The Making of the Hero – Katabasis and the Superhero in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe
Torsten Caeners
1. Introduction
In The Myth of the American Superhero Lawrence and Jewett state that
'[t]housands of images of heroes and heroines larger than life, with powers every
bit as magical as those exercised in classical mythology, [are] floating about in the
American entertainment system.'1 They imply a close and continuing relation
between the modern superhero and the epic heroes of antiquity. Similarly, Umberto
Eco contends that '[t]he hero equipped with powers superior to those of common
man has been a constant of the popular imagination – from Hercules to Siegfried,
from Roland to Pantagruel, all the way to Peter Pan.'2 Levi-Strauss rightly notes
that 'the true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated relations but bundles of
relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and
combined so to produce meaning. [They] must be read diachronically along one
axis […] and synchronically along the other axis.'3 The timeless and reiterative
nature of the hero-archetype enables diachronic relations between classical and
modern-day superheroes. The superheroes of the MCU form such 'bundles of
relations' diachronically with the mythical hero-archetype thus producing culturally
saturated characters. On closer inspection, literary topoi often partake in reiterating
the hero-archetype for successive generations. It is my thesis that the literary
commonplace of the classical hero's journey into the underworld, the co-called
katabasis, has been successfully employed by Marvel in its Cinematic Universe to
fashion a postmodern mythical superhero. In appropriating the katabasis, Marvel is
able to facilitate origin stories of modern-day superheroes that are contemporary
but still tap into the mythical archetypes of the classical epic. The katabatic space
functions as a catalyst that fuses past and present, myth and reality, man and hero,
into superhero. These new superhero identities that emerge from the katabatic
experiences are inherently conflicted, however, both internally with respect to a
parallel existing or residual non-superhero identity and, externally, with respect to
the different superhero identities enacted by the members of the MCU.
Following a definition of the term katabasis on the basis of its generic
features, I will analyse the katabatic experiences of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers
focusing on how they enact contemporary issues of culturally relevant forms of
conflict.
2. Katabasis, Heroes and Superheroes:
In the classical epic tradition, the journey into the unederworld is taken as a last
resort when heroes face a hopeless situation. The underworld promises a way out
that manifests itself as a magical object, a person or some form of prophetic
knowledge only available to the dead. '[A]t a dark moment of exhaustion,
confusion, or despair, [the hero] is driven to seek counsel and guidance from the
past preserved and the prophetic vision vouchsafed by a tutelary figure in the
underworld.'4 The classical katabasis is thus defined by three main constituents: 1)
It is an actual descent into the underworld by a hero that takes place at a desperate
moment in the hero's life. 2) The hero seeks an object or some vital piece of
information. 3) Heroes are accompanied or encounter a tutelary figure who guides
them to their destination or, in fact, constitutes the destination as the keeper of
prophetic wisdom.
The hero's need for a tutelary figure suggests that the hero's powers are, at
least temporarily, eclipsed by the situation. The hero is unable to actively engage
with the problems of the world and is forced into a passive position. This is
highlighted by the hero's passive dependence on the tutelary figure. When heroes
return from the underworld, leaving their tutelary figure behind, they regain their
active position and are able to overcome the world's obstacles. The katabasis thus
constitutes a turning point, a moment of change from bad to good and also from
passive to active. It is the pivotal moment in which the hero irrevocably becomes
the hero both for himself and for the world. '[T]he hero is swallowed into the
unknown, and appears to be either lost or dead. Instead of passing outward, beyond
the visible world, the hero must go inward to be ultimately born again.'5 The
katabasis is essential to constituting the hero identity, both inwardly and
outwardly.
Modern-day superheroes represent revised and contemporized reiterations of
classical archetypes. In this context, the katabasis is the archetypical locus where
these revisions are both facilitated and enacted. Joseph Campbell notes in The
Hero with a Thousand Faces: 'The archetypes to be discovered and assimilated are
precisely those that have inspired, throughout the annals of human culture, the
basic images of ritual, mythology, and vision.'6 In-depth psychology defines the
archetype as 'a representation of the Irrepresentable.'7 As a cultural archetype,
however, the hero 'needs to be presented in concrete form of an event, a
personality, or of a locality.'8 Paradoxically, the superhero has to represent or
embody the irrepresentable in a manner that can partake in the active discourses of
contemporary culture. It is at this paradoxical juncture that the hero-archetype and
the katabasis reconnect. Within the hero's journey, the voyage into the afterlife is a
diegetic manifestation of the irrepresentable. It depicts the afterlife which is per
definition beyond representation. The katabasis thus becomes the paradoxical
locus where irrepresentability represents itself. Since it is also the place where the
hero is forged as hero, he or she incorporates aspects of irrepresentability into his
or her identity. In its classical form, the irrepresentable becomes manifest as divine
or magical power. The hero becomes super-human thus representing an Other
beyond common humanity. With the newly incorporated powers, the classical hero
becomes a transcendental force that embodies cultural desires and anxieties that
cannot ever be fulfilled or pacified. This is why they are relegated to the realm of
myth. The representation of the irrepresentable happens in the fictional, unreal
space of myth. It cannot ever truly come to pass and hence not be represented in a
non-fictional discourse. The difference between this rebirth in the classical context
3
and the rebirth revised in the MCU is that Marvel's superheroes take on their
superhero identity, but they remain conflicted about it. The conflict arises from the
fact that the MCU consciously strive to represent a non-mythical, contemporary
reality. Becoming a superhero thus becomes a process of fragmentation, not, as for
the classical heroes, one of unity. Since Marvel's heroes are firmly rooted in the
contemporary human realm, the irrepresentable does not yield to representation;
rather, it inserts itself spectrally as notions of fragmentation that subliminally haunt
the superheroes and their actions. 'The traumas of modernity are highlighted and
worked through to reach a compromise.'9 In the MCU, the way to this compromise
is by working through conflict. This has been a specific mark of Marvel's
superheroes from the beginning and becomes foregrounded in the MCU.
Bainbridge convincingly argues that DC heroes follow pre-modern notions of
identity 'in the sense that they promote themselves as divine figures of retribution,
offering […] the promise of transcendent justice.'10 In contrast to this, Marvel
heroes are normal, common people that become superheroes and 'this act of
becoming is a twofold process: First, there is the scientific accident [or similar key
event] that creates the superhuman […] Second there is the assumption of the
superhero role.'11 For all heroes of the MCU, the first aspect is fashioned as a
katabasis and for some, like Tony Stark, the katabasis is also the moment of
'assumption,' of embracing the superhero role, albeit not unconditionally or
unconflictedly.
3. The Katabasis of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers
At the beginning of Iron Man, Tony Stark experiences a katabasis. Tony is
abducted by an Afghan terrorist cell and held captive in an underground cave. The
entire underground episode exhibits all the classical katabatic features. In
accordance with the topos, the katabasis is initiated by a moment of crisis, namely
the attack on Tony. Also, the passivity that is characteristic of the hero at the
moment of katabasis is strongly implied. Although shown to be almost manically
active, Tony is leading a shallow life in which he passively and ignorantly lives
each day as it comes. Tony's passivity is most clearly foregrounded, however, by
the fact that he is carried into the cave while he is unconscious and, in fact, dying.
As in the classical katabasis, Tony's underworld has certain concrete geographical
features, but it is essentially a generic subterranean space. It is a no-space beyond
the world of the living. Tony thus finds himself in a nondescript liminal space
between life and death. When he wakes up with the electromagnet attached to his
breast, he is neither dead nor alive. In this underworld, Tony is no longer himself
and not yet another. Tony meets Doctor Yinsen who represents his tutelary figure.
He saves Tony's life and is essential in guiding Tony through the dangers of the
underworld by giving advice about how to behave. This function is emphasized by
Yinsen wearing a suit and tie which marks him as different from all other
inhabitants of this underworld. Yinsen is essential in helping Tony construct
prototype Iron Man suit which will allow Tony to return to the surface. It is
important to note that the visionary information about the suit's arc-reactor comes
to Tony at a moment of torture when he is literally between life and death. The
liminality of the katabatic experience is foregrounded here and it is the state of inbetween that enables the prophetic vision that eventually facilitates his escape from
the underworld. The moment of vision also constitutes the moment that Iron Man
is born. The arc-reactor that Tony builds frees him from the car batteries he was
previously attached to. He thus regains his freedom and becomes active again.
However, he does not emerge as a complete hero from the katabasis. The
fragmentation of the irrepresentable, symbolized by the shrapnels that remains in
his body, haunts Tony. Even after his escape, he remains in-between and his
relation to the Iron Man suit is expressive of this state. The suit is a self-created
tool that was constructed out of pure necessity. Tony did not build the prototype
suit to become a superhero nor in preparation for some great altruistic task. He
built is exclusively to survive and to escape. There is no voluntary embracing of
the superhero identity. It is only after he is back home, that Tony refines the design
and begins to use it. However, this is as much from an altruistic desire to do good
as from a egoistical wish to be safe from ever being in a helpless situation again.
Hence, the Iron Man suit remains a tool separate from Tony. There are two
different identities in play: Tony Stark or Iron Man. There is, at the beginning, no
unity between the two and Tony's identity remains split. Temporary unity is
achieved at the end of the first film, when Tony publicly announces that he is Iron
Man. Iron Man 2 and, even more so, Iron Man 3 show that Tony continues to
improve the suit and make it better, even creating specific suits for specific tasks.
The suit is Tony's guarantee that he will be able to cheat death again and again.
This undermines his identity as a superhero. In the classical epic, the katabasis
metaphorically signifies heroes' willingness to accept and embrace their own death
and it is this acceptance that allows them to be reborn as heroes. In contrast, Tony
does his utmost to feel from facing his own mortality. Two diametrically opposed
identities are struggling for supremacy in Tony. As the various discussions in the
first Avengers film make clear: Tony is haunted by the question of whether it is the
man or the suit who is the hero. Despite his superhero status, he remains an as
deeply conflicted individual as before his katabatic experience. In this sense, he is
the perfect hero for the world depicted by the MCU, namely a world of conflict and
uncertainty.
Of all the MCU heroes, Captain America is the one who is most defined by his
untainted morals and his clear sense of right and wrong. This has characterized
Rogers even before he became a superhero. Rogers' transformation into a
superhuman only externalizes his already firmly developed heroic character.
Where the other Avengers have to learn and struggle to internalize the hero,
Rogers' transformation externalizes the hero that is already within. Being
transformed into Captain America constitutes, quite literally, an embodiment of his
inner hero. Steve Rogers' katabasis happens at the end of Captain America: The
First Avenger. In contrast to Tony, it is a conscious katabasis that willing embraces
death. Rogers voluntarily steers Red Skull's plane into the ice to keep it from
5
reaching New York. Rogers' katabasis is however not a moment of identity
formation or of transformation; it is a moment of temporal displacement and
diachronic rebirth. It is not Rogers who changes through the katabatic experience,
it is the world that changes. His descent is from the sky to the surface rather than
into some subterranean space. In this way, the world symbolically takes the place
of the underworld. Frozen in ice, Rogers does not experience the katabasis. For
him, it is timeless. In the meantime, the world descents into chaos, becoming the
morally ambiguous, fragmented and constantly endangered place of the MCU.
Macdonald notes that 'in the underworld all pasts are made equally present.'12 The
underworld is essentially timeless and the katabasis thus allows for 'a chance to
discover a new order in the past.'13 Once unfrozen, Captain America is transplanted
into a time that is characterized by blurring boundaries and uncertain values. It is a
world caught in chaos where notions of freedom, morality and democracy have
become problematic. Captain America embodies, both outwardly and inwardly, an
America of a simpler and, allegedly, more honest time. Rogers thus wakes up in a
katabatic space, liminal in that good and bad are no longer clearly defined, and,
due to the pure moral compass he has retained, he becomes the tutelary figure that
can facilitate a cultural renewal and thus an escape from this underworld. Rogers
functions as the anachronistic, timeless other, the irrepresentable archetype. He is
different and brings difference to an indifferent world of blurred boundaries,
transgressed values and shady politics. By means of the difference he signifies, he
allows the world to see itself as it really is: as a hellish place. This, then, is his
function within the greater MCU: He serves as the moral compass of the Avengers,
something which has been thematically highlighted in his second solo adventure
Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Tony is the quintessential superhero of and for the world the Captain reemerges in. Tony is deeply conflicted person with regard to his position in society,
his business, himself and his relation to his Iron Man identity. The Captain
represents a different world, he infuses the good old stable values that provide
fixture and guidance into the chaotic world of the MCU. His presence inscribes
past values anew on a present scene which is inherently katabatic. The MCU as a
katabatic space constitutes a palimpsestuous space onto which the idiosyncratic
identities and functions of the individual superhero are inscribed. In the context of
palimpsestuous textuality, Dillon notes that the palimpsest ‘constantly operates in,
disrupts, and yet engenders the meaning of any text.’14 which means it combines
conflict and fragmentation with notions of structure and completeness. Essentially,
it ‘evidences the spectrality of any ‘present’ moment which always already
contains within it ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ moments.’15 For the individual
characters, the katabasis as a personal experience and the world of the MCU as a
katabatic space, facilitates the combination of classical monomythical elements
with decidedly postmodern and posthuman notions of fragmentation and conflict.
By functionalizing the dynamic and adaptive topos of the katabasis, the MCU is
able to depict superheroes that retain their essentially postmodern character as
inherently conflicted individuals. Simultaneously, the katabatic character of the
palimpsestuous MCU creates a spectrality that continually evinces the liminality of
the underworld and thus suggests, especially in the interaction with the other
superheroes, the irrepresentabilty of the archetype. These hauntings of the
irrepresentable pertain to the heroic but the MCU's non-mythical reality puts this
into conflict. The world of the MCU is a katabatic space within which superheroes
strive to achieve Bainbridge's ‘compromise’ from within the conflicts that develop.
Tony is the motor of conflict (cf. Ultron), but he is vital because it is by working
through conflict that ‘compromise’ is to be achieved. On the other side, Captain
America's temporal difference marks him as the tutelary figure. In conjunction,
Tony and Captain America thus hold the key to revitalizing the morally corrupt
world of the MCU.
NOTES
1
John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett, The Myth of the American Superhero
(Grand Rapids, Cambridge: Eerdmanns Publ. Corp., 2002), 21.
2
Umberto Eco, ‘The Myth of Superman.’ Diacritics, 2:1 (Spring 1972): 14.
3
Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology. Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brook
G. Schoepf (New York: Basic Book, 1974), 211-212.
4
Michael Thurston, The Underworld in Twentieth-Century Poetry. From Pound
and Eliot to Heaney and Walcott (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 2.
5
Hougaard Winterbach, 'Heroes and superheroes: from myth to the American
comic book.' SAJAH 21.1 (2006): 120.
6
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton (Oxford:
Princeton UP, 2004), 17.
7
Estes Pinkola, 'Introduction', Campbell, Hero, LVII.
8
Maurice Halwachs. On Collective Memory. Edited and Translated by Lewis A.
Coser (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 200.
9
Jason Bainbridge, 'Worlds Within Worlds. The Role of Superheroes in the Marvel
and DC Universes,' The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero, ed. Angela
Ndalianis (New York, London: Routledge, 2009), 80.
10
Ibid., 67.
11
ibid., 73.
12
Ronald R. Macdonald, The Burial-Places of Memory. Epic Underworlds in
Virgil, Dante and Milton (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press,
1987), 8.
13
Ibid.
14
Sarah Dillon, Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (London: Continuum,
2007), 87.
15
Ibid., 37.
7
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