Monday, August 4, 2008

The Politics of Superheroes



With the recent worldwide release of the new Christopher Nolan film "Batman: The Dark Knight" during an election year perhaps it was inevitable that people would start to make something political out of a superhero movie.
According to Screengrab ( a movie blog edited by friends of mine), right-wing thriller writer Andrew Klaver publicly compared the Batmeister to our 'budala' (that's the Turkish word for idiot) president George W. Bush because Batman went all out to fight the Joker (whom Klaver compared to Osama), the ACLU be damned. But, as Scott Von Doviak of  Screengrab pointed out, Batman did not quit pursuing Heath Ledger a few minutes into the film!
Nevertheless, this gives me a chance to purely speculate on the politics of not only Batman but other superheroes (oh, forgot to mention that Democratic Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont has a cameo in the new Batman, hmmmm....").

'Course, we will only speculate on American comic book heroes. Since both Lucky Luke (pictured) and Asterix are French, we will assume they are both socialists. (But, wait a minute, Lucky Luke is a cowboy........?).
Bloggers Will Forbis (swingmachine) and Pab Sungenis (democraticunderground) have  made these assumptions before, but of course, my guesses are as good as their's. Right?

Libertarians:

Howard the Duck
Conan the Barbarian

Independent:
Batman (has all the traits of a Republican according to Sungenis, but there is his questionable relationship with Robin)
Vampirella (the closest thing to a comic book porn queen!)

Democrats:
Spiderman
Wolverine
The Punisher
Wonder Woman
The Black Panther
Blade
Daredevil
Deadpool
Hellboy
Superboy (like me, he probably rebels from his conservative dad)
Batgirl
Green Arrow
Plastic Man
Too Much Coffee Man (created by my Facebook friend Shannon Wheeler)

Republican:
Hulk
Captain America
Superman
G.I. Joe
Iron Man
Richie Rich

And, lastly, gay Republican:

The Mighty Thor


(I noticed the image of Thor doesn't appear on theblog.......ay karamba!)
Useful Links:

http://www.swingmachine.com
http://www.democraticunderground.com
http://www.nerve.com/cs/blogs/screengrab/default.aspx
http://www.tmcm.com


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