The costumed crime fighter returned to primetime television Sunday with NBC’s midseason debut of The Cape. For all the emphases on superheroes in popular media, those heroes, at least on television, have shied away from costumes. They provided the function associated with superheroes, but not colorful form. Why then, the return to the costumed hero on the small screen?
The Cape is a family friendly show about a wrongfully accused cop who takes on the persona of his son’s favorite comic book hero to clear his name and save “Palm City.” A genre show that draws on familiar themes, The Cape offers a fight for justice and an individual’s struggle against societal corruption. As with its big screen counterpart, The Green Hornet, The Cape returns places the pulp hero in the spotlight at a time when the value of individual agency is in question. This neo-pulp moment is both stimulated by and a reaction to social upheaval and economic uncertainty. Like superheroes, pulp characters offer a means to understand how U.S. society negotiates the continued belief in the American dream in the face of contemporary challenges to that idealize reality.
Superheroes’ costumes, powers, and dual identities serve as an externalization of the power, desires, and values that are deeply ingrained within the U.S. culture. Reacting to the specter of terrorism and challenging globalization, the superhero reaffirms broad traditional ideas about United States. The decision to turn away from superpowers and embracing the pulp hero allows the U.S. audience to connect to the heroic journey in a different way. If, as we so often assume, the superhero is wish fulfillment, pulp heroes differ because of their humanity. The pulp hero provides a vision of common man empowerment for the audience that links economic stress, societal corruption, and familial jeopardy to the hero in way a super-powered protagonist does not.
This return of the pulp hero to the mainstream allows the audiences greater freedom to identity with the hero, yet that identification is regressive--it imagines an agency for the common man in the past that existed in a way much more complex than our collective memory allows. Indeed, if we consider the 1930s closely, the struggle for individual agency mirrors much of our contemporary concerns. In the midst of global depression, the New Deal legislation championed by FDR alarmed conservative elements in the country. Charges that President Roosevelt and his "Brain Trust" of advisers drawn from academia (sound familiar) were attempting a government takeover of the marketplace rallied conservatives. FDR's first hundred days saw new legislation that dramatically regulated business process and provided government support in massive ways. While Americans might have romanticized the lone individual struggling against the odds, they voted for FDR and in doing so, placed the government at the forefront of remaking the United States.
The Democratic coalition that Roosevelt built shaped the political landscape in the United States for decades, in part by putting the government to work for rural and urban residents in dynamic ways. This era saw massive government intervention in the argicultural sector, regulation of banking, and efforts to modernize the South. While FDR's predecessor, Herbert Hoover, emphasized Americans could weather the economic storm relying on self determination, family, and charitable institutions--the reality is that many American expected the government to do more. Indeed, FDR experience highlights this point. Charged with being a radical socialist by conservative, he was equally scorned as a friend to bankers by liberals. The continued economic problems facing the country and the rising tide of discontentment forced Roosevelt into a second New Deal notable for the creation of Social Security and insuring the right to unionization for workers.
Despite a reality of government action creating the new American experience, popular sentiment has remained tied to a vision of the United States rooted in the 19th century frontier experience. The cowboy and the homestead seem the only way to remember the formative American past. There is no question individual action has been important to the United States. Yet, that individual action isn't defined purely by the agrarian past. The union organizer, the social advocate, the questioning intellectual (shout-out to my peeps), also helped to make the United States. Those people, who often questioned power and advocate for grassroots action do not attract the attention. The story of the United States as an inevitable project bless at some level by divine forces seems easier to understand than the complex economic, social, and political struggles associated with the country's actually experience.
No surprise then that popular culture seems to return to these basic tropes, especially in tough times. They ideas reassure us, but that opens the question of whether not the reassurance is a bad thing. If The Cape make it on the air, why not Wonder Woman? With the notable exception of Wonder Woman, DC Comics’ holy trinity (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) have appeared on film in the last five years. With the recent news that David E. Kelly’s pitch for a Wonder Woman series has failed to find a network home, we won’t be seeing Wonder Woman on the big or small screen in the immediate future. Yet, this is a classic character. The obvious answer is that Wonder Woman, a female character fully capable of fighting evil on without a big strong man to save her does not appeal to the collective mythology of the frontier past dominated by manly Cowboys and demure schoolmarms. In their defense, there was concern about the cost associated with licensing the property and that is a reasonable question. Without a television outlet that it can work with, DC naturally seeks to maximize profits from licensing. This pressure must be growing since the market share seem frozen. Marvel, as a part of Disney, can be flexible when developing material with ABC (Jessica Jones and Hulk shows are in development). Since all the money is going to the same place, they can think about distribution in a different way.
Question of branding, pricing, and distribution aside, the cultural value of the comic (and comic related) property right now reflect a broader struggle in the United State. What does the future hold for the American experience? How much of that future will be built upon the established understanding of our past? Given the assumptions associated with that understanding are imperfect (at best) and the rising tide of social, political, and economic forces shaping the future, it seems obvious the future will not replicate that past. This point more than anything I suspect is driving we way we look at the world and ourselves.
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