Square-Jaws and Twitchies: Superheroes in the Post-Modern Age

When I first heard who was playing Iron Man in the latest Marvel franchise-quest, my head spun around like a bad Linda Blair imitation. Quirky, twitchy, just-a-step-away-from-rehab Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark, man of steel? Come on now . . . and then I saw this second trailer for the movie and I said: “Oh. That’s what they’re going for. The old gotta-be-nuts to even think About putting on this tin suit thing.” Which, of course, Downey Jr. is perfect for.

I am aware that the very fact I would give Downey Jr.’s casting a second thought betrays my age. You see, my children, when I was growing up — sometime shortly after the Triassic era to be sure — there were two kinds of superhero, let’s call them the square-jaws and the twitchies. The square-jaws were true-blue, all-American heroes, often with flag-colored tights, who pined to show their girl-friends just how manly they really were, but — for the sake of their secret identities — had to play the nebbish. Of course, the prototypical square-jaw was Superman, who was so straight-arrow that I wonder anybody could stand to be around him, much less be rescued by him. Other square-jaws were Green Lantern, Flash and, yes, Batman, before Tim Burton converted him to a twitchy. DC Comics was the square-jaws’ natural habitat, but lest you think it was the only place to find them, remember: Captain America was from Marvel.

Twitchies, on the other hand, had not a lot of self-assurance. They tended to be full of self-doubt and — at times — self-loathing. Often, they tried repeatedly to give up their super-identities, to divest themselves of the mask or tights or metal suit or claws, but to no avail. For a twitchy, their super-identity is a burden at least as much a blessing, and the conflict that drives their adventures is within their own, divided selves. As Superman is the archetypal square-jaw, so is Spiderman the classic twitchy.

Of course, none of this is any news to anybody who has followed comics over the years. There have been reams and reams written about how Marvel revolutionized the comics, etc., etc., and it’s true: I count my comic-reading childhood into two haves: B.T. and A.T. for, of course, before and after twitchy.

You see, we boomers grew up on the cusp of not just a change in millennium, but a change in era. I’m talking, of course, about the change from modernity to post-modernity that social critics and others go on about. One of the key characteristics of the post-modern age is a distrust of authority, and, really, what is more of an authority figure than some guy flying around in red, yellow and blue tights, symbolizing all that is unstoppable about the good, old U.S. of A?

And so, as the move from the positivist 50s — age of tomorrow! — progressed through the 60s into the jittery seventies, lo! There were born people who knew no other environment than post-modernity, who did not know of a time — however brief for many of us — when authority was to be respected for what it was, science was an unalloyed good, and you could tell the good guys from the bad by the color of their flags.

In film, I think of the Coens as the post-modernists par excellance . . . their films are dripping with irony (the new millennium’s prime cultural marker) and they are cast with a who’s who of anti-hero types: John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, and John Goodman, to name but a few, and even the more mainstreamers like George Clooney have that ironic, self-deprecating twist about them. Though it’s been said, many times, many ways, it’s not an accident that movie stars are gone with the dodo birds.

Which brings us back to the super-heroes, and the franchises upon which they rest. The grand-daddy of all super-hero franchises revolved around Superman, the grand-daddy of all square-jaws, and to play him they got earnest, good-looking Christopher Reeve, who didn’t have an ironic bone in his body. He played the big guy straight, and much of the fun in Richard Donner’s first two films (the third and fourth were never that) was in contrasting that straightness with the jaded 70s with which it was surrounded. Reeve’s Superman was alien not only in his super-powers, but in his idealism and genuinely heroic point of view.

By the 80s, we were already at a place where we’d no longer buy a square-jaw super-hero on film. The coveted 18- to 25-yea-old male demographic had seen the ends of both ‘Nam and Richard Nixon, and they’d no longer come anywhere close to buying a guy whose heart was as pure as his body was bullet-proof. The horrible Supermans III and IV nailed the lid on the super-hero coffin, only to have it pried up once again (God, what tortured imagery) by Tim Burton and 1989’s Batman.

And for my money, you can talk about your over-the-top Nicholson or your delectable Basinger eye-candy, but the heart and soul of Burton’s vision was Michael Keaton, still my favorite Batman. I knew it was right when, in the opening scene, the petty crooks whose crime he has just foiled ask him “Who are you?” and his two-word reply said it all: “I’m . . . Batman.” Keaton’s reading of that one line contained an edge of madness, an edge of uncertainty, that was just right for Burton’s dark re-imagining.

The casting of Michael Keaton as Batman marked a turning-point in the evolution of the on-screen super-hero. His hair was receding, his eyes were shifty, and he didn’t look like you could trust him at all. In fact, I wouldn’t have trusted Bruce Wayne much less the caped crusader, unless it were to further corrupt an already decadent city. He was a Batman that was a product of the crazed post-modern streets, not alien to them as was Reeve’s Superman.

Once again, though, studio greed got the better of a franchise, and after Burton and Keaton left, the series tanked, only to be remembered for George Clooney’s be-nippled bat-suit. But Keaton had paved the way, he’d shown how a super-hero could be successful in our ironic, post-modern stew, and his Batman made it possible for the dominant Marvel franchises we have today. Tobey Maguire, anyone?

As an interesting footnote, Warner Brothers tried to revive the Superman franchise a couple of years ago, this time with Bryan Singer of über-twitchy X-Men fame at the helm. But inexplicably, rather than remaking the character in a post-modern mold, they cast square-jawed Brandon Routh, who more than one observer has labeled “Christopher Reeve reborn.” I thought studios had learned their lesson with the Keatons and the Maguires and the Jackmans, but like anyone who counts on that bunch for intelligence, I was wrong.