depoliticize Captain America?

The lack of criticism directed toward ENDGAME’s core values begs contemplation: do these changes escape sociopolitical criticism because we sublimate the Marvel Cinematic Universe as “theme park entertainment?”  Spared the type of analysis that comes with “heavier” fare, the underlying morality of Rogers’ choice goes unchecked—impacting young, impressionable viewers, and influencing other works for years to come.  Our popular art both reflects and informs our cultural attitudes.

Taken as a whole, the entire Marvel “oeuvre” rationalizes American exceptionalism and interventionism.  Often interpreted as a propaganda arm of the Military Industrial Complex, its flagship hero is a rogue Elon Musk-esque billionaire employing proto-Fascistic reasoning to justify a surveillance state.  Yet, Disney bulwarks the Marvel films as a beacon of progressivism and positive representation for marginalized demographics.  Iger:

“[If they] want to bitch about movies, that’s certainly their right… are you telling me Ryan Coogler, making Black Panther, is doing something… ‘less than’ what [they] have ever done… come on. There. I said it.”

By invoking Coogler’s name in response to criticism, Iger positioned BLACK PANTHER as representative of a pattern instead of an outlier in Marvel’s track record.  Out of 23 male directors hired leading up to ENDGAME, 21 are white men; the studio’s ratios of non-white male screenwriters and producers are likewise bleak.  It’s also reflected in ENDGAME’s condescending, slapdash battlefield moment featuring all-female characters— largely interchangeable and with negligible prior interaction —and co-director Joe Russo’s small cameo as a gay man—a demeaning footnote to a parade of heteronormality, with its ad nauseam “no homo” inserts of nuclear families meant to symbolize a return to normalcy.  Superficial inclusion means nothing if the underlying message is ignorant.

Will Marvel’s concept of representation ever be more than exceptions and lip-service?  Their behind-the-camera hires for post-ENDGAME projects look encouraging, but how many of these individuals’ ideas will exit the system unscathed?  The studio teased an LGBT hero in THE ETERNALS (scheduled for 2020 release), but how textual will the character’s identity be?  Will the studio ever make a choice risking their bottom line?  Design-by-committee creations, their films adhere to a formula that appeals to the widest possible cross-section of the general public.

The immutable truth is that a behemoth like Disney could be a prime-mover of cultural change if it endeavored so in earnest.  They possess the financial safety net to take subversive risks, and yet they stagnate the creativity of the entire industry.  The pursuit of excellence withers in the safe comfort of settling, despite growing evidence that diversity translates into greater box office returns.  There exists an entire untapped market of marginalized viewers ripe for the taking; if Disney doesn’t step up to fill that need, someone else will.  Yet, their obsessive control over their brand handicaps its own artistic potential, even though their omnipresence means a built-in, captive audience.

Disney wants to have their cake and eat it, too—immunizing the blockbuster from deeper analysis, enabling its existence as both art and entertainment.  The studio is campaigning AVENGERS: ENDGAME for top-tier Academy Awards consideration in spite of the film’s traditionalism and risk-avoidance.  It’s no MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, a rare franchise film that, in defiance of tentpole norms, seamlessly melded action with scathing social commentary.

Meanwhile, the landscape of cinema is in the midst of a permanent change.  Despite the earnings glut from franchise fever, per capita attendance hangs at century lows, while larger distributors bully independent films and artistic bravery out of the medium.  If Disney is unable to cede an inch of its dominion, the least it can do is take a leap of faith and grant its pervasive intellectual property a measure of subversion.  With great power comes great responsibility: Disney has the power and potential to be more than just purveyors of the status quo.