A billionaire white playboy spends his evenings fighting villains with a cape and mask. A white alien works as a reporter but jumps to take out the bad guys in the city.
Traditionally, superheroes fit a predictable mold: white men who are bastions of justice despite their vigilante status. In the recent Netflix movie “The Old Guard” and the Emmy-nominated HBO masterful series “Watchmen,” black women are the new types of heroes, not only breaking that mold, but allowing for a drastic shift in storytelling.
A new guard of superheroism doesn’t just mean diversity. This leaves room for the possibility that, especially now, when our political systems and institutions are called into question, there is no absolute moral authority, even for those charged with saving the day. It features individuals better equipped to understand the weight of the badge and mask, and the cost of being called a hero.
In “The Old Guard,” a quartet of immortals is led by the eldest, Andy (a fascinating Charlize Theron), a warrior with steel eyes. As they travel the world crushing baddies, they welcome a new member, a Marine named Nile (KiKi Layne).
When we meet Nile, she is stationed in Afghanistan, distributing candy to children on the streets. Ordered to obtain information about a place where a dangerous man might be hiding, she reminds her fellow troops to “keep respect”. She shoots the target but is visibly affected when he survives. She immediately rushes to stop the bleeding, but is vulnerable to a fatal knife attack – from which she miraculously recovers.
Movies and TV shows love an upbeat rookie, and young, empathetic Nil certainly is. But his race also brings him into another cliché. Black women are often presented as the standard bearers of ethical action. They saw judicial errors and silently endured the pain or valiantly retaliated; either way, they are resilience and kindness personified. This also applies to superhero tales: think of Misty Knight in “Luke Cage”, Storm in the “X-Men” movies, and even the no-frills Okoye from “Black Panther”. Although black women are rarely the protagonists of these stories, they are often accused of being the pillars of strength and the moral foundations of the team. In “The Old Guard,” Nile is both the bright-eyed newcomer and the strong moral compass, so she can serve as a foil for Andy and the others.
Nile is skeptical of the team’s supposed acts of justice. “So are you the good guys or the bad guys?” she asks them. “It depends on the century”, we answer. “We are fighting for what we think is right,” adds another. The group is immortal but not infallible, and the immortals’ claim that they use their abilities to fight for their definition of justice is consistent with that of a myriad of armies, generals and other militant bodies in through history. Nile herself comes from such an institution – the US military – which is often described as providing a vital national line of defense, but which in reality is also used to exert power and influence for less ethical and more policies. The film even parallels the immortals with the actual army that Nile comes from: Andy bluntly declares that they are an army.
The fact that Nile is a black woman, someone who is not often seen in superhero movies and who is often overlooked and disadvantaged – even brutalized – in our culture, makes a statement: This individual, who makes part of a demographic so often victimized by discriminatory militant systems, may in this world be empowered and empowered to decide what she thinks is right or wrong.
But ultimately “The Old Guard” goes easy on its heroes. Although Nile questions their status as a fellow and their work as a self-proclaimed hero, she eventually joins them. After initially criticizing the moral superiority at work in hero films by positioning Nile as the conscience of the group, “The Old Guard” will not let us sit with the possibility that the immortals are not the angels. guardians they hope to be. One final twist reveals that there is a grand design after all, and they unwittingly carry it out.
As a result, these heroes are, in fact, infallible, despite the blood on their hands. They – including the Nile – are an army with the power to act and kill in the name of the common good. Whatever that means.
Last fall, “Watchmen” also ended with the initiation of a black heroine, but delivered a more complex examination of her relationship with law enforcement, heroism and vigilantism. In the original comic book of the same name, Alan Moore and David Gibbons produced an exquisite storyline but didn’t feature any colored heroes, and didn’t address the issue of race at all. The HBO series, created by Damon Lindelof as a sequel to the original, is refreshingly reactionary, positioning the narrative around race and featuring a black heroine as the protagonist: a police officer named Angela Abar (Regina King) who gets tangled up. in the world of superheroes and a megalomaniac scheme for ultimate power.
In search of members of the Seventh Kavalry, a pseudo-KKK group calling for a revolution, Angela is forced to hide her identity and makes more progress in hitting racists as a masked vigilante, Sister Night. After all, even his fellow police officers cannot be trusted. When she discovers a KKK balaclava in the closet of her close friend and boss, Angela realizes that things are not what they seem.
The series also brings out this message that defining and carrying out justice is not a pleasant and orderly task. Angela discovers that her grandfather, a mysterious hero called Hooded Justice, also donned the costume while serving as a police officer. He was the victim of racist treatment by his peers and was unable to tackle crime the way he wanted.
Two generations later, Angela faces similar circumstances, but she is undoubtedly the hero of the story. Angela is the new guard, following the legacy of the Watchmen.
Literally, she inherits superpowers and becomes more than the hero she already is; she becomes a god. And, while we’ve witnessed an entire season of Angela fighting for what’s right, we’re still denied a final image of her as a deity. Unlike “The Old Guard,” “Watchmen” never falls into its own fantasy of the brave woman who can’t hurt. At its core, “Watchmen”, like the original comic, is a breakdown of the superhero fairy tale. But the series expands this criticism to include an often glamorous institution meant to represent justice but which too often fails: the police.
After becoming immortal, facing rejection from her military peers, Nile is marginalized by an army with a morally ambiguous history of atrocities, foreign interference and political agendas, just to become the last soldier of another who is equally morally ambiguous – but rationalized in the universe. of the movie. Angela, on the other hand, breaks with the police and her history of racist behavior; by acting independently, in accordance with its own morality, it obtains divinity. That this makes it foolproof is not the problem. The point is, she is a black woman who has found power outside of a broken structure. While that and her identity don’t make her flawless, her experiences as a black woman, a police officer and then a vigilante give her a more nuanced understanding of justice. She has the potential to be an even greater hero than any we’ve seen.
“The Old Guard” and “Watchmen” present exciting universes with powerful beings who aim to do good. But even in this supposedly protected world, justice is not a given. The character best suited to bring about change is one who knows the system inside and out and understands what it means to be crushed below. These black women are not perfect, but they are the precursors of a heroic revolution. Because when a black woman puts on a mask, she’s the closest vision to the kind of hero the world really needs.
