Recent comics-related headlines have been overwhelmed by
Martin Scorcese’s pronouncement in October that the films of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe are “not cinema.” He went on to equate the films with theme parks,
and then dropped a critique that has raised many an ire: “It isn’t the cinema
of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to
another human being.”
There have been a plethora of responses from supporters of the MCU, but also shows of support from fellow auteur directors. Francis Ford
Coppola waded into the battle with this lovely bit of vitriol: “When Martin
Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we
expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some
enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. I don’t know that anyone gets
anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again.”
Both directors have produced remarkable works in their time,
and on the topic of cinema there are few whose opinions we might give greater
weight. But their critiques of the MCU are not really critiques of cinema. Or
rather, they’re critiques of cinema that are missing the point of superhero
stories in much the same way that critiques of the comics themselves as “not
real books” (something I actually heard a parent say to a child while they were
in my comic book store) misses the point. Nor are these criticisms even remotely new, or really
that scathing. Coppola calls the films “despicable,” a harsh term to be sure,
but it pales in comparison to other ways that comics have been critiqued in the
past. Frederic Wertham (who, hopefully, is in a very uncomfortable afterlife
somewhere) once said that “Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book
industry.” Yep, he compared the superhero, crime, and horror comics of the day
to the architect of the Third Reich.
Superhero comics, and comics in general, have always been
maligned by the mainstream. My own experience in academia, within the last 5
years, proved this to me implacably. With the exception of a few scholars in the
department, most of the professors I dealt with had little good to say about
comics, even though they themselves had virtually no experience with them. One
of the (many) reasons I left my PhD program is that there was a palpable
antagonism toward what I studied, that comics were not worthy of academic interrogation.
Regardless of all of this, the criticisms miss the whole
point of the superhero genre. When Coppola calls watching the films “seeing the
same movie over and over,” perhaps he is forgetting that old saw in literature
that there are really only a few plots – we just have so many different ways of
telling them. I’ve always been of the opinion that superhero narratives, the
best of them, are slowly replacing our older spiritual texts, telling stories
of redemption, heroics, sacrifice, and humanity in ways that we can take from the
screen, or page, and apply to our own lives. Superhero stories are cathartic in
the same way that the dramas of the ancient Greeks were. Think about how often
superheroes wear masks, after all. Indeed, I have to wonder if Coppola would
question Scorcese’s decision to make The
Last Temptation of Christ when that’s a story that has, literally, been
retold over and over again for two millennia. And, of course, it’s a story that
has been offering the same lessons and ideas that something like All-Star Superman does (how many
Superman origins have we had? The story remains relevant), or that even Avengers: Endgame does. What about Tony
Stark’s sacrifice to save everyone is that different from Jesus’ sacrifice to
save everyone? They’re the same tale, just dressed up a bit differently for a
contemporary audience. It’s simple, really.
I think that critiques like these ones come from a place of
fear, and that fear comes from a place of misunderstanding. Cinema is not just
one thing. Nor is literature. Nor is art. They are multiplicities. That’s the
whole point of art, to stretch our imaginations and ideas into places they’ve
never been. And to take us to places we’ve been before, but in different and
varying ways. To just dismiss a whole artistic genre (the comic, the superhero
film) is to cripple art, to force it only to tell some stories, but not all of
them.
That’s really all I want to say about this. I get why so
many people are so annoyed by these comments, but the comic book fans have
heard it all before. We don’t care. We know what we know, and if the critics
aren’t willing to come and perhaps learn from us, and vice versa, then there’s
really no point in trying to have a discussion.
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