Earlier this year, S&S’s own Scott Gardner reflected on “The Spiritual Consciousness of Marvel’s Daredevil” for The Huffington Post, analyzing both seasons of the hit Netflix superhero series in terms of its ties to faith. With the church-infused Luke Cage having become a binge-worthy sensation as well as Iron Fist, The Punisher, and Defenders all debuting out in 2017, ’tis the seaon, so to speak, to revisit the break-out characters’ heroic suffering and “struggling conflict of faith.”
Over at ComicMix, writer Mindy Newell takes The Jewish Daily Forward to task for its piece, “Do Marvel Movies Have An Anti-Semitic Problem?” Newell minces no words, calling it “the dumbest article I’ve ever read on their site.”
The Forward article by Susan Mohall seems to hinge on Magneto, identified in the movies and (most) comics as a Jewish Holocaust survivor, being a villain as well as the nefarious HYDRA organization having its Nazi roots effaced. Newell quickly dismantles their Magneto argument and, in terms of HYDRA, goes on to say:
Oh, Susan. I guess you never saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier and you never have watched Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. HYDRA evolved, my dear. It’s gotten smarter, its adapted, it’s gotten smoother – just as our own rat-fuckers learned from Watergate – but it is certainly is still fascist, and it’s certainly not “shy[ing] away from its Nazi roots.”
For what it’s worth, Hal Jordan’s partial Jewish heritage was never featured in the Green Lantern movie, and Ben Grimm’s Jewish background has never been noted in any Fantastic Four movie. Then again, neither has Bruce Wayne’s potential tie to the Christian Sir Gawain of Grail Legend or, say, Colossus of the X-Men’s atheistic Communist roots.
Perhaps the issue that Mohell misconstrued was less some form of antisemitism in these superhero films but, instead, a compulsion towards secularizing their characters? (Even Thor, a “god,” isn’t worshiped…)
Is television’s Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) the first of these cinematic characters we’ve seen seek spiritual help from a real-world religious institution?
