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Speaker 4: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Hey,
Speaker 4: we're giving you one of our member only episodes where
Speaker 4: we're continuing this idea of the core questions. What are
Speaker 4: the things that are kind of like fundamental to any
Speaker 4: discussion of superhero ethics. And one of the topics that
Speaker 4: I think comes up again and again and again and
Speaker 4: so we wanted to dive into pretty early on is
Speaker 4: that of accountability of superhero Accountability of who are superheroes
Speaker 4: accountable to, if anyone? Should they be accountable to anyone?
Speaker 4: What should happen when something goes wrong? Should there be registrations?
Speaker 4: Should there be oversight bodies? Should there be none of this?
Speaker 4: All of this, all those questions that sometimes get kind
Speaker 4: of summarized as team Tony or team cap but as
Speaker 4: we're going to talk about, are a lot more complicated
Speaker 4: than that. And we'll be using MCU's Civil War, both
Speaker 4: the comic books and the movie and talking about some
Speaker 4: of the differences for those as a jumping off point.
Speaker 4: But we're not here to relegislate what exactly happened in
Speaker 4: that movie or that comic book show or what should
Speaker 4: have happened. We're here to talk about this larger question
Speaker 4: of if there are people in the world who have
Speaker 4: powers far beyond what most of us have, and those
Speaker 4: people choose those powers to do their version of good,
Speaker 4: what should the rest of us do about it? And
Speaker 4: when something goes wrong, what should happen. I've got some
Speaker 4: kind of things I'm going to say to frame this discussion,
Speaker 4: but Riki, let's just starting out by that. Want to
Speaker 4: introduce yourself and give kind of your general thoughts on
Speaker 4: this topic and why you think it's important one to discuss.
Speaker 3: Yes, hello Matthew and listeners and chat. I guess we
Speaker 3: are live here. I'm Riki, And for me, the most
Speaker 3: important thing about this is that for the longest time,
Speaker 3: superheroes were framed as good. I mean, they are right,
Speaker 3: they're heroes, but the idea that they were not accountable
Speaker 3: was there was never any discussion baked into these stories
Speaker 3: about that. For the longest time, it was just assume
Speaker 3: that they're good because they are. And then we got
Speaker 3: this shift. I want to say, maybe starting in the eighties,
Speaker 3: late eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: Where we've got more stories that were focused on well,
Speaker 1: what if superheroes were bad, right, Like The Watchmen is
Speaker 1: one of those big moments in comic books where the
Speaker 1: whole industry really shifted around it, and I think it
Speaker 1: set the tone for a lot of the stories that
Speaker 1: came later, asking these questions like you know, literally, who
Speaker 1: watches the Watchmen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then it developed and we get to the
Speaker 3: point of civil war in the comic books, and then
Speaker 3: of course in the MCU really put that on the
Speaker 3: map for mainstream media, especially the MCU version.
Speaker 4: And I'll say that it's a long and I'll say
Speaker 4: a long time ago on this podcast, we did a
Speaker 4: series of episodes with Jessica Regiez before you became a
Speaker 4: co host, I believe, yeah, act she was long before
Speaker 4: on the history of comic books. And one thing we
Speaker 4: talked about was that this moment in the late seventies
Speaker 4: early eighties where we started thinking about these questions a
Speaker 4: lot more. It's not coincidental that that's happening at a
Speaker 4: time when a lot of people are starting to ask
Speaker 4: are the police always doing good? Is the military always
Speaker 4: doing good? And frankly mean people have been asking those
Speaker 4: questions for a long time, but between the comics code
Speaker 4: that we've talked about Mcarthyism and all sorts of stuff
Speaker 4: like that. Those either weren't topics being discussed in mainstream
Speaker 4: America very much. It was thought of was like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's just the hippies, the liberals, they're crazy ideas, or
Speaker 4: it was ideas that you couldn't talk about in comic
Speaker 4: books and things like that, and so part of this
Speaker 4: and then I think we'll talk about there's always been
Speaker 4: this conversation about our superheroes kind of stand ins for
Speaker 4: the police, or for the military, or for something else,
Speaker 4: and it's not coincidence. At the same time we start
Speaker 4: talking a lot more about, you know, war crimes in
Speaker 4: Vietnam and police brutality, that we start also asking about superheroes,
Speaker 4: like what if they are not always doing good or
Speaker 4: trying to do good, but bad things are happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he said the seventies, and immediately my mind
Speaker 3: went to President Richard Nixon. Of course, the Watergate scandal
Speaker 3: and his ultimate resignation from the presidency really shook the
Speaker 3: country and the world to the core of this idea,
Speaker 3: like the president committed crimes and had to resign because
Speaker 3: of them. You know, he was in the process probably
Speaker 3: of being impeached and being removed as president by Congress,
Speaker 3: and that really set the tone for people's, like the
Speaker 3: public's perception of people in power. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 3: was always you would always be critical of presidents, probably
Speaker 3: like if you're an average citizen and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't like this policy or that policy, but you
Speaker 3: accept their authority, like they're the president, like they should
Speaker 3: be allowed to do all these things, et cetera. And
Speaker 3: that was the moment in history when people were like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, wait a minute, like you can't do that,
Speaker 3: Like even if you're a president, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: And of course, like we are currently dealing with times
Speaker 3: where presidential powers once once again being stretched and tested
Speaker 3: by the law. And we also coincidentally have a MCU
Speaker 3: story coming out as of this recording. It's releasing tomorrow
Speaker 3: in theaters, Captain America Brave New World, where the President
Speaker 3: of the United States is like a villain figure in
Speaker 3: the story, definitely questioning his motives.
Speaker 4: Now, before we jump into this too much, I do
Speaker 4: want to frame the discussion a little bit, which is
Speaker 4: saying that the questions of a lot of the questions
Speaker 4: we're going to discuss are questions that by nature are
Speaker 4: probably not going to be dived into in great degree
Speaker 4: in the media that we talk about themselves, and that's
Speaker 4: somewhat intentional, and it's part of what we like about
Speaker 4: this podcast is kind of getting to dive into those
Speaker 4: and with superheroes especially, I think there's two ways in
Speaker 4: which that comes forward, and one of these was really
Speaker 4: well spelled out by my brother in law, Joseph J. Dixon,
Speaker 4: in a post teammate on Facebook response to a question
Speaker 4: I asked where he was talking about how one of
Speaker 4: the things that's weird about superhero media is that we
Speaker 4: fundamentally think of people as having superpowers in terms of
Speaker 4: their ability to do violence, in terms of their ability
Speaker 4: to be in confrontation, and he had suggested that actually,
Speaker 4: like you know, in a world of superheroes, you might
Speaker 4: think of, like you know, a person with weather control
Speaker 4: could actually be incredibly helpful working with farmers and agriculture,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't really make for a Hollywood blockbuster. In
Speaker 4: the same way and in the same way, you know,
Speaker 4: as we've often talked about like Captain America and Tony
Speaker 4: Starks in a room and talking back and forth about well,
Speaker 4: should there be some accountability, but his registration too much,
Speaker 4: and what could different accountability look like? And how do
Speaker 4: we find the middle ground? And can we trust the
Speaker 4: government go do it? Or should someone else that doesn't
Speaker 4: make a big movie the way Captain America and Bucky
Speaker 4: and Tony Stark are punching each other does And so
Speaker 4: we're kind of diving more into those questions a little
Speaker 4: bit and just kind of framing it that way. Just
Speaker 4: want to kind of start by saying, like, there's an
Speaker 4: extent to which we could peel open the whole superhero
Speaker 4: genre and say, like, well, but what if we went
Speaker 4: in these totally different ways. We're acknowledging that, Yeah, the
Speaker 4: movies aren't gonna do that, the TV shows aren't going
Speaker 4: to do that, But we still think it's important to
Speaker 4: ask these questions because, as you said, these are reflecting
Speaker 4: the real questions we're dealing with in our own world
Speaker 4: as well, and that's the whole point of this podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say that in the comic version of
Speaker 3: Civil War, both the characters of Daredevil and she Hulk,
Speaker 3: because they're day jobs as Matt Murder and Jennifer Walter's
Speaker 3: their attorneys, so they actually like had I would say,
Speaker 3: pretty big roles in like that desk job sort of
Speaker 3: way of not fighting or fighting in the court of
Speaker 3: law and challenging superhero registration Act in various ways.
Speaker 4: So my favorite one of my favorite Jessica Jones cartoon,
Speaker 4: one of my favorite Jessica Jones stories from the comic
Speaker 4: is about her dealing with a teenage girl who's pretending
Speaker 4: to be a superhero, because that's kind of like the
Speaker 4: girls who have superpowers as teenagers are kind of the outcasts,
Speaker 4: but therefore also kind of cool in like the high
Speaker 4: school way, and it's a great story, like getting into
Speaker 4: all those details, and you're right, I do think one
Speaker 4: of the ironies of all this is that in general,
Speaker 4: the wider you make the audience, the less likely you
Speaker 4: are to deal with depth and nuance, and the more
Speaker 4: likely you are to have really awesome explosions, because that's
Speaker 4: just the kind of like mass marketing versus like a
Speaker 4: comic book or a novel or something like that can
Speaker 4: often explore a lot more of these things, and a
Speaker 4: lot of the TV shows and seeing I think understandably,
Speaker 4: like you know, get into a lot more of those
Speaker 4: nuances for those kind of reasons. So let's talk about this.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the questions we're dealing with. And Civil
Speaker 4: War starts with an an incident, and I know it
Speaker 4: from the movie, and the book is probably a little
Speaker 4: comic books a little bit different. I don't want to
Speaker 4: legislate exactly what Wanda did or didn't do, but I
Speaker 4: think that a situation like what happens at the start
Speaker 4: of Civil War is a good place to start this
Speaker 4: question of accountability. So let me start asking Eureki. Superheroes
Speaker 4: are out in the world. They think they have identified
Speaker 4: what they think is something bad. They are taking action
Speaker 4: to stop something bad. As a result of the actions
Speaker 4: they take, innocent bystanders die. Now, there's lots of questions
Speaker 4: about this off, like could they have done something so
Speaker 4: that those innocent bistadors wouldn't die? Would more innocent bistadors
Speaker 4: have died if they'd didn something else? Obviously, there's all
Speaker 4: these questions surrounding it. What should happen in your mind
Speaker 4: in a perfect world, what would happen next?
Speaker 3: There should be an investigation and fact finding, and it
Speaker 3: should be determined by the investigating body whether the heroes
Speaker 3: acted in a proper way. Yeah, and how like how
Speaker 3: responsible they are for the deaths. So you mentioned the
Speaker 3: comic version. The comic version is like much more stark,
Speaker 3: no pun intended. It is I can't even remember the
Speaker 3: name of the group, but it's like some throwaway not
Speaker 3: young not the young Avengers, but like young Avenger type
Speaker 3: like kids who have powers, like and they are filming
Speaker 3: a reality TV show, So like that's the level of
Speaker 3: superhero they are. They don't care as much about the
Speaker 3: saving people. They're like doing it for the clout, right,
Speaker 3: and they like in trying to apprehend a super criminal,
Speaker 3: they cause like this criminal has like atomic powers and
Speaker 3: they cause them to explode and basically like it goes
Speaker 3: off as a nuke and like a city is destroyed, right,
Speaker 3: and that is the inciting incident of comic Civil War.
Speaker 3: So it's much more like of an irresponsible interesting especially
Speaker 3: because it's like filmed right like this this camera crew
Speaker 3: is filming them, so everyone has the footage and like
Speaker 3: these kids are like cracking jokes and stuff and like
Speaker 3: we got ICs. It's easy.
Speaker 4: So the idea that like superhero superheroes existing in the
Speaker 4: way that they do without any change is totally fine.
Speaker 4: Like that's just not a part of the cop Like,
Speaker 4: I think you could look at what happens in uh
Speaker 4: Nigeria and what happens to the connon students, and there's
Speaker 4: an argument certainly of like look, yeah, maybe wand it
Speaker 4: should be better trained or whatever, but like just let
Speaker 4: cap and then handle it. That's not an argument that
Speaker 4: can be being made. It sounds like in the comic
Speaker 4: book version, like it's very clear something is not right
Speaker 4: with the way superheroes are getting to act. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the movie kind of tries to parallel that
Speaker 3: by making Wanda the one responsible because she's the newest
Speaker 3: member of the team. She's young, you know, she wasn't
Speaker 3: a part of the Battle of New York, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So they're trying to frame it as like, well, she's inexperienced,
Speaker 3: but they never truly touch upon it in the same
Speaker 3: way that I think the comics were like, who the
Speaker 3: heck let these kids play superhero? Right, that's kind of
Speaker 3: like the framing. Yeah, and that's how it's approach of
Speaker 3: like this superhero thing has gotten out of control, because
Speaker 3: in the comics, of course there's there's hundreds, whereas in
Speaker 3: the movies it really is like this core a dozen
Speaker 3: or so at this time.
Speaker 4: Right, it's a much smaller group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's less it's less so in the movie
Speaker 3: about like the idea of superheroes kind of getting out
Speaker 3: of control. I think, right, and it's more like these people.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting because I think I've talked to before
Speaker 4: and don't want to get stuck just too much on
Speaker 4: civil war it self. But one of my frustrations with
Speaker 4: that is that winds up pitting the idea of the
Speaker 4: Sokovia Accords against any kind of accountability, and where CAP
Speaker 4: winds up kind of standing behind a position of like, no,
Speaker 4: let us handle it. No one else should be thinking
Speaker 4: about it except us. And it sounds like, at least
Speaker 4: in the comics, there is some acknowledgment of some degree
Speaker 4: of accountability is probably good, but the Circoba Accords are
Speaker 4: not the right way to do it. And it becomes
Speaker 4: the conversation about registration and all of that is that
Speaker 4: you think that's an acurate description about what happens in
Speaker 4: the comics.
Speaker 3: So I would say that there's two main differences in
Speaker 3: a comics version versus MCU. One. In the comics it
Speaker 3: is USA based, right, Like, solely it is like the
Speaker 3: US government saying we have to control superheroes, whereas the MCU,
Speaker 3: the Cecovia Accords is a United Nations resolution. Right, it's
Speaker 3: the international agreement, and I think that's a very important distinction.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And then the second party, as you mentioned, it's about registration,
Speaker 3: like the key thing. It's called the Superhero Registration Act,
Speaker 3: and it decrees that if you are going to vigilante
Speaker 3: or like legal ante, if you are going to act
Speaker 3: as a superhero to fight crime, then you have to
Speaker 3: register with the US government, which includes most importantly revealing
Speaker 3: your secret identity.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And Spider Man Peter Parker becomes the key person in
Speaker 3: this struggle because you know, he's Spider Man like, he
Speaker 3: has kept his secret identity hidden for the you know,
Speaker 3: the longest time amongst this community, and importantly for his
Speaker 3: character because Norman Osborne, the Green Goblin, discovered his identity,
Speaker 3: he targeted Gwen Stacy and ultimately murdered her. And so
Speaker 3: he because of that incident, he holds a secret identity
Speaker 3: very closely because he does doesn't want you now at
Speaker 3: may or MJ to become hurt or targeted as a
Speaker 3: result of his activities as spider Man, and that's like
Speaker 3: always been a part of his story. So he ends
Speaker 3: up revealing his identity in a press conference where he says,
Speaker 3: I'm Spider Man, takes off his mask and my name
Speaker 3: is Peter Parker and he joins Team Talk.
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Speaker 3: She sa