Mariannecdotes

An acquaintance recently took offense to a Guardian article I posted on my Facebook called “Frank Miller and the Rise of Crypto-Fascist Hollywood,” written by Rick Moody. What I appreciated most about our conversation wasn’t his irritation with Moody’s assessment of Hollywood as a bunch of pro-corporate, neoconservative fascists, but his remark that Frank Miller’s Batman could be considered a Nietzschean. Batman is a brilliant, wealthy and strong aristocrat who acts without regard to social conventions. The quintessential Ubermensch.

I talked it over with a friend, and we came up with some plausible ethical motivations for Batman. Although he initially thought that the true test of Batman’s Nietzschean spirit would be whether his motivations are life-affirming, I thought that Nietzsche would disapprove of anyone risking life and limb for some high moral cause even if, on the face of it, they appear to be acting outside conventional understandings of good and evil. Vigilantism seems to have little place in a Nietzschean worldview.

In fact, I think that Alan Moore is one of the most Nietzschean literary figures today for his deconstruction of morality, whether acted out as a personal vendetta or on the international stage. (I understand this is a matter for debate. It’s plausible Moore’s reading of Nietzsche would lead him to critique the Ubermensch through such flawed characters as Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias. Maybe I’ll blog about this some other time.)

Moore himself is one of those libertarian-socialists who doesn’t fit neatly into mainstream political categories. It’s a surprisingly secure worldview which forces us to consider the political spectrum as circular rather than a linear model of “right” v. “left”- which is why, despite V For Vendetta’s libertarian flavor, some leftist Occupy Wall St. protesters proudly don Guy Fawkes masks.

In the end, my friend decided that Nietzsche’s philosophy is too vague and Batman’s character too flat for any significant relationship to be made. All very true. I, on the other hand, concluded that most superheroes are of a Lockean slant. For Locke, one has an ethical responsibility to take up arms against those who have broken the social contract, whether its a corrupt politician or a lowly thug.

Miller’s unfortunate neoconservativism and Moore’s more sophisticated brand of libertarianism validate this right to revolution. When one has become a victim of tyranny, it’s time to bring out the big gunz.