This past week of Reflections has really been interesting. I never knew that you could examine so much out of comics. Secret identities are always just a given for superheroes. We all know that Spider-Man is a regular teenager trying to get through high school and make Mary-Jane notice him. Batman is Bruce Wayne who fights crime as a scarier hero but has no actual superpowers, so on and so forth. But yesterday in class and after reading Morris’ article, I never really thought about how Superman’s secret identity is reversed. He comes to earth as a “super” man and has to create a secret identity of an ordinary man to fit in. Everyone else is already an ordinary man. That was something I never really thought about until it was actually brought to my attention.
Another thing that interested me during class this week was when we discussed the three articles on superhero morality. Specifically, my group talked about the Robichaud article. In the article, he discussed two different concepts, utilitarianism and nonconsequentialists. I think I agree more with the utilitarian view just because I believe that an event where the greater good or happiness comes out of that event should be enforced rather than one that would cause less happiness. I just think, why would you do something that only helps a few people when you could try and save the whole world? But I know that those situations are never easy to handle when actually faced with them. Then our article brought up a point that really sparked my interest in the respects of illegal vs. immoral. I believe that superheroes were meant to help law enforcement, but when you have superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man whose reputations are not the brightest, we come to a chronic situation of morality. Batman is trying to fight city crime, but because of the masked vigilante, villains like the Joker are created and the only real reason they are there is because of Batman. This is why police officers want Batman to turn himself in so that crimes created by the Joker will stop. But if Bruce were to turn himself in, crime would either decrease or much worse increase. The greater good of this situation would be to not turn Bruce in and keep the Batman because he saves a lot of people. The movie The Dark Knight really portrays this situation well.
Spider-Man gains his bad reputation from the newspapers. I believe that a lot of people actually like Spider-Man but because some of his stories get twisted around, some people start to wonder if he really is a good thing for New York. This is where Peter Parker’s immoral thoughts begin to take place because he is at a constant battle with himself about if being Spider-Man is the best thing for him. It seems to put his loved ones in the most danger. In this case the utilitarian would say that he needs to stay Spider-Man because he is helping the entire city of New York. When it comes to personal situations like this, we start to wonder if lying to our loved ones about being a superhero to keep the safe is the best solution. In both Spider-Man and Batman’s case, even if they were to tell the world who they were to stop the illegality of their actions, would the immorality of the lying be solved as well? I’m not so sure it would be but I guess we will never really find out.
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