Justice League and Terror in Cartoons

69 Pages·2022·3.082 MB·English

by  Mario Marcello Neto

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"There is no use in locking ourselves up in dusty archives to write pages and
pages about a remote past, like copyist monks oblivious to the reality that
surrounds us. For the majority of the population, the history that exists is the
one that is imagined. It is up to historians, although not only historians, to make
society imagine history, either with words or with the imagination.
accompanied by images and sounds".

Rafael Hagemeyer

"All these that are there standing in my way, they shall pass away....
Me birdie!"

Mário Quintana
1
SUMMARY
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INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 3
CHAPTER I ........................................................................................ 5
CHAPTER II ..................................................................................... 19
CHAPTER III .................................................................................... 37
CONCLUDING REMARKS ............................................................. 53
REFERENCES .................................................................................. 55
PRIMARY SOURCES ...................................................................... 60
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ................................................................... 61

2
INTRODUCTION

The 21st century has emerged amidst turbulence, imperialism reaches other
levels, mainly because of globalization, which is surprising to us until then.
Nationalisms, their imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson (2008) puts it,
are going through a process of re-signification and a search for regional
autonomy. Local identities assert themselves even more, on the other hand,
globalization internationalizes culture, often treating it as hegemonic, as Stuart
Hall (2006) states.The studies conducted by Eric Hobsbawm (2012) bring up
questions that instigated the origin of this book. When the author discusses the
prospects for the U.S. empire and the infamous fear of terrorism, it was possible
to understand that history can indeed contribute to the studies of recent
phenomena. Although the phenomenon of terrorism is not restricted to the 21st
century, it is on this phenomenon that the media and public opinion are now
focusing. Perhaps this is a way of trying to establish the duality relationship that
came from the Cold War in the 20th century.When we think of history as a
dialectical process of ruptures and continuities with which societies transform
and re-signify their way of seeing and acting in a given space and place, we can
understand that there is no possibility that the end of one century and the
beginning of another will mark a new era, totally new, with few elements from
the past.Through the cultural studies pointed out by Kellner (2001) and his
method of diagnostic criticism we seek to understand the text (in this case the
animation) through the context, and vice versa. Thus, this book intends to
discuss two central elements present in the Justice League animation. The first is
about media terrorism and official discourses (CHOMSKY, 2002). We will try
to problematize the historical elements that led to the construction of this term,
the differences between state terrorism and common sense terrorism.The fall of
the Word Trade Center, a symbol of financial capitalism, occurred in 2001 on
American soil. The accusations about the guilt of such an act were directly
attributed, by the official and media discourse (CHOMSKY, 2002), to the group
called terrorist Al Qaeda and as a consequence to almost all Arabs. The
accusation of terrorism was enormously widespread, for the first time on such a
large scale there was so much news, images, and information (reliable or not)
about such an event, and possibly, because of this, the concept of terrorism has
been emptied of its meaning.Noam Chomsky (2002) is categorical when he
affirms that the term has always had double standards. For the imperialist
national states, terrorism is anyone who threatens their order. On the other hand,
people dominated and suppressed by them consider war crimes and domination
by imperial powers as terrorism. Regardless of our political position on this
issue, it is worth remembering that we will adopt as our conceptual contribution
the views of Chomsky (2002) and Hobsbawm (2012), in which these so-called
terrorist movements are perceived by the media as, in a certain way, ephemeral,
i.e., they would be police cases, and it would not be necessary to combat these
3
movements through military intervention, especially foreign.These aspects of
the production context of the aforementioned animation did not go unnoticed by
its narrative. Since it is a superhero cartoon, the duality between good and evil is
one of the main prerogatives of this form of narrative. Therefore, it is clear that
the choice made by the producers of the animation was to characterize most of
the villains as terrorists. The way in which the narrative is constructed shows an
effort to reinforce the idea of a model of terrorism. This debate will be held
throughout this book.The second element we sought to discuss was the way in
which nuclear fear is recurrent in the Justice League narrative. It is important to
think that these events in which nuclear war and even the extermination of
humanity is feared are naturally associated with the 20th century. When
Thompson (1985) argues about the clear possibility of an extermination of
humanity, some historians, such as Hobsbawm (2013), have criticized him,
because to what extent can a historian project the future? This debate will be
further explored in the course of this research, especially when Hayden White
(s/d) uses the concept of the modernist event in which we consider that nuclear
fear may belong.Therefore, for the reader's understanding we have divided in a
way that would allow a better understanding of the cartoon studies, our
theoretical and methodological views on the same, a brief presentation of the
source, and finally the discussions listed in the paragraphs above on terrorism
and nuclear fear.In the first chapter we aim to present the source, its
characteristics and possibilities of analysis that we will use. For this, we start our
discussions about research in relation to academic works produced in relation to
animation and its possibilities of analysis. After this brief problematization, we
will go on to expose our theoretical and methodological visions with the purpose
of enabling an understanding of what we intend to do, what we understand as
History and its possible relation to the source. Finalizing Chapter I we conduct a
brief discussion on source characteristics, its main producers, and other elements
that are extremely pertinent to its study.In the second chapter, we seek to
analyze the source from the perspective of diagnostic criticism (KELLNER,
2002), discussing it together with its context of production and exhibition. To do
so, we initially expose our analysis categories and the framing of the source
before them. Afterwards, we start the discussions about the two most recurrent
themes throughout the 52 episodes of the animations: the terrorist discourse of
numerous characters and the fear of nuclear weapons or warheads. Each of these
two themes are problematized in relation to the source and its context.
4
CHAPTER I

1.1 Toward a History with Cartoons: A brief literature review.
When we started our studies on the relationship between cartoons and History,
we carried out a dense research process in databases of academic institutions, in
order to find researches done and possible paths so that this book could be
realized. Besides the consulted databases, mainly the public domain website
where all the theses and dissertations are sent after their defense in Brazilian and
public institutions, we searched in academic journals and some congress annals.
Initially we will discuss the works that we consider, in some points, relevant to
the realization of this book. Thus, first it is worth mentioning the master's
dissertation by Djessika Maciel (2010), entitled: "Last Exit to Springfield: A
Study on the Cartoon The Simpsons (1987-2009)". This work was one of the
few found at the graduate level on cartoons and history. Thus, its relevance lies,
first of all, in its pioneerism, but, in addition, the discussions about the satirical
way in which the series represents the American way of life are well explored.
An article published by the journal Social History in 2012, authored by Daniel
Correia makes a coherent analysis about cartoons in the period of the First
World War. His work: "Puppets in combat: discourse analysis of American
cartoons during the First World War" brings good theoretical and
methodological discussions. When the author refers to the ways of analyzing
and thinking History with, and in, animations, he searches in authors who
explore very well the universe between History and audiovisual, such as Marco
Napolitano and Jean- Noël Jeanneney. In addition, it is worth mentioning that
the author contemplates the discussions about the change of target audience, i.e.,
leaving the cartoons broadcast in theaters for adults, moving on to animations on
television aimed at children.Thus, in terms of scientific production, whether in
the form of articles or in the form of dissertations and theses, the two
aforementioned works are those that we consider to be the most significant on
the theme in question. We are not able to say that there are no other works that
address this subject, but what is known is that there is little production on the
subject, a fact that has repercussions in our analysis. In other areas, we have a
larger production on the subject. This allows us to understand other aspects that,
perhaps, have not gained the same focus as ours, but that their methodology,
whether of analysis or of The way he structured his text, helped us to think
during the process of writing this book.Thus, a work that needs to be highlighted
is the thesis of Carolina Fossatti (2010) in Social Communication entitled:
"Categories of Narrativity in Animation Cinema: Update of Aristotle's Ethical
Values According to Edgar Morin". Although it is a very extensive work, the
author does a dense work of criticism and analysis of several animations
contemplating discussions about the history of animation, technical
characteristics of this media, as well as a technical analysis on several
animations focusing on the issue of narrativity. This work provided us with
5