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A year before that beasts, Diana ran through No Man’s Land The miracle woman, deflecting bullets with their indestructible bracelets (somehow no one bothered to shoot her bare thighs). This year Disney’s Jungle cruise presented a magical healing leaf that the film’s characters hope to use to help soldiers in the trenches during World War I. (Although they secure the petal, the film ends before being used in military efforts, something that can be portrayed in the upcoming sequel.)
Inserting magic or technology into history and pretending to have caused or prevented atrocities is a dangerous game that could rob humanity of its autonomy and guilt (after all, the atomic bomb had an immortal, non-alien inventor – one whose remorse is the subject of historical debate). What’s worse is that inserting these scenes for quick pathos and not studying them in depth can feel disgusting and cheap. The background of World War II may, says researcher Keys Ribbens, make history “less obscure, less inaccessible,” but sometimes these scenes become too short a shorthand.
“Maybe there’s some laziness on the part of the creators,” said Ribens, who teaches popular history and war courses at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. “They know that both world wars are almost always liked by the modern public, because wars are not only highly recognizable, but also act as a moral standard for right and wrong.
Yes, presenting atrocities in popular culture can raise awareness of historical events, but it can also be exploitative, says Agnieszka Soltisik Monet, a professor of literature and culture at the University of Lausanne who also specializes in presenting war in popular culture. Because these films are commercial endeavors, Monet argues, “their motive for using atrocities is primarily to touch a nerve in a way that moves people, but doesn’t really bother them.”
In addition, the introduction of fantasy elements or superheroes can reduce people’s sense of freedom of action or, as Ribbens puts it, “suggests that humans are not really capable of dealing with the evil that is ultimately created by human hands. “.
And yet, is this really something new? Superheroes and World War II have always been intertwined. Ben Saunders, director of research at comics and cartoons at the University of Oregon, says monthly comic book sales doubled between 1941 and 1944, with nearly half of the enrolled American men reading about superheroes fighting the forces of Axis (Captain America even hit Hitler in the face in 1941). “The fantasy of a superhero is one in which the pleasures of moral righteousness and the pleasures of aggressive action intertwine,” he says. “Naturally, this was a particularly popular fantasy at the time of the war, when the cultural need for messages of justified aggression was very great.
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