Dan Hassler-Forest interview
Studying literature and cultural studies at university has undergone a seismic shift
over the last few decades. It used to involve listening to lectures on Joyce’s Ulysses
and Henry James by ageing academics in tweed jackets who smelt of pipe tobacco,
malt Irish whisky and broken marriages. Now, the lecturers wear Coen Brothers tshirts and talk of Freudian symbolism in Back to the Future.
It has become almost de rigueur to write Master’s or doctoral theses with titles such
as ‘Sexual politics in Sex and the City as seen through the eyes of Schopenhauer’,
‘Existentialism and ethnicity in The Sopranos’ or ‘Neo-Marxist theories of late
capitalism as embodied in zombie movies and The Walking Dead’.
In the 21st century, pop culture is seen as legitimate food for intellectual thought.
Something strange is afoot when one of the foremost global philosophers, the
Slovenian enfant terrible Slavoj Žižek, is called upon to comment on the latest Marvel
film The Avengers. It’s difficult to imagine Wittgenstein musing on the Twilight films
and Kristen Stewart’s (a.k.a. the Twilight ‘trampire’) infidelities, or Heidegger
expounding on Kim Kardashian’s cleavage/media profile and SpongeBob
Squarepants (although had they been alive, they would have had to fight hard to
loosen the fat media paycheck from the grasp of the aforementioned lisping,
loquacious Slovenian).
Pop culture has been elevated from the Kleenex-padded waste paper baskets of
spotty, pubescent male bedrooms to the amply subsidised bosom of literary
academia. As Bob Dylan might have said, before students started writing papers on
Jungian archetypes and the deconstruction of American identity in his lyrics, The
Times They Are a-Changin'.
Dan Hassler-Forest, assistant professor of popular culture, cultural theory and
zombies (he states that he intends to rotate the ‘zombies’ in his email signature with
‘hobbits’ or ‘superheroes’) is one of the brave young pioneers fusing literary theory,
cultural theory and pop culture. He is a world-renowned expert on superhero films
and comics (albeit reluctantly).
In this interview, he expands on the hidden and dangerous subtexts that lie behind
the all-conquering Hollywood superhero brand, the rise of comics as high art form
and the importance of intellectual analyses in making anesthetised consumers think
about what they are being fed by the media.
First of all, what differentiates the UvA from other universities and makes it a worthwhile place to study? It’s in the middle of Amsterdam! It sounds like a very facetious and cheeky answer, but the fact that it’s right in the middle of this cosmopolitan, European urban environment, unlike VU University Amsterdam which is on the outskirts of the city, gives a lot of added value to the place as an intellectual community, as a scholarly institution and as an international place of residence for academics. On your twitter page, it says you’re a ‘reluctant superhero expert’. However, your doctoral thesis was on 21st century superhero figures, you co-­‐edited a book on comics and your next book is on the 21st century superhero as political phenomenon. Isn’t this a contradiction? Explain your reluctance. The book is the improved version of my dissertation, which was on the figure of the superhero. It’s about the neo-­‐liberal ideology embodied by the contemporary superhero movie. That’s coming out in December. I spent a couple of years working on this. I started off as a fan of the superhero genre film and Christopher Nolan and I ended up sick and tired of everything related to superheroes. The end result of this is that I am legitimately seen as a superhero expert, even though I am tired of talking about it. So, I am trying to branch out into other areas, such as zombies, fantasy and fan communities. But, I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that I will forever be the ‘superhero guy’. Superheroes are big business in cinema at the moment. Can you briefly explain the significance of the superhero as political phenomenon? I think there’s something interesting about the fact that the most popular and profitable Hollywood genre of the past decade has been the superhero. A few exceptions aside, superhero stories are about extremely rich white men making sure that the status quo remains unchanged, even in the face of apocalyptic outside threats. They can have supernatural powers or build amazing suits. But, they are first and foremost staunch and devoted capitalists to whom we should entrust our sense of security. The fact that so many of them are owners of private companies, which are celebrated as being sources of good and natural common wealth, is extremely problematic. This is something that is not often discussed in relation to these films. In your blog, you talked of the recent Batman film and certain subtexts, such as how it relates to the Occupy movement and represents reactionary capitalism. Can you explain this? One of the things that the film has been criticised for is the fact that it sets up a populist movement led by the villain Bane that is obviously inspired by the Occupy movement. And it re-­‐frames them as a reactionary and extremely violent social group without any obvious goals apart from complete anarchy and destruction. Then it sets up Batman, the heroic billionaire, as the saviour of the city who will restore order. But even more problematically, the film’s denouement hinges on this army of policemen surging back into Gotham City and reclaiming it from these evil populist forces. This, to me, is an extremely reactionary and right wing point of view to take, if we’re relating this to events of the last two years that we have seen in the news media. Are these subtexts deliberate, and if they are, who is trying to disseminate this message (the director, the studios, corporations or government)? I would say ‘yes’ they are deliberate. But, there is no evil Machiavellian force that is
trying to synchronize popular culture to make it into propaganda that is primarily
vested in the 1% (of rich capitalists). One way that directors like Christopher Nolan
have found they can be commercially successful and critically lauded has been to
include stuff which connects visually or thematically to things that have been going
on in politics or in the arena of news media, although not in a coherent way. This is
one of the good things about, for example, Christopher Nolan’s films in that they
make people think about how the films relate to contemporary politics and social
movements. However, one of the problems, specifically with the Batman films, is
you’re trying to make a film that is based on a fascist principle. I would say the
superhero paradigm is a fascist idea.
So, is Christopher Nolan responsible for this deliberate fascist subtext?
No, Christopher Nolan is one of a group of directors, who also include James
Cameron, who think that they are making stories that are thought provoking and
liberal and against the corporate machine that is producing and paying for their films.
But, the pleasure that we get from these expensive films like Batman and Avatar
hinges on a sense of pleasure that derives directly from the capitalist consumption
practices that are making them possible in the first place. So, we create a feedback
loop. Žižek relates this to the idea of ‘interpassivity’. If our films our doing our critiquing for us and saying capitalism is bad or corporations are bad, that means we no longer have to do that work ourselves. We can let the movies do that work and consume them, which is a capitalist form of activity. So, is Christopher Nolan actually trying to promote white, neoliberal capitalism? I don’t think he’s doing that. He’s gone on record as saying let’s just throw a load of stuff on the screen and see what works. However, what reveals itself is an inherently political tendency towards a sense of order. All of his films are about love of order. We see populist movements and the people of Gotham as an element of chaos and unpredictability, so we want to keep them contained. The love of Batman, which is an important factor in a lot of fans’ devotion to the film, is this myth of a white supremacist who is the embodiment of justice, a white billionaire who can keep criminality and social evil in check. What would Christopher Nolan say if you told him about these subtexts? I think he would say we are thinking too much about something that should just work as a story. This is most fans’ response. They would say I’m over-­‐thinking it and reading too much into it, and there is no intention other than it being simple entertainment. But, from my critical theory perspective, those moments when you are being told it’s just entertainment and you shouldn’t think about any message that is being given to you, are the moments when ideology is working hardest. Žižek has talked of the hidden messages in Hollywood films and said ‘This is ideology at its purest’. To what extent would you agree? Absolutely. Many thinkers I admire, including Žižek, would say that the time when the most ideological work is done for us is when we switch off our radar and are no longer maintaining a critical awareness of what information is passed onto us and are just purely enjoying. This applies to many popular genres ranging from TV series to children’s series, cartoons and superhero films. To what extent can comics/superheroes fulfill a meaningful political role that does not embody capitalist, neoliberal ideology? Alan Moore has done it very successfully. Although it has not been done so much in commercial Hollywood films. You can’t come away from Watchmen still thinking superheroes are cool and a good idea. The Zack Snyder movie adaption was faithful to the story, but simultaneously indulged in the iconography that idealises the superhero, such as slow-­‐motion action sequences, which is a fundamental contradiction. One of the problems of popular entertainment is that it’s so devoted to the celebration of, what Susan Sontag would call fascist art: art which celebrates violence and posed masculinity that is all about aggressive intervention. If children see films where the good guy is always a white guy who runs a company and wants to enforce law and order, to what extent will this influence their ideology and how they think? That’s what am I afraid of. That’s the worst-­‐case scenario, that we’re all being influenced. The popular mode in the last few decades has been either to indulge in fantasies about inventing a history in which white people were the victims instead of the oppressors, as in a Tolkien-­‐type narrative, or else one in which the only way forward is through intensified capitalism, as in the superhero genre. A dominant trend in the Hollywood movies of the 60s and 70s was a more critical position in terms of what American identity and responsibility in the world were. That’s much more rare today, because every entertainment product has to be an easily consumable commodity. It has to be branded and part of a franchise and create instant gratification. We don’t find these critical, questioning narrative pleasurable in the same way. Is there a moral responsibility to change this genre then? I think there is. There’s this famous quote, ‘Nobody ever went broke underestimating the American public.’ The entertainment industry needs to start reinvesting in the audience. In an interview with Dutch journalist Theodor Holman you talked of the rise in popularity of comics. Which examples of this medium do you feel should be read by everyone? Top 5 in random order would be: Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Joe Sacco’s Palestine, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth and Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle. Chris Ware won the Guardian prize for literature in England with ‘Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth’. Have comics finally been accepted as a ‘high’ art form? We’re in the age of ‘anything goes’. There are many high brow universities which offer courses on comics. A couple of years ago, Yale University structured a Sociology course about post-­‐industrial urban crises, all in relation to the HBO series The Wire. We have clearly reached a point where things that have traditionally been looked on as low culture, like television and comics, can now be treated by elite institutions as ‘high’ culture. It has become somewhat more acceptable to be seen with a comic book on the train. In the 1980’s people were very Utopian about the future of comics. It hasn’t turned out exactly that way, but there have been developments. Any major bookstore has graphic novels or comics. Academia is awash with analyses of HBO series and superhero films from the perspective of Lacan or Schopenhauer. What is the practical use of this or is it elitist masturbation? (Laughs) It’s all elitist masturbation. No, I don’t think it’s all that. One of the most important functions of institutions like the UvA is that of education. Thousands of students come through here pursuing a degree in the humanities and get caught in classrooms with guys like me who are doing their utmost to affect the way they see the world and themselves in it. This teaching is also research-­‐
driven, as we continuously try to develop our ideas further in our written work. A part of this involves publications in journals, which other academics read, if you’re lucky. This also includes throwing around big names like Lacan and Schopenhauer, lending weight to what sometimes amount to simple arguments. But sometimes they are very sophisticated exercises in theory. In times like these when anti-­‐intellectualism is on the rise, having these analyses visible and present in our society is incredibly important. Because it makes people think? Yes. It reminds people we are more than just consumers of the Batman brand. That’s why I’ve never come across a theoretical framework that I’ve found more appealing and convincing than the Marxist one, which states that theory should not just about understanding the world better, but also about changing the world for the better. That should be the function of intellectuals. You’re trying to make the world a better place. You’re trying to make people think and act in ways that are better for themselves and each other. You have stated that there is not much to discover in high culture, using Joyce’s Ulysses as an example, and that looking at popular culture is more interesting. Explain. I don’t want to be dismissive of great literature. I’m giving a series of lectures on David Foster Wallace later this fall and I think if anything is elitist literature then it’s probably an author like him. I think a similar thing goes for Chris Ware. It’s not the most accessible type of text. It requires a serious literary investment on the part of the reader. It’s just that I have personally been fascinated by questions of what popular entertainment is and what makes specific things popular. And I come to this from a position of a fan or critical enthusiast. I find that in teaching and talking with students, the one framework that you can share and which they can relate to is that of popular culture. If you’re teaching Plato, it’s easier to talk about The Matrix than to bring in examples from high literature. Popular culture provides a shared reference in the way that literature or the novel did a hundred years ago. You were nominated for UvA Lecturer of the Year in 2008 and have talked of lectures needing to be accessible and fun. How do you achieve this/what tools do you use to achieve this? There’s only thing that works no matter what the context, and it’s personal investment and enthusiasm. Whatever your field and whatever your background, it’s all about being passionate and devoted to communicating something. It’s not the pop culture. It’s the enthusiasm.