Titans
How Superheroes Can Help Us Make Sense of a Polarized World
- Ethics, Culture & Social Issues
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2017
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Publisher's Description
These days it seems like heroes fight each other more often than they fight villains. The hero-vs-hero trope so common in comic books and in superhero movies these days can provide us with a means of thinking about the deeply polarized state of modern politics and public opinion about civic life, morality, and even God. There is a real divide in our public life that nobody seems to be able to cross. It's easy to complain that people should be more willing to meet each other half-way, that politicians should be more willing to compromise in order to get things done, but there are plenty of important issues on which compromise really isn't possible. We see this problem dramatized in comics like Marvel's Civil War and Avengers vs X-Men; in DC's Kingdom Come and The Dark Knight Returns; and in film media like Daredevil, Batman v Superman, and Captain America: Civil War. The consequences of the conflicts that arise in these stories can serve as warnings about our current political environment. They're safe places in which we can see the logic of our political dysfunction carried to frightening (but perhaps inevitable?) conclusions.
Endorsements (3)
“Superheroes seem to spend more time these days fighting each other than battling evil. In Titans, Boudreaux, Latta, and Nevin use this trend as an opportunity to explore issues such as conflicts between different visions of the good, the nature of power (and superpower), and the value of superheroes as modern mythology. Their love for the subject matter shines through while they flesh out the stories we all love with fascinating insight and entertaining prose.”
“Boudreaux shows with surpassing clarity not only how comic books make use of philosophy, but also the more important point that precisely because it is such a powerful tool for understanding the world, philosophy underwrites all forms of culture, popular as well as elite. In making explicit so much of the thought that informs the genre, he also provides a helpful primer on a variety of major ideas and schools of thought in the Western tradition.”
“Titans is a serious examination of the political, philosophical, and theological themes in superhero films and comic books. The superhero genre constitutes a new mythology that revisits ancient themes which have continued salience in the contemporary world—the existence of God, the problem of evil, the moral obligation to disobey unjust laws. Titans is an important study of a popular genre that has not received sufficient scholarly attention.”
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