I DO draw comparisons to Ayn Rand. Particularly with regards to The Incredibles. I agree that this is not new, with the notable exception of Superman, most super heroes have some reason for angst. It’s a way of humanising them. However, I think that the last ten years has seen this narrative move into the mainstream of American politics.

Up until recently the Right was full of tough guys who would laugh at bleeding heart liberals who feels sorry for people. Now they’re the first to claim that they are victims of conspiracy in an attempt to illicit sympathy. The story isn’t new, its movement into politics, on the other hand, is… in my view at least.

I don’t really have a view on the chicken and the egg of the media and society, nor do I think that Hollywood is grinding a political axe. Instead I think it’s simple; the public sphere is affected by the media and if the media puts hundreds of millions of dollars a year into making sure that we all get excited about masked vigilantes then sure enough, we’re all going to get excited about masked vigilantes.

So you have this public sphere primed for tales of a sick and decadent society that can only be healed by violent thugs and that then has an impact upon the people writing films and the people suggesting projects.

If there was money to be made in social realism then I’m sure those films would be swamping the market too and if the market became saturated as it has with comics then you’d find studios making nothing BUT films about social realism.

Frankly, I’d prefer the second state of affairs and so I’m going to vote with my wallet and simply not go and see any more super hero films. I am fed up with them.

I think the idea that comic ‘outsider’ stories is a way of recasting powerful figures as victims and therefore absolving them is compelling, in a kind of Zizek-ian turnabout kind of way. But I’m not convinced this is a sudden eruption or a historical marker for a particular feeling. Hasn’t this always been the theme of these works? Spider-Man, the comic, is practically swamped by the sense that its main character, despite being superhumanly powerful and (in the books, at least) terrifyingly clever, is always rejected, outside, etc. I’d argue you could probably see it in any popular depiction of characters given miraculous individual powers. It may be that’s simply a more interesting way of dealing with the trope, since where else is the conflict going to come from? You could even, if you felt cheeky, draw parallels back to things like Ayn Rand’s supermen, who are frequently rejected and victimised despite being preternaturally talented and seemingly capable of anything they put their minds to. Or even further back. I’m not convinced this is a new phenomenon, or even a resurgent one specific to the Bush administration and right-wing discourse.

There’s also weird subtext here I’ve seen before, that it doesn’t seem like you’re entirely convinced culture responds to people and not the other way around – as if filmmakers are receiving instructions from the White House to make movies glorifying the stigmatised overpowered individual, which is then beamed down to a submissive audience. If only they were making films about collective action and social-realist class war, then the dumb masses might be getting the right message! I’m pretty sure these films are being made, anyway. They’re just not getting the same exposure, because they’re not as relevant or immediate. Thus we have, surrounding a few extremely popular and entertaining comic spectacles, a large buckshot pattern of awful, horrible and irredeemable comicbook adaptations based on movie executives seeing a pulsing jugular in western thought and trying to break it wide open.

I’m not excited about it or even intending to go and see it at this point as I’ve read the comic and it never really connected with me in the way that it has with others. I actually think that Moore is hugely over-rated as a writer though I’ll admit that Watchmen is the best thing he’s produced (it’s certainly better than the baffling, self-indulgent and unreadable mess that was the black dossier).

As with Dark Knight, I respect the artistry involved in that type of deconstruction. I admire the thinking that went into Watchmen, Judge Dredd and Marshall Law but at the end of the day I don’t think that the best way of confronting these ideas is by writing super hero stories that nod and wink at the fascistic elements in the genre. A self-consciously right wing supers story is still a right wing supers story just as Wes Cravens scream was still a shitty slasher film.

Ultimately, I don’t think that deconstruction and culture jamming have anywhere near as much potency as direct confrontation as so it seems to me that the best way to confront right wing supers is to make a film that is neither right wing nor about supers. It’s not to make a supers film about Swastika Man.