Monday, October 19, 2020

The Boys: Superheroes for the Trump Era? [Media Notes 50]

Just watched the Netflix series, The Boys, which came out in 2019 and is based on a comic book from 2006-2008, about which I know nothing. Here’s the basic premise (Wikipedia):

The Boys is set in a universe where superpowered individuals are recognized as heroes by the general public and work for the powerful corporation Vought International, which markets and monetizes them. Outside of their heroic personas, most are arrogant and corrupt. The series primarily focuses on two groups: the Seven, Vought's premier superhero team, and the eponymous Boys, vigilantes looking to bring down Vought and its corrupt superheroes.

The Boys are led by Billy Butcher, who despises all superpowered people (whom he calls “Supes”) and the Seven are led by the narcissistic and violent Homelander. At the start of the series, the Boys are joined by Hughie Campbell after a member of the Seven accidentally kills his girlfriend, while the Seven are joined by Annie January, a young and hopeful heroine forced to face the truth about those she admires. Other members of the Seven include the disillusioned Queen Maeve, drug-addicted A-Train, insecure the Deep, the mysterious Black Noir, and narcissistic Homelander. The Boys are rounded out by tactical planner Mother's Milk, weapons specialist Frenchie, and superpowered test subject Kimiko. Overseeing the Seven is Vought executive Madelyn Stillwell, who is later succeeded by publicist Ashley Barrett.

That’s the general idea. We get quite a bit about the personal lives of, say, ten of the major characters, including, in a number of cases, tangled relationships with parents or parent surrogates.

But I wish I had a more extensive and fine-grained knowledge of superheroes against which to read this series. How original is the corporate premise? I know, from a movie or three, that the Avengers has some kind of corporate identity beyond merely teaming-up time and again. And, while they have their personal idiosyncrasies, they aren’t vain, self-serving, two-faced and corrupt in the way The Seven are. There’s nothing new about evil mega-corporations, of course, but the linkage between Vought and The Seven does seem new.

During the first episode or two I saw the possibility of turning such a series into a critique of the business to superhero films and comics, but nothing like that has appeared, nor did I expect it. Still, if you just cranked the right knob up to eleven, that’s where it would take the series.

The overall plot seems driven by three arcs: 1) Butcher’s desire for revenge, 2) some kind of interaction between Hughie and Annie, and 3) a drive toward, well, world domination by (some of) the Supes. It’s this last drive coupled with the need the Supes have for the adulation of the crowd that makes this seem particularly Trump-like. Since the series has been made during Trump’s presidency that seems possible, either through deliberate intent by the creators or simply by osmotic awareness of the current scene. How much of that is there in the comic books? All of it or only some of it?

Of course Trump did come not out of nowhere, even if his 2016 victory was unexpected and unforeseen. The cultural forces were there and those forces have certainly been alive in popular culture.

Above all I’m thinking about role superheroes in people’s imaginative lives. There is a need to make sense of the world to the extent – in time, space, and causal nexus – that we are aware of it. Superheroes, even or perhaps especially corrupt ones, are mediating figures in this process. In the first place they are concrete individuals, not abstract actors like corporations and governments. But these individuals are powerful enough that they can, as individuals, motivate the actions of corporations and governments. Moreover, as individuals, they have their merely personal stories, which we can identify with. In this series the story of Homelander in particular is filled with personal details, some of the sort that suggest or even require a psychoanalytic reading.

Finally, I note that the series has scenes of extravagant violence.

BTW, what is it with Fresca?

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