Spring 2004

Ellen Fridovich David ’71 is a film, television and voice actress in New York City who most recently appeared on NBC’s “Law and Order.”

The most amazing part of appearing as a superhero was that I had enormous freedom to observe people and their behaviors without them really seeing me. My first job for Marvel Comics was as a very blond buxom Ms. Marvel. I had a long run as Spiderwoman, making appearances all over the country including the White House during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. I was traveling with Spiderman, The Hulk and The Green Goblin and we were quite a sensation. Perhaps the craziest personal appearance I made for Marvel was in Las Vegas to a convention of car dealership owners. I explained how I acquired my super powers as Jessica Drew, who was saved from an early death by an injection of spider venom, hence, the arachnid traits.

One day I was part of a photo shoot for Marvel in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York. We finally finished, I was running late, and didn’t have time to change. I hailed a cab in costume, mask and wig, and without blinking the driver just said “Where to lady?” However, other drivers and pedestrians were not so blasé. That’s the flip side of being incognito. People will say things to your “persona” that they would never say to your “face.” Kids tend to take you literally as the superhero. I don’t know how many times I was asked to “spin a web” and had to explain that I would, but for the mess it would make on the ceiling.

Joel Rose ’70 is a novelist and journalist whose work includes “Kill the Poor,” “Kill Kill Faster Faster” and his latest “New York Sawed in Half: An Urban Historical.” He is a former editor at DC Comics.

Not so many years ago, I received an urgent call from the city of Metropolis. I hurried to 1700 Broadway, took the elevator to the 19th floor. When I got out Superman, his fist outstretched, his cape flowing behind him was just crashing through the wall above the receptionist’s head. Bricks were spewing down on the poor woman. Mr. Mxyzptlk was about. So was a leering Lex Luther.

Below me, on the 18th floor, Gotham City loomed. Batman stood on the roof, atop a dark building. He stood beside a forbidding water tower, surveying all. If there were any evil doers down below, for example, the Joker or Mr. Freeze, by the grim expression on the caped crusader’s face and hard cast of his mouth, you knew he would be their undoing.

So began my most pleasant sojourn at DC Comics with Superman, Batman and a slew of other outsize masked and cloaked protectors.
When I arrived at DC the place was being administered by a group of middle-aged men who had started in the company, volunteering their time when they were 13 and 14 years old. Childhood misfits all, they had been known collectively as the Woodchucks, and now 30 years later here was their revenge, they were running the show. Their vision of America and the superhero had been carefully thought and calculated. The Woodchucks were in their heyday, selling millions of copies of comic books, watching movies being made from their ideas, seeing their influence on the American public, everywhere from peanut butter jars to rides at Six Flags amusement parks.

The fantasy embraced by youth, cool and otherwise, all over the country was their fantasy. They were gleeful, powerful, and on top of their game. The masked superhero emerging from his or her bland identity to rescue the town, the city, the nation, the world, was them, it was the Woodchucks.

For me, helping to keep everything in perspective, of course, the saving grace was that just below us on the 19th floor and Metropolis, below the 18th floor and Gotham City, was the 17th floor: the true American superhero, Alfred E. Neuman and “Mad” magazine.

Arthur Bijur ’77 is the president and executive creative director of Cliff Freeman & Partners, an advertising agency that has won multiple creative awards and is responsible for the branding and advertising campaigns of Little Caesars (“Pizza! Pizza!), Staples, Fox Sports, Ben & Jerry’s and more.

There is a big S on his chest. Suddenly, using his X-ray vision, he sees through LDM (Loan Default Man). He leaps across the state to the capitol and comes down hard on Infrastructuro, then makes short work of Developmento, the arch enemy of the environment. Finally, he blows really hard through a gap in his teeth, and Corrupto and Overtaxman are disposed of. Soon he grows more powerful and wants to change his name to Presidentor.

If you haven’t guessed, S is for Schwarzenegger. Do you really think celebrity alone is responsible for this Governor’s election?
Such is our comic book reality. Times are tough. Faith, hope, religion and lotto step in to fill the void. But ordinary faith doesn’t remedy all of our modern day ills. So, for a little comic relief, how about a caped crusader or two?

The fantasy of superheroes is appealing because we would all like to have power or control like they do. Children like superheroes because they represent being powerful and in control in a way that they are not. We’re all just big kids, after all.

Iva Deutchman is a professor of political science specializing in gendered political issues. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Once upon a time – a long, long time ago – we needed heroes. Heroes were suitable for a time when we perceived the world to be less scary than it now appears. A hero could come and rescue the beautiful young thing who was tied to the railroad tracks or the poor widow who the awful landlord was about to toss out into the snow. Yes, we still have awful landlords, and God knows we still have snow! And maybe beautiful young things still fear being tied to railroad tracks. But these days the widows often have money and the young things are post-Title IX strong. So the handsome, young hero of yesteryear has fewer demands on his time – and our imaginations. Instead, he is replaced by the superhero, who is needed in 2004 because our fears are different. The evil we encounter seems more random, more global and more out of control. Terrorism is the obvious example, but there are others. World Wars. Nuclear weapons. Snipers. Serial killers. Michael Jackson. Both the superhero and the hero of yesteryear are male (they might not be real, but they have gender). The superhero can do more than the mortal hero. He flies. He morphs into something or someone else. He is the only figure that we can imagine who can protect us from the steady increase in random violence.

There are ways in which superheroes seem to become human. Firefighters and police officers, in the wake of 9/11, enjoyed a bit of a superhero reputation. Athletes have always been larger than life and inspirational (and not just for young boys). Of course, it is dangerous for us to confuse human beings with the superheroes of our imaginations. Superheroes can leap great heights, run past the speed of light, see through solid objects and in general turn the world right side up. In contrast, real people can only leap at imaginary heights, always lose the marathon, and can barely see the nose on their own face. In other words, real people inevitably disappoint. Who wouldn’t prefer the superhero?

Dr. Michele Robins ’77 is a psychologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is also in private practice.

Last year, I attended an exhibition at The Whitney Museum of American Art that featured a series of sculptures by Giles Barbier depicting elderly superheroes: Captain America hooked up to an IV, a grey-haired Superman leaning into a walker, the Incredible Hulk slumped in a wheelchair. The exhibit was shocking because it defied everything we take for granted about a superhero’s immortality.
The superhero gives us a way to defy the truth of mortality.

Surrounded by the adversity of life, the superhero is a fantasy, a deified icon that never faces death. Superheroes enable us to feel as though we are secure and defended against hardship in a world in which we feel vulnerable. We are comforted in knowing that there is something or someone stronger and more powerful than we are. Children and adults long to feel protected, and a superhero feeds those protection fantasies in a socially acceptable way.

In my practice, I sometimes ask children and adolescents which superhero they like best. You can find out much information about how they see themselves through their answers. When I ask children to name their favorite superhero, I'm really asking who they look up to, how they view and express their own feelings like aggression, and which characteristics they value and aspire to in others.

Richard Salter ’86, assistant professor of religious studies, is interested in how religions form, and the related themes of religion, violence and globalization. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

I wonder if the idea of a superhero is humanities’ mirror image of God. In a world that finds it hard to take time to meditate on the complexity of ultimate reality, we find ourselves instead drawn to fantasy figures of our own creation that express our deepest longings. Superheroes allow us to believe in immediate (and often violent) justice and in the simple oppositions of good and evil. When I think of a superhero, I think of someone who sees injustice, knows what to do, and acts. We invent them to be invulnerable, unlike real heroes. In what is perhaps the best review of “The Iliad,” Simone Weil points out that it is precisely the might of Achilles (our Ur-hero), and his desecration of Hector, that leads his own humanity to unravel. Only the fragile and risky encounter with Hector’s father … an encounter which makes Achilles remember his own father … makes Achilles human again.
As the world becomes increasingly complex and difficult to understand, we find ourselves drawn to a desire for simplicity … a desire to believe that it is possible for the powerful to act first and ask questions later. For better or worse, superheroes let us believe.

Donald Spector, chair of the department of physics, is a world-class particle physicist with expertise in quantum theory, mathematics and computational methods. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Several years ago, I gave a lecture on my research titled "What's So Super about Supersymmetry?" The first slide featured the title of my talk accompanied the logo from Superman’s chest, that famous “S” in a triangle. Surely if I could associate Superman with my subject, supersymmetry must be very powerful!

Physicists have found much that they think is super. In superconductors, electricity travels without losing energy. Superfluids are liquids that flow without friction. Supersymmetry evades a mathematical constraint known as the Coleman-Mandula Theorem. These phenomena are all termed “super” because they go beyond the limits of what physicists had thought possible.

Superheroes carry this even further. The whole concept of the superhero rests on our shared understanding of the scientific laws that govern our environment and our lives. We call superheroes “super” because their actions violate these laws; “super” is a euphemism for “impossible.”

These pseudoscientific explanations, incidentally, generally confront the scientific concerns of the day, attempting to tame the worrisome genies that science has released. Flash, who first appeared in 1939, got his extraordinary powers by breathing in chemical fumes, echoing the mustard gas attacks of World War I. Bruce Banner became the Incredible Hulk when exposed to gamma rays (1962). The case of Spider-Man is particularly telling. When Spider-Man debuted in comic books in the early 1960s, it was a bite from a radioactive spider that gave Peter Parker his powers. Four decades later, in the Spider-Man movie, a genetically modified spider delivers the critical bite instead.
Thus we see in the superhero a summary of our whole societal relationship to science. It is indeed quite a task that we ask these characters to perform. But do not worry about whether or not they are up to that task. They are, after all, superheroes.