Bix dot Blog

Examining how we approach superheroes of course is a valid thing to do, but I’m squeamish about doing so in the context of defunding the police, in the way we’re re-examining how pop culture handles policing. There’s a discussion about cops in pop culture right now because police are very real, and actual policing itself as its currently performed in America is very wrong and very racist and very violent. The fictional ways in which we portray that institution, and the distortions of reality therein, arguably are a pressing debate. Superheroes, however, are not fictionalizations of a real-world institution. There are plenty of ways to contextualize, decontextualize, and recontextualize superhero tropes, but there aren’t superheroes running around killing Black people on American streets. Superheroes surely can and do reflect and discuss some very real questions of our morality, but arguing over what superheroes are for and what they do and what they echo and what they push back against isn’t the same conversation.