"The Best Thing We Can Do With Power Is Give It Away" - On The Leftist Critique Of Superhero Narratives

"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:

The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. [EDIT: I SCREWED UP! This was created in 2019 by the guy who runs the Midnighter-Core page on Facebook, and Joey just reposted it!]

So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:

"The Best Thing We Can Do With Power Is Give It Away" - On The Leftist Critique Of Superhero Narratives

"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe is fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/

- Midnighter-Core, 2019

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thebigwideopengalaxy

5 years ago

when someone says "blaze it" on 4:20 do it

like actually do it

set their fucking house on fire

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thebigwideopengalaxy

2 years ago

finally finished echo !! i didnt rlly plan for him to come out looking like an 80s anime protag but i dig the look tbh

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thebigwideopengalaxy

4 years ago

c!Techno makes me so frustrated as a socialist because. Direct action is a good thing! Standing up to oppressive power structures is a good thing! Violent revolution is necessary to overthrow the existing capitalist world order! But c!Techno does not do any of that in S2. Nor does he do much that is analogous to what anarchism advocates for. And yet I'm supposed to see him as a prime example of anarchy in the Dream SMP?

Let's take his 'terrorism'. There are two streams where c!Techno goes to L'manberg and commits 'minor terrorism'. So how does it advance his goal of anarchy? Does he obstruct police action? Does he destroy private property?

Well... no. He tortures one member of the cabinet (Fundy) and one civilian (Connor), gets his items back, causes some destruction (to what I'm assuming is public property) with a wither, and then dips. The entire purpose of the venture is to get his personal property back. You can say that getting his weapons back was essential to his plan to take down L'manberg, fine (and it isn't in the world of Minecraft, where infinite resources are accessible by everyone), but that's still not analogous to, say, the Socialist Rifle Organization's efforts to arm workers, because it all comes down to c!Techno as an individual. Also it's not like his Netherite weapons did the most legwork on Doomsday, plus I don't think even the most die-hard anarchists believe in torturing civilians as a means justified by the ends, and also I don't think Techno's main focus was anarchy in the trips — I think a lot of it was about his personal attachment to his items, which is an established trait of his character. If it was about anarchy, then he should have shown it more explicitly.

Okay, then, what about Doomsday? He destroys the oppressive, evil government of L'manberg, as he's been planning to do for a month! Violent revolution is necessary to overthrow existing power structures, right?

But it's not a revolution. c!Techno is not a citizen of L'manberg. And his reason for destroying L'manberg is, in that moment, not about anarchy. It's about how he feels betrayed and victimized. The dissolution of L'manberg's government in the aftermath of Doomsday actually had very little to do with c!Techno — it happened independently of him after the destruction ended. Yes, it happened as a result of the overwhelming scale of the destruction and the hopelessness that inspired in its members, but that's not exactly analogous to real-life revolution. It's more like if some foreign anarchist dropped a nuclear bomb on America and then the US government disbanded. That's not a revolution, no matter how desirable the disbandment of the US government may be (which, don't get me wrong, I think it is). The end may justify the means, but that doesn't make it a good example of anarchist direct action.

Property damage ≠ anarchism. Property damage as a form of direct action can be a means to bring about anarchism, but Technoblade's goal in his December to-do list was 'Destroy L'manberg', not 'Use some property damage as a means of dismantling the L'manberg government and establish in its place a non-hierarchical community'. The disbandment of the L'manberg government in the aftermath just gave the audience the impression that he was trying to do the latter.

So it really doesn't matter if c!Techno is a 'true anarchist' or not, because Doomsday is not an example of anarchist revolution, even if its purpose was to bring anarchy (which it wasn't, at least not purely.) Horizontal grassroots organization is so fundamental to anarchism and its ideas of anti-hierarchy, and c!Techno's story in S2 doesn't involve any of that. It doesn't matter how much of an anarchist he is in his heart if he doesn't embody it with his actions.

In fact, c!Techno doesn't talk that much about anarchy in S2. I've watched most of his streams from S2 and if I've missed some big soliloquy from his character about anarchy, please let me know, because I've gone through quote compilations from Techno fans and I haven't seen any. I know cc!Techno said that he doesn't want to follow a specific ideology in order to not make people mad, but I'd like to hear more from his character about like. Any ideology at all? Anarchism is such an involved and radical system of beliefs that it would have been cool for there to be some more explicit conversations about it in-canon.

The thing about c!Techno and anarchy is that so much about his ideology is extrapolation that the audience must draw. He's against hierarchy, but he doesn't go much further than that. I've made this joke before, but sometimes I want to shake c!Techno by the collar and ask "Where the hell is the mutual aid?!" (And no, giving items to Tommy is not 'mutual aid' lol. It's c!Techno being a host.) We have the Syndicate now, which is a non-hierarchical organization, but it doesn't function like a group of revolutionaries. It doesn't work to help facilitate revolutions in, say, the Eggpire or Kinoko Kingdom. It doesn't do much of anything, really.

This isn't to say that I think foreigners can't help facilitate the downfall of oppressive regimes. There are historical examples of people having done that, such as Che Guevara. What I'm saying is that c!Techno doesn't do that in S2. He causes a lot of property destruction. He doesn't engage with c!Tubbo and his cabinet to disempower them as leaders. He doesn't work to build horizontal, non-hierarchical systems of governance and mutual aid. He doesn't work to dismantle hierarchy outside of "destroying governments" (which, again, he doesn't do a great job of) because there's not much hierarchy to dismantle in a sandbox world of around 30 people with no entrenched systems of discrimination?

Yes, Minecraft as a medium does make it more difficult to portray systems of power, but it's not impossible. S1 pulled it off with Schlatt, not perfectly, but better than S2 did. The bigger problem is the writing. cc!Techno told us his character as an anarchist, but I'd have liked more examples of him showing us. An anarchist character is such a cool concept and I would have loved to see it played well. But as it stands, I don't think c!Techno is the greatest example of an anarchist. And that isn't because I dislike anarchism as an ideology.