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The Cinematic Superhero
as Social Practice
Joseph Zornado · Sara Reilly
The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice
Joseph Zornado · Sara Reilly
The Cinematic
Superhero as Social
Practice
Joseph Zornado Sara Reilly
Department of English Rhode Island College
Rhode Island College Providence, RI, USA
Providence, RI, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-85457-7 ISBN 978-3-030-85458-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85458-4
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Preface
This book began of humble origins with grandiose ambitions: is it possible

to apply critical theory as a way of understanding both how and why
certain genres of popular entertainment are, in fact, popular? By “popu-
lar” we mean (in this case) movies that launch consumer brands, media
empires, and so further enrich shareholders and investors. Could such a
financial scheme ever lead to “innocent fun”? Are superhero films “just
entertainment”? Are we to accept that, against all odds, corporate capi-
talism has produced fantasy as “escapism” as a kind of public service
for the stressed-out consumer? Working against popular misconceptions
about the “innocence” of popular entertainment, especially movies that
appeal to the “child within,” we approached the question of “innocence”
by dismissing it entirely as a useful logical premise. Of course, such a posi-
tion also dismisses all metaphysics, romanticisms, and nostalgia as barriers
to critical thought.
We began this project as an outgrowth of a previous project on Disney
and desire, Disney and the Dialectic of Desire: Fantasy as Social Practice.
There was simply too much to say about the superhero, and we believed
it deserved the treatment we have given the topic here. The question of
how cinematic superhero fantasy functions as social practice is one that
took us into some of the most basic questions of language acquisition
and identify formation. What we maintain about superhero fantasy will
hopefully upset you as much as it has us. The point of our study is to
submit fantasy to critical scrutiny, an attempt that some might consider
v
vi PREFACE
churlish at best. What follows applies an idea of fantasy as a psychoanalytic

drama of the individual subject’s desire. There is no discourse with the
Symbolic order of language and social practice to mediate communicative
acts. As such, the Symbolic order is the inescapable source material for
all personal identity, the gauntlet we all must traverse. For this reason,
among others, we believe understanding the cinematic superhero fantasy
as social practice is a way of understanding and resisting a popular culture
designed to turn children into consumer subjects.
Providence, USA Joseph Zornado

Sara Reilly
Contents
1 Introduction: A Plague of Superheroes 1

2 The Superhero with a Thousand Faces 29
3 Fantasy and the Working-Class Superhero 55
4 Fantasies of the Anthropocene 83
5 The Cinematic Superhero as Other 121
6 Superhero Fantasy in Crisis 155
7 Conclusion: Destroy All Monsters! 191
Index 211
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: A Plague of Superheroes
Understanding Superhero Fantasy

The superhero first became “cinematic” back in 1936 with the Flash
Gordon film serials. Over forty years later, the first full-length superhero
feature film, Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) fused source mate-
rial and the film medium to establish any number of precedents that
helped to establish the metaphoric and metonymic associations of the
cinematic superhero for the next forty years.1 In 2008, the cinematic
superhero underwent another transformation when Marvel committed to
the concept of a multi-film, multi-character, multi-storyline “cinematic
universe” that would connect twenty-three films over twelve years and
beyond into streaming media and television. The cinematic universe was
“the most important trend in the movie business,” allowing storylines
and characters to weave in and out of two or three movies per year (Fritz
2018, xx). The possibilities for multiple franchises within a single franchise
proved to be lucrative for all involved.
We are, it seems, in a “ new golden age for superheroes” at a time
when most consider the “original” superhero medium to be dead—or
worse, a niche market (Brown 2017, 2).2 Between 2000 and 2015, at
least one superhero film has been listed yearly in the top ten grossing
films, two or more superhero films constituted the top ten seven times,
and five superhero films came out on top (Brown 2017, 2).3 Between
2015 and 2019, eighteen more superhero films have been named the top
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
J. Zornado and S. Reilly, The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85458-4_1
2 J. ZORNADO AND S. REILLY
ten grossing films worldwide.4 In all of those years, at least one superhero
film appeared in the top ten worldwide for gross earnings; in 2018, a
staggering 60% of top grossing films were iterations of superhero fantasy,
most of which came from one studio, Marvel—owned by Disney since
2009 (The Numbers n.d.). It bears noting that if a corporation could have
a monopoly on discourse, especially entertainment for children, Disney
would be that corporation.
Despite a historic presence, critical scholarship has only recently begun
to take the cinematic superhero phenomenon seriously. Understanding
the cinematic superhero as a media phenomenon is a problem precisely
because it seems at first glance to be entirely unnecessary. Serious crit-
ical analysis belongs to things more deserving, or so the thinking goes.
Wheeler Winston Dixon and Richard Graham (2017) explain “though
comic book movies [largely dominated by superheroes] are now seen as
mainstream entertainment, they were once designed specifically for chil-
dren, and usually formatted as ‘serials’ which played out on successive
Saturday mornings at movie theater matinees, for a largely juvenile audi-
ence” (1). Much superhero scholarship represents intra-narrative analysis
of plot-points, what might have been, and lack critical engagement. Some
critics (and most fans) eschew political or ideological readings of super-
hero fantasy, maintaining instead that the genre is nothing more or less
than “escapist” consolation or “kids’ stuff.” Any ideological analysis,
however, begins with the premise that there is no innocent media. The
premise of this study is that there is no place more vital to analyze than
mass media that most assume to be innocent, as if it came into being
as a public service offered as a spectacle to distract from the otherwise
worrisome material conditions of reality (Holdier 2018). It should be
noted that the uncertainty of contemporary society, especially since 9/11,
correlates neatly with the rise of the cinematic superhero—and espe-
cially Marvel’s dominance of the genre. Such correlation invites critical
attention.
This is not to say that there is a dearth of superhero scholarship;
however, some critics might claim that superhero studies is still emerging
out of the shadow of comics studies, which is itself a relatively new field.
Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester (2013) were among the
first to collect superhero criticism from across the decades. The Super-
hero Reader provided a historical overview of the superhero, theoretical
approaches, and cultural criticism from a number of scholars and legiti-
matized superhero studies as its own separate field. Collections of more
1 INTRODUCTION: A PLAGUE OF SUPERHEROES 3
recent criticism exist such as The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero

(Ndalianis 2010), Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and
the Canon of Superhero Literature (Romagnoli and Pagnucci 2013), and
Batman: The Definitive History of the Dark Knight in Comics, Film, and
Beyond (Farago et al. 2019). At the time of this writing, there is no
dedicated journal publication strictly to superhero studies. Much of super-
hero criticism lives online, published on e-journals, academic blogs, and
other kinds of webpages. Those scholars who have analyzed the super-
hero approached the topic from religious and mythology studies (e.g.,
Reynolds 1994; Lawrence and Jewett 2002; Oropeza 2005), as a form
of political statement or informed by political events of the day (e.g.,
Kavadlo 2015; Fawaz 2016; Chambliss, Svitavsky and Fandino 2018),
exploring the psychology of the superhero (e.g., Fingeroth 2004; Rosen-
berg and Canzoneri 2008; Rosenberg 2013; Langley 2012), along with
critiques and analysis from gender and women’s studies scholars (e.g.,
Gray and Kaklamanidou 2011; Cocca 2016). More recently, media studies
has considered the superhero a “transmedia figure” because of its appear-
ance across multiple media platforms in various formal iterations (e.g.,
Flanagan, McKenny, and Livingstone 2017; Yockey 2017).
The comic book source material for the cinematic superhero reveals
how fluidity and change informed the comic book canon across the so-
called Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern comic book eras. With each
new demographic came a new version of the comic book character. Old
characters died; dead characters returned. Comic books played fast and
loose with their own narrative canon.5 Perhaps as a result of this fluidity,
comic book narratives adapted to the cultural and historical moment and
more immediately represented the world of their readers in the pages of
the comic, but not without some symbolic commentary about it.
Critical attention to the impact of superheroes on culture is not a new
avenue of inquiry. Early on in the history of comics, the comic book hero
represented a distinct threat to the minds of the young, and Congress
wanted an investigation. Meanwhile, Frederic Wertham published his
Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. While Wertham might be misunder-
stood as a teetotaling moralist, his concerns remain prescient. What, he
wondered, are the effects of consuming images of violence, for example?
And further, what did it mean that advertisements in the comic books
invited boys to buy toy guns, air rifles, knives, and other weapons of war?
Rather than a subversive message, the comic book seemed to indoctrinate
boys into patriarchy, complete with an adoration of power along with
a gun fetish. Wertham (1954) worried that comic books, and television
shows turned teenagers into juvenile delinquents. When parent groups
and Congress entered into the fray, the result was the Comics Code
Authority, a voluntary commission made up of comics creators that insti-
tuted a code that would ban certain content from their pages. Wertham
was not wrong to wonder about comic book content and what it meant
to a generation of boys raised by mass media in the service of free markets.
What concerns us in this study is not the source material or the transi-
tion of the superhero from page to screen, but rather the superhero story
itself as it is produced for and consumed by a mass audience over the past
two generations. While some viewers, critics, and scholars have studied
the issue of fidelity in the transition from comic to film, adaptation theo-
rists like Linda Hutcheon and Robert Stam have dismissed the notion of
fidelity in comparison studies. Stam (2000) reminds us “the literary text
is not a closed, but an open structure... to be reworked by a boundless
context. The text feeds on and is fed into an infinitely permutating inter-
text, which is seen through ever-shifting grids of interpretation” (57).
Instead of fidelity criticism, Stam encourages a dialogic approach to adap-
tations. He writes, “Every text forms an intersection of textual surfaces.
All texts are tissues of anonymous formulae, conscious and unconscious
quotations, and conflations and inversions of other texts” (64). Simply
put, everything is a remake of something else and so the director, as
Graeme Turner (2006) describes it, is “a bricoleur,” the filmmaker who
“uses the representational conventions and repertoires available within
the culture in order to make something fresh but familiar, new but
generic, individual but representative” (179). In this way, Turner explains,
ideologies from the past are repurposed and represented in the present
oftentimes unconsciously. Stam (2000) points out that “film adaptations...
are caught up in the ongoing whirl of intertextual reference and transfor-
mation, of texts generating other texts in an endless process of recycling,
transition, and transmutation, with no clear point of origin” (66). Each
iteration of a story carries with it the cultural, ideological, and psycholog-
ical content from its past lives. Some of that legacy appears deliberately
in new iterations, and some it appears unconsciously in the way a narra-
tive implodes around the narrative’s fundamental conflict between the
conscious and unconscious narratives.
Particularly since 9/11, critical scholarship has begun to recognize the
superhero as a significant cultural event that bears scrutiny. In A Brief
History of Comic Book Movies, Dixon and Graham (2017) offer a thor-
ough origin story for the cinematic superhero and establish a through-line
from the latest iteration of Marvel or DC superheroes to their earliest
antecedents found in Gilgamesh to ancient Greek mythology and the
Bible. All of this and more has been repurposed and transposed to fit
the times. The explaining stories of mythology and religion today come
wrapped in comic books adapted into cinematic spectacle.
In her introduction to The Psychology of Superheroes: An Unauthorized
Exploration, Dr. Robin S. Rosenberg (2008) explains that the allure of
superhero fantasy is not merely a call for action-packed escapism, so preva-
lent in the source material, but rather as symbolizations of moral ideals
so much so that superheroes serve as models of moral behavior. Super-
hero fantasy is a “teaching machine” as Henry Giroux might describe it.
The audience, Rosenberg (2008) notes, takes it all in as by a process she
calls observational learning. Observing others allows us to learn some-
thing which we can then apply to ourselves (2). She explains that when
audience surrenders to the cinematic superhero fantasy, they explore
different ethical and authoritative perspectives via identification with
idealized objects. Rosenberg is describing in her own way what Laca-
nian psychoanalysis describes as, in part, the “mirror stage” of human
development.
Rosenberg extended Danny Fingeroth’s approach, though perhaps
Fingeroth’s Superman on the Couch more effectively addressed super-
heroes as psychoanalytic phenomenon as well as “mere” entertainment.
Fingeroth posits that superhero fantasy represents back to the audience
the normative values and desires the subject already identified with as
“real” and “perfectly normal.” Through identification with the superhero
ideal, the subject engages in their own desire to be more than they are
and superhero fantasy provides a site of projection and identification on
the screen. Fingeroth (2004) defines a hero as “someone who rises above
his or her fears and limitations to achieve something extraordinary” and
who embodies “what we believe is best in ourselves” (14). Fingeroth
posits that the audience identifies with the superhero ideal precisely in
proportion to the sense of lack or incoherence they feel in their own
lives. Fantasy at its most fundamental provides an ordering narrative that
brings order to chaos, meaning to meaninglessness. The hero is the ideal,
and the superhero is the ideal on steroids—which the subject desires as a
way of disavowing the lack that defines the human condition. Because of
this lack “we simultaneously admire and despise these people” (14–15).
Like Fingeroth, our interest in this study in part is to inquire about our
identifications. Has fantasy become an “abnegation of our responsibility
to confront the problems we face individually and collectively?” (20–21).
According to Fingeroth and other experts, fantasy exists to help “deal
metaphorically with our dreams and hopes, our fears and anxieties” (44).
What do we have to be anxious about if not everything? In response
to the globalized anxiety that dominates our age, the cinematic superhero
genre has become, as DeWitt Kilgore (2017) describes it, a “cinema of
consolation.” As fantasy, the cinematic superhero genre provides its audi-
ences with versions of the contemporary world characterized by terror and
perpetual war into undergirded by an all-important fantasy element (that
Thor exists, Superman exists, Spiderman exists, and so on) contextualized
in a cinematic world in which the invading alien Other is beyond human
sympathy and must be annihilated. A fractured humanity finds a common
salvation in the great conflict against the Other, and the besieged world,
though near collapse, is somehow saved and made great again. All of this,
Kilgore posits, is in response to 9/11 and a culture of endless war.
Can there be any doubt that the cinematic superhero narrative bears
the imprimatur of the times from which it comes? According to Terence
McSweeney (2018), the answer is obvious: Iron Man’s origin story
depends upon a world at war after 9/11, Thor and The Incredible Hulk
represent post-9/11 allegories, and Captain America’s representation
of moral certainty depends on the nihilism of the present age seeking
restoration from an idealized, morally certain time past. This pattern,
McSweeney observes, continues in The Avengers , released in 2012, which
is very much another narrative informed by contemporary military conflict
and even symbolizes quite explicitly the pivotal alien attack on New York
City as a reference to 9/11. The Battle of New York itself might be
regarded as an example of what Richard Corliss (2009) has called “dis-
aster porn,” a term he originally used to describe the Roland Emmerich
disaster film 2012 (2009) and the tendency of large-scale Hollywood films
of the era to present spectacularly orchestrated scenes of destruction and
devastation which audiences are invited to both marvel at and revel in.
These visual and aural signifiers, McSweeney (2018) argues, exist within
many post-9/11 American blockbuster films and are a central signifier in
the world of Marvel superhero narrative.
Increasingly, the field of superhero studies recognizes the cultural
impact of superheroes, but this study considers superhero fantasy signif-
icant as a social practice, itself significant because social practice always
embodies ideology. In this way, the social practice of superhero fantasy

is reinforced by the superhero fantasy narrative that informs the semi-
otic content of the viewing experience. In other words, and in the most
reductive way possible, the point here is that the subject learns to be a
consumer by engaging in social practices that rehearse “consuming” as
an act, an act that involves consuming narratives that implicitly justify
consuming as the normative reality of the ideological status quo, none
of which the subject need trouble about. Consider the consumption of
the cinematic superhero: In 2019, Avengers: Endgame sold over $858
million in movie tickets in the United States (The Numbers n.d.). This
amounts to approximately 93 million tickets or about a third of the entire
population at the time (McClintock 2019). Many millions more streamed
the film online or purchased a copy to complete their Marvel’s Avengers
boxed set. Others borrowed a copy from a friend, illegally downloaded it
off the internet, and so on. Long form transmedia entertainment is the
new normal, with superhero fantasy narrative as the ideological staple.
That our social order requires a kind of hysterical commitment to an
overarching fantasy speaks to the rise of the cinematic superhero as well
as the latter-day fantasy in the form of conspiracy theories. Fantasy is as
old as thinking and as a social practice, and “its association with imag-
ination and with desire has made it an area difficult to articulate or to
define” (Jackson 1988, 1). In A Short History of Fantasy, Mendlesohn
and James (2012) attempt to offer a schematic of fantasy and do an
admirable job of defining it as literature and art and “the presence of the
impossible and the unexplainable” that they then locate in literature from
earlier historical periods down into fairy tale, myth, legend and saga (3).
Superhero fantasy and fantasy are coeval and spring from the same source.
Mendlesohn and James (2012) note that fantasy, the sort they identify
in the literary tradition, has been relatively neglected by so-called serious
scholars, even as publishers and booksellers—along with loyal audiences—
have codified popular forms of fantasy in spite of literary critics’ dismissive
attitude toward it by virtue of its association with children and childhood,
and as such, unworthy of serious study. Hollywood’s legacy directors have
recently come out against the superhero film genre in much the same
way, dismissing it as “not cinema.” To film makers like Martin Scorsese
(2019), superhero films have dumbed-down the industry, dumbed-down
the audience, and killed the pallet for more sophisticated films.
Those who defend literary fantasy maintain that fantasy offers access
to insights into the human condition more effectively than any realism
could possibly achieve. Ursula LeGuin (2014) calls writers of fantasy

“the realists of a larger reality,” while its detractors dismiss it as juvenile
and unworthy. Yet, if fantasy is coeval with literature itself, as LeGuin
contends, then perhaps the dismissal of fantasy by “serious” scholars
should be understood as an attempt to repress that which stands for the
essentially fantastical nature of reality. Fantasy is the scapegoat by which
defenders of realism deny and disavow an anxiety of influence and fear of
recognition.
More than simply a literary genre, fantasy is also understood from
a psychoanalytic lens as a mental phenomenon of the conscious and
unconscious mind. This type of fantasy is often signaled by an alterna-
tive spelling, “phantasy,” adopted by English translators of Freud (Isaacs
1948, 97). Phantasy as “unconscious fantasy,” differentiated conscious
fantasies of daydreams or play time represents a fundamental aspect of the
psyche for it serves as the mind’s defensive structure to protect itself from
perceived threats (Klein 1975). As the (child-)subject habitually interacts
with reality through the protective screen of phantasy, the perception of
reality is always-already filtered through the Symbolic obscuring its own
trauma. Thus, the mental phenomenon of phantasy creates a narrative of
fantasy, both functioning as screening fiction to protect from the psychic
trauma of existence.
Like a dream, narrative fantasy organizes the mind’s experience into
a network of formal signifying elements structured as relationships of
cause and effect within a larger symbolic network of language and cultural
discourse. Understood as a “screening fiction,” fantasy “conceals some-
thing quite primary, something determinate” both for the author and for
the reader who identifies with the author’s fantasy (Evans 1996, 60). For
Lacan, fantasy is a defense against castration and a “way of defending
oneself... against the lack in the Other” (60), that is, against the realiza-
tion in the subject that the Other itself is castrated, incomplete, unable to
serve the role it demands to serve as authority, Law, and exemplar for life
and behavior. Fantasy defends against the individual ego-subject’s recog-
nition that the Other cannot satisfy the subject’s desire (60). According
to Lacan (2006), “any temptation to reduce fantasy to imagination, that
doesn’t admit to its failure, is a permanent misconception” (532). Fantasy
must be understood as a function of the Symbolic, and as such, part of
the structure of language as a function of the unconscious.
We live in a world plagued by fantasies, Žižek (2011) argues, and
we are kept in a constant “state of collective fetishistic disavowal” more
so than ever thanks to social media as a transmedia phenomenon and

a place to repurpose and represent fantasy content as memes on social
media platforms that allow for users to interact with the cinematic film
fantasy (x). For example, Fingeroth’s observation that the subject’s iden-
tification with the superhero ideal is a complicated dialectic that loves
and despises in various measures. The subject’s fantasies are not her own,
for though they emerge from the subject’s Imaginary, the Imaginary has
already been programed by the Symbolic order, that world of language
and social practice that exists long before the subject is born into the
world. Individuals are interpellated by their primary environments as part
of language acquisition and the experience of social practices enacted
around them and with them. We learn what we live, in other words, and
as such ideology interpellates the child-subject without exception. For this
study, however, critical agency refers to the cognitive ability to surface and
analyze ideological content hidden in plain sight, and largely invisible to
children.
Superhero Film Fantasy, the Subject, and Ideology

The loss of reflective—and critical—analysis of fantasy stories has a cost: it
allows us to avoid an encounter with, as Žižek describes it, the traumatic
kernel at the heart of the subject’s identity. In their critique of popular
culture, Horkheimer and Adorno (1993) lament that mass culture is
derivative and there are no surprises; they claim, “as soon as the film
begins, it is quite clear how it will end, and who will be rewarded,
punished, or forgotten” (125). One might reply, but that is how stories
work. Vladimir Propp’s taxonomy of Russian fairy tales is a classic example
of how all stories can be thought of as various iterations of a limited
number of patterns, devices, and outcomes. For Joseph Campbell, one
such pattern informed ancient mythology as well as popular religion:
the Hero’s Journey, that is, the journey of the hero who must grow,
fail, then recover and ascend in order to transcend through self-sacrifice.
Horkheimer and Adorno (1993) worry that in an age of reproduction,
formula and predictability “replaces the work” (126), “the work” in ques-
tion being the work of reflective thought. In “The Myth of Superman”
Umberto Eco (1972) approaches the same question and warns against
“growing accustomed” so surrendering to the master’s hail. He calls it
“paternalistic pedagogy” for it positions the superhero narrative as a thing
sourced from the big Other, Lacan’s Symbolic Order, and so grounds the
Law of the Father as the primary link between the subject’s desire and
social practice (19).
In film fantasy, we represent to ourselves an imaginary relationship to
the actual conditions of material reality. Our imaginary reality, on the
other hand, is often at odds with material reality precisely because our
imaginary reality is constructed for us by ideological apparatuses in aid
of capital. “We engage,” Hutcheon (2012) writes, “within a particular
society.... The contexts of creation and reception are material, public, and
economic as much as they are cultural, personal, and aesthetic” (28). The
importance of an ideological reading of even the most “innocent” of film
genres requires a psychoanalytic approach to ideology precisely because,
as Dudley Andrew (1984) writes, “consciousness is not open to the world,
but filters the world according to the shape of its ideology... no filmmaker
and no film... responds immediately to reality itself or to its own inner
vision... We need to study films themselves as acts of discourse” (28–
37). This study is an attempt to do precisely that: to study the cinematic
superhero films as an act of discourse.
Film is in a unique position to both create and reinforce ego devel-
opment while simultaneously indoctrinating the individual as a subject.
This is because the film screen acts as a mirror and the act of watching
a film Christian Metz explained is to revisit and rehearse the develop-
mental drama of the Lacanian “mirror stage.” “The imaginary of the
cinema presupposes the symbolic,” Metz (1982) explains, “for the spec-
tator must first of all have known the primordial mirror. But as the latter
instituted the ego very largely in the imaginary, the second mirror of the
screen, a symbolic apparatus, itself in turn depends on reflection and lack”
(57). In this sense then film is an (ideological) apparatus of the Symbolic
order—of image and language, and narrative, all of which comes to the
subject in the form of simple social practice. In this way we can proffer
an initial thesis that it is possible to discover what a culture believes about
itself, what it suffers over, what it desires, and what it desperately wants
to approach by sorting out what the fantasy narrative explicitly disavows.6
In this study, we approach the cinematic superhero as a cultural
phenomenon in its own right, deserving of analysis and interpretation
separate from the various iterations of the comic book source material. In
The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno (1993) argue
that the culture industry as they witnessed it was already in the service
of appealing to the individual subject’s desire by offering in exchange for
distraction, fetish objects meant to appeal to the ego’s desire to acquire
ego ideals (as objects) in order to complete the ideal ego (as state of
being). The impossibility of the former leading to the latter has made no
difference to the addictive quality of consumerism. In fact, Horkheimer
and Adorno claim that popular culture made the masses stupid and
perhaps this may not be all together inaccurate. By way of contrast, they
claim that desire can be shaped towards more “authentic” human needs,
including individual freedom which Marcuse and others believed would
lead to original creativity and much greater life satisfaction.
Of all the proffered outcomes of superhero fantasy—if read from a
Lacanian understanding of fantasy—is that desire can be satisfied, one’s
thirst can be quenched, the objet petite a grasped, Freud’s das Ding can
be found, and with this power in hand one might snap one’s fingers and
the status quo restored. Ideologically the fantasy of acquisition as the way
to wealth and power represents a classic “bait and switch.” The subject-
viewer comes into the cinematic superhero narrative desiring escape to an
imaginary world where power, justice, and relevance all work together
for the good; or perhaps to overcome alienation from the Symbolic,
or emotional solace in the face of alienation, or even simple distraction
from anxiety, but by the end cinematic superhero fantasy interpellates the
subject into a conservative world of reactionary politics grounded in a
nostalgia for an imaginary past. In restorative superhero fantasy, the solu-
tion to anxiety and uncertainty is the restoration of the conditions that
produced them in the first place. In this sense superhero fantasy—like
so much popular film—is essentially conservative in spite of any explicit
progressive political statements a story might make. The regressive nature
of superhero fantasy-as-ideology interpellates the individual as a subject
who, as part of the deal, agrees to be subjected to the big Other. In
return, fantasy in various iterations offers the subject brief respites from
uncertainty and anxiety even as it hijacks the subject’s desire and steers it
towards the needs of Capital. But what are the needs of Capital? Or, in
other words, what does the cinematic superhero want from me?
According to Althusser’s fundamentally sound definition, ideology
informs the imaginary relationship of the subject’s relation to the material
conditions. In other words, a material environment exists, and ideology
tells me who I am and how I should interact with my environment. Laca-
nian psychoanalysis helps to explain the process by which the Imaginary
part of the subject’s developing identity is colonized by the Symbolic
order. With the symbols, language, relations of power, and myriad
unconscious assumptions about reality the subject absorbs from their
developmental environments, ideology is the unconscious holding the

patterns together. While such a definition may sound suffocating and
overly deterministic for the subject, in his early career Lacan could see
no hope for agency or free will. Everything was determined by the social
order. Later, however, Lacan acknowledged the possibility for the “sur-
plus” part of the subject, that part of the human mind that cannot be
domesticated. Unless one accepts the possibility of a surplus subject, the
subversion of the Symbolic remains an impossibility, and further, given
such a deterministic, functionalist description of the subject as a consti-
tuted product of culture, ideology, and social practice, what possibility
remains for freedom or agency?
For Lacan, the ego was a thing in flux, driven by desire to set out
on the impossible task of building itself into an ideal according to the
ideals presented it to it by the world all around. If ideology interpellates
the individual into a subject in “mirror stage” developmental moments,
there seems to offer no way out of the prison house of language. Such a
subjugation is unavoidable because individuals develop from birth in and
through language, and when we learn language, we learn the language
of our masters. Kafka’s The Trial is one of the greatest representations of
the subject’s dilemma. In the latter part of his career Lacan conceded the
likely possibility that the subject, while largely a creature of the Symbolic
order, nevertheless retained something in excess, something beyond the
symbolizable, elusive yet hidden in plain sight. Understanding the way
in which an individual’s symptoms represent an exercise of the uncon-
scious and revealing the subject’s symptom as a symptom of an inner
conflict that, as such, was to accepted for it provided the connection
among the subject’s psychic registers, turns symptoms into sinthomes —
in the end it was elusive and unanalyzable. When the subject discovers
the source of their impasse is a refusal to integrate the meaning of their
symptom and recognizes the need to identify with it, the end of anal-
ysis is in sight. Agency, then, is possible. Such a belief justifies the critical
process behind all analysis and interpretation. If, however, we exist in a
solipsistic cognitive universe—a funhouse of mirrors, as it were, where all
we see are distortions and misrecognitions—than all of this is for naught.
Understanding fantasy offers a way for the subject to traverse the symbolic
superhero fantasy and come out the other side.
Like a mythology or religion, narrative fantasy organizes experience
and memory into a network of formal signifying structures that are then
prescribed meaning. Whatever their differences, mythology, religion, and
narrative fantasy inform the imaginary relationship the subject has to

material conditions. The history of mythology and religion suggest reli-
gion is fossilized ideology, once a fantasy, then an enshrined symbolic
code. The rise of the Mormon religion in nineteenth-century America
is a more recent example that proves the rule. The fantasy defines the
subject and explains the relationship subjects have to one another within
the larger symbolic network of language and cultural discourse. For Laca-
nianism, at its core the impulse towards fantasy is a defense against
castration and “the lack in the Other” (Evans 1996, 60). Consider
Superman as a symbolized fantasy of the big Other. If Superman himself is
defined by “lack,” then his awesome strength is just a defense against his
actual castrated status. Perhaps this explains why the cinematic Superman
narrative always must take the titular character on a journey in which he
discovers his awesome power only to then discover is radical vulnerability,
and that his Achille’s heel is that he has one. The fantasy of Superman
is that the castrated signifier can be overcome by heroics of violence and
love. In other words, fantasy defends against the ego’s recognition that
the Other cannot satisfy the ego’s desire (Evans, 1996, 60).
Lacan formalized fantasy on his graph of desire as an algebraic
matheme: S ♦ a. The “barred S” (S) stands for the divided subject
barred from itself because the signifying system constitutes the subject
as a divided, alienated structure. Alienation defines the human condition.
Fantasy serves as symbolic bridge across the primordial divided self. Like a
subject’s sinthome, to understand fantasy as social practice is to understand
fantasy-as-ideology expressed in story, all working to “hold together” the
divided, alienated self that has no central structure, but rather, might be
understood as a void, an absence. This “holding together” is essential, if
unconscious, because, according to Žižek, the gap between the S and S—
that is, the gap between the barred subject and the symbolic feature which
represents him—represents a primordial existential crisis for the subject,
one that must be resisted at all costs it the ego is to function properly.
For Žižek (2008),
there is no connection whatsoever between the (phantasmic) real of the

subject and his symbolic identity: the two are thoroughly incommensu-
rable. Fantasy thus offers the subject a multitude of “subject positions”
among which the subject is free to float, to shift his identification from
one to another... with the proviso that these subject positions are to be
strictly distinguished from the void that is the subject. (7)
The second symbol in Lacan’s grapheme (♦) stands for “the objet petit
a.” The objet petit a metonymically represents das Ding, the lost object—
e.g., the breast, the feces, the gaze, the voice of the m(Other)—which
is an imaginary substitution for something primordial, lost at birth. The
experience of loss remains as an unconscious trace, not a memory as such,
but as the primordial trauma of separation that (dis)connects the body
from the Real like a ripened plum; it is born of the tree but once it ripens
and falls, it is permanently separated. Fantasy restores the fallen plum to
the tree. For Lacan, the objet á is the both the cause and the object of
desire. As such, the objet á exists always in retrospect, taking on distinctly
nostalgic forms and functions.
At this point the following proposition emerges: fantasy disavows. Like
religion, it serves to reassure that we too are heroes of our own journey,
and that things make sense. Anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism,
and grandiose narcissism abound in fantasy. A teleological metaphysical
universe exists as the backdrop against which cosmic dramas play out in
Manichean form. The gods have an interest in humanity and are not so far
away as all that. In fact, some of us may even be transmuted into gods if
we spend billions of dollars to do it. From the start, cinematic superhero
fantasy establishes that the status quo is profoundly disturbed and is in
desperate need of saving.
The threat to the setting is the Subject’s conflict with itself and that
it might cease to exist at any moment. Following Lacan, the Subject’s
anxiety is unconsciously aware of its alienated, castrated status but cannot
bare to face it. This denial, or disavowal, emerges as symptomatic behavior
that takes on symbolic meaning. The symbols of the Subject’s conflict
with their alienated status emerge as a conflict between superhero and the
villain, the terrible “other” who threatens the Subject’s alienated, frag-
mented sense of self with annihilation, or worse, castration. The fantasy
solves the Subject’s conflict by narrativizing disavowal . Everything can
be resisted, battled against, represented in superhero fantasy as hysterical
violence against the evil “other” (who is always a version of the repressed
subject’s ideations of its “true” self). Once the superhero vanquishes the
“other,” the big Other is sustained and the Symbolic order that from the
beginning is the true source of the subject’s suffering is instead “saved”
by the superhero’s efforts and as such accomplishes the restoration of the
ideological status quo.
When we consider superheroes as symbols of fetishistic disavowal in

the service of ideology, the symbolic between superheroes and nation-
alism (working as neoliberal capitalism) becomes obvious. Worse, fantasy
threatens to intrude on the political life of a society in ways that further
obfuscate ideology’s function as informing an imaginary relationship
(informed by the Symbolic order) which defines the subject’s relationship
to the actual material conditions of existence. The rise in popularity of
conspiracy theory walks hand in hand with fantasy. It should be noted that
a correlation exists between the rise of fascism in American and European
societies and the explosion of cinematic superhero fantasy since 9/11. In
Marvel, DC, and Legendary films, we discover a shared fantasy narrative
enlivened by a similar set of psychoanalytic symptoms—sinthomes —all of
which points to the cinematic superhero fantasy as a story of a culture
desperately trying to make sense out of its own decline.
The Cinematic Superhero and Nostalgia

Fantasy is both a staple of the imagination and, at the same time, a
staple to connect, as in a suture point, where the subject’s desire identifies
with the ego ideal symbolized by the Marvel cinematic superhero. Driven
by desire-as-nostalgia, desire drives for the superhero fantasy precisely as
desire expresses itself as a drive for a fetish object. It is no accident that the
Avengers films began as a toy. Lacan argues that it is impossible to know
the meaning of a signifier until after the fact, after the passing through,
of subject’s field of awareness. It is in hindsight that meaning is made.
Recall that, for Lacan, the subject’s identity is defined by misrecogni-
tion; from the “mirror stage” onward, the subject assembles an ideal ego
from the “ego ideals” in their environment. From the Symbolic discourse
that informs and defines the world as the infant enters it, the individual
emerges as a subject from informal and formal exposure to the require-
ments made on them by social practice, institutional norms, that aim to
harness an individual’s desire and point it towards their own inadequacies.
There is, it seems, an insatiable desire for the cinematic superhero, in
spite of—or perhaps because of—the predictable regularity of the stories,
plotlines, special effects, and resolutions. They are a shared mythology,
secular through and through, yet for many fans, a religion unto itself.
The question remains, why do certain stories—certain fantasies—appeal
to us more than others? And not only do we tell stories, we find the need
to retell them, reimagine them, repurpose and repackage them in evolving
media formats, over and over again and have done so for many thousands
of years. It is, in fact, remarkable how the roots of the cinematic super-
hero go deep, well past their comic book source material and find their
primal antecedents in Gilgamesh, The Bible, The Iliad and The Odyssey. In
her book, A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon (2012) argues that
adaptation is essentially a form of evolution, and that stories adapt and
evolve much like living things. We can hear a bit of Darwin when she
claims that certain stories persist because they adapt and are adaptable.
“The fittest,” she writes, “do more than survive; they flourish” (32). But
the question remains, by what measure do we conclude the fitness of a
story? Why does one flourish and another end up in the bin?
We can conclude the popularity of a cinematic superhero fantasy by
following the money. How much at the box office? How much world-
wide? How many downloads? How many rentals? And more importantly,
how many film-inspired products, especially toys, have been sold? Recall
that the original Star Wars film did not make George Lucas rich; the toys
he sold inspired by the film, however, did. But that still leaves us with
a difficult question about why certain films and film franchises “touch
a nerve” with an audience and launch an empire—careers are launched,
great fortunes are made. And here we arrive at another cinematic super-
hero axiom: with so much money at stake, taking story-telling risks and
breaking new ground is a risky proposition and one that encourages a
conservative approach to popular film productions. “If they liked that,”
in other words, “they will probably like this.”
Superhero films, complains Martin Scorsese (2019), “are made to
satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on
a finite number of themes... everything in them is officially sanctioned
because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern
film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, re-
vetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.” Scorsese’s
comments about superhero franchises are worth noting for reasons other
than he intends. He observes that, “franchise films are now your primary
choice if you want to see something on the big screen. If people are given
only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course
they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.” In a response to
Scorsese, Michael Cavna (2019) writes,
For many theater owners, the reliance on ‘worldwide audiovisual entertain-

ment’ has become a financial survival tactic more than an aesthetic choice.
. . . The reality is, the economics of the average modern moviegoer have
shifted so massively that even many Scorsese fans will simply wait for “The
Irishman” to come on Netflix after its run in theaters. What we miss in
communal experience and large-screen viewing, we gain in the wallet.
In other words, people weigh the cost of a movie ticket against their
expected rate of return on their investment generally find that the giant
superhero blockbuster with its cool effects, explosions, and continuity
from a film they already enjoyed is a better buy than a risking not enjoying
something else.
In this perhaps we see the hidden hand of the age of reproduction
dumbing things down, as Horkheimer and Adorno warned. As Ben Fritz
(2018) points outs, people “most often go to the multiplex for familiar
characters and concepts that remind them of what they already know they
like” (xv). Liam Burke (2015) points out that “the relative reliability of
a time-tested favorite, such as the adaption of a comic book, may have
seemed like a better investment than buying a ticket for an unproven
property during the economic downturn” (45). In short, Scorsese and
his colleagues are bemoaning the inevitability of change. Whatever cinema
once was, the cinematic superhero fantasy in its transmedia presentation
and global pandemics promise to continue to drive change in the enter-
tainment industry and how we consume entertainment. Because of this
inexorable market logic, the various cinematic superhero film franchises
function as semiotic reiterations of antecedent fantasy but now co-opted
by economic interests and made to serve the ideological status quo.
Meanwhile, we observe with others a correlation between the extraor-
dinary environmental crises we face (crises that, if left unchecked, put
civilization itself at risk) with the extraordinary financial success of, say, the
Marvel Cinematic Universe. That capitalism depends upon an overarching
fantasy of disavowal makes capitalism the defining element of a perverse
social system that uses fantasy entertainment—and the cinematic super-
hero—as the blunted tip of the ideological spear. In the end, superhero
films assure us that restoration is at hand.
Critical scholarship has recognized the momentum of superhero
fantasy but has struggled to articulate its ideological significance. “Each
new superhero film that breaks box office records,” Jeffrey Brown (2017)
writes, “is evidence that audiences are emphatically declaring: ‘Yes, we
still want to believe in superheroes!’” (4). Ben Saunders (2011) writes
“the superhero fantasy has become a self-reflexive allegory about the frus-
trations of human desire” that are “fantastic, speculative, and distinctly
modern expressions of a perhaps perennial human wish that things were
otherwise” (2); the genre itself is “an obvious fantasy-response to the
distressing mismatch between our expectations of the world and the way
the world actually appears to be” (3). None of this fantasizing, however,
happens in a cultural or ideological vacuum as some superhero criti-
cism suggests. It is the “logic of fantasy” to “repress, distort and mystify
the existing structural contradiction” between fantasy and material reality
(Tomšič 2015, 5). The ideological fantasy at work in nostalgia that serves
neoliberal social practice is “the idea of a permanent and unstoppable
progress with no foundations whatsoever in economic, political or logical
reality” (162).
Svetlana Boym’s work on locating nostalgia within a historical and
cultural context, and as an expression of ideological conditions, offers
a way to understand the Lacanian subject’s vulnerability to ideological
hijacking long after the original “mirror stage” event. Boym (2001)
explains that “nostalgic longing” is an expression of desire for the “loss of
the original object” (38). The “original object” for Boym refers to a kind
of primordial objet á. For her, nostalgia looks backward in “longing for a
home that no longer exists or has never existed... a sentiment of loss and
displacement... a romance with one’s own fantasy” (xiii). Later, nostalgia
“reappears as a defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of
life and historical upheavals” as a way “to revisit time like space, refusing
to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condi-
tion” (xiv–xv). The “original object” of nostalgic longing can never be
fully symbolized, but only as simulacra, objects that stand for objects that
stand for das Ding. For Lacanian desire, the subject engages in precisely
the same way with the object as both the cause, and the goal, of desire.
The cinematic superhero trades in nostalgia as the defining element of
the larger fantasy narrative. Every superhero origin story is about loss,
set in a time before that we have since lost. Before they take their place
as superheroes, superheroes lose their homes, their fathers, their mothers,
sometimes their very humanity. They are divided souls, lacking something
essential but with a surplus of some compensatory ability that must, but
can never, make up for the love, connection, and community they have
lost. Yet they soldier on. When this formula is questioned, ignored, or
upended, audiences react sometimes with hostility. Take, for example, the
character of Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi (2017). Rian Johnson’s Luke
has lost his religion and rejects the entire fantasy upon which the story
rides. Even so, the film restores Luke, and, though the film seems to offer
a meta-critique within the story, in the end, all is restored and the fantasy
rolls on. The key takeaway here is that nostalgia is a form of desire while
fantasy is a form of ideology; perhaps these terms are, in fact, synonymous.
When fantasy trades in nostalgia, which is almost always, it is a type of
nostalgia that is the most common, what Boym (2001) calls “restorative
nostalgia.” Restorative nostalgia longs for “a transhistorical reconstruction
of the lost home” (xviii). The lost home is in many ways the lost “tran-
scendental signifier,” the guardian and ground that protects the ideal.
Restorative nostalgia resolves the conflict of loss by restoring life—but
always in terms of the ideological status quo. So while dysfunction in
family, government, school, and so on may have triggered the film narra-
tive, it is precisely these social practices the film posits as the “lost past”
that needs to be returned to or restored to the main character. This ideal-
ized social structure is often located in the past, in an alternate present
that we lost but now might regain. Symbolic representations of the “lost
past” in fantasy function metonymically as ideals that offer ego ideals as
objects for the subject to identify with in desire’s search for the “ideal
ego,” that is, an ego fixed, stable, and “happy.”
Boym identifies another type of nostalgia: “ reflective nostalgia.” A
counterpoint to restorative nostalgia, reflective nostalgia “dwells on the
ambivalences of human longing and belonging” (Boym 2001, xviii), ques-
tioning rather than restoring, although elements of restoration may still be
present in the narrative. A subversive mode of desire, reflective nostalgia
attempts to leave open what restorative nostalgia would close. Reflective
nostalgia offers the opportunity for the subject-viewer to enter into a
dialectical relationship with desire via fantasy that refuses to solve the
problem of existential uncertainty. If restorative nostalgia provides closure
and fixity as a balm, then reflective nostalgia allows representations to
be open-ended and contingent. Restorative nostalgia drives conservative
ideological idealizations. Reflective nostalgia invites an encounter with
the human condition by inviting meta-cognitive analysis while restorative
nostalgia flattens cognition to two-dimensional symbolic associations that
reassure as much as they misrepresent. The dangers posed when restora-
tive fantasy becomes normative social practice in terms of media discourse
are somehow both obvious and impossible to discern. Boym (2001) warns
us that while restorative nostalgia seems to offer “the promise to rebuild
the ideal home,” such a desire “lies at the core of many powerful ideolo-
gies of today, tempting us to relinquish critical thinking for emotional
bonding” (xvi). She is talking about fascism.
The first cinematic superhero film, Superman is perhaps the genre’s
most restorative. American exceptionalism underscores Superman’s ideo-
logical appeal. His rampant heteronormative masculinity defined ideals
of the male body. He cares about cats, Lois Lane, the truth, and even
California real estate prices. By the end of the film, Superman defies his
father’s Law and goes back in time to save Lois. This sets the stage for
the sequel, Superman II (1980). By the time of Superman IV (1987),
Christopher Reeve agreed to reprise his role one more time only if the
narrative brought fantasy and history together in a potentially more reflec-
tive way. As a result, in the film, Superman helps the Russians, works
with the United Nations, and seems to work directly against the restora-
tive fantasy of the first three Superman films. Superman decides to ignore
advice from Krypton—who encourage him to leave Earth and find a more
mature species to serve!—and works to avoid nuclear war between the
Soviet Union and the United States. The film ends on an ambivalent
note because it takes into account that the world beyond the film could
destroy itself still in nuclear exchange. Superman IV reminds the audi-
ence that there is no Superman and we have to save ourselves. This might
be an example of reflective nostalgia, par excellence. Curiously, the film is
considered to be an absolute failure and is widely considered to be one of
the worst films of all time.8
The restorative narrative begun in the first cinematic superhero story
continues through contemporary examples. Consider the overarching
narrative of the first major storyline from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Thanos, the narrative’s antagonist, believes there are simply too many
consumers of finite resources in the universe. With a snap of his fingers,
he could correct all that and bring balance back to the natural order.
Thanos comes close to articulating the existential threat of our time: the
consumption of finite natural resources in an unsustainable way. There are
simply too many consumers consuming too much of too little. Thanos’s
solution, to reduce the population of the universe by half, is regressive in
that it punishes those who consume the least exactly as it punishes those
who are the worst offenders. Reflective loss defines Avengers: Infinity War
(2018), but Marvel’s twenty-three-film story arc ultimately ends with
restoration the primary goal and outcome of Avengers: Endgame (2019).
All that Thanos did had to be undone. Thanos’s concerns about the
unsustainability of current consumption patterns and the attendant issues

of pollution and environmental degradation surfaced only to be repressed
by the narrative in favor of a restorative nostalgia for the moment precisely
before Thanos erased half the population of the universe. Those were
the good old days, it seems, and we must restore the world to the way
it was at that moment at all costs. There are dozens of more examples
of similar narratives in other contemporary cinematic superhero media.
Thus, cinematic superhero fantasy is essentially a media of restorative
nostalgia, though with some exceptions.
Towards an Understanding
of the Cinematic Superhero Fantasy
In what follows, we explore the rise of the cinematic superhero by taking
on exceptional examples of the genre, along with analysis of the ways in
which ideology and desire function as fantasy and nostalgia in ways that
prove amenable to conservative, even fascistic social tendencies. Chapter
Two, “The Superhero with a Thousand Faces,” explores the roots of the
Superman fantasy and how Superman represents the primary example of
the origin and development of restorative fantasy as a function of late
twentieth century cinematic social practice. It includes a discussion of the
iterative nature of the cinematic superhero genre, the problem of adapta-
tion, and the reboot phenomenon, with close readings of DC’s Superman
films. Chapter Three, “Fantasy and the Working-Class Superhero,” takes
on Spider-Man as an alternative to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and
as such represents the potential for the cinematic superhero as a reflec-
tive, working-class hero whose fantasy ideal represents adolescence as loss.
Chapter Four, “Fantasies of the Anthropocene,” considers the superhero
film as entertainment, transmedia phenomenon, particularly in terms of
Iron Man and the rise of Marvel’s “cinematic universe” as the preemi-
nent example of restorative superhero fantasy amidst cultural breakdown
and environmental crisis. Chapter Five, “The Cinematic Superhero as
Other,” takes up Wonder Woman (2017) and Black Panther (2018) as
self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in a restorative
fantasy narrative. Chapter Six, “Superhero Fantasy in Crisis,” takes on
the superhero-as-monster in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy
along with Gojira (1954) as an example par excellence of the possibili-
ties of fantasy and the reflective narrative mode. Chapter Seven, “Destroy
All Monsters!,” concludes this study with discussions of Logan (2017),
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), and Amazon Prime’s The Boys (2019) as
various examples of reflective superhero fantasy across entertainment plat-
forms that variously challenge the ideological status quo at the heart of
the cinematic superhero as social practice.
Notes
1. Even before Superman in 1938 there were comic strip heroes like
The Phantom and turn-of-the-century pulp heroes like Buck Rogers
and Zorro. The Scarlet Pimpernel was a masked crime fighter in
1905. In truth, the superhero is an age-old archetype, as old as
human stories, a hero with a thousand faces, a protagonist with
extraordinary abilities who serves to defend, protect, and restore the
status quo.
2. Consider one of the bestselling superheroes of all time, Superman.
The character first appeared in Action Comics in 1938. Publishers
did not record sales figures at during this time, but estimates show
that the character’s solo title, appearing a year later, sold around
200,000 copies per issue. In the 1950s, the title would easily sell
over a million copies. Around the release of Richard Donner’s
Superman film in 1978, fewer than a quarter of a million issues sold
and after the release of subsequent films, comics sales dropped to
fewer than 100,000 issues. Today, selling 100,000 issues constitutes
a “best seller”; monthly sales average around 50,000 (Miller n.d.).
Not even the success of superhero films have boosted comics sales
(Burke 2015, 120).
3. The top grossers of their respective years were Spider-Man (2002),
Spider-Man 3 (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), The Avengers
(2012), and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).
4. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War
(2016), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Deadpool
(2016), Suicide Squad (2016), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017),
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Thor: Ragnarok (2017),
Wonder Woman (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Black
Panther (2018), Aquaman (2018), Venom (2018), Deadpool 2
(2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Spider-Man: Far From Home
(2019), Captain Marvel (2019), and Joker (2019).
5. “The only people who stay dead in comics are Bucky, Jason Todd,
and Uncle Ben” (Last 2007). Bucky refers to Bucky Barnes, Captain
America’s sidekick from the very start in Captain America #1

(1941). Bucky was dead in comics canon since the 1960s, but
in 2005 creator Ed Brubaker brought the character back in the
comics series Winter Solider. Jason Todd, Batman’s second side-
kick, was killed by the Joker in Batman #428 (1988) but was
resurrected the Red Hood in 2005’s Batman Under the Red Hood.
Uncle Ben, Spider-man’s uncle, died in the very first Spider-Man
story, Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962). Uncle Ben remains deceased,
but nothing necessarily prevents him from being resurrected. These
examples illustrate how even story elements that are perceived as
unchangeable can change over time.
6. Jean-Louis Baudry (1974) makes a similar case for the function
of film as ideology. He observes that when an audience member
watches a film they experience themselves as the center of percep-
tion. It is as though when watching film “everything happens as
if, the subject himself being unable—and for a reason—to account
for his own situation, it was necessary to substitute secondary
organs, grafted on to replace his own defective ones, instruments
or ideological formations capable of filling his function as subject”
(46).
7. See Chapter Four.
8. Christopher Reeve (1998), who had a strong influence on the film,
ultimately felt “the less said about Superman IV , the better” (199).
The film also appears on several critics’ lists of worst films and has
extremely low scores on film review websites like Rotten Tomatoes
(11% out of 100%) and Metacritic (24 out of 100).
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CHAPTER 2
The Superhero with a Thousand Faces
The Birth of a Notion

Today, the superhero film represents what Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Adorno (1993) warned about in their Dialectic of Enlightenment: the
comfort of predictable redundancy in a safe-space of the child’s imagi-
nation. Moral absolutes exist, the subject’s desire functions the subject-
viewer’s nostalgia-as-desire. The familiar dominates all iterations of super-
hero film franchises. While much is made to distinguish one studio from
another, the effect functions as a fantasy itself, screening the subject
from the politicized “mirror stage” process designed to take advantage
of the interpellating process of film as social practice.1 Adaptation theory
reminds us that the source material for superhero fantasy—previously
published comic books—are themselves reworkings of mythology, reli-
gion, and fantasy repackaged for children and adolescent boys, at least at
first. The ideological DNA of this original audience informs and influences
superhero fantasy today, though Marvel has monetized the representation
of diversity and gender in the comic book film assiduously, if not cynically.
Repetition, experts have argued, is what children need. Without structure,
the child develops anxiety. The impulse to provide a fiction of narrative
stability to the child’s developmental years trumps almost all concerns
with the content delivered by social structures—that is, social practices—
in the name of providing a sense of a reliable, repeatable, recognizable
“reality” that the subject does not have to dwell on or be concerned
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

Switzerland AG 2021
J. Zornado and S. Reilly, The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85458-4_2
about. Reality will play out reliably in the background while the subject’s
ego focuses on its narrow and localized drama with the fantasy construct
of “reality.” While this may sound too summative in tone, when consid-
ered in terms of children and child-rearing, no one has ever suggested the
opposite. Restorative fantasy, in other words, hails the subject’s desire-as-
nostalgia for a series of “pasts,” including their own individual past, the
national, past, the mythic past, the “good old days,” and the time when
“innocence was bliss.” The lost past was a time of wholeness, stability,
and order. It comes closest to pointing the direction before fragmenta-
tion, individuation, and dissociation, all of which come into operation
at the “mirror stage” of ego development. It is worth noting that the
subject’s longing for the Real is not a false longing for a false Real. The
Real, while unsymbolizable, informs and sustains the other psychoana-
lytic registers of the Imaginary and the Symbolic. The Real is that part
of the subject’s mind, that part of the material reality of existence in all
its contingent randomness, that cannot be commodified or reduced to
secondary codes. This uncommodifiable part of the subject is rooted in
loss, the “primordial wound” of birth and separation, and mortality. The
Real is the ultimate object that cannot be objectified yet drives desire
for the substitute-object. The symbolic codes of social practice provide a
steady supply of symbolized, substitute-objects that stand in for the Real,
that is, that stand in for a solution to the subject’s existential dilemma.
Superhero texts “invoke and rework” each other as part of
what Julia Kristeva (1980) calls “a rich and ever-evolving cultural
mosaic” (17). “The fundamental character of the mythical concept is
to be appropriated” according to Roland Barthes (1993, 119). The
language of day-to-day narrative draws upon an extant “metalanguage”
which has been “communicated across generations and cultures” (Sanders
2016). From this perspective, it is easier to recognize in Superman’s
character mythological figures like Christ, Hercules, Samson, Moses, and
other heroes from the mythic past (Saunders 2011). What is the Laca-
nian Symbolic order if not a mosaic of language, metalanguage, memes,
codes, symbols, and structure? From this, or what Graeme Turner (2006)
describes as the bricolage, filmmakers draw. Repetition, it seems, begets
repetition and so in this way mainstream filmmaking is essentially conser-
vative. This is pleasurable, according to Linda Hutcheon (2012), because
“the comfort of ritual combined with the piquancy of surprise” can be
reliably depended upon by the subject-viewer (4). The result of this
approach to adaptation, Wheeler Winston Dixon and Richard Graham
2 THE SUPERHERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES 31
(2017) write, is that the “consumer trust in the Marvel product is total.
Even virtually unknown characters can still anchor a blockbuster debut”
(43). In this way, Disney-qua-Marvel builds “trust” with its audience.
There will be no unsanctioned surprises, Marvel assures its fantasy; your
earliest fantasy attachments in superhero fantasy will be protected by our
films and, more, they will be amplified with all of the technological might
unlimited resources can muster.
In The Comic Book Film Adaptation, Liam Burke (2015) maps out
four phases of the history of the superhero film: Articulation, Classical,
Stationary, and Decline.2 Scott Bukatman (2011) captures well the situ-
ation across the first two phases of Burke’s four-phase history: “The
superhero film genre in the first decade of the twenty-first century yielded
a glut of nearly identical films featuring dumbed-down version of charac-
ters that were still appearing, to better effect, in the comics” (119). Jon
Favreau’s Iron Man (2008) marks a shift in the cinematic superhero as
much as it represents the launch of Marvel’s cinematic universe; it was,
as Fritz (2018) describes it, the “dawn of the franchise film era” (xv).
Various film studios have produced well over fifty superhero films in the
years after Iron Man. Marvel opened a golden age of superhero filmic
intertextuality. Contemporary audiences have expectations for the super-
hero film that depend less on fidelity to comic book source material and
more on self-reflexivity within the secondary world of the transmedia
superhero film fantasy (Burke 2015, 112).
All of this has to do with how ideology and fantasy function as social
practice and the significance of it for individual subjects. The subject,
according to Lacan, is defined by lack. A sense for this lack emerges as
the individual becomes a subject, that is, is drawn into language and social
practice during and after the “mirror stage” of infant development. From
that developmental moment on, the subject’s ego development is defined
by the need to compensate for its sense of lack. The objects offered by
the Symbolic order stoke the subject’s desire and, if successful, overwrite
the biological individual with the ideological (cultural) via social practice
across the child’s developmental years.
The ego-ideal always comes as a simulacrum and never das Ding, that
is, the “real thing itself.” The real thing does not exist anywhere, only
the desire for it. An unbridgeable gap defines the subject as a primordial
wound. Fantasy screens the subject from the primordial wound of alien-
ation and offers symbolic codes that promise to restore the subject to
itself, and to bliss, freedom, a perfect plenum. The Lacanian subject comes
to “know” itself only retroactively, and even then only through a process
of misrecognition suffused by languages and symbols themselves inher-
ently empty, defined by absence and difference. Yet the ego is doomed to
search for its ideal state in a wasteland. Social practice finds the subject at
odds with its desire, and then “offers itself” as a solution to the impasse.
In late capitalism, the Symbolic order functions as a predatory network,
even vampiric, in its feeding on human frailty. The developmental process
by which the child’s imaginary psychoanalytic register assembles an ego is
for sale.
Richard Reynolds’s (1994) taxonomy of superhero mythology under-
scores and opines on the repetitive nature of superhero narratives.
Reynolds identifies a common structural motif that serves as a narra-
tive foundation for fairy tale, mythology, and adolescent daydreams: the
hero is an outcast, an exile from society. He is, in effect, an alien, sepa-
rate and apart from the mask he wears; the result is one of dissociation
from himself as well as from others. The superhero’s extraordinary nature
represents in reverse the depth of the hero’s humanity. He is both a mere
mortal and as a demigod of sorts (Reynolds 1994, 16). The hero has
been born with great power, or by fate has been granted it. The funda-
mental fantasy of the hero is coeval with the fundamental fantasy of the
ego-subject’s drive to create and realize itself. Superman is a Cinderella—
they wait for their moment to reveal themselves. Harry Potter is the
Christ-hero, the martyr, another Frodo Baggins learning the selfless task
of self-abnegation. The fantasy presupposes that, contrary to the ordinary
sinner, the Christ-child is born with special birth status and comes into
the world possessing a “devotion to justice” that transcends ordinary law.
The hero hides in plain sight behind a mask, or an alter ego, their “split”
personality symbolizes the hero’s sacrifice of a “self,” and instead accepts
the gap between this and that defines him. The hero’s journey in fantasy
is of reunion and restoration and as such results in a fantasy tradition that
shapes desire into nostalgia, a backward-looking longing for the restora-
tion of the lost past. Marvel’s Iron Man updates at least one aspect of the
ur-hero model: when Tony Stark reveals that he is the “true king” behind
the iron mask, he upends the traditional expectation of ego and alter ego
in the superhero’s character. Tony Stark’s personality conflict is a public
spectacle, rewarding both the character’s and the actor’s celebration of
self-righteous narcissism. Tony Stark’s journey from selfish egotist to the
savior of universe will be discussed at length going forward as an example
par excellence of the repetitive yet adaptive nature of the superhero with
a thousand faces.
Others have made the connection between superheroes and old Holly-
wood cinema. Liam Burke (2015) and Richard Jewett and John Shelton
Lawrence (2002), among others, have traced superhero fantasy tropes
back to the Hollywood Western. The High Plains Drifter is Jedi Knight,
and both are Samurai warriors. All are on Joseph Campbell’s heroic
journey as Japanese and American cinema of the twentieth century
represented it. Christ analogies abound, as do even older mytholog-
ical referents. There is a Prometheus intent meting out his own sense
of justice even as it brings him into conflict with Zeus. Prometheus’
power lies in his will rather than in any physical or magical attributes. He
chooses to declare himself in opposition to tyranny and autocratic power.
The Promethean myth informs Marvel’s Iron Man even as it reads as a
Christian allegory of one (super)pilgrim’s progress.
According to adaptation theory, all adaptations of previous source
material are palimpsestuous; that is, they are “haunted” by the almost
bottomless layering of previous iterations as a kind of “mythic palimpsest”
(Evans 2010, 121). Meanwhile, contemporary cinematic fantasy appro-
priates, adapts, and represents what came before even as its weave in
references to current events, including war, environmental crisis, over-
population, the fear of social collapse, among others. It is the function of
ideology to answer the issues raised by the film in the opening acts with
a resolution in the last act. How the narrative resolves and answers the
issues it has raised earlier indicates one way of identifying the ideological
functions of the film’s narrative.
Because fantasy-as-ideology “structures the social reality itself”
(Žižek 2008, 27), questioning the nature of the fantasy represents impor-
tant work for the subject by way of critically engaging with social practice
in order to wrest agency from it. When social practice is largely informed
by fetishistic identification as a way of hailing the subject as a subject-
object, that is, an object of another’s gaze, made real in the gaze of the
other. To be the object-cause of the other’s desire, once achieved, signals
the end of the ego’s search for its ideal state. It has been achieved. But
such an achievement is impossible from a Lacanian perspective and is in
fact the path to self-annihilation. The drive to satisfy desire in terms of
winning the objet petite a’, that is, of utterly joining with the most desired
object would be the end of the subject’s ego and a descent into madness.
In other words, the drive to quench one’s thirst permanently can end in
only two ways: death or the desire for more water. There is nothing left
but to play the role of desiring subject according to the forms and prac-
tices dictated by culture and history as they are expressions of the power
of the state and the impositions of social practice on the subject.
Superman: Superhero with a Thousand Faces

It would be difficult to over-emphasize the importance of Superman to
superhero fantasy. He is the example that proves the rule. He comes to
earth from afar, sent to serve humanity by a loving father. He is the
son who labors on Earth as a savior. While nearly an immortal being,
he must die (or nearly die) only to be resurrected (by the power of the
sun). His life is precisely that of the self-abnegating martyr who must
remain separate and apart from humanity even as he desires to belong. To
become Superman, and his father’s son, he must kill Clark Kent’s desire
to be human. He is an avatar of Hercules, the son of Zeus and Alcmene,
his mortal mother. He labors among humanity doing great deeds and
protecting the weak, often while trying to prove himself worthy of his
father’s approval (Saunders 2011, 22).
Critics note that Superman is the invention of two Jewish teenagers
in the 1930s, and, as such, connected to Jewish culture and tradition in
figures like Samson, Moses, and the golem and in Kryptonian nomencla-
ture’s striking resemblance to Hebrew (e.g., Kal-El, Jor-El) (Zeichmann
2017). The creators of Superman, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, were
themselves Jewish, so it is likely that the myths and stories of their
youths were incorporated into Superman’s stories (Brod 2012, Zeich-
mann 2017). Yet at the same time, the close resemblance of Superman
with Christian story tropes speaks to the power of fantasy adaptation and
the ways in which ideology is palimpsestuous.
As an ideological symbol assuming a teleological universe in which
Christian American nationalism prevailed, and within which a subtle
but persistent fantasy drawing on a eugenics myth of the master race,
Superman has never been superseded. He represents “the oldest and
surely... the most hegemonic, central, quintessentially American of super-
heroes” (Evans 2010, 117). Harlan Ellison called Superman, “the 20th-
century archetype of mankind at its finest,” a specimen of “courage and
humanity, steadfastness and decency, responsibility and ethics. He is our
universal longing for perfection, for wisdom and power used in the service
of the human race” (qtd in Dooley and Engle 1988, 12). He is “a shining
example” of humanity (Tye 229). Superman stands as the ur-model for

superhero-as-objet petit a’, the object-cause of the subject’s desire. The
object’s attributes, associations (and unconscious appropriations) are the
very qualities that the individual desires—because of the Symbolic order’s
tutelage via the “mirror stage.” The object’s attributes are “ego ideals”
that attract the ego in its process of assembling the “ideal ego,” that is,
the version of itself most likely to end in the subject’s sense of wholeness
and perfect satisfaction.3
The first cinematic Superman appeared on the big screen in 1978 as
Superman. As an adaptation, it called out to the comic book source mate-
rial and the television iteration of the 1950s while adapting the titular
hero’s restorative charm and good will to a new Hollywood world capable
of producing light and magic on an industrial scale. In a post-empire
world, “truth, justice, and the American way,” while once the ideology
propelling American involvement in World War II, was never more at
odds than it was with the discord and uncertainty of the post-Nixon
presidency and the lingering aftermath of the end of the Vietnam War.
Superman’s America-centric catchphrase originated in the radio broad-
cast in 1942, and was part of the opening credit monologue for the
television series The Adventures of Superman (1952–1958), but was
finally uttered by Superman himself in Richard Donner’s 1978 film
(Lundegaard 2006). While the audience already knew it, the film re-
enforces the fantasy that going West was endemic to the “American
character.” The Monroe Doctrine, “manifest destiny,” and the ideology
of empire justified genocidal violence throughout most of American
history. Donner’s Superman pronounced that fantasy alive and well.
The film establishes the American flag as a visual motif throughout the
film. Flag iconography appears throughout the Marvel universe, from
Captain America to Spider-Man, the America-centric ideology of the
source material found a ready and willing home as popular superhero
entertainment.
The history of the cinematic superhero from 1978 maps onto a period
of political and ideological uncertainty in America. Not coincidently, as
Hollywood had begun to articulate the themes, tropes, and visual style
of the first phase of the cinematic superhero, the U.S. Congress had
been planning for the American Bicentennial as early as 1966. It would
prove to be an orgy of propaganda for “manifest destiny.” The “great big
wonderful tomorrow” was a world dominated by “truth, justice, and the
American Way.” Only a year before the bicentennial anniversary in 1976,
the country still in social and political turmoil, Gerald Ford’s lame duck
administration created the American Revolution Bicentennial Administra-
tion to encourage widespread engagement the holiday. As a function of
ideology, Ford recognized the power of fantasy as a “screening fiction.”
If not in the present, society could come together around a fantasy of
American history and from that draw out events for the bicentennial that
would engage subjects in activities informed by “a restoration of tradi-
tional values and a nostalgic and exclusive reading of the American past”
bent toward “renewal and rebirth” (Ryan 2012, 26).
The restorative nostalgia at work had been already deployed to fantastic
success by Walt Disney and the invention of the “themed” park, Disney-
land. The message of American triumphalism and the manifest destiny
of empire building by white America was embedded in the visual story-
telling throughout the park. Only recently has the Disney corporation
recognized the racist, colonialist violence inherent in these stories and has
moved to purge them from the park, notably “Splash Mountain” and
the antebellum nostalgia in the Brer Rabbit adaptation. Also, the Disney
corporation is removing racist caricatures of native people who inhabit
the “Jungle Cruise,” the jungle river cruise ride. In fact, the entire design
of the Jungle Cruise ride is colonialist, as it locates visitors on a ride into
the Amazon as tourists. The invasion has already happened, the empire
has been extended, and it is time for visitors to river cruise in their new
territory.
The patriotic optimism of Superman embodied what the troubled
nation needed (Scivally 2008, 76). By today’s dollar, the film has earned
over $500 million, placing it at 58 in the top 100 superhero films of
all time in terms of ticket sales (The Numbers n.d.). The film made
Christopher Reeve a global star and the cinematic imago of what a
superman should look like. As it turns out, it is the body-style of the
masculine narcissist with a borderline personality disorder. In the most
basic and even banal representations, patriarchal ideology offers up a
phallocentric symbol linked to both cultural ideology and the subject’s
pre-existing patters of fantasy “already at work within the individual
subject and the social formations that have moulded him” (Mulvey 1989,
57). While Lois is “castrated” and hence passive, Superman is endowed
supremely, and serves as the phallic signifier that grounds all other signi-
fying chains. He represents the fantasy of the supreme “S” that gives
stability and meaning to all other signifying chains. He is the status quo
embodied, but his embodiment is imperfect, incomplete, and defined by
loss. Even within the fantasy of Kal-El, orphaned son of Krypton, he only
stands in as a substitute of the full power of his father’s love. Kal-El can
only put to what he is not. In this way his status represents the Laca-
nian notion of the “barred self,” that is, because the “self” is a formation
of sliding signifiers, there is no such thing as a stable, knowing, know-
able “self.” The subject, in other words, is barred from itself precisely
in the same way the signifier is empty, made of difference, defined if at
all only by what it is not. All of this makes the Superman fantasy all the
more urgent for the subject already suspecting their own alienated, barred
status. Superman represents the fantasy of “whole” man, the uncastrated
Subject, and the manifested body of the Symbolic order in all its perfected
form, perfectly capable of running the world with “truth, justice,” and so
on.
The opening sequence of Superman signals a narrative commitment
to restorative nostalgia through the opening sequence of images of a
movie theatre from the 1930s, signaled visually by classically draped floor-
to-ceiling curtains that open and close in front of the “stage.” On the
screen words appear: “This is no fantasy.” It should be noted that even
before the narrative fantasy begins and the story of Superman unfolds,
the “mirror stage” has already been triggered. The audience knows, as do
the producers of the film, that the film—any Hollywood film—is precisely
fantasy, and it is fantasy that the audience has come to see, and it is what
the film purveys. The film’s explicit disavowal of its status is an acknowl-
edgment, a wink of complicity if you will that says: we will help you escape
from the misery of day-to-day existence with a fantasy “so real” that you
will believe a man can fly even after you leave the theater.4
The foundation of the Kal-El/Superman narrative is tragic: the planet
Krypton, Kal-El’s home world, is about to collapse, yet its politi-
cians have rejected Jor-El’s warnings of impending doom and choose to
do nothing. The planet begins to collapse in on itself not long after Jor-
El and Lara send their infant child to Earth. While Lara worries that her
son, “Won’t be one of them,” and that “he will be odd, different,” Jor-
El assures her that, “He will be strong... fast, virtually invulnerable”
(Superman 1978). Kal-El will be fit to carry on his father’s legacy, and
carry on his legacy he must. Jor-El’s legacy is the legacy of the Law in
all its cultural and social formations. Even before Jor-El is rebuked by his
political colleagues for again warning of Krypton’s imminent demise, we
see Jor-El in a Kryptonian court of law. He is the prosecutor. The faces
of the judges hang over head as glowing projections. Jor-El’s sentencing
of the three criminals will play out in the sequel, but, this scene under-
scores Superman’s connection to the law, and not just any law. It is a
law without mercy and without interest in, or capability for, reforma-
tion. Eternal imprisonment in a nether-dimension is the only sentence.
The reactionary judges who will later reject Jor-El’s thinking are, in this
point, in lock-step with Jor-El the prosecutor. The criminals are declared
guilty by all.
Jor-El is the ghost of Hamlet’s father, the admonition to “remember
me” is the admonition from the Symbolic order, that is, the Father whose
name you carry, and whose law defines you and guides you. Just prior
to sending his infant son across the heavens Jor-El intones to his infant
son, “You will carry me inside you, all the days of your life... You will
make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your
life will be seen through mine” (Superman 1978). Kal-El the child would
learn the lessons of his Earth world from adoptive parents living in the
American heartland. They farm corn: Martha and Jonathan Kent.
The Kents represent an ideological ideal within the America of manifest
destiny. Farmers like the Kents earn an honest living by working the land
God gave them, and as a result, they help feed their neighbors. They are a
kind and peaceful people who worship the Abrahamic God, a God who is
generally pleased with how things are going in North America. Kal-El is
proof of that. Kal-El is a gift from the Heavens. His spaceship as it moves
through space resembles a heavenly star. Martha Kent draws the associ-
ation together for the unaware when she exclaims to her husband, “All
these years how we’ve prayed and prayed that the good Lord would see
fit to give us a child” (Superman 1978).
America’s savior has some growing up still to do, and he will do so on a
farm with a mom and a dad. Television’s Smallville (2001–2011) explores
the “missing years” between Clark Kent’s adolescence and his appearance
on the scene as Superman. The cinematic superhero backstory from takes
place in visual shorthand, but the message is clear: Clark is an outcast, not
popular, and does not engage in typically male-gendered behaviors. His
weakness and unworthiness is assumed by other males in high school as
a result. It is Clark’s father, the audience learns, who lies behind Clark’s
restraint. Even as an adolescent, Clark must deny his power, hide it from
others, and pretend to be ordinary. The father ostensibly helps the boy
begin his journey of self-discovery. In the scene following Kal-El’s crash
landing, high school senior Clark struggles on the sidelines of the foot-
ball field, kept there by his stepfather who emphasizes to Clark, “You are
here for a reason... It’s not to score touchdowns” (Superman 1978). For
this, Jonathan Kent has been apotheosized in Superman fantasy, his child-
rearing of Clark unquestioned. It should be noted, however, Jonathan
Kent may very well represent the unconscious actions of all well-meaning,
but wrong, parent-figure who deepens the child’s alienation from self and
others with the imposition of their law.
The relationship between the father and son is a common trope in
superhero fantasy and represents a telling example of the way superhero
fantasy “draws upon pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work”
within the subject-viewer’s ideological frame of reference (Mulvey 1989,
57). The father, like the Symbolic order itself from which the father lives
and has his being, is a frustrating paradox. The father is all-knowing, wise,
and sees beyond the horizon even as he is mortal, imperfect, occasionally
wrong, and then dies of a heart attack, or gets gunned down on the street,
leaving the child to grow up an orphan, idealizing the father and bereft
of him at the same time. Even Odin, the “All Father” dies in the end,
leaving disorder. Jonathan Kent does not live to see his son find out his
reason for being on Earth; he dies of a heart attack. The father’s tenuous
status as both a potent and impotent must be overcome by the superhero
if the superhero is to function as an ideological point de caption.
As part of Clark’s coming of age, he brings a crystal from his space-
ship from Krypton to the Arctic, and there it becomes his “Fortress of
Solitude.” Jor-El’s ghost appears and begins to teach him his true nature.
Clark is Kal-El, a superman among men– or, in Jor-El’s words, “the light
to show them the way” (Superman 1978). Curiously, Superman fore-
grounds the latent Christian motifs that inform the Superman story in a
way the comic book source material never did. The film’s insistence on
the importance and continuity of the father’s name, his rule, his Law—
even after the father’s death and Krypton itself—is the hallmark of the
restorative nostalgia at work in the fantasy. In the end, Superman stands
for America, and his belief in “the American way” is linked to his commit-
ment to Jor-El, a father greater than us all, guiding us from beyond in the
form of his only begotten son in whom he is well-pleased.
In previous comic book iterations of Superman’s origin story, Jor-El
does not return to teach his son making the loss of the father more
complete, and Clark’s alienated status as a subject caught between two
symbolic orders all the more conflicted. Of Clark’s alienated status on
Earth, Clark loses his adoptive father, Jonathan Kent, early in Clark’s life
and is rarely seen again. The comic book establishes Clark as a child of
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Elfter Abschnitt
In der Südostecke der Kolonie
W ährend nun bei Narunju für mehrere Wochen ein Stillstand

eintrat, hatte der Feind eine regere Tätigkeit in dem von der
Abteilung Stuemer besetzten Teil des portugiesischen Gebietes
gezeigt. Gegen Mwembe waren mehrere englische Kolonnen
konzentrisch von Südwesten und Süden her vorgegangen, und
Major von Stuemer, der sich zum Widerstand nicht für stark genug
hielt, hatte Mwembe geräumt. Dann waren die einzelnen
Kompagnien allmählich auf den Rowuma zu zurückgewichen.
Nördlich dieses Flusses hatte Kapitänleutnant d. R. Jantzen, den
das Kommando mit zwei Kompagnien nach Tunduru entsandt hatte
und aus den zu sich die einzelnen Kompagnien der bisherigen
Abteilung Stuemer sammelten, den einheitlichen Befehl
übernommen. Auch von Ssongea her drangen feindliche
Abteilungen in Richtung auf Tunduru zu vor.
Einzelheiten über den Gegner waren schwer festzustellen; ich
hatte den Eindruck, daß er unsere Hauptkräfte bei Narunju lediglich
hinhalten wollte, um mit starken Truppen in unser
Verpflegungsgebiet, das wesentlich in der Gegend von Tunduru-
Massassi-Ruponda lag, einzudringen und unsere Bestände
fortzunehmen. Es schien mir damals nicht ausgeschlossen, gegen
diesen Feind einen Erfolg erzielen zu können, und ich marschierte
deshalb am 10. September 1917 mit fünf Kompagnien aus den
Lagern von Narunju und Mtua ab nach Massassi. Von dort wurde
zunächst Hauptmann Goering mit drei Kompagnien gegen Tunduru
in Marsch gesetzt, das inzwischen vom Feinde besetzt worden war;
Abteilung Jantzen stand nordöstlich dieses Ortes. Zu Rad erkundete
ich die Straße nach Tunduru und mußte befürchten, daß die
Verpflegungsschwierigkeiten sehr groß sein würden. Das hat sich
leider bestätigt. Verpflegung aus dem Lande war nicht durchführbar,
und zu einer längeren Operation, für die erst Nachschub von
Massassi her einzuleiten war, fehlte die Zeit.
Die kleinen Patrouillenunternehmungen der Engländer und
Portugiesen, die von Süden her über den Rowuma kamen und
unsere Magazine und Transporte belästigten, trieben uns allerdings
nicht zur Eile. Aber der Feind, der von Kilwa her gekommen war und
den Hauptmann Koehl durch das schwere Gefecht von Mbeo-Chini
und eine Anzahl kleinerer Zusammenstöße nicht hatte aufhalten
können, kam in die Gegend von Nahungu. Seine fliegenden
Kolonnen, zum großen Teil beritten, umgingen die Abteilung Koehl
weiter westlich und drangen den Mbemkurufluß aufwärts auf
Nangano zu vor. Die Verbindung zu Hauptmann Koehl, die auf der
Telephonstrecke Nahungu-Nangano basiert hatte, wurde zunächst
für einige Tage, dann dauernd unterbrochen. Die dort liegenden
Feldmagazine fielen in Feindeshand und wurden zerstört. In
Voraussicht der Unterbrechung der empfindlichen Telephonlinie war
von Ruponda aus in nordöstlicher Richtung eine neue
Telephonstrecke gebaut worden, aber der an diese anschließende
Botenverkehr zur Abteilung Koehl erforderte mehrere Tage.
Bei der langsamen Nachrichtenübermittlung von und zur
Abteilung Koehl war es nicht möglich, sich rechtzeitig ein Bild von
der dortigen Lage zu machen, und da der beabsichtigte Erfolg bei
Tunduru ohnehin nicht durchführbar war, marschierte ich mit den fünf
Kompagnien von Massassi aus Anfang Oktober nach Ruponda,
dann weiter nordöstlich und vereinigte mich bei Likangara mit
Abteilung Koehl. Auf die Meldung hin, daß feindliche Abteilungen
sich Ruponda von Nordosten her näherten, wurde der Abtransport
der Kranken und der Bestände aus Ruponda nach Lukuledi und
nach Mnacho angeordnet. Am 9. Oktober 1917 wurde eine feindliche
Patrouille bei Ruponda mit einigem Verlust für den Feind
zurückgeschlagen, am 10. Oktober griff ein stärkerer Gegner —
festgestellt wurde das 25. indische Kavallerieregiment — Ruponda
auf mehreren Seiten an. Der Marsch unserer Kompagnien nach
Likangara hatte also leider etwas zu schnell stattgefunden; es wäre
sonst die Möglichkeit vorhanden gewesen, daß der Feind bei
Ruponda auf einen Teil unserer durchmarschierenden Kompagnien
gestoßen wäre und vielleicht eine Niederlage erlitten hätte. So aber
befanden sich außer einigen Patrouillen in Ruponda keine Truppen;
die Kranken fielen zum großen Teil in Feindeshand und leider auch
das etwa 90000 kg Verpflegung enthaltende Magazin. Bei Likangara
kam es zu keinen nennenswerten Gefechten. Es zeigten sich wohl
feindliche Patrouillen und schwächere Abteilungen, aber unsere
Kampftruppen, die gegen die den Mbemkurufluß entlangführende,
hauptsächlichste Verbindung des Feindes gingen, dort Automobile
beschossen und zerstörten und Post und Vorräte erbeuteten,
brachten mich zur Vermutung, daß die Hauptkräfte der feindlichen
Kilwatruppen weiter westlich herum in Richtung auf Ruponda
ausholten.
Die vermehrte Tätigkeit des Feindes einige Tagemärsche östlich
Likangara, wo der Gegner unsere Aufkaufposten aushob, sowie
Erzählungen der Eingeborenen machten es wahrscheinlich, daß
gleichzeitig stärkere feindliche Truppen von Nahungu aus direkt in
südlicher Richtung, also auf General Wahle zu, marschierten.
Erbeutete Post zeigte uns, daß der Feind trotz seinem
ausgedehnten Nachrichten- und Spionagesysteme recht im dunkeln
tappte. Er wußte beispielsweise nicht, wo ich mich aufhielt, obgleich
er hierauf den größten Wert zu legen schien. Sagte ihm doch die
Kenntnis meines jeweiligen Aufenthaltes, wo der Hauptteil unserer
Truppen zu vermuten sei. Während nun die eine seiner Nachrichten
meinte, daß ich mich in der Gegend von Lukuledi befände, wollte
eine andere wissen, ich sei bei Tunduru, und eine dritte, ebenso
bestimmte, in Mahenge. Die Schwatzhaftigkeit unserer Europäer, die
es trotz aller Hinweise nicht lassen konnten, in ihren privaten Briefen
ihre Kenntnis von der Kriegslage und ihre Vermutungen einander zu
schreiben, hat hier einmal etwas Gutes geschaffen; es wurde
nämlich so viel geklatscht, die Gerüchte waren so widersprechend,
und auch Unwahrscheinliches wurde so wahllos geglaubt, daß aus
den Korrespondenzen der Deutschen eigentlich alles, auch das
Entgegengesetzte, herausgelesen wurde. Trotz dieser
unbeabsichtigten Irreführung des Gegners ist es aber nicht zu
verstehen, daß verständige Leute wichtige Dinge, deren Kenntnis
dem Feinde entzogen werden muß, einer Postverbindung
anvertrauten, von der sie wußten, daß sie unzuverlässig war und
daß die Briefe häufig in Feindeshand fielen.
Es war mir klar, daß die Unsicherheit in der Beurteilung der Lage,
in der sich der Feind offenkundig befand, mir eine große Chance
geben mußte, wenn schnell und entschlossen gehandelt wurde. Ich
durfte hoffen, daß der beabsichtigte entscheidende Schlag, den ich
in der Gegend von Lindi zweimal, bei Tunduru einmal gesucht, und
dessen Gelingen bei Narungombe an einem seidenen Faden
gehangen hatte, jetzt endlich heranreifen würde. Günstig hierfür
erschien mir im Rahmen meiner Beurteilung der Gesamtlage die
Entwicklung der Dinge bei Abteilung Wahle. Die gesamte feindliche
Kriegshandlung mußte den Gedanken nahelegen, daß die einzelnen
Kolonnen des Feindes mit aller Wucht vordringen würden, um uns
durch konzentrische, gegenseitige Einwirkung zu zerquetschen.
Auch die Lindidivision des Feindes drückte mit großer Energie vor.
Vor ihr waren die neun schwachen Kompagnien des Generals Wahle
in ständigen Gefechten bis Mahiwa zurückgegangen. Das Gelände
bei Mahiwa war mir persönlich einigermaßen bekannt. Es war sehr
wahrscheinlich, daß mein Abmarsch dorthin vom Feinde nicht
rechtzeitig bemerkt werden würde.
Am 14. Oktober 1917 marschierte ich im Vertrauen auf das
Kriegsglück mit fünf Kompagnien und zwei Gebirgsgeschützen über
die Berge von Likangara nach Mnacho, traf dort bei Dunkelheit ein
und marschierte am 15. Oktober bei Tagesanbruch weiter. Auf dem
schmalen Pfade an den Abhängen riß die Marschkolonne sehr
auseinander. Die Geschütze blieben weit zurück; die Tragetiere
versagten, Askari und Träger halfen aus, und immer von neuem
verstand es Vizewachtmeister Sabath, die Schwierigkeiten zu
meistern und seine Kanonen vorzubringen. Es überraschte mich,
daß mir von Mahiwa aus keine Meldung entgegenkam, aber das
Gewehr- und Maschinengewehrfeuer ließ erkennen, daß ein Gefecht
im Gange war. Vor Eintritt der Dunkelheit traf ich bei der hinter dem
linken Flügel der Abteilung Wahle in Reserve zurückgehaltenen
Kompagnie des Oberleutnants d. L. Methner ein. Der Feind schien
gegen diese umfassend durch den Busch vorzugehen. Die
einschlagenden Geschosse hatten für mich die unangenehme Folge,
daß der Träger, der meine Schreibtasche mit den wichtigsten
Meldungen und Karten trug, auf zwei Tage verschwand. Unsere
beiden, zuerst eintreffenden Kompagnien wurden sogleich zum
Gegenangriff gegen die feindliche Umfassung angesetzt und der
Feind hier zurückgeworfen. Die Kompagnien gruben sich dann ein.
Am 16. morgens begab ich mich dorthin und stellte fest, daß sich der
Feind dicht gegenüber auf 60 bis 100 m gleichfalls verschanzt hatte.
Als mir Oberleutnant von Ruckteschell eine Tasse Kaffee anbot,
mußte man etwas achtgeben, da der Feind ziemlich aufmerksam
war und leidlich gut schoß. Die Gelegenheit zu einem
überraschenden und entscheidenden Angriff schien mir günstig zu
sein. Er wurde mittags, den Feind links (also nördlich) umfassend,
angesetzt. Abteilung Goering sollte hier vorgehen.
Nachdem wir in Ruhe Mittag gegessen hatten, begab ich mich
schnell zum linken Flügel, wo Hauptmann Goering sich soeben mit
zwei Kompagnien entwickelte. Als er eine breite Niederung
überschritten hatte, holte er zu meiner Überraschung noch weiter
nach links aus. Bald traten die Kompagnien ins Gefecht. Erst nach
und nach konnte ich mir diese auffallende Bewegung erklären.
Hauptmann Goering war überraschend auf einen neuen Gegner
gestoßen, der von Nahungu aus eingetroffen war und jetzt von
Norden her anlief. Es waren mehrere Bataillone und zwei Geschütze
der Nigeriabrigade, die von unserem Eintreffen bei Mahiwa nichts
wußten und glaubten, die Truppen des Generals Wahle durch einen
gegen dessen linke Flanke und Rücken gerichteten Angriff
vernichtend schlagen zu können, während gleichzeitig die nach
Osten gerichtete Front des Generals Wahle durch eine Division
energisch angegriffen wurde. Die Nigeriabrigade war nun ebenso
überrascht wie Hauptmann Goering, fand sich aber nicht so schnell
in die neue Lage hinein. Hauptmann Goering, dem Reserven dicht
folgten, ging mit seinen zwei Kompagnien so energisch im Busch
gegen den Feind vor, daß er dessen einzelne Teile völlig überrannte,
durcheinanderwarf und entscheidend in die Flucht schlug. Ein
feindlicher Offizier, der eine Munitionskolonne vorführte, hielt unsere
Truppen für die seinigen, und so gelangten wir in den Besitz von
etwa 150000 Beutepatronen. Ein Geschütz mit Munition wurde im
Sturm genommen und mehr als 100 Nigeriaaskari als gefallen
festgestellt. Auch rechts vom Hauptmann Goering, wo zwei
Kompagnien unter Oberleutnant von Ruckteschell und dem hierbei
schwer verwundeten Leutnant d. R. Brucker fochten, wurde der
Feind ein Stück in den Busch zurückgeworfen.
Gleichzeitig mit diesen Kämpfen auf der Flanke und auch an den
folgenden Tagen griff der Feind die Abteilung Wahle mit aller
Anstrengung an. Der Gegner zeigte hierbei starke Übermacht;
immer wieder wurden frische Truppen gegen unsere Front
eingesetzt. Die Gefahr, daß die Front des Generals Wahle nicht
standhalten würde, war groß, das Gefecht schwer. Die Gefahr war
brennend, daß unsere Umfassung in dem sehr schwierigen Busch-
und Sumpfgelände durch schwache feindliche Truppen so lange
aufgehalten werden würde, daß in der Front des Generals Wahle
inzwischen eine für uns ungünstige Entscheidung fiel. Dann aber
war das Gefecht für uns verloren. Ich hielt es für zweckmäßiger, die
Nachteile, die der Feind sich durch seinen verlustreichen
Frontalangriff selbst schuf, soviel wie möglich zu vergrößern und alle
meine Kräfte so zu verwenden, daß der Feind sich in seinem immer
stärker werdenden Frontalangriff gegen die Abteilung Wahle wirklich
verblutete.
Die ursprünglich beabsichtigte Umfassung des feindlichen linken
Flügels wurde deshalb an den folgenden Tagen nicht weiter
durchgeführt, sondern im Gegenteil die irgend verfügbaren
Kompagnien vom linken Flügel fortgezogen, um die Front des
Generals Wahle zu verstärken. Auf diese Weise wurde erreicht, daß
unsere Front nicht nur festhielt, sondern auch genügende Reserven
durch kraftvolle Gegenstöße schwache Momente beim Feinde sofort
erfassen und ihm eine wirkliche Niederlage beibringen konnten. Zu
meiner vielleicht auffälligen Taktik bestimmte mich auch die
Persönlichkeit des feindlichen Führers. Vom General Beves war mir
vom Gefecht von Reata (11. März 1916) her bekannt, daß er seine
Truppen mit großer Rücksichtslosigkeit einsetzte und nicht davor
zurückscheute, einen Erfolg statt durch geschickte Führung und
deshalb mit geringeren Verlusten, vielmehr durch einen immer
wiederholten Frontalangriff anzustreben, der, wenn der Verteidiger
standhielt und über einigermaßen ausreichende Kräfte verfügte, zu
schweren Verlusten des Angreifers führte. Ich vermutete, daß
General Beves auch hier bei Mahiwa von ähnlichen Überlegungen
geleitet war. Ich glaube, daß es recht wesentlich die Ausnutzung
dieser Schwäche in den Berechnungen des feindlichen Feldherrn
war, die uns hier bei Mahiwa einen so glänzenden Sieg verschaffte.
Bis zum 18. Oktober, also im ganzen vier Tage lang, stürmten immer
neue Angriffswellen gegen unsere Front an, aber der persönliche
Augenschein zeigte mir, daß hier auf unserem, rechten Flügel die
Wucht des Angriffes allmählich nachließ und die Niederlage des
Feindes eine vollständige wurde.
Am 18. Oktober abends hatten wir mit unseren etwa 1500 Mann
eine feindliche Division, die wohl mindestens 4000, wahrscheinlich
aber nicht unter 6000 Mann im Gefecht hatte, vollständig geschlagen
und dem Feinde die schwerste Niederlage beigebracht, die er,
abgesehen von Tanga, überhaupt erlitten hat. Nach Angabe eines
höheren englischen Offiziers hat der Feind 1500 Mann verloren; ich
habe aber Grund anzunehmen, daß diese Schätzung viel zu niedrig
ist. Bei uns waren 14 Europäer, 81 Askari gefallen, 55 Europäer, 367
Askari verwundet, 1 Europäer, 1 Askari vermißt. In Anbetracht
unserer geringen Streiterzahlen waren diese Verluste für uns recht
erheblich und um so fühlbarer, weil sie nicht ersetzt werden konnten.
Unsere Beute betrug ein Geschütz, sechs schwere und drei leichte
Maschinengewehre sowie 200000 Patronen.
Die Kriegslage verbot leider, unseren Sieg voll auszunutzen; in
unserem Rücken war nämlich der Feind, der am 10. Oktober
Ruponda besetzt hatte, mit starken Kräften weiter nach Süden
vorgedrungen und hatte am 18. Oktober den Major Kraut bei
Lukuledi angegriffen. Nachholend muß bemerkt werden, daß unsere
Truppen, die unter Kapitänleutnant Jantzen in der Gegend von
Tunduru gefochten hatten, allmählich von dort nach Nordosten an
den oberen Mbemkuru ausgewichen und über Ruponda, noch vor
der am 10. Oktober stattgefundenen Besitznahme dieses Ortes
durch den Feind, an das Kommando herangezogen worden waren.
Zwei dieser Kompagnien hatten unsere zum Schutz der Magazine in
der Nähe von Lukuledi stehende Kompagnie verstärkt, und diese
drei Kompagnien waren es, die unter dem Befehl des Majors Kraut
bei Lukuledi am 18. Oktober durch einen überlegenen Feind von
Norden her angegriffen wurden.
Der auf sechs Kompagnien des Goldküstenregiments geschätzte
Gegner wurde zwar abgewiesen, aber um unsere gefährdeten
Verpflegungs- und Materialbestände, die in Chigugu und Chiwata
lagen, zu sichern, rückte Major Kraut nach dem ersteren dieser Orte
ab. Außer Chigugu und Chiwata war durch den Feind, der sich
meiner Ansicht nach zweifellos bei Lukuledi verstärkte, auch
Ndanda, wo eine große Menge unseres Kriegsmaterials lagerte,
gefährdet. Jeden Augenblick konnte der Fall eintreten, daß der Feind
von Lukuledi aus in unsere rückwärtigen Verbindungen eindrang,
unsere Bestände und Verpflegung in Besitz nahm und uns auf diese
Weise kampfunfähig machte. Ein Mittel, unsere rückwärtigen
Verbindungen durch lokale Sicherungen ausreichend zu schützen,
gab es für uns nicht; denn die paar tausend Mann, die wir hatten,
brauchten wir zum Fechten. Da die Truppe aber lebensfähig bleiben
wollte und sollte, mußte die Gefahr auf andere Weise beseitigt
werden.
Dazu gab es nur ein Mittel, nämlich den Feind bei Lukuledi
entscheidend zu schlagen. Wir durften daher bei Mahiwa keine Zeit
verlieren, und ich mußte, so schwer es mir wurde, den Gedanken an
eine vernichtende Verfolgung fallen lassen. Während am 19.
Oktober früh einige sichtbare Teile des Feindes beschossen wurden,
war ich schon mit sechs Kompagnien und zwei Geschützen im
Abmarsch; am nächsten Tage trafen wir zwei Stunden östlich
Lukuledi ein, und am 21. Oktober wurde der Feind bei
Morgengrauen, anscheinend ganz überraschend, angegriffen. Die
Kolonne des Majors Kraut überraschte nördlich Lukuledi, an der
Straße nach Ruponda, das Lager des 25. indischen
Kavallerieregiments, das gerade mit angespannten Fahrzeugen zum
Vormarsch auf Massassi bereitstand; das Lager wurde gestürmt, und
das feindliche Regiment verlor fast sämtliche Zugtiere, im ganzen
350. Während ich nun mit den Abteilungen Koehl und Ruckteschell
in ziemlich ernstem Gefecht bei Lukuledi gegen den dort
verschanzten Feind stand, wartete ich vergeblich auf das Eingreifen
der Abteilung Kraut. Ein Sturm auf das Lager ohne das Moment der
Überraschung versprach keinen Erfolg. Als die Truppe nun auch von
seitwärts durch Minenwerfer wirksam beschossen wurde, zog ich
nach Abweisung eines stärkeren, feindlichen Angriffes das Gros aus
dem wirksamen Kreuzfeuer heraus, um unnötige Verluste zu
vermeiden. Ein neuer, aus einer starken Patrouille oder einer
Kompagnie King’s African Rifles (englische ostafrikanische Askari)
bestehender Gegner, der überraschend im Busch auftauchte, wurde
schnell zurückgeschlagen. Hierbei fiel an der Spitze seiner
Kompagnie Oberleutnant Kroeger. Dann wurde das Gefecht
abgebrochen. Erst in der Nacht traf Meldung von Major Kraut ein: er
hatte in dem Glauben, bei Lukuledi nicht mehr mit Erfolg eingreifen
zu können und weil er keinen Gefechtslärm gehört hatte, den Ort im
Bogen umgangen und dann südöstlich von Lukuledi Lager bezogen.
Träger
Durch die Ungunst der Umstände war es nicht gelungen, den
Feind bei Lukuledi wirklich entscheidend zu schlagen, und der
Zweck meiner Unternehmung nur zum Teil erreicht; aber die Verluste
des Feindes durften als erheblich angesehen werden. Auch der
Eindruck auf ihn war größer, als ich anfangs glaubte. Jedenfalls
ergaben die Erkundungen, daß er Lukuledi wieder geräumt hatte
und in nördlicher Richtung abgezogen war. Unter unseren Verlusten
befanden sich drei gefallene Kompagnieführer. Noch jetzt steht mir
Leutnant d. R. Volkwein vor Augen, wie er, notdürftig von einer
schweren Beinverwundung hergestellt, vor seiner Kompagnie durch
den Busch hinkte. Auch mit Leutnant d. R. Batzner und Oberleutnant
Kroeger sprach ich noch kurz, ehe sie fielen. Als tüchtiger
Maschinengewehrführer fiel hier auch Vizefeldwebel Klein, der so
häufig seine Patrouillen an die Ugandabahn geführt hatte. Aber
unsere Verluste waren nicht umsonst gebracht. Unsere Patrouillen
verfolgten den Feind und beschossen dessen Lager in der Gegend
von Ruponda und die feindlichen Verbindungen. Die Unmöglichkeit
für uns aber, in der Gegend von Ruponda stärkere Truppenmassen
zu verpflegen — waren doch unsere dort angesammelten Bestände
in Feindeshand gefallen —, zwang mich, auf eine gründliche
Verfolgung des Feindes zu verzichten.
Ich hielt es damals für möglich, daß der Abmarsch des Feindes
von Lukuledi nach Norden hervorgerufen war durch Bewegungen
unserer Truppen, die unter Hauptmann Tafel von Mahenge her in
Anmarsch waren. Mit ihm fehlte seit Anfang Oktober jede
Verbindung. Er hatte Anweisung erhalten, vor den starken,
feindlichen Kolonnen, die von Norden (Ifakara), Westen und
Südwesten (Likuju, Mponda) her auf Mahenge zu vordrangen, nur
ganz allmählich auszuweichen und die Vereinigung mit den unter mir
stehenden Hauptkräften zu suchen. Ich hielt es für wohl möglich,
daß er bereits jetzt in der Gegend von Nangano oder westlich davon
eingetroffen war und der Feind aus Besorgnis für seine eigenen
rückwärtigen Verbindungen jetzt in Lukuledi wieder kehrtgemacht
hatte.
Zwölfter Abschnitt
Die letzten Wochen auf deutschem Boden
A m 24. Oktober traf der Gouverneur von Chiwata her, das

inzwischen zum Zentralpunkt der Verwaltung geworden war, in
meinem Lager östlich Lukuledi zu einer Rücksprache ein. Ich legte
meine Auffassung endgültig dahin fest, daß trotz aller
Verpflegungsschwierigkeiten, die in Deutsch-Ostafrika bald
entstehen mußten, der Krieg weitergeführt werden könne und
müsse. Die Möglichkeit hierzu werde durch eine Basierung auf das
portugiesische Gebiet geboten. Dies sei nur ausführbar, wenn wir in
Portugiesisch-Ostafrika eindringen und Deutsch-Ostafrika räumen
würden.
Die Verpflegungsfrage wurde brennend; in unseren vorhandenen
Magazinen hatten wir rund 500000 kg liegen. Das würde für etwa
anderthalb Monate reichen. Aber es hatte sich herausgestellt, daß
die Zahlen kein unbedingt zuverlässiges Bild ergaben. Die
gestapelten Säcke waren zum großen Teil mindergewichtig, und die
Körner hatten durch Insektenfraß gelitten. Neue Ernte war
frühestens erst wieder im März zu erwarten. Bei den weiteren
Operationen mußte daher rein vom Verpflegungsstandpunkt aus
eine Verschiebung nach Süden stattfinden. Allerdings rechnete ich
noch mit der Möglichkeit, daß Hauptmann Tafel mit seinen Truppen
in der Gegend von Massassi und Chiwata eintreffen würde und daß
ich ihm dann die hauptsächlich in der Gegend von Chiwata
liegenden Magazinbestände überlassen könnte, um selbst mit einem
Teil der Truppen von Chiwata aus das Makondehochland in Richtung
auf Lindi zu überschreiten und die Hauptetappenstraße des Feindes
am Lukuledifluß anzugreifen. Für beide Möglichkeiten der weiteren
Kriegführung war die Gegend von Chiwata wegen ihres Reichtums
für uns von größter Bedeutung. Chiwata war aber nicht geschützt
und war noch dadurch gefährdet, daß auch von Norden her gegen
Mnacho feindliche Unternehmungen stattfanden, sich auch berittene
Abteilungen des Feindes an der Straße Lukuledi-Lindi in der Gegend
von Ndanda zeigten. Auch schenkte die feindliche Fliegertätigkeit
unseren Lagern von Chiwata eine gesteigerte Aufmerksamkeit.
Dies waren die Gründe, aus denen ich Ende Oktober 1917 mit
dem Hauptteil meiner Truppen von Lukuledi abrückte. Es war noch
nicht zu übersehen, ob sich von Chiwata aus erneut die Gelegenheit
zu einem Vorstoß auf eine der voraussichtlich demnächst wieder
vorrückenden Kolonnen des Feindes bieten würde. Für die nächsten
Wochen richtete sich der Druck des Feindes wiederum gegen die
Abteilung Wahle. Dort traten ganz neue Truppen auf, unter ihnen
auch das aus südafrikanischen Mischlingen gebildete Capekorps.
Dieses hatte an der Zentralbahn gestanden und war zur Verstärkung
der Truppen des Generals Beves anscheinend über Daressalam-
Lindi herangezogen. Glücklicherweise hatte General Beves diese
Verstärkungen nicht abgewartet, als er seine Niederlage bei Mahiwa
herbeiführte.
General Wahle wich Schritt für Schritt den Lukuledi aufwärts aus.
Leider konnte ich ihm keine Unterstützungen schicken, mußte ihm
sogar einige Kompagnien fortnehmen, um von Chiwata aus bei
günstiger Gelegenheit Truppen für einen Vorstoß in der Hand zu
haben und zugleich unsere Magazine zu schützen. Durch die
Buschgefechte der Abteilung Wahle, zu denen es fast täglich kam,
wurden dem Feinde anscheinend erhebliche Verluste beigebracht
und er zähe hingehalten; zu einem durchschlagenden Teilerfolg und
zu erheblicher Munitionsbeute kam es aber nicht, und unsere
Munitionsbestände zehrten sich mehr und mehr auf. Am 6.
November ritt ich von Chiwata nach Nangoo bei Ndanda und
erkundete hier dicht hinter der Abteilung Wahle das Gelände für ein
etwaiges Eingreifen mit den Chiwatatruppen. Am 7. November ritt
ich von Nangoo aus in südlichem Bogen über das Makondehochland
nach Chiwata zurück. Am gleichen Tage wurden wieder feindliche
Truppen bei Lukuledi festgestellt, am 9. November fand ein
Patrouillengefecht bei Chigugu statt, dicht westlich Chiwata.
In dieser kritischen Zeit, wo sich die Anfänge der feindlichen
Kolonnen Chiwata näherten, bestand für uns naturgemäß das
dringende Bedürfnis, uns auf eine dieser Kolonnen mit allen unseren
Kräften so frühzeitig zu werfen, daß die anderen feindlichen
Kolonnen in das Gefecht nicht eingreifen konnten. Für einen solchen
Schlag war Vorbedingung, daß wir unsere an sich geringe
Truppenzahl in ihrer vollen Gefechtsstärke zur Wirkung bringen
konnten. Hierbei spielte die Munitionsfrage eine Hauptrolle. Unsere
gesamten Munitionsbestände waren auf rund 400000 Patronen
zusammengeschmolzen, das war bei einer Zahl von rund 2500
Gewehren und 50 schweren und leichten Maschinengewehren, die
tatsächlich, wenn man alles zusammenraffte, in Frage kamen, für ein
ernstes Gefecht schon knapp, und die Weiterführung des Kampfes
war nur dann möglich, wenn Munition erbeutet wurde. Hierfür war
das Gelände ungünstig. In dem dichten Busch war der einzelne
geneigt, viel zu schießen und wenig zu treffen; die
Munitionsbestände zehrten sich auf, ohne daß schnelle, für uns
günstige Entscheidungen erzielt wurden. Eine befriedigende Lösung
der Munitionsfrage wurde noch dadurch unmöglich gemacht, daß die
Patronen zum weitaus größten Teil aus der rauchstarken Munition 71
bestanden, während die Truppe nur zu rund 1/3 mit Gewehren 71
bewaffnet war; 2/3 hatten deutsche, englische oder portugiesische
moderne Gewehre, und für diese war ausreichende Munition nicht
vorhanden. Die geringen Bestände an modernen Patronen waren für
unsere Hauptwaffe, die Maschinengewehre, notwendig. Da war
guter Rat teuer. Es blieb nichts übrig, als im Gefecht von jeder
Kompagnie nur den mit Gewehr 71 bewaffneten Zug einzusetzen
und schießen zu lassen, die beiden anderen Züge, die modern
bewaffnet waren, und bei denen jeder Mann nur etwa 20 zu seinem
Gewehr passende moderne Patronen, im übrigen aber rauchstarke
Patronen 71 trug, in Reserve zurückzuhalten. Die Züge wurden dann
abgewechselt, so daß, wenn zuerst der erste Zug mit Gewehren 71
gefochten hatte, er seine Gewehre an den ihn ablösenden zweiten
Zug abgab, selbst dessen moderne Gewehre nahm und in Reserve
zurückgezogen wurde. So konnte günstigenfalls nur ein Drittel der
verfügbaren Streiterzahl wirklich ins Gefecht eingesetzt werden, und
auch dieses mußte mit den Patronen aufs äußerste sparen.
Die Artilleriemunition war bis auf einige Schuß unserer beiden
Gebirgsgeschütze und einige portugiesische Munition bis zur letzten
Patrone verschossen worden. Unsere letzte Feldhaubitze sowie das
bei Mahiwa erbeutete englische Geschütz wurden gesprengt. Die
beiden letzten 10,5 cm-Königsberggeschütze waren schon einige
Tage vorher vernichtet worden. Ein deutsches Gebirgsgeschütz
wurde einen Tag später bei Kitangari vernichtet und versenkt. So
blieb noch ein deutsches und ein portugiesisches Gebirgsgeschütz
übrig. Der Mangel an Artilleriemunition war in den letzten Monaten
schon so erheblich gewesen, daß wir an sämtlichen Beständen alles
in allem selten mehr als 300 Schuß hatten. Das war etwa die
Gefechtsausrüstung eines einzigen der so zahlreichen englischen
Geschütze.
Unter solchen Verhältnissen war ein erfolgverheißender
Offensivstoß nur möglich, wenn die Lage sich ganz ausnahmsweise
günstig gestaltete. Dieser Fall trat nicht ein. Zwar wurde mit
Kampfpatrouillen gearbeitet und der Feind nach Möglichkeit
geschädigt, sonst aber blieb nichts übrig, als daß die Truppen des
Generals Wahle und die noch bei Mnacho zum Abtransport der
dortigen Bestände stehengebliebene 11. Feldkompagnie vor dem
nachdrängenden Feind allmählich aus Chiwata zu auswichen. Am
10. November wurde die unmittelbar im Rücken des Generals
Wahle, der bei Nangoo stand, liegende Mission Ndanda durch einen
starken Gegner, der vom Westen kam, überraschend besetzt. Das
dortige Feldlazarett und ein Teil unserer Bestände fielen in die Hand
des Feindes. Die südlich Ndanda stehende Abteilung Lieberman
sicherte den Abmarsch der Abteilung Wahle, die von Nangoo aus
aus dem von mir am 7. November erkundeten Wege südöstlich von
Nangoo das Makondeplateau erstieg und sich dann durch den
Abmarsch quer über das Plateau nach Chiwata der durch den Feind
gestellten Schlinge entzog. Auch die 11. Kompagnie fand sich von
Mnacho her heran, und so war, abgesehen von der Abteilung des
Hauptmanns Tafel und kleiner, weiter südlich stehender
Detachierungen, die gesamte Truppe bei Chiwata vereinigt; die
allmähliche Verschiebung unserer Bestände aus Chiwata in östlicher
Richtung aus Nambindinga zu war im Gange und auf diese Weise
der weitere Abmarsch auf Kitangari eingeleitet. Dabei spähte ich
gespannt danach aus, ob sich nicht eine der feindlichen Kolonnen
eine Blöße geben würde. Am 14. November glaubte ich, diesen Fall
eintreten zu sehen.
Eine starke feindliche Kolonne, zu der das 10. südafrikanische
berittene Infanterieregiment gehörte, hatte uns von Lukuledi aus
über Massassi umgangen und griff an diesem Tage von Südwesten
her das zwei Stunden südlich Chiwata gelegene Mwiti an. In diesem
Ort, der bisher nur schwach besetzt gewesen war, war am Tage
vorher durch Verschiebungen von Chiwata her die Abteilung von
Lieberman (drei Kompagnien) versammelt worden. Trotz aller
Munitionsschwierigkeiten bot sich, wie ich glaubte, die Möglichkeit,
mit der bei Chiwata stehenden Abteilung Koehl so überraschend in
das Gefecht bei Mwiti einzugreifen, daß dieser Gegner vereinzelt
geschlagen wurde; ich war aber zu sehr mit den allerdings
schwierigen Anordnungen für den Abmarsch auf Nambindinga
beschäftigt und habe die sich bei Mwiti bietende Gelegenheit leider
unbenutzt vorübergehen lassen.
So blieb mir nur das allmähliche Ausweichen auf Nambindinga
übrig. Bei der Räumung von Chiwata fielen die kriegsgefangenen
europäischen Mannschaften des Feindes sowie die Inder, die zum
Lazarett transportiert worden waren, zusammen mit diesem, zum
großen Teil mit Schwerverwundeten gefüllten Lazarette in
Feindeshand. Der Abmarsch auf Nambindinga fand unter steten
Gefechten vom 15. bis 17. November statt. Ich wollte den Feind
veranlassen, die konzentrische Bewegung seiner von Norden,
Westen und Süden vorrückenden Kolonnen auch wirklich bis zu
deren Vereinigung auszuführen; dann, wenn der Feind auf engem
Raume mit seiner großen, unbehilflichen Menschenmasse stand,
konnte ich abmarschieren, wohin ich wollte. Am 17. November
mußte ich bei Nambindinga einen entscheidenden Entschluß fassen.
Das dauernde Buschgefecht drohte unsere letzte Munition zu
verzehren. Es wäre sinnlos gewesen, dieses Fechten, das zu keiner
für uns günstigen Entscheidung führen konnte, weiter fortzusetzen.
Wir mußten also abmarschieren.
Gleichzeitig mußten wir unsere Kopfstärke vermindern. Denn
unsere vielen Leute mit wenig Munition hatten weniger Gefechtskraft
als eine geringere Zahl, aber ausgesuchter Leute mit ausreichender
Munition. Die Verpflegungslage forderte das gleiche. Nur durch eine
erhebliche Verminderung unserer Verpflegungsstärke ließ es sich
ermöglichen, mit den vorhandenen Vorräten noch zwölf Tage zu
reichen. Unser Verpflegungsgebiet war eingeengt, neuer Aufkauf
durch den Feind gestört und die Lebensmittel der Landschaft
erschöpft. Der Bestand an Chinin reichte für die Europäer noch auf
einen Monat. Nach Aufbrauch dieses letzten Chinins mußten die
Europäer der Malaria und ihren Folgen erliegen; sie würden den
Strapazen des Tropenkrieges nicht mehr gewachsen sein. Nur bei
Reduzierung der Europäerzahl auf ein Minimum blieb für den
einzelnen so viel Chinin, daß wir noch monatelang würden
weiteroperieren können. Es kam darauf hinaus, unsere Truppe auf
rund 2000 Gewehre zu vermindern und hierbei die Europäerzahl auf
nicht über 300 festzusetzen. Alles, was über diese Zahl hinausging,
mußte zurückgelassen werden. Es half nichts, daß bei den mehreren
hundert Europäern und 600 Askari, die wir so notgedrungen im
Lazarett Nambindinga zurückließen, sich auch Leute befanden, die
gern weitergefochten hätten und die gesundheitlich hierzu in der
Lage waren. Leider läßt es sich nicht verschweigen, daß es einer
Anzahl derer, die hier bei Nambindinga blieben, auch von den
Europäern, nicht unwillkommen war, die Waffen niederzulegen. Aber
es verdient doch hervorgehoben zu werden, daß es nicht nur der
Mehrzahl der Europäer, sondern auch vielen Askari bitter schwer
geworden ist, zurückbleiben zu müssen. Manchem braven Askari
mußte seine Bitte, bei uns bleiben und mit uns fechten zu dürfen,
abgeschlagen werden. Als aber nach zwei Tagen Oberleutnant
Grundmann, obgleich er nach schwerer Verwundung kaum gehen
konnte, wieder bei mir eintraf und meldete, er habe es trotz Befehl
nicht übers Herz bringen können, in Gefangenschaft zu gehen, da
habe ich mich über diesen Ungehorsam gefreut, wie selten.
Es mag hier erwähnt werden, daß der Feind mit unseren
Gefangenen im allgemeinen, soweit ich es zu beurteilen in der Lage
bin, menschlich verfuhr; aber doch scheint mir, daß er bestrebt war,
uns Grausamkeit gegen englische Gefangene zuzuschieben,
vielleicht um hieraus die Berechtigung zu Repressalien herzuleiten,
vielleicht auch aus anderen Gründen. Leutnant d. R. Gutsch war in
Ndanda krank zurückgelassen worden und in Feindeshand geraten.
Auf die ganz aus der Luft gegriffene und unerwiesene Behauptung
eines Schwarzen hin, daß Leutnant Gutsch gelegentlich einer
Patrouille einen englischen Verwundeten verbrannt habe, wurde er
in Handfesseln gelegt und dann auf der Seefahrt nach Daressalam
mehrere Tage lang in den Vorraum des Aborts eingeschlossen. In
Daressalam wurde er mehrere Wochen lang ins Gefängnis gesperrt,
ohne überhaupt verhört zu werden. Als er dann schließlich gehört
wurde, stellte es sich heraus, daß sich die gegen ihn begangene,
sinnlose Grausamkeit nur auf die lügenhafte Aussage eines
Schwarzen gründete. Ferner teilte mir General van Deventer mit,
daß Hauptmann Naumann, der sich in der Gegend des Kilimandjaro
ergeben hatte, wegen Mordes verfolgt würde; auch er ist, wie ich
später hörte, lange Zeit und gleichfalls ohne Vernehmung
eingesperrt worden, bis schließlich auch seine Unschuld anerkannt
wurde. Ein Grund zu dieser jeden Gerechtigkeitsgefühls spottenden
Handhabung der Rechtspflege ist mir um so weniger verständlich,
als die englischen Gefangenen bei uns durchaus menschlich
behandelt und materiell oft besser verpflegt wurden als unsere
eigenen Leute[5].
Die gefaßten Entschlüsse stellten die Kriegführung auf gänzlich
veränderte Grundlagen. Bisher hatten wir die Verpflegung in
Magazinen sammeln und aus diesen in der Hauptsache die
Anforderungen befriedigen können; auch die Ergänzung der
Munition hatte stets aus gelagerten Beständen erfolgen können.
Dieses System hatte uns zwar eine Menge empfindlicher und für den
Feind angreifbarer Punkte verschafft, die wir nicht schützen konnten,
aber es war durch die bisherige Methode möglich gewesen, die
Truppe in einer für unsere Verhältnisse erheblichen Stärke unter
Waffen zu halten und große Teile derselben auf engem Raume auch
auf längere Zeit zu verwenden. Es war ferner möglich gewesen,
wenigstens einigen Lazaretten einen ständigen Charakter zu geben,
hier Verwundete und Kranke in Ruhe der Genesung zuzuführen und
so einen großen Teil der in der Front entstandenen Lücken durch die
wiederhergestellten, kriegserfahrenen Leute zu ergänzen. Dieses
System hatte unsere Operationen natürlich in hohem Maße von den
Verpflegungs- und Nachschubsverhältnissen abhängig gemacht und
die Bewegungsfreiheit gehemmt. Der Vorteil, für unsere Verhältnisse
starke Truppen verwenden und mit ihnen auch größere feindliche
Verbände mit Erfolg bekämpfen, manchmal gründlich schlagen zu
können, war aber so groß, daß ich dieses System solange wie
irgend möglich beibehalten hatte.
Jetzt war dies nicht länger möglich, und die erwähnten Vorteile
hatte ich unter dem Zwange der Notwendigkeit bewußt fahren lassen
müssen. Es war gewiß fraglich, ob selbst die verminderte Truppe
ohne jedes Magazin und ohne jeden Nachschub unterhalten werden
könnte. Die Aussicht, nach zwölf Tagen mit 5000 hungrigen Negern
ohne Verpflegung in der Steppe zu sitzen, war nicht verlockend.
Würde es gelingen, diejenigen Bedürfnisse der Truppe, die die
Eingeborenenfelder nicht liefern konnten, also vor allem Munition
und dazu passende Waffen, in solchem Umfange zu erbeuten —
denn nur eine Beute aus den Beständen des Feindes konnte als
Ersatzmöglichkeit in Frage kommen —, daß die weitere
Kriegführung lebensfähig blieb? Das waren alles ernste Fragen.
Gelang es aber, auf der neuen Grundlage die Truppe lebensfähig zu
machen, so mußten die gesteigerte Unabhängigkeit und
Beweglichkeit, entschlossen ausgenutzt, uns dem unbeweglicheren
Feinde gegenüber trotz seiner gewaltigen Überlegenheit an Zahl
doch gelegentlich die lokale Überlegenheit schaffen. Bei dem
endlosen uns zur Verfügung stehenden Raume würde es uns
möglich sein, uns ungünstigen Lagen zu entziehen. Der Feind würde
gezwungen sein, einen enormen Aufwand an Menschen und
Material dauernd in Bewegung zu halten und seine Kräfte in ungleich
höheren Maße zu erschöpfen als wir selbst. Es war also Aussicht
vorhanden, auch weiterhin starke feindliche Kräfte zu binden und
endlos lange hinzuhalten, wenn — meine Überlegungen stimmten.
Das war damals zweifelhaft. Das Wagnis mußte aber unternommen
werden. —
Unseres Bleibens bei Nambindinga war nicht lange; der oben auf
dem Plateau liegende Ort hatte nämlich kein Wasser, und die im Tal
liegende Wasserstelle lag im Feuer der feindlichen Geschütze und
Maschinengewehre. Unter dem Schutze von Patrouillen, die den
Feind bei Nambindinga hinhielten, traf das Kommando und der
Hauptteil der Truppen am 18. November bei Kitangari ein. Der Feind
drängte nicht nach, konnte es wahrscheinlich auch nicht. Er hatte,
wie vorauszusehen war, sich aufs äußerste angespannt, um bei
Chiwata den so lange ersehnten letzten Schlag zu führen, und
mußte sich für weitere Operationen erst neu gliedern. In Kitangari
bestätigte sich die alte Erfahrung, daß die Verpflegungsbestände
des dortigen Magazins viel zu hoch eingeschätzt waren. Wenn man
alles zusammennahm, was an Vorräten irgendwie verfügbar war, so
hatte die Truppe für rund zehn Tage Verpflegung; auf eine
wesentliche Ergänzung dieser Bestände aus der Landschaft war von
Kitangari aus nach Süden nicht zu rechnen. Die Frage, wohin sich
nun der Weitermarsch richten sollte, spitzte sich in der Hauptsache
dahin zu: Wo bot sich Aussicht, die Truppe wieder in ausreichendem
Maße zu verpflegen? Zeit durfte nicht verloren werden.
Es war mir bekannt, daß längs des Rowumagebietes Engländer
und Portugiesen unsere Verpflegungsbestände systematisch zerstört
hatten. Unsere kleinen Magazine, Aufkaufposten und
Verpflegungskolonnen waren überfallen und die Bestände vernichtet
worden. Die Eingeborenen waren beeinflußt, sich gegen uns
feindselig zu verhalten. Nordufer und Südufer des mittleren Rowuma
waren nur dünn besiedelt; den Rowuma aufwärts, bei Tunduru,
hatten längere Zeit stärkere Kräfte beider Parteien gefochten, die
Verpflegungsbestände waren dort wahrscheinlich erschöpft. Über
das südlich des unteren Rowuma gelegene Mafiaplateau konnte ich
wirklich zuverlässige Nachrichten nicht erhalten. Selbst wenn dort,
wie manche mitteilten, vor dem Kriege ein reicher Anbau bestanden
hatte, so war es doch sehr fraglich, ob auch jetzt noch, nachdem
dort stärkere portugiesische Truppen jahrelang gehaust hatten,
Verpflegung vorgefunden werden würde. Am wahrscheinlichsten
schien es mir damals, in der Gegend, wo die Operationen des
Majors von Stuemer auf portugiesischem Gebiet stattgefunden
hatten, in dem Winkel zwischen Rowuma- und Ludjendafluß, sowie
weiter südlich in der Gegend von Nangware und Mwembe
Verpflegung vorzufinden. Zweifelhaft war auch das; auch dort hatten
kriegerische Operationen den Anbau der Eingeborenen gestört.
Indessen erschien mir unter den verschiedenen, zweifelhaften
Aussichten diese letztere noch am günstigsten, und ich beschloß,
vorderhand den Rowuma aufwärts zu marschieren.
Mitbestimmend für diese Marschrichtung war der Wunsch, durch
eine tüchtige Beute an Patronen und anderem Kriegsmaterial die
Truppe wieder auf längere Zeit schlagfertig zu machen. Frühere
Beobachtungen und Aussagen von Eingeborenen legten den
Gedanken nahe, daß auch jetzt irgendwo in der Gegend des
Rowumaflusses für uns geeignete Bestände des Feindes lagern
würden. Am 20. November wurde Newala erreicht, wo sich die
letzten detachierten Teile, die nach Süden zu gesichert hatten,
anschlossen und die Neuorganisation der Truppe endgültig
durchgeführt wurde. In Newala wurden die letzten
Nichtmarschfähigen zurückgelassen, und mit 300 Europäern, 1700
Askari und 3000 Trägern und sonstigen Farbigen wurde am 21.
November 1917 weiter nach Süden zum Rowuma marschiert. Die
Tragfähigkeit aller war voll ausgelastet. In dem Maße, wie während
des Marsches Verpflegung verzehrt wurde, wurden Leerträger
entlassen, um die Zahl der zu verpflegenden Leute so niedrig wie
möglich zu halten. Vielen unserer guten, alten Träger mußten wir
ihre Bitte, bei uns bleiben zu dürfen, abschlagen; eine große Zahl
von ihnen erbot sich, ohne Lohn bei uns zu bleiben, manche wollten
sogar ohne Lohn und ohne Verpflegung bleiben und sich ihren
Unterhalt auf eigene Faust aus den Resten unserer Verpflegung und
den Früchten des Pori beschaffen. Der damalige Feldintendant,
Leutnant zur See a. D. Besch, hat in diesen schweren Tagen die nun
einmal notwendige Neuorganisation des Träger- und
Verpflegungswesens mit größter Umsicht zustande gebracht. Ihm
gebührt für die weitere Leistungsfähigkeit der Truppe ein
Hauptverdienst.
Vom Feinde waren in der Nähe des Rowuma, wie zu vermuten
war, nur schwache Abteilungen gemeldet. Am 21. November trafen
wir bei Mpili am Ufer des Flusses ein und waren im Begriff, Lager zu
beziehen, als weiter vorwärts bei einer Jagdpatrouille Schüsse
fielen. Bei der Erkundung bemerkten wir vor uns einen größeren
Teich, an dessen jenseitigem Ufer Pferde getränkt wurden. Dahinter
lag ein felsiger Berg. Bald erschien auch ein Eingeborener,
augenscheinlich ein Spion, der einen Brief brachte: „Wir sind
englische Kavallerie und wollen mit portugiesischen
Infanterieregimentern Fühlung nehmen.“ Ob dies nun eine Finte war,

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The Cinematic Superhero as Social

Practice 1st Edition Joseph Zornado

ISBN 978-3-030-85457-7 ISBN 978-3-030-85458-4 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Orbon Alija/Getty Images

This book began of humble origins with grandiose ambitions: is it possible

churlish at best. What follows applies an idea of fantasy as a psychoanalytic

Providence, USA Joseph Zornado

1 Introduction: A Plague of Superheroes 1

Introduction: A Plague of Superheroes

Understanding Superhero Fantasy

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

recent criticism exist such as The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero

embodies ideology. In this way, the social practice of superhero fantasy

could possibly achieve. Ursula LeGuin (2014) calls writers of fantasy

so than ever thanks to social media as a transmedia phenomenon and

Superhero Film Fantasy, the Subject, and Ideology

developmental environments, ideology is the unconscious holding the

narrative fantasy inform the imaginary relationship the subject has to

there is no connection whatsoever between the (phantasmic) real of the

When we consider superheroes as symbols of fetishistic disavowal in

The Cinematic Superhero and Nostalgia

For many theater owners, the reliance on ‘worldwide audiovisual entertain-

unsustainability of current consumption patterns and the attendant issues

America’s sidekick from the very start in Captain America #1

Holdier, A.G. 2018. On Superhero Stories: The Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Superhero with a Thousand Faces

The Birth of a Notion

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

Superman: Superhero with a Thousand Faces

example” of humanity (Tye 229). Superman stands as the ur-model for

W ährend nun bei Narunju für mehrere Wochen ein Stillstand

A m 24. Oktober traf der Gouverneur von Chiwata her, das

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