The Superhero Reader

by Worcester, Kent, Hatfield, Charles, Heer, Jeet

  The Western has been said to descend from multiple sources, including Victorian melodrama, an idea that lends itself to the built-in hybridity of the genre. Melodrama, in these early incarnations, was known for “its aspect of excitation, its display of violent action” and the fact that its emphasis on excitation tied melodrama to urban modernity” (Singer 149). Kenneth MacKinnon describes recent “male-oriented family melodramas” (87) such as The Godfather and their portrayals of the “varieties of male power within patriarchy, right down to what is clearly male powerlessness” (97). These are concepts well suited to genres that depict males in conflict with each other, as they effectively cross generic boundaries. Films in the noir tradition, such as The Big Heat and Desperate Hours, as well as quintessential Westerns, such as John Ford’s Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, are keen examples of melodramatic masculinity functioning within those thematic structures so inimical to the Western.

  In The Big Heat, Dave Bannion, although initially allied with the forces of law and order (much like Frank Castle), becomes increasingly similar to the villains he pursues after they murder his family. Seeking vengeance, he breaks with traditional police procedure and steps into the dark, urban world they inhabit as well as into their moral ambiguity. Likewise, when the mild-mannered patriarch Dan Hilliard and his family are threatened by the violent psychopath Glenn Griffith in The Desperate Hours, he must find his own dark nature within that dangerous proximity. In his retaliation, he circumvents the police (who gather impotently outside), learns to use uncharacteristic psychological cruelty to inflict pain, and ultimately sends a man to his death without flinching.

  In Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Searchers, the western frontier frames similar struggles in which men enact pursuit, revenge, individualistic expressions of rough justice, and battles for family. The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach seeks the murderers of his father and brother. In Liberty Valance, Tom Doniphan (again, John Wayne) must personally dispatch the villain when the politicians, the press, and the frontier authorities only talk about a better world.

  In The Searchers, Ethan Edwards obsessively tracks down the Comanche tribe that wiped out nearly his whole family. Ethan Edwards is a bleaker, revisionist version of the straightforward pursuit of justice sought by Ringo. Like Frank Castle, he loses part of his own better nature and flirts with true madness on his bloody trek through enemy territory. This is especially true in the Garth Ennis graphic novel The Punisher: Born, as Frank Castle deliberately endures three tours of duty in Vietnam because he begins to crave the violent quest, the brutality of the killing fields, and the unleashing of his internal demons. He also believes that the connection he has to his family is his only hope of being rehumanized. The codes of the Old West, self-sufficiency and personal action, thread through all these narratives and continue on, within parallel themes, in the film version of The Punisher. In each case, traditional forces of authority are inadequate, leaving the protagonist to enter into direct confrontation with the hostile foes arrayed against him (and a society unable to do so on its own). He must negotiate the shifting dynamics of male power and often adapt the villain’s dark modus as his own in order to defeat him and gain vengeance and justice. This formula links melodrama, film noir, and the Western to each other and Frank Castle’s story to them all.

  In Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology, Richard Reynolds describes the origins of comic book characters in a way that often parallels those of the Western protagonist. For instance, he writes that “the hero is marked out from society” and that his “devotion to justice overrides even his devotion to the law” (16). Furthermore, the superhero, like the Western hero, suffers through personal issues involving family, vengeance, and guilt—especially as personified by characters like Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, and the Punisher. Reynolds also notes that a superhero’s world “is one of mirror images and opposites” (68), a critical similarity to the movie cowboy (and his relationship with the villain) as I discuss here. Through my close reading of The Punisher and my simultaneous, parallel examination of the characters and storylines of several influential Westerns, I will show how key aspects of the modern superhero are prefigured in the Western film genre as well as how other generic elements from melodrama and film noir, through their own links to the Western, also color this increasingly nuanced figure.

  For instance, a direct comparison in the motivation and character of both Ethan Edwards and Batman gives us an insight into the connection between the superhero and the Western hero. Reynolds could be describing both men when he says that “madness is part of Batman’s special identity, and that the protagonist’s obsessive character links him with his enemies in a more personal way” (67). Thus is Ethan paired with Scar, and Batman with his own antagonistic doubles such as the Joker.

  Exploring film genre, Thomas Schatz writes that “the Western represents a basic story, which is never completely ‘told’ but is reexamined and reworked in a variety of ways” (37). Philip French speaks to the universality of this genre: “There is no theme you cannot imagine in terms of the Western, no situation which cannot be transposed to the West” (23). Throughout the history of the narrative arts, theater, literature, and myth, an oppositional structure has been the overriding method of storytelling. “The Western’s essential conflict … is expressed in a variety of oppositions” (Schatz 45). The most predominant of these was defined when Jim Kitses adapted “Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis of myth” into a “central antithesis between wilderness and civilization, from which all other conflicts derive” (Buscombe 292). Thus, the Western, with its eternal syntax of good versus evil, and especially with the moral ambiguities of later incarnations, provides a framework by which so many unexpected narratives may be examined.

  The oppositions that are visible in the Western traveled forward through successive genre developments. The gangster genre of the 1930s, along with the “hard-boiled detective film” of the 1940s (Schatz III) and the resulting evolution of 1950s film noir all build on the basic mythology of the Western as one in which a “strong hero” (Wright 138) is “divided between two value systems” (Altman 220). In most cases, “he tends to generate conflict through his very existence. He is a man of action and of few words, with an unspoken code of honor that commits him to the vulnerable … community and at the same time motivates him to remain distinctly apart from it” (Schatz 51). Our ingrained cultural notions of the Western hero as a man apart are echoes when the Punisher is described in a graphic novel as a man “above all laws, all codes, but his own” (Goodwin). His counterpoint is the villain, who can be both functional and symbolic, and who does “harm to the hero and to the society … with impunity as far as the legal institutions of society are concerned” (Wright 65). These characters balance the narrative even when “the hero becomes very much like the men he is chasing” (Wright 156) by moving outside traditional authority and breaking the law himself. “Genre films regularly depend on … dualistic structures” and “intertextual references” (Altman 24–25); it is through these that archetypal characters like the lone, laconic hero who slips over the line and the villain who frequently reflects that hero’s darker self are threaded through our literature, our myths, and our movies. Therefore, we can follow a structural and thematic connection from Shakespeare to nineteenth-century melodrama to Westerns to film noir to present-day action films (and graphic novels along the way), right up to and including The Punisher.

  When George N. Fenin and William K. Everson use the phrase “Le Western Noir” in their book, The Western, they are talking about Anthony Mann, a director “brought up on hard-bitten city thrillers” (278) who also directed several films that are considered key examples of noir-ish Westerns of the 1950s. Thomas Schatz describes how “[John] Wayne’s stoic machismo and [James] Stewart’s ‘aw shucks’ naiveté are effectively inverted to reveal genuinely psychotic, antisocial figures” (40). The result is our understanding that genre can be as unfixed as
any characters wandering across a movie screen. Revisions in classic generic characterizations are what keep the form alive. And in whatever genre he comes, a film hero has a relationship with the natural world and with community in some form, and must confront the oppositions contained in these relationships. The Punisher moves within two worlds: one is the natural world, the family and its rituals, civilization. The other is the wilderness, the city, savagery. Genres such as the Western, film noir, and the melodrama contain the same oppositions, whether they are expressed through the use of a literal wilderness, an urban setting, or within domestic family space. In addition, there are often elements depicting varying expressions of ritual, along with masochism, sadism, and fetishism, within the narrative to bring deeper meaning to the relationship between the villain and the hero: to link them along an ambiguous moral spectrum and to situate them within multiple thematic oppositions. Through the use of iconic imagery, Westerns and film noir can merge with graphic novels into a single film grammar that establishes a fluid hybridity between them.

  When The Punisher opens, it is with the flourish of a spaghetti Western. The graphics, stark white letters on a black background, are soon riddled with bullet holes as the sound of a lone trumpet dominates the score. The writer and director, Jonathan Hensleigh, thus sets up his film with cues about its origins and its influences. The surname of the protagonist, Frank Castle, is itself a dualistic element that connotes both civilized community and militaristic fortification. In order that his ultimate identity as the Punisher, a man with “antisocial status” (Schatz 49), makes more of an impact, the film first shows us his life as a happy family man who has a successful career with the FBI. He has just finished his last undercover job, a sting operation to halt the sale of an illegal arms cache in Tampa, Florida. During the mission, Bobby Saint, son of local businessman Howard Saint (played by John Travolta), is killed. It is made clear that Bobby is presented with full knowledge of the illegality of his actions. His death, however, is accidental, and Castle expresses anger afterwards at the unnecessary tragedy. He is then feted by his fellow officers in a retirement send-off before his departure for home.

  Thomas Schatz describes the use of a critical doorway in The Searchers as a “visual motif” (76) indicating a character’s relationship with civilization. Both this film and Shane frame their protagonists with the symbolic access points, like doors and windows, of a family space. In The Searchers, Ethan Edwards is filmed approaching an open door from the outside (in the film’s most iconographic image) and walking away from it in the opening and closing scenes. In the latter, the mysterious gunfighter, Shane, stands outside the window of the Starrett homestead as he converses with Marian, a wife and mother who, despite their mutual attraction, he can never have, in a life he can never be part of. These scenes highlight “the hero’s basic inability to pass through that doorway and enjoy civilized existence” (Schatz 76).

  Frank Castle’s relationship to the domestic sphere is a revision of this theme. He is initially framed, lit by bright overhead rays beaming down, in the open doorway of his family home, and, unlike the characters in the previous examples, he can enter through it comfortably. In both his working environment and his home, he is shown in these opening sequences to be a part of the world of family, institutions, and community. “He is upright, clean-living, sharp-shooting, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant who respects the law, the flag, women and children” (French 48). He has loving relationships with his wife and young son and is looking forward to a long-awaited reunion with his extended family in Puerto Rico.

  The dialectical relationship between civilization and savagery is explored in The Punisher through three family groups within the society depicted in the film. The Saints “represent unbridled market self-interest” (Wright 140) and yet are, on the surface, respectable. They are highly visible and wealthy; the Saint building, with its towering, cathedral-like roof, marks the city skyline as a distinctive symbol of power. Howard, his dark-haired wife, Livia, his two sons, his business associates, and his employees are shown nearly always dressed in black, which is also the color of his car. Like the Western villain, then, “he dresses in black, rides a dark horse and is doomed to die” (French 48). Thomas Schatz further describes a noir version of the Western villain, the gangster, who “must ultimately lie dead in the streets” (90), and who shows “irrational brutality … enterprising business mentality” (87), and a “perverse devotion to his family” (88).

  This last point is evident in the dark undercurrents of the Saint family, as it is revealed that Howard jealously covets his wife, despite their genuine affection. At the first sign of something amiss, he investigates behind her back rather than simply asking her for the truth, a fatal flaw that will be exploited by Castle. This family is about status. A pair of Harry Winston diamond earrings carries a nearly Hitchcockian object power. Castle delivers his first message to Saint on the golf course of his private country club. Howard Saint’s remaining son, Johnny, who was one of the assassins of the Castle family, is shown coming out of a door with a sign above it that proclaims it to be “The Best Nude Bar” in the city. Along with his deceased brother, Bobby, he is clearly not a member of the upstanding working class that Frank Castle’s family is shown to be. Family life at the Saint mansion is conducted through layers of security, with bodyguards and paid lackeys at each successive perimeter that surrounds them, proving, in addition, that “the bad guys are much richer than the good guys” (Wright 139–140). They are seldom shown outdoors, especially in daylight.

  The Castle family is more casual and more ordinary: picnicking, swimming, walking on the beach in the idyllic setting of Aguadilla Bay in Puerto Rico. They also have a military tradition, with both Frank and his father having served. Frank’s service, his power, has remained invisible to mainstream society through his involvement with Special Operations and a Counter Terrorism Unit. He and his blonde wife, Maria, are dressed in white clothes during a romantic beach scene in which they discuss how lucky they are to have each other, to have their family. The next morning, they talk about having another child as they watch their son, William, sleep. This family is about simple pleasures. During the family reunion, which takes place on the beach in front of his parents’ modest island home, kids enjoy vanilla ice cream cones, couples dance in slow motion, Frank sits quietly, tilting his head back and breathing deep, the picture of contentment, while Maria and his son explore the wildlife near the surf.

  The final family structure in the film is made up of the “social outcasts” (Schatz 50) that adopt Frank after his family’s death, despite his deliberate attempt to remain apart. Just as there are “three mediating figures in Liberty Valance,” there are three characters who inhabit the isolated, run-down tenement apartment building “on the periphery of the community” (Schatz 50) that become his urban family. This dwelling is like “the Western fort manned by misfits” (French 20) and Joan, Mr. Bumpo, and Spacker Dave, like the microcosm of characters thrown together in Stagecoach, form a group that “represents a range of social issues” (Schatz 50) and, further, are all depicted as belonging to the working class. Joan is a waitress (like Hallie in Liberty Valance) who is trying to overcome an addiction to alcohol and abusive boyfriends. When we first see her, she is bent over a sewing machine working on the apron for her uniform and there is a jar of saved pennies in front of her. She is a “bruised and intelligent woman” who later speaks earnestly to Frank about a “commitment to reality” (French 143) when she points out that, in his quest for violent vengeance, he is no different than his enemies.

  The heavyset Mr. Bumpo is an example of soft masculinity, with his penchant for preparing (and definitely eating) desserts while singing along to “La Donna è mobile” from Puccini’s Rigoletto—food and opera as escape mechanisms. Dave, on the other hand, displays the badge of alienated youth, with multiple facial piercings on his eyebrow, his nose, his lower lip, and his tongue. He is estranged from the traditional support systems of parents and
school. In his first scene, he is playing a computer game, scolding a figure on the screen for being a coward as well as a grave disappointment to his mother and father, hinting at personal experience. He is also the most benign example of masochism to be found in The Punisher.

  This family is about sanctuary and, despite their outsider status, provides a human element to the nearly machine-like Frank Castle. They are comic relief, music, food, and loyalty in his cold world, whether he wants them or not. Furthermore, as in Stagecoach, they prove that “those who display the most nobility are the social outcasts” (Fenin 238). When Castle is in trouble, it is this new family that comes to his rescue, a revision of both the “classic” and “vengeance” hero in Westerns who “can take care of himself … and needs no one” (Wright 138).