Violence in the American Imaginary: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Superheroes
MENAKA PHILIPS
Violence in the American Imaginary: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Superheroes - Volume 116 Issue 2
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Cambridge Core
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will—Bernard Shaw

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was chased down and fatally shot by three white men, one of whom was a former officer with the Glynn County Police Department (Rojas, Fausset, and Kovaleski Reference Rojas, Fausset and Kovaleski2020). Less than a month later, on March 13, Breonna Taylor was gunned down in her home while asleep, by three, plainclothes Louisville Metro police officers. And on May 25, 2020, George Floyd was suffocated to death by ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Theirs were not the first Black lives lost to racially charged violence, but occurring in the span of four months, their deaths reignited the Movement for Black Lives on a scale not previously seen across America (Buchanan, Bui, and Patel Reference Buchanan, Bui and Patel2020).

Notably, the world of superheroes merged with these events. In the midst of sustained protests organized in response to the killings of Arbery, Taylor, and Floyd, some law enforcement officers and even entire police departments began displaying the skull logo of Marvel’s Punisher—a fictional vigilante known for his extreme violence (Cronin Reference Cronin2020). Adopted outright, and sometimes retrofitted to feature a black and white American flag and a blue line, the appearance of The Punisher skull on police vests, cars, and social media posts is not only a reaction to the protests for racial justice sweeping the nation but also a statement about the status and self-understanding of law enforcement personnel in the face of renewed national scrutiny. And it is not the first time The Punisher has been appropriated by American security forces for that reason.

In 2017, The Punisher skull was decaled onto the official vehicles of a Kentucky police department along with the slogan “Blue Lives Matter” (Campbell Reference Campbell2017). Two years later the St. Louis Police Officer’s Association encouraged members to adopt a version of the emblem as a sign of support for officers who were under investigation for publishing “a range of concerning images and statements on social media” (Balk Reference Balk2019; see Figure 1). In a letter to members, association president Ed Clark noted that the “Blue Line Punisher” had “been widely embraced by the law enforcement community as a symbol of the war against those who hate law enforcement. It’s how we show the world that we hold the line between good and evil” (Clark Reference Clark2019). More bluntly, Navy Seal Chris Kyle, popularly known as the “American Sniper,” outfitted his field unit in Iraq with the Punisher skull to announce, “We’re here and we want to fuck with you” (Kyle, McEwen, and DeFelice Reference Kyle, McEwen and DeFelice2013, 231).

Why do armed units of the American state identify with this outlaw legend of the comic book genre?Footnote 1 I argue that these appropriations of The Punisher constitute a fundamentally political act to which scholars should pay close attention. The Punisher—a character defined by his brutality—participates in the privilege of violence. By this I mean the force or coercion particular individuals may deploy based on normative expectations concerning gender and race. This privilege of violence can be difficult to see, in part because it operates in the interstices of broader forms of structural violence—rooted in the everyday workings of social, economic, and legal institutions and practices—which impairs the opportunities and experiences available to certain populations (Galtung Reference Galtung1969). The privilege of violence, however, operates through individuals to delineate the forms of violence they can use in response to experiences with loss, harm, and injustice.