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- Should I do another Deadpool video?
- [Voiceover] Absolutely! Deadpool's the greatest.
- [Voiceover] Clearly you've never actually
read a Deadpool comic.
He's incredibly...
- [Voiceover] Funny?
Attractive?
Shooty and stabby?
- [Voiceover] Obnoxious.
- What is happening?
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In a video I did a few months back,
we discussed why Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool,
talks in yellow speech bubbles.
Since then, I have gotten a ton of requests
to talk about why Deadpool has had
multiple voices in his head.
If you're unfamiliar with the character
or the concept, there was a point
when Deadpool had a pair of dueling
inner monologues, one that speaks
in yellow boxes and is seen as the main voice,
and a second one that speaks in white boxes
and is a bit more rational and condescending.
This idea of Deadpool having multiple feuding
voices in his head wasn't something
that the character initially debuted with.
It wasn't until 2008, a whole 17 years
after his first appearance that we first
saw this element pop up in Wolverine Origins
Number 21, written by Daniel Way,
who would have his own
famous run on the character.
In an interview with Way, he explained
his reasoning for adding these voices,
saying quote, "I wanted to do Deadpool
"without a straight man or sidekick to bounce off of,
"so I simply internalized the chatter."
He went on to describe the dynamic
he initially intended for Deadpool's
inner voices saying quote,
"The white first person narrative
"caption box is kind of what
"he's really thinking.
"Then there's the yellow box,
"which is his diary, and that's
"kind of what he wants you
"to think he is thinking."
But all right, if that's the real world
explanation, then what's the in continuity reason?
Some fans have speculated
that Deadpool's inner voices
were a result of brain damage
that the merc has suffered
throughout the years, causing him to acquire
a kind of dissociative identity disorder.
Seems simple enough, but this is comics,
of course it's more complicated than that.
In the Deadpool Annual from 2013,
it was revealed that the voice inside
his head that takes the form
of white caption boxes is actually
an old Marvel villain named Madcap.
Yes, Deadpool has a completely separate
person inside his head.
Amazing.
Madcap has an incredible healing factor,
just like Deadpool.
He's also crazy, just like Deadpool.
They're cut from the same cloth,
which might be a funny observation
a few minutes from now.
Either way, the story goes that
this disfigured avocado,
- Thank you.
- was contracted to kill some
other blind avocado at law
named Matt Murdock, when Madcap
showed up and distracted him.
Daredevil came on the scene
to stop them both, but he didn't
really have the patience to deal with healers.
Luckily, Thor showed up out of nowhere,
and Daredevil convinced him to
electrocute Deadpool and Madcap,
so they can quickly end the fight.
Thor went a little overboard with this
and accidentally disintegrated the two
nuisances into a pile of ash.
Moments later, Deadpool and Madcap's
healing factors kicked in, but since they're both
combined into one pile, the healing factor
ended up merging the two of them together.
Deadpool now had Madcap's
mind in his own brain.
And this was the status quo for a bit.
Deadpool had three voices:
his speaking voice, his main thoughts
and now Madcap for about four or five years
until the two of them were finally separated.
We'll touch on that in a bit.
The voices weren't that distinct
from one another in terms of personality
at first, but over time, they got their
own regular dispositions more in line
with how the Deadpool video game
described them as childish Deadpool
in the yellow caption boxes, serious Deadpool
in the white caption boxes
and just Deadpool as Wade's speaking voice.
What I find interesting about this
is how the voices seem to line up
with Freud's structural model
of the human psyche.
You've probably already heard
of the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud,
usually followed by the generalization
that everything he ever said was
so fantastically wrong by today's
understanding of how our minds work,
but despite that, Freud has managed
to infiltrate and influence modern
culture with more force and tenacity
than probably anyone ever.
Psychologist John Kihlstrom once said
quote, "More than Einstein
"or Watson and Crick, more than Hitler
"or Lenin, Roosevelt or Kennedy,
"more than Picasso, Eliot, or Stravinsky,
"more than the Beatles or Bob Dylan,
"Freud's influence on modern culture
"has been profound and long-lasting."
And yes, a lot of his ideas were
next-level bonkers, but there are
still a few areas where he wasn't completely wrong.
For the purposes of this video, I'm talkin'
about his claim that the mind is made up
of different parts, but I don't mean
the physical structure of the brain,
consisting of distinct regions and hemispheres,
but rather the parts of our personalities
and their relationships with one another.
Freud suggested that the mind
is split into three interacting parts,
and that our individual personalities
were formed by the inner struggle between them.
These include the id, the ego and the superego.
First up, let's talk about the id.
This is your instinctual desire
for instant gratification of your wants and needs.
This is the part of your mind
that's impulsive, emotional,
that seeks pleasure and gets aggressive
when it don't get what you want right now.
Young children, for example, will often
throw tantrums if they don't get their way.
I do the same thing with my editors.
D.K., what are you doin'?
Get this out of here.
Stop it!
Come on, man.
I see the id as being represented
by Deadpool's inner voices
in the yellow caption boxes.
It's immature, hedonistic, impatient,
obsessed with guns, violence and money.
It's driven by the pleasure principle,
which seeks to avoid pain
and satisfy ones biological needs,
like Deadpool's insatiable hunger for Mexican food.
To get a better understanding of the id,
it's probably best to contrast it
against the second part
in the Freudian triforce, the superego.
This represents the conscience,
dealing with one's sense of morality.
It operates based on the idealized
version of one's self and even self-criticizes
if one fails to live up to those ideals.
I believe Deadpool's white caption boxes
constitute the superego.
I know, I know, after learning about Madcap
a few minutes ago, it might be difficult
to think oh, this guy is definitely
a moral compass for Deadpool,
but we have to remember that
that story was a retcon.
It wasn't initially intended for Madcap
to be that voice, so we're just
gonna let it slide.
We're just gonna let is slide for now.
You can disagree in the comments.
I don't know.
The dialogue of this voice
usually, not always, but usually
steers Deadpool to take more serious,
responsible actions, even criticizing him
for his shortcomings and childish, impulsive behavior.
Take a look at a couple interactions
between the dueling inner voices.
When Deadpool's friend Bob,
an ex-agent of Hydra accidentally
takes a dive with a dangerous villain
named Tiger Shark, the two voices
have completely different reactions.
The yellow voice wants to run away
from the threat of Tiger Shark
as a sense of self preservation,
while the white voice says that
they should really be rescuing Bob
because that's the right thing to do.
In another instance, Deadpool kills
a bunch of people that his employer
hired to help him.
The white voice acts as a conscience,
asking if he thinks the employer
will care that Deadpool just killed
a bunch of his own men,
but the yellow box exclaims
it doesn't matter, still gettin' paid.
Or take the beginning of the Deadpool video game.
They get the script for the game,
and the yellow voice doesn't want
to read any of it, 'cause words,
words are boring.
However, the white voice urges him
to be responsible and actually read through it.
It even condescends Deadpool
during parts of the game when he
would know what's going on
if he actually took a look at the script.
Heck, even the design of the white boxes
takes on a more formal structured tone.
Black Courier font on a plain white
background, no flash, no pizzazz,
just straight to business.
By contrast, the other inner voice
is written in your classic stylish
comic book font on a fun
yellow background to match
Deadpool's own speaking voice.
Speaking of which, the third
and final part of Freud's model
of behavior is the ego.
The ego is the most conscious part
of our minds, and it's what
mediates between the conflicting
wants of the id and superego.
The ego also deals with reality,
which is fitting, 'cause it is Deadpool's
real voice that we're talking about.
We've seen plenty of occasions
when Deadpool uses his speaking
voice to consult and strike deals
with his dueling inner voices,
like when he was being made fun of
by some punk kids, the yellow voice
wanted to compulsively kill them,
but the white voice tried to talk him out of it.
Deadpool then settled on a compromise
with his inner voices.
He wouldn't kill them.
He would just break their arms.
See, much more rational.
The ego also understands that there
are other people who have just as valid
thoughts and feelings and desires.
Where the id makes decisions based off
of the pleasure principle, and the superego
makes decisions based off of morality,
the ego makes decisions based off
of what other people will think
or the consequences of a given action.
There was an entire stint in Daniel Way's
Deadpool run where Wade traveled
the country trying to make people
see that he can be a hero.
It wasn't driven by his conscience
or a desire to do what's right,
he still did horrible and unethical
things to try and achieve this goal,
like framing his friend Weasel
to look like a super-villain so Deadpool
could claim the glory of being a hero
in the eyes of the public, who previously
only saw him as a violent lunatic mercenary.
When Deadpool's not trying to look
like a hero, he's simply trying to look
awesome in order to impress people.
While Daniel Way did not plan
for Deadpool's voices to line up
with the id, ego and superego,
it's interesting to see how well
they unintentionally fit.
It's actually become a trope in storytelling
to have a so-called Freudian trio
composed of three characters based
loosely off this model.
One who's emotional and instinctual.
Another who is rational and logical,
and one who tries to reconcile between them.
Think Avengers or Star Trek,
Lord of the Rings or Boy Meets World,
the list goes on.
Anywhere you can find a group
of three characters, chances are they
more or less fit into the Freudian trio trope.
In the case of Deadpool, he represents
all three parts by himself.
That is pretty cool.
However, this can be a little tricky
because the personalities of the voices
don't stay consistent.
Sometimes the white boxes are
more immature, and the yellow
boxes are more serious.
Daniel Way explained that the voices
seemingly flip-flop saying quote,
"It's like he can't keep things straight.
"Deadpool very much lives in a world
"of his own construction, so he's
"not very big on rules and order."
- [Voiceover] Oh my God, this is so boring.
- No, it's not.
It's really interesting.
- [Voiceover] Perhaps we should
let someone else chime in.
- I think you two have done
enough of that already.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, but
here's an idea.
- Thank you Scott and ah, Scott's boxes.
Yeah, I totally agree with Mr. Way.
Deadpool definitely lives in a world
of his own construction, which I mean
that might be a little bit weird
to think about, given that Daniel Way
is one of the many very talented
people that made the world
that he said Deadpool constructs,
but it makes sense somehow.
The way we talk about fictional
characters presumes that they have
experiences and perceptions,
even consciousness in their own worlds.
Though we totally understand that those
worlds are made by people in our world.
I don't need to talk your ear off
about this because one, you don't
have a healing factor, and that would
be pretty gruesome, and two, you covered
a lot of this with Ollie in your Avengers
video, but to build on this line of thought,
we can explain a lot about how Deadpool
is the way he is if we accept
his having experiences and consciousness.
There's this line of thought from a school
of philosophy called phenomenology,
which holds that it's our experiences
that comprise this wacky thing we call reality.
At least as far as we know,
our perceptions give rise to all that's out there.
Now, the thing about perceptions
is that, for now at least, you need
a body to have them,
so in this line of thought,
consciousness, perceptions, reality,
they're all tied up in having
and using bodies.
What if that body was different?
Had a completely unique and exceptionally
intense experience of the world?
Might it not follow that since reality
is based on perceptions, and perceptions
depend upon a body, your reality
might be different?
Is this starting to sound familiar?
That is what we're gonna talk
about in regard to Mr. Wade "Deadpool" Wilson
on Idea Channel, if you wanna come
and check it out after you're
done here, of course.
Scott and his boxes still have
a lot of very important material to cover.
See ya soon.
- Thanks, Mike.
Yeah, unfortunately, all good things
must come to an end, and in the comics,
Deadpool and Madcap were eventually separated.
Deadpool took up that same contract
to kill Matt Murdock again.
This time, Luke Cage showed up
to stop him and delivered
a massive punch to Deadpool's head.
The resulting damage finally allowed
for Madcap's mind to fully
take over Deadpool's body.
But Deadpool is not a fan
of having someone else control him,
so he came up with a plan
to separate them once and for all.
They convinced Luke Cage and Thor,
who once again showed up out of nowhere,
to play tug of war and rip
Deadpool's body in half.
In the aftermath, the right half
of his body was solely Deadpool,
and the left half healed into Madcap.
The two men were their own
separate selves once more.
Cut, almost literally, from the same cloth.
See?
It all came around.
Since then, Deadpool has only had
one voice in his head, if you don't
count the brief period where
he had a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's consciousness
transferred into his brain to seemingly
fill the role as a superego as Madcap once did.
- [Voiceover] Lame!
Let's wrap this up.
(gasps) Like a chimichanga.
- Look, we're almost done, all right?
- [Voiceover] What exactly was
the point of all this?
- Remember, Freud's theory was
that our personalities are shaped
by the balance between the id,
ego and superego.
These three voices fleshed out
the character of Deadpool by explicitly
showing each side of his personality,
but with Madcap gone, did he take
Deadpool's sense of morality with him?
That depends on your particular
version of the character.
Deadpool has been called
the Internet's favorite superhero.
One writer even described him as a walking,
talking chimichanga-scarfing meme,
and that's a big part of his personality,
sure, but it's not all of it.
It's fun to take panels out of context
and create our own idea of Deadpool
as a wise-cracking, self-indulgent,
violent-obsessed clown, but when
we do so, as symbolized in the story
that split apart Wade and Madcap,
we risk throwing away a genuine
slice of his personality and end up
with a version of Deadpool who's incomplete.
But I'm filming this before I saw the movie,
which is probably fine.
Whatta you guys think?
Do Deadpool's feuding mental voices
represent the Freudian model
of the human psyche?
Do you wish he's go back to having
Madcap in his head, or are you
just fine with his regular inner voice?
Let's talk about it all in the comments.
And a huge thanks to Mike from Idea Channel
for being part of this video.
Seriously, if you're not subscribed,
you really, really should be.
Click right here to see the video
of his that I made an appearance in,
exploring what it would be like to be Deadpool.
Go check it out.
It is genuinely amazing.
We also have an entire playlist
of Deadpool videos examining
topics like whether he might secretly
be a mutant, or hopefully dispelling
the myth that he was a rip-off of Deathstroke,
plus a bunch more.
Click right here to lean back
and watch all of our videos
about the merc with a mouth,
and make sure you hit that big
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miss out on all the new videos
that we make for you every Monday,
Wednesday and Friday that explore
the history, science, art and philosophy
behind your favorite comic book superheroes.
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