{"id":1195,"date":"2026-06-22T08:42:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/?p=1195"},"modified":"2026-06-22T09:06:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T09:06:44","slug":"gramsci-and-the-superhero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/2026\/06\/22\/gramsci-and-the-superhero\/","title":{"rendered":"Gramsci and the\u00a0Superhero"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his cultural writings, Gramsci writes quite a lot about popular literature, and this should naturally be connected to his thinking around hegemony, where cultural products disseminate ideological messages, consciously or not so. <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

E.g. in a discussion on Nietches \u201cSuperman\u201d he points out that these characters are found in exactly popular literature, like Dumas\u2019 The Count of Monte Christo, and a range of other popular characters, who have in common that their individual extraordinary capabilities right the wrongs that the novel describes. I.e. there is no need for collective action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a contrast<\/strong> Gramsci puts up the more tragic figures of late Romanticism with their \u201cfatalism\u201d. he mentions Stendahls Juline Sorel from Rend and Black, but I could add Dostoevsky\u2019s Raskolnikov. Their ideas about personal grandeur (Napoleon complex), cannot stand up to reality, and the result is tragedy (see e.g. Q 16 \u00a7 13). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Wison<\/strong> writes about this phenomenon in her interesting review<\/a> of Fretignes Gramsci-biography To Live is to Resist\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGramsci approached the subject of taste with the same vigor that other Marxists reserved for political economy. He reserved special rancor for Eug\u00e8ne Sue\u2019s popular novel The Mysteries of Paris (1842\u20131843). In the novel, a Prince Rodolphe metes out vigilante justice in Paris\u2019s seedy underbelly. Gramsci said the French serial provided \u201cthe romantic setting in which the fascist mentality is formed,\u201d since it presented social problems as something to be solved by a superhero figure rather than through class struggle.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like<\/strong> to include a little more of Gramsci\u2019s passage, which stems from two articles in 1916 where he criticizes a fascist writer (I have ked down an English translation of the article, but the citation is included with an explanation of the context in a footnote on page 345-46 in Selections from Cultural Writings).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201ca novel like Eug\u00e9ne Sue\u2019s Mysteries of Paris, a novel in which, with the extensive method of Carolina Invernizio, a peaceful provincial city of honest working people, of peaceful petty bourgeois on state pensions, becomes a den of every-vice, an aquarium of sea-snakes, a beggars\u2019 haven for every social monster. This is what romanticism is, this is the romantic setting in which the fascist mentality was formed. Why was the serial novel, such as that published by Sonzogno, so popular in Italy before the war? Why was Il Secolo the newspaper with the highest circulation? Why was Carolina Invernizio the most widely read novelist? Why are Dario Niccodemi\u2019s plays still so successful?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A city of honest <\/strong>working people and petty bourgeois becomes a den of thieves, and one man must fix it. This description brings me to the Gotham City of the Batman comics, and right into our modern world of superheroes. The idea of Batman as fascist is hardly new, and has been debated in comic book circles<\/a> over decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a character portrait by a large number of authors and drawers, Batman of corse is nothing in himself, he is an empty vessel and can be shaped in both fascist and anti-fascist ways. The importance from Gramsci in line with the hegemonic ideas portrayed is not this. It is that the dissemination of the idea of injustice being sorted out by one strong-willed man and no tcollective action, is fertile growing grounds for fascist ideology. And this goes not only for Batman but for much of contemporary superhero comics and films, and also many other movies, perhaps particularly the \u201cone man army\u201d action genre, exemplified by Arnold Schwarzenegger\u2019s Commando.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have howeve<\/strong>r been instances where popular superhero comics have gone in dialogue with their own societal role. One well-known example is Denny O\u2019Neill and Neal Adams 1970 run on the classic DC heroes Green Lantern and Green Arrow (printed in Norway in the magazine \u201cGigant\u201d in the late 70\u2019s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here O\u2019Neill explicitly points to the weakness of the \u201cSuperheroes fighting crime\u201d-narrative in a class society with extreme inequality. O\u2019Neill, in Gramscian terms, here is attempting to contribute to a counter-hegemony \u2013 another way to understand crime, as a result of injustice and social problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this scene,<\/strong> Green Lantern has arrested a young man, for acting aggressively against his landlord \u2013 a slum lord \u2013 who exploits his tenants. Green Arrow, widely considered a Marxist in ideological discussions about superheroes, calls him out, as does one of the inhabitants of the building. This leads Green Lantern to question the standard discourse on superheroes, and his blindness to important forms of societal injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Using a Gramscian vocabulary<\/strong> and way of thinking, we can better understand the importance of such an endeavor as the one O\u2019Neill and his partner Neal Adams put forward in these comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were using the at the time one of the most effective and widespread cultural products \u2013 superhero comic books. This was a genre that arguably have had an overall effect of contributing to the hegemony that defends the status quo. But they were using this genre to attack that very status quo and try to create a counter-hegemony \u2013 attacking, so to speak \u2013 the belly of the beast. That was no small feat, and if you read the letters section of the original US magazines, you can see they got pushback as well, as do they now in comic book forums when this comic is discussed. Typically current conservatives deem it as \u201cwoke\u201d, showing that 50 years old, it still has the power to provoke. While then, as now, others defend it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discussions <\/strong>around this comic book (and other attempts at using superhero comics to break with hegemonic thoughts, like e.g. creating a brown muslim Ms. Marvel), gives an interesting insight into how hegemonic struggles happen in real time, in different areas and microcosmos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most important Gramscian lesson is to understand what is actually happening in all these conflicts on a lot of different areas of society and culture \u2013 they are important hegemonic struggles, who individually might seem unimportant, but who seen together has the power to change the soil political decisions grow out from. So, they are important and must not be dismissed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think globally, argue and promote progressive culture locally.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his cultural writings, Gramsci writes quite a lot about popular literature, and this should naturally be connected to his thinking around hegemony, where cultural products disseminate ideological messages, consciously or not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Using Gramscian consepts we can understand the cultural-political effects of superhero comics and movies, and the hegemonic struggles that happen inside these cultural spheres.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30,26,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-kultur","category-politikk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/8222601571_baa3352d4b_z1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1195"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venstresida.net\/ny\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}