The Superhero Vote

A follow-up to my piece on television voters: How would superheroes vote? The recent surge of highbrow superhero films has often carried a political notation to it. I figured I could take a few guesses at the political orientations of these heroes. I’m going here off the most recent incarnations.

Batman: Conservative. Bruce Wayne is a wealthy man, which inclines him towards republicanism. He’s clearly not embarrassed by class differences the way many liberals are, as evidenced by the fact that he still has a butler. But most importantly, The Dark Night is more a conservative parable of evil than anything. Its villain does wrong not to achieve some goal of cruel power. He’s an inherently evil degenerate who wants to drive people away from morality and tear down society. In response, Batman takes many war-on-terror-like precautions, most prominently his radar of hacked phones and computers that clearly parallels the PATRIOT act.

Iron Man: The most recent Iron Man movies paint him as a clear liberal. He uses his wealth to build a green energy machine that his company never wanted to build. He privatizes world peace. He rejects the morality of building weapons of war. On top of all of that, the movie develops some geopolitical sympathy for the Arab victims of United States intervention in the middle east.

Spiderman: Liberal-leaning moderate. In all the time I’ve known Peter Parker, he’s come off as younger and less mature than other relatable superheroes. He doesn’t seem to have a cohesive life philosophy. However, younger voters vote democratic more frequently than the overall populous. On top of that, his villains embody more of a liberal view of evil, such as The Green Goblin, a greedy industrialist heir who becomes a villain in his desire for power.

Captain America: The Captain didn’t just tell a story set in postwar America.  He was postwar America: energetic, pure, and full of the righteous indignation of the common man against the fascist. The era’s politics, in light of the New Deal coalition, was unabashedly liberal, and so was its hero.

The Hulk: The Hulk can’t really get involved in politics. It would make him too angry.

X-Men: I would guess most of the X-Men are pretty liberal. They were written as subjects of discrimination who can be likened to African-Americans or the LGBT community. Their antagonist, Sen. Robert Kelly (R-Fictional) was allegedly based off Joseph McCarthy. In this fictional universe, I’d guess the liberal politicos would be more in favor of the Mutant Rights Movement. (On that same note, does anyone think the Brotherhood of Mutants might be based off the Muslim Brotherhood?)

The Watchmen: The central panic in The Watchmen is fear of a nuclear war and the resulting mutual assured destruction. Both the president in the comic, a heavily fictionalized Richard Nixon in his fifth term, and actual president Ronald Reagan, were conservatives whose relationships with the Soviet Union were tense. If any of The Watchmen wanted to vote, they would go for pro-peace or pro-de-escalation candidates, probably liberals.

That’s all the franchises I can think of. Comment if you disagree with any of these. Happy thanksgiving.