The Trope
In comic books, TV shows, and movies that feature heroes/superheroes, the trope of the "no kill rule" runs rampant. So ubiquitous as to have its own page on TV Tropes, many fictional heroes refuse to cross the line from beating up the bad guys to ending a human life. In his more recent incarnations, Batman refuses to use a gun. Daredevil wants criminals to be brought to justice using the legal system. Superman took a vow to never kill. Even Jedis try to avoid killing when they can. There are times in all of these books/shows/movies when a judicious use of killing could be used to prevent the loss of many innocent lives. Often times, this is something that the hero is forced to grapple with at some point. As Peter Parker knows, "with great power, comes great responsibility."Not So Machiavellian
Machiavelli wrote in The Prince that rulers must act in accordance to a different moral code than a regular person. For an investigation of power, one could argue that Machiavelli would say the same about any person in a position of tremendous power--such as a superhero. While they don't rule countries or kingdoms like a prince, superheroes represent power in our culture today. They have abilities that no human has--extreme strength, the ability to fly, invisibility, endless money with which they can buy cool gadgets--and that is what makes them an embodiment of nearly unlimited power. With such power, Machiavelli would argue that these heroes need to occasionally take a human life in order to prevent that human (generally the villain) from perpetrating more evil. So what does it say about our society that most of the heroes in our books, shows, and movies are reluctant to kill, even if there would be benefits to it at certain times? Does it show that we value human life beyond all else and find it unforgivable for a human to take another human's life? But what if the human that the hero doesn't kill goes on to kill 50 other people? Fifty lives could be saved if the hero would choose to end just one. Even though the math seems simple, this is a hard thing for people to accept. In addition to being representations of power, superheroes are often supposed to be an ideal human of sorts--noble, self-sacrificing, and merciful. Just as we hate to see our superheroes kill, we hate the idea of our government torturing our enemies or killing civilians in times of war. While many people say that they are "Machiavellian" or agree with Machiavelli's principles, it says something about our ideals that our fictional heroes are not so Machiavellian.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. Machiavelli talks most specifically about political power about being responsible for a community. How are superheroes similar and how are they different? Do you think these differences are enough to make Machiavelli less pertinent here? Why or why not?
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. Machiavelli talks most specifically about political power about being responsible for a community. How are superheroes similar and how are they different? Do you think these differences are enough to make Machiavelli less pertinent here? Why or why not?
Maybe superheros have extremely powerful features such as flying, they are as simply as normal people. From the reading, we can see that power is not the only thing that raise up the prince, not to say physical power. Leaders are more than just physical power. Therefore I think rules for leaders from The Prince don't really apply to superheros. There are a lot of debate going for superheros, their identity, their performance, their legality, even when they are presenting and practicing their "virtues". Recently there are more variety of superheros movie, along with some anti-superhero movie which intends to bring superhero "back to daily life". These movie are showing that superheros is no more than different than us. They are just a bunch of people having a lot more physical power. It is always worthy to see two sides of presenting of the same topic..
ReplyDeleteMaybe superheros have extremely powerful features such as flying, they are as simply as normal people. From the reading, we can see that power is not the only thing that raise up the prince, not to say physical power. Leaders are more than just physical power. Therefore I think rules for leaders from The Prince don't really apply to superheros. There are a lot of debate going for superheros, their identity, their performance, their legality, even when they are presenting and practicing their "virtues". Recently there are more variety of superheros movie, along with some anti-superhero movie which intends to bring superhero "back to daily life". These movie are showing that superheros is no more than different than us. They are just a bunch of people having a lot more physical power. It is always worthy to see two sides of presenting of the same topic..
ReplyDeleteI think that Machiavelli remains pertinent here, as many superheroes do have or feel a responsibility toward their community. Because I've recently watched Daredevil on Netflix, that is the first example that comes to mind. The hero in that show feels a tremendous responsibility to protect the people of Hell's Kitchen and sees that as being his duty in the same way that a political leader might. Another example comes from Batman, with Gotham's bat signal. Whenever Batman is needed, his community issues a call for him.
ReplyDeleteObviously, there are differences between superheroes and politicians. Superpowers being one, but also the fact that being a superhero never seems like a full-time job. There are some matters in a community that a superhero stays out of (such as taxes) that a government would have to deal with.
I suppose a way in which a superhero would differ to a society as a whole in regards to maintaining peace and order is that a superhero (normally) does not have establishment of fear or any inhibitors otherwise directed at the citizens the hero is protecting. For example, there are no laws usually set in place with clear penalties to support residential obedience by the one person, though some variation of rules can be inadvertently attributed to the people for their own protection. The main point here is that superheroes mainly focus on what society views as the villains, and as a result does not invest his/her time in maintaining internal peace within the civilized community. This is partly due to the implausibility of singularly taking on such a task, but mostly because the superhero's position in society is not inherently supplemented with that much more authority to dispose.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jia's point that The Prince does not relate to the code of superheroes. We cannot expect from superheroes to follow Machiavelli's laws according to which leaders of a government need to behave harsher in order to maintain the order within their country. First of all, a superhero is not in charge of the government and hence, cannot take peoples' lives away without having the agreement of the court because this will be against the law. Second of all, their ultimate goal is to keep their city safe and not to kill anyone but just to put them behind bars (we can infer this from the various movies/comic books that we have access to). For these reasons I don't think that Machiavelli's laws should apply in the cases of superheroes.
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