The protagonists of superhero videos note that they have been deceived and manipulated by dark forces that control the global and its perceptions.
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Donald Trump has announced that he is promoting virtual trading cards with himself
“IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!” Former President Donald Trump shouted from his social network Truth Social on Thursday morning. Trump then announced that he would release a collection of virtual Donald Trump trading cards (collect them all!). The cards depict Trump as a superhero. In one, he stands in a Trump wrestling ring dressed in a tight suit, with a flag cape, a giant “T” on his chest and wavy abs.
The photographs of the superhero and the crude puncture provoked a wave of mockery, as expected. Journalist Maggie Haberman noted that at one point, Trump sought to be kicked out of Walter Reed Hospital dressed in a Superman blouse under his outfit so he could simply open to reveal his smart fitness at the right time. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough laughed at the letters. “We are in third place!” He calmed down.
Trump is and has been ridiculous, and other people point it out, that’s fine. However, it’s worth noting that third-graders and Trump aren’t the only ones who love superhero photography these days. Conversely, superheroes are probably the most popular entertainment genre in the United States. The Marvel Cinematic Universe alone has released 30 films valued at around $25 billion gross, making it the most successful film franchise of all time.
People love superhero stories. And I think they love them in large part for the same reason Donald Trump loves them. Superhero stories are, specifically, blatant fantasies of reinforcement. They inspire the audience to immerse themselves in emotions of excessive weakness and helplessness, and then throw them a party. in of literally divine strength and perfection. Thugs become righteous thugs, taking revenge on those who threatened and humiliated them. It’s a calibrated narrative.
Steve Rogers, for example, starts out as a faint weight of 98 pounds, so thin that it gives the impression that his limbs will break like twigs. Then, he is injected with the supersoldier’s serum and transforms into Captain America, a model of American virility, with waves and imperious intonation. Clark Kent is an oppressed, bespectacled Nebish; Lois Lane insults his proposals. Then he becomes Superman, and no one laughs at Superman. Just as a physically fit Trump imagined himself opening his blouse to reveal that red S, looking like he is not a physically fit man, but a titan of presidential fitness.
Secret identities are vital to superhero empowering fantasies, but so are conspiracies. Superhero stories show the hero as defeated, weak, burdened, before the ultimate apotheosis of triumph. In this year’s Black Adam, the hero is in an underwater coma in a secret criminal act at the time. It has disadvantages of mobility and even sensitivity, all so that it can reappear at the most vital moment and more dramatically overwhelm all its enemies in front of it.
It’s not unusual for homelessness in superhero videos to be cognitive and conspiratorial. The protagonists notice that they have been lied to and manipulated through dark forces that control the world and its perceptions. In Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014), Captain Marvel (2019), and The Eternals (2021), heroes are informed that the smart guys they think they were fighting for are actually bad. Empowerment means seeing the truth through corruption. And then beat the snot of liars, of course.
As I’m the first to point out, superheroes’ fascination with empowerment, powerlessness, and conspiracy reflects the fascism that Trump and MAGA also consider so sympathetic.
The Nazis claimed that other Jews controlled the world and also believed that Jews were weak, cowardly and corrupt. Germany, they said, had been “stabbed in the back” and betrayed through the Jews after World War I, leaving the country vulnerable, defenseless, powerless. The Nazi movement, according to the Nazis, a superheroic reversal of supine impotence, in which Hitler revealed the fact of the Jewish conspiracy and activated the other, once inert Germans.
MAGA revels in similar myths. The QAnon movement, at most an excessive example, believes that the world is controlled by Satanist pedophiles, with Trump being the only impediment to the overall victory of evil. electoral fraud. The sense of weakness and persecution fuels Trump’s calls for excessive violence and assertiveness. “We’re going to have to fight a lot harder,” Trump said after his defeat in the 2020 election. Occasionally extravagantly dressed, Trump supporters rebelled in the capital, the stars of their own killer fantasy of empowerment.
That’s not to say that all superhero narratives are proto-fascist or pro-Trump. Both The Eternals and Captain Marvel have pretty particular feminist messages, which Trump supporters probably wouldn’t find sympathetic. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) and the TV series The Children feature villains who intentionally resemble Trump. Art is confusing and superheroes can be used to tell other kinds of stories.
But it’s also not exactly a twist of fate that Trump and the superheroes took the lead in the same position at the same time. It’s easy to laugh at Trump’s fantasies of self-expanded superheroes. And everyone deserves to laugh about it. But it’s also worth asking why our existing cultural fantasies are so indebted to a Trumpian dynamic of self-pitying victimhood that inevitably leads to violent, flag-wrapped empowerment. telling other stories.
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Donald Trump has announced that he is promoting virtual trading cards with himself
Social Fact / Donald Trump
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