- [Scott] This video is supported by our beautiful patrons
over at patreon.com/nerdsync.
What's going on you wonderful nerds?
I've been thinking a lot about Logan ever since I saw it,
especially how it portrayed violence.
And I really wanted to talk about it.
Obviously, as I'm sure we all know, the movie takes
heavy inspiration from the Old Man Logan
comic book story line where Wolverine for the most part
has his claws put away, he put his violent past behind him.
But this movie feels like almost the exact opposite.
He whips out his claws from the very beginning
and starts slashing at people's throats.
It is bloody, it is gory, it is brutal,
but the movie doesn't treat violence like it's a fun thing
that all the characters are engaged in,
even when Wolverine is victorious in combat.
The characters aren't throwing up quips
or having heartfelt moments of realizations
with their teammates during combat,
they simply fight because they have to.
Most of the violence in the movie isn't Logan or Laura
looking for a fight or saving the world as heroes,
but simply the result of them trying to survive.
It's the world that's violent
and the characters just live in it.
This, in my opinion, makes Logan different
than most superhero movies or superhero stories in general,
whether from comic books or cartoons, et cetera.
Heroes tend to fight because there's a deep-seated
narrative in our culture that combat
is always the solution to every problem.
Theologian Walter Wink coined this as
the myth of redemptive violence.
He uses Popeye as an example, where a typical episode
would feature Bluto taking Olive Oyl.
Popeye attempts to save her but gets beat up
by Bluto initially, then he eats some spinach
and wins the fight, wash, rinse, repeat.
There's no discussion of whatever rivalry they have,
no attempt to talk it out like people.
No one walks away with any lesson learned,
as pretty much the same thing will happen
in the next episode.
The basic idea is present throughout almost every story
we tell as humans.
"The belief that violence saves is so successful
"because it doesn't seem to be mythic in the least.
"Violence simply appears to be the nature of things.
"It's what works, it seems inevitable,
"the last and often the first resort in conflicts.
"If a god is what you turn to when all else fails,
"violence certainly functions as a god.
"This myth of redemptive violence is the real myth
"of the modern world.
"It, and not Judaism or Christianity or Islam
"is the dominant religion in our society today."
Wink goes on to explain that this dates all the way back
to the ancient Babylonian creation myth
where gods were killed, and from their corpses,
one of them being the embodiment of chaos,
the earth and the stars were created.
Creation itself is an act of violence.
It was there from the very start.
And the story structure of the victory of order over chaos
spread like wildfire,
it's present in almost every story we tell,
especially superhero stories.
Superheroes have to fight in order to win.
Even political issues go from healthy discussion
to airport battles, and this is what caused
Fredric Wertham to go on a crusade against comic books
during the 1940s with his book Seduction of the Innocent.
If you recognize that name at all, you might associate him
as the guy who really hates comic books,
but really he should be thought of as the guy
who really hates violence.
His life goal was to promote the idea
that human violence could end.
He simply believed that superheroes and comic books
were teaching children that violence was entertainment.
- [Fredric] We are teaching young people that violence
is an amusement, it's an entertainment.
Human violence can be reduced,
to my mind can be completely abolished.
- [Scott] And while we might consider crime stories
to be their own sort of subgenre, Wertham thought
about 90% of comics were crime stories,
including superheroes and horror comics.
- [Fredric] We've come to the conclusion,
crime comic books are comic books that depict crime.
We have found that it makes no difference
whether the local is western or Superman
or a spaceship or horror.
If a girl is raped, she is raped whether it's
on a spaceship or in the prairie.
If a man is killed, he's killed whether he comes
from Mars or from somewhere else.
- [Scott] He felt that children who read these stories
would pay attention to all the cool things
that the villain was doing for most of the plot
and then kind of disregard the last few panels
where the hero or the police officer would come in
and say that crime doesn't pay.
And Walter Wink echos a similar sentiment in regards
to the myth of redemptive violence.
"For the first three quarters of the comic strip
"or TV show, the hero suffers grievously
"and appears hopelessly doomed, until miraculously
"the hero breaks free, vanquishes the villain,
"and restores order til the next episode.
"This segment of the show where the hero suffers
"actually consumes all but the closing minutes,
"allowing ample time for indulging the violent side
"of the self."
Wink was also worried that redemptive violence
would give way to violence as an end in itself,
without meeting the redemptive quality of that.
And look no further than us comics fans who are constantly
asking questions like,
In that scenario we didn't set up a reason
why those two were gonna be fighting.
They're not gonna do so to save the world
or for any sort of higher purpose, they're just fighting
because it's a cool thing to think about.
It's violence as an end in itself.
But okay, look, I'm not saying that superheroes
should stop fighting, mostly because I'm very selfish
and I really like watching superheroes fight each other.
It's a really cool thing and I don't want it to ever end.
Look, violence isn't going anywhere.
As Stanley Kubrick said, "There's always been violence
"in art, there's violence in the Bible,
"violence in Homer, violence in Shakespeare."
But it is nice to see the occasional story
where the villain's outsmarted, instead of outpunched.
But that is just my opinion,
my thoughts about this topic.
Guys, I would love to know your thoughts
regarding superheroes and violence down
in the comments below.
If you've been around the channel before, you might notice
that this video was edited a little bit differently
than normal, it was actually done so by The Film Guy
over on YouTube, definitely check him out.
I'll have his channel linked up onscreen right now.
What a cool guy for doing this and trying out a new style.
If you like this sort of thing, go ahead and show
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Thank you so much to our patrons who make
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The names of those beautiful people are in the description
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Once again, that is patreon.com/nerdsync.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read
between the panels and grow smarter through comics.
(upbeat music)