Deus Ex Schlockina

“#Ruthkanda forever.” To anyone who masochistically chooses to spend their time on the political side of X, hearing that phrase will cause you to experience a Slumdog Millionaire-esque cringe flashback to September 2020. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman to serve on the Supreme Court, had just passed away, and thousands of people took to social media to express their condolences. One X user, Alexandra Lee-Capps, decided to share a dubious story of her daughter’s reaction to the news, claiming that her daughter struck the iconic pose of Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther and said the now infamous phrase “Ruthkanda forever”. 

At first glance, this is not a particularly remarkable story. Cringey posts are to X what DJ collectives are to St Andrews, and this tweet, though particularly cringey, was just a woman trying to share a story she thought would resonate with others as meaningful and culturally salient. But I think something is betrayed in the post that the author is likely not aware of, something far less benign than just a (probably) fake story. To me, this post and others like it represent something seriously wrong with how we think about politics and society at large, and I think blockbusters like Black Panther are in part to blame. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good blockbuster. Seeing Avengers: Infinity War opening night was an experience I don’t think I’ll ever forget, and Top Gun: Maverick was so much fun that it made me want to double the US military budget. But these films are, at base, all the same story: an incredible individual, or a group of incredible individuals, persevering against unbelievable and evil forces with a combination of strength, prowess, and a lot of luck. The more these films dominate the culture, the more that same story does, too. 

Herein lies the problem. If our films are increasingly stories of special people saving us from disaster, does that not limit our collective ability to imagine other ways of stopping the real-world ‘bad guys’? People like Alexandra Lee-Capps have begun to see influential political figures as superheroes: larger-than-life champions for truth and justice who will defeat the villainous opposition while we sit back and cheer. This problem is exacerbated by the decline of US and UK leadership contests, which have become more about personality than policy. It’s no wonder that the internet is full of depictions of figures like Donald Trump and Joe Biden as warriors or superhumans. We’re addicted to the idea of being saved, a phenomenon I’ve dubbed Lois Lane syndrome.

Although blockbusters have magnified and profited off this issue, they are not entirely to blame. When we as a society are faced with the terror of issues like climate change, fascism, and the erosion of our rights, it’s no wonder we cling to the comfortable idea that people more capable than ourselves will rise up and beat back the darkness. This is baked into the DNA of the comics many of these blockbusters are based on. Superman, Lois Lane’s saviour, was created by two Jewish men who, having seen and escaped the horrors of antisemitism, created an invincible superhero who was forced to flee his home and now fights Nazis. These men had lost their agency in the face of the most evil ideology the world has ever known, and to cope with that tragedy they invented someone who could fight back and win. 

But there is no Superman in the real world. Our politicians are as fallible as we are, and an uncomfortable amount of human history does not end with the heroes winning, if there were any heroes involved at all. The Nazis were beaten not by a fictional man with the strength of a thousand others but by thousands of men of incredible collective strength, who stared into the sadistic gears of the Nazi death machine and did not blink. We won’t find heroics among a group of special people but instead in our collective will to resist the encroaching darkness. Let’s abandon our Lois Lane syndrome and our belief in a coming deus ex machina; change can only happen if we all fight for it.

Image from Wikimedia Commons