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( Editor's Note: Before the release of Avengers: Endgame, here is the second part of a five-part series that attempts to understand the relationship between the film universe Marvel and the state of the world today.This series will seek to engage critically with the MCU and explain how his films are anxious in the real world.Read the first part here )
For us, it has become wise to think that superheroes should be everything. well. And, if we observe closely, they will not be disappointed. In the DC Comics universe, for example, Superman is supposed to be the very incarnation of good and virtue. In Christopher Nolan's adaptations, Batman becomes the moral center, one who is known for his nobility and his values, against the chaos represented by the Joker.
Coming into the Marvel film universe, we have Captain America showing these qualities. In fact, in Captain America: The First Avenger we see how Steve Rogers is chosen, despite his lack of physics and combat skills, a lean boy from New York streets fighting the brutes and just wanting to join the army and fight in World War II. And the reason he was chosen, it's because he's empathic, because right from the first film, we had a glimpse of the fact that there was a really good soldier there and noble. .
But must a superhero always be the moral center?
The question may seem easy – swing between yes and no – but that's not the case. This question is at the heart of the films of Iron Man and in particular the character of Tony Stark.
Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark / Iron Man. Image via Twitter / @ kaarna97
Tony Stark's Fatal Flaw
Tony Stark, at the very beginning of the first film of Iron Man is your usual type of rich man who, by the way, is finds himself a genius of technology.
He is flamboyant, a womanizer, and the owner of Stark Industries, the company founded by his father and in the MCU, is renowned for making his weapons. Before changing his mind, while he was captive in the arid lands of Afghanistan, Tony Stark had a peculiar idea of what peace should be. Just before his capture, Tony is interviewed by Christine Everhart of Vanity Fair magazine. The conversations proceed as follows:
Christine : "You have been dubbed the da Vinci of our time." What do you say?
Tony : "Absolutely ridiculous I do not paint."
Christine : "And what do you say to your other nickname, the merchant of death?"
Tony : "This is not bad."
After this exchange, Stark goes on to say two very important things at this point: he says first " it's an imperfect world but it's the only one we have, I guarantee you day guns are no longer needed to keep the peace, I'll start baking bricks and beams for baby hospitals. "[19659002] And go on with this: "Ok, that's serious, my old man had a philosophy, peace means having a stick bigger than the other guy."
It's only during his captivity, and especially when he realize how much the weapons made by his own company began to fall Not only the US defense forces, but also the terrorists, changed their minds, took matters into their own hands, dissolved the weapons division of their company and became Iron Man .
It might seem like a simple moralistic account of a blind arms dealer trying to redeem himself by undoing the wrongs he was responsible for. But Tony Stark is a complicated figure, just like his moral compbad. Usually, it would have been easy to simply clbadify it as anti-hero. But Tony Stark is not really an anti-hero either. Anti-heroes have their own moral codes and they generally avoid the codes that society imposes on them. Michael Corleone in The Godfather now is an anti-hero. Tony Stark is your insider par excellence, the one who was born with the silver spoon in his mouth, heir to a vast empire.
In Shakespeare's tragedies, the main characters are defined not by the moral codes to which they adhere, but by the characters have a great inherent central defect. For Othello, this flaw was insecurity and jealousy. for Hamlet, it was undecided, and for Macbeth, it was ambition. Tony Stark, in a sense, fits this category.
Because at the beginning, he is really good. He adheres to a strong moral code and truly wants to protect the world that he has been instructed to save. Tony Stark is noticeable in the three films, but it is actually clearly exposed in Avengers: Age of Ultron .
Remember this beautiful scene where Tony and Bruce Banner, after their gigantic mistake in the creation of Ultron, retry the experiment, but this time try to transplant the artificial intelligence of Jarvis into the android of the vibranium. Wanda Maximoff and Captain America intervene, trying to prevent Stark from making this mistake again. And why? Maximoff, at one point, told Steve Rogers: "Ultron does not see the difference between saving the world and destroying it, from where do you think it pulls that?"
Here she refers directly to the creation of Ultron by Tony Stark. This means that the idea of security has become so entrenched in Tony Stark's mind that he will do everything in his power to make it a reality. And, notice, this security idea is Tony Stark's version. This does not mean that everyone subscribes to it. Of course, this experience was a second time successful and Vision was born. But hypothetically, think about it. What if Vision had malicious intent, like Ultron? The fact is that you never know.
Tony Stark as a Metaphor
In many ways this fatal flaw of "peace at any cost" is also at the heart of our modern world, a world where nations become a weapons-based superpower of which they dispose.
Where, to take India and Pakistan as examples, the idea of peace between the two countries is ironically based on the overriding fear of nuclear winter, as both nations are nuclear-armed, and this becomes in itself a condition of peace. Tony Stark and his Iron Man are a metaphor for this modern world where weapons, and their maneuvers, define not only power, but also morality. In the name of national security, it becomes imperative to use mbad surveillance as a tactic. Where we are being asked to drop our inherent right to privacy, because, well, everyone wants to be safe, and that's always a priority, is not it?
Tony Stark means well. He wants to do good. What MCU is exposing, on the contrary, is a beautiful deconstruction of this well-meaning hero, and the thin line that separates the emphasis on safety from paranoia, which in Tony Stark's case is personal, and in the case of our institutional governments.
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Publication date: Apr 20, 2019 09:39
| Date updated: April 20th, 2019 at 09h39
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Date Updated: Apr 20, 2019 9:39:10 AM HIST
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