Hey everyone, this week we began to view our novel with an eye to its iconography, tone, and metaphor. Let’s take a look!
Superheroes go infinitely beyond what they’re name expresses them to be: heroes with super powers. These characters are layered with psychology and metaphor; moreover, they often have connections to past myths. This week, we began to look under the mask of our own heroes in Powers with an eye to their psychology and associated metaphors. It is important to recognize these metaphors, psychologies, and connections in order to determine what must be maintained for the film in order to sustain cultural appeal for the audience.
Firstly we would like to discuss the metaphors we noticed in our graphic novel; unfortunately, we could not discover any scholarly articles on this subject, but we uncovered striking evidence of interesting metaphors drawn by Bendis. We noticed parallels between superheroes in Powers and biblical reference. The death of a superhero is notably depicted in a similar fashion to the death of Christ. The superhero is displayed legs together and arms spread out with wrists raised in a pose similar to Jesus on the cross. This depiction is in a single panel which covers the entire page. Moreover, the person who performs the autopsy of the hero notes the difficulty of removing her wrist bands while also stating he took off her “red boots.” Both these attribute to the comparison of removing the nails which held Jesus to the cross. Moreover, this character is later suggested to be a reincarnation of similar strong female characters in history such as “Joan of Arc.” Finally, even the protagonist of Powers is demonstrated to have connections to biblical story. The superheroes are compared to angels whom fly above the city; one superhero suggests that they are “their own gods.” The protagonist, who is a superhero that has lost his powers, is named “Christian Walker.” This name suggests that he is a ‘walking’ Christ-like figure; essentially, he is depicted as a fallen angel. Furthermore, the images used to depict his loss of powers illustrate him fighting a silhouette of a bulky horned figure which demonstrates a connection to the original fallen angel of the bible, Lucifer, in other words, the Devil. This calls us to question if it is beneficial for us to maintain this symbolism when adapting the novel. Do we want to root our story in biblical reference and risk alienating certain audience members? Frankly, the references are subtle and Bendis seems to be careful enough not to parade a belief in the religion, but merely creates parallels to certain aspects of the story. Nonetheless, due to quick spread of information through the internet, any symbolism in the film will spread like wildfire and possible attribute to some controversy; of course, any publicity is good publicity when treated carefully.
This week we also discussed Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns which deals with the dark psychology and controversial methods of Gotham ’s protector. This, in fact, is the role the media plays in the novel; reporters and guest speakers constantly debate the morals of Batman creating links between him and the villains he mercilessly attacks. Of course, the novel also supplies the reader with the sinister but, nonetheless, rational thoughts of Bruce Wayne as he submerses himself to become the Dark Knight: a protector who emphasises justice over due process. Tim Burton creates a similar dark atmosphere in Gotham within his film Batman. However, the media glorifies the work of Batman rather than questioning his actions throughout. Of course, the film creates a direct connection between Batman and villainy through the reciprocal creation of the Joker and Batman. Thus, the parallels between Batman’s revenge motives and the villains are drawn directly rather than festered to grow through the media as it does in the novel. Burton clearly demonstrated that he was mainly concerned with maintaining the tone and iconography; however, he overlooked the deeper psychology that runs through the novel; nonetheless, this allowed the audience to connect with a much more human character who is capable of turning away from his sinister characteristics and plunge himself into a love story. As we go further into our process of adapting comic to film, we must consider what iconography we wish to transfer and, moreover, if an audience can establish a connection with characters they only know for two hours when they were originally fleshed out in the timelessness of the comic medium.
