Jutta Weldes

The Myth of the American Superhero

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“The Myth of the American Superhero is a very timely and provocative analysis of what John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett call the 'American monomyth.' In this myth an Edenic community is threatened by implacable evil from outside. Mundane democratic institutions, impotent or corrupt, can't cope. With a convulsion of redemptive vigilante violence, the selfless, singleminded, sexually repressed, and misogynistic superhero restores the community to its pristine state and fades into obscurity. The authors trace this generic story (and its variants) through many guises: it appears, among others, in Buffalo Bill's traveling Wild West show, in The Virginian and The Lone Ranger, in a wide range of twentiethcentury films from John Wayne through Rambo, in disaster movies and in The Matrix, in the television phenomenon Star Trek, in the wonderful world of Disney, in video games, and in 'credotainment.' In this scathing critique the authors demonstrate the relentless reproduction of a fundamentally antidemocratic and viciously misogynistic myth that, with fascist rigor, extols the purifying powers of extralegal violence. Lawrence and Jewett trace the frightening imitative Werther effect' of this myth of vigilante redemption in the antisocial violence unleashed by Bernard Goetz, the Unabomber, and Timothy McVeigh, among others. The power of this myth to radically undermine the prized American institution of democracy is ably illustrated in their retelling of the Ramboesque antics of Oliver North and of even more appalling North's striking popularity. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and the unilateral extralegal violence promised by the Bush administration to destroy evil on a worldwide scale, exposing and challenging this American monomyth is of the utmost importance. Lawrence and Jewett's fascinating and accessible volume does just that.”