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Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Iron Man
Two years late on this, I know. I mentioned to a friend that I’d never seen it, and his bug-eyed astonishment persuaded me I ought to give it a go. I’ve seen it now. Verdict: fairly jolly.
Longer verdict: for much of its length, this almost lives up to the ideal; the ideal being that the title is short for Irony Man. There’s some movement in this direction, with Downey Junior’s wisecracking screen persona, but only some. In fact the heart of the film (the gleaming, metallic, circular heart) is clumsily, even painfully unironic. It’s the dream narrative of US military involvement in the Middle East: one American is able to go to Afghanistan, kill only the bad Afghans, leave all the virtuous Afghani men women and children alive, and then leap clean away into the sky having Done Good.
Iron Man’s suit, classically, is a wish-fulfulment dream of invulnerability, in medieval-knight or Ned Kelley mode. What this film adds is a twopetal garnish to that ancient human fantasy: first, the magic-carpet dream of jet-flight mobility and second, the equally potent dream of perfect moral choice. For Stark’s magic suit comes fitted with software that allows him not only to see everything (from the kid’s icecream blob falling from his cone, to the wicked Taliban fellah hiding behind the wall) but also to lock-on and, assisted by his silky-voiced computer advisor, discriminate good from bad. That’s the film’s major mendacity: that accurate moral judgement and effective ethical action are predicated upon an ontology of perfect, mechanical invulnerability. The exact opposite is the truth. Our ethical potential is grounded in our vulnerability.
The next stage in the analysis would be to trace this misprison, the belief that ethical behaviour must be grounded in invulnerability, deeper into the US psyche: the obsession with guns, the catastrophic foreign policy. But that would be a large and complex task, and beyond me at the moment. Intuitively, though, I wonder if there’s something in it.
Comments
A most provocative final paragraph, Adam. If anyone undertakes that task, I’d be interested in reading the result.
Iron Man sounds like a combination of the US Marines catchphrase “a few good men” refined to “one great man” and superweapon or superhero salvation propaganda and lore - the classic study of which is H. Bruce Franklin’s War Stars: The Super Weapon and the American Imagination -
Revised and Expanded Edition University of Massachusetts Press Paperback, 2008. ISBN 978-1-55849-651-4.
Comments on the original edition (1988):
“A marvelous study that weaves together some of the most important developments in US military history, a survey of popular literature, and an overview of American culture.... The story of America’s conversion to belief in the efficacy of air power… is told better here than anywhere else. Franklin concludes with a penetrating discussion of the current debate over Star Wars… no source provides so profound a historical perspective to the debate as this one.”
--Choice (Outstanding Academic Book Of 1989)
“In this carefully researched and revealing inquiry into American cultural history, Bruce Franklin brings to light themes of great significance. One is the fear that we are about to be destroyed, and at the last minute are saved, miraculously, by a superweapon or superhero. More ominously, in his words, ‘the American imperial eagle’ commonly turns out to be ‘a bird that habitually views its own behavior as “defense” against its prey.’ Unless this pathology is understood and overcome, it will continue to cause great haarm, which we will not escape.” --Noam Chomsky
“Thought provoking--insightful--brilliant. Franklin’s analysis marks a watershed in the debate over nuclear weapons and Star Wars. He has broken new ground in this book, which will be talked about for years to come.”
-Michio Kaku, Professor of Nuclear Physics, City University of New York
“In War Stars, H. Bruce Franklin writes American history from a new angle . . . It astonished me--but it was totally convincing throughout.”
--Isaac Asimov
“A searing and penetrating history of the American obsession with finding a technology that will end wars forever… Its analysis of American fiction and films provides a new dimension to the subject.”
--Carl Sagan
“If there is a future, and perhaps Franklin’s book will help to insure there is one, then War Stars will be a classic. This book should be placed on the desks of all public officials, elected or appointed.”
--John Seelye, Graduate Research Professor, U. of Florida
“A wide-ranging, highly readable, and thoroughly stimulating book. Franklin’s provocative study is essential to an understanding of the ideological and popular-culture dimensions of our long national obsession with superweaponry.”
--Paul Boyer, the Merle Curti Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles
“[One of the two] most significant studies ever published in science fiction scholarship.”
--Science Fiction Research Association Newsletter
“Franklin has emerged as an outstanding voice among radical critics of science fiction, and War Stars represents an important step in placing the genre within a political and historical context. The flip-flop word play in the title suggests this book’s major focus; Franklin is concerned primarily with American ideology-«particularly the place of technology within an aspect of the American belief system--and its effects on foreign policy and the arms race of the postwar period. While Franklin shows the dialectical relationship between the fictive products of imagination and American history, his emphasis here… is on the political and material consequences of an ideological position and national self-image. Outspoken and compelling, War Stars’ well-documented and rigorous argument… gains a specific and original force by its marshalling of evidence.”
--Christopher Sharrett, Film Quarterly
“War Stars is so crammed with fascinating facts and ideas that it should interest people of all political persuasions. The author’s rigorous scholarship and analytical insights are delivered in an appealingly vigorous and pungent prose. And for those trying to comprehend the powerful effect of the SDI concept on the public imagination, it should be required reading.”
--Paul Brians, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
...
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/Books/WarStars.html
Ah, you’re right: it’s almost the opposite, isn’t it? Ethical behavior must be grounded in vulnerability. That’s the basic soil my work is rooted in.
I have to confess that I find Robert Downey Jr. possibly the best actor of his generation, and I’m waiting for his thinking to outgrow this part.
Once again, it seems that some people just don’t get it at all, so they need a refresher:
Tony Stark didn’t refuse to give the Iron Man suit to the government because he hates the government (he doesn’t)-he refused to give it to them because he knew the arms race that would result if it was ever taken over and modified to be used for the dictates of the U.S. Armed Forces. The situation in the movie with Ivan Vanko was a one-off that would likely never really happen again, but would continue if Justin Hammer had got his way. Remember, this is a man (Tony Stark) who became paranoid because he was afraid of how his armor tech was being used by a ton of super crooks (the main story point of the Armor Wars storyline in the comic book) and who waged a kind of war to make sure these crooks didn’t get it. Not to mention the change he went through in the cave in Afghanistan that set him on the path of being Iron Man and discontinuing the making of arms.
If this guy wasn’t that concerned, he wouldn’t be acting as a force for good the way he does in the comic books (which you and many other people should try to read along with watching and reviewing this movie!) Once again, you join a panoply of people on the left and right who have commented on the Iron Man franchise, but don’t really get it at all.
Oh, and Tony; as for Downey changing his thinking-he’s done more change in his life than you will ever know. Playing a force for goo is a change-just not one that you give a shit about. Your loss.