American Dreams of Mutants.docx

1、American Dreams of MutantsAmerican Dreams of Mutants: The X-Men“Pulp” Fiction, Science Fiction, and Superheroes1. John M. TrushellArticle first published online: 5 JUL 2004DOI:10.1111/j.0022-3840.2004.00104.xIssueThe Journal of Popular CultureVolume 38,Issue 1,pages 149168,August 2004ReviewingAmeric

2、an contributions to popular culture of thetwentieth century, the critic MartinWilliamsidentifies “motion picture drama, jazz, a special kind of musical theater and its associated music and dance, the modern detective story, the comic strip, to name only the most obvious” (3). No less obvious, and a

3、glaring omission from these claims, is science fiction, for “two genres acquired their recognizable form in American “pulp” fiction magazines: the detective noir and science fiction” (A. Boyer92). Despite the European/Old World antecedents of H. G. Wells, who wrote scientific romances, and Jules Ver

4、ne, who wrotemerveilleux scientifique, the term “science fiction” was coined by Hugo Gernsback, editor of the American magazineAmazing Storiesin the 1920s. From these pulp origins, science fiction moved “inexorably towards the center of American culture” (Franklin3), a movement marked by the detonat

5、ion of an atomic bomb at Hiroshima in 1945, when “thoughtful men and women recognized that they were living in a science fiction world” (Gunn174). And, asBukatmanremarks, there can be “no overstating the importance of science fiction toa moment that sees itself as science fiction” (Terminal Identity

6、3). Reviewing those opinions expressed by critics and commentators in the 1950s,Edward Jamesfound acceptance that science fiction was a serious literaturealthough privileging ideas over literary expressionconcerned with mankinds present plight and problematic future (“Before the Novum” 27).The pulp

7、fiction origins of science fiction and detective noir,Jamesobserves, were shared by American comic books: “The pulps indeed spawned the comic-strip heroes of the 1930sthe super-hero, in fact, was one of the most prominent creations of the pulp era” (Science Fiction48).The pulps of the 1930s featured

8、 such “men of mystery” as Doc Savage, “The Man of Bronze,” and his Fabulous Five (Doc Savage Magazine#1: March 1933), and “The Spider,” a caped vigilante (The Spider#1: October 1933),1while the comics introduced Superman, “The Man of Steel” (Action Comics#1: June 1938), and Batman, “The Caped Crusad

9、er” (Detective Comics#27: May 1939). The debuts of Superman and Batman, the more successful and enduring superheroes, were followed by those of The Human Torch and Namor the Sub-mariner (Marvel Comics#1: October/November 1939) to establish a “golden age” of comics. These superhero storiesproduced,Bu

10、katmanalleges, “largely by young males for somewhat younger males” (“X-bodies” 95)have been considered to be science fiction albeit, asJamescontends, “shorn of all sophistication” (Science Fiction83). But these stories are more properly fantasies; the superheroes retained the mysticism of their pulp

11、 predecessors (Lang and Trimble165) and, although set in plausible worlds where even “the irrational or the strange is still explicable in quasi-scientific or everyday terms” (Abercrombie, Lash, and Longhurst123), superhero stories used science as “an alibi for magic” (Reynolds53). Both science fict

12、ion and fantasy areestrangedgenrespossessing an “imaginative framework alternative to the authors empirical framework” (Suvin6061)as opposed to naturalistic genres (Parrinder37), but separated by the notion ofcognitioninherent in “the Gernsbackian idea of fiction with a scientific explanation” (Parr

13、inder37).The 1920s and 1930s witnessed the rise of the American science fiction short story, but the 1940s saw the science fiction story honed by writers chosen by editor John W. Campbell for publication inAstounding Science Fiction. Science fiction began appearing in “mass-circulation magazines lik

14、eColliersand theSaturday Evening Post” (P. Boyer257), but many general readers continued to consider science fiction as escapist or unrealistic, which contributed to a “ghetto” mentality among fans. This “ghettoizing” of science fiction was not entirely imposed from without; many science fiction wri

15、ters and readers regarded “the bulk of their own society as mistaken, ill-informed, and probably ineducable” (Shippey101). Nevertheless, the 1950s saw “the emergence of science fiction from its paraliterary ghetto” (A. Boyer96) with the publication of socially conscious and critical stories and nove

16、ls. Yet, this serious and sophisticated literature coexisted with unsophisticated paraliterature, such as articles and stories that encouraged a “cult of irrationality and UFOism” (Seed9). These stories were published after the Second World War by Ray Palmer, who succeeded Gernsback as the editor of

17、Amazing Stories. Serious science fiction survived the crash of science fiction magazines (which dwindled from forty to a mere six or seven in the late 1950s Sadoul217, due in part to the failure of the major magazine distributor American News Company), the decline of mass-circulation magazines such

18、asColliers, and the rise of television.Unsophisticated superhero comics, by contrast, flourished for the golden age before and during the Second World War. The Axis threat was countered by a roster of patriotic superheroesincluding Captain America, the Eagle, the Shield, the Star-Spangled Kid and St

19、ripesy, and Uncle Samwho provided “fantasies of superhuman power overcoming the devastatingly dehumanizing forces associated with Fascism” (Schmitt155). But this golden age ended in 1954 with the publication of Frederic WerthamsSeduction of the Innocent, “397 impassioned pages detailing the pernicio

20、us effects” of comics (Ross110). American comic books were subjected to a scare campaign, one of those “moral crusades of the McCarthy era” (Brown18) that tapped “the general cultural paranoia of the period through the continual and effective use of the popular press” (Parsons71). Although this “com

21、ic scare” undoubtedly damaged the comic trade, television had contributed to the decline of comic sales by “siphoning off the comic book audience” (Parsons72) with programs such asCaptain Video(194953),Tom Corbett, Space Cadet(195054), andSpace Patrol(195056). Comic book publishers, “to escape the w

22、itch hunts with what little audience they had left” (Brown21), submitted to “a busybody review board and an insufferable code that amounted to the emasculation of comic books” (Richler306).However, Superman and Batman survived the 1950s, reconciling themselves to the requirements of the post-Wertham

23、 Comics Code. Superman was even translated successfully for television inThe Adventures of Superman(195357). Further golden age superheroes were rehabilitated or reoriginated. The first was the Flash (Showcase#4: October 1956), from whose appearance the “silver age” of comics is dated (McCue3538;Rey

24、nolds9). But the revitalization of American comic books has been attributed to the debuts, in the early 1960s, of new heroes such as the Fantastic Four (Fantastic Four#1: November 1961), Spider-Man (Amazing Fantasy#15: August 1962) and the X-Men (The X-Men#1: September 1963). These were products of

25、the Marvel Comics Group helmed byStan Lee.2Marvel of the Silver AgeMordecai Richler observes that the golden age superheroes had constituted “invulnerable, all-conquering” champions for children, providing “revenge figures against what seemed a gratuitously cruel adult world” (306, 300). The relevan

26、ce of these superheroes for children was epitomized by a young Billy Batson who, upon uttering the magic word “SHAZAM” (an acronym of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury), was transformed into the worlds mightiest mature mortal, Captain Marvel (Whiz Comics#2: February 1940), “an al

27、legory of pubescent metamorphosis,” allegesBukatman(“X-bodies” 100). Such golden age superheroes “were always adults, except when followed by a xeroxed sidekick” (McCue41); Batman was followed by Robin (Detective Comics#38: April 1940) and The Human Torch by Toro (The Human Torch Comic#2: Fall 1940)

28、. These sidekicks had served “as a source of identification for young adolescents” (Brody176). Marvel Comics innovation was to “pioneer comics for the adolescent” (Jacobs and Jones129) that dealt with “titanic battles between teenaged superheroes and middle-aged supervillains” (Mondello233).Numbered

29、 among the Fantastic Four, who were exposed to cosmic rays in a near-earth orbiting spacecraft and transformed into superheroes, was a new Human Torch who could burst into flames without being consumed by fire. The Torch was an impulsive, literally hot-headed high school student with a penchant for

30、hot-rods. The wise-cracking Spider-Man, whose superhuman powers were acquired by the bite of a radioactive spider while visiting a science exhibition, was a high school bookworm who,Bukatmanobserves, had a certain “nerdy charm” (“X-bodies” 95) and lived with his widowed aunt. There was a mutual anta

31、gonism between the silver age Human Torch and Spider-Man, begun when Spider-Man crashed a party held by the Human Torchs girlfriend (The Amazing Spider-Man#8: January 1964). This contributed to the crossover sales of both comic book titles.These mid-1960s superheroes were torn between a preference f

32、or self-gratificationthe Torch was a girl-chaser and Spider-Man was “neurotically obsessed with status and worldly success” (Lang and Trimble165)and public service (Mondello235;Skidmore and Skidmore89). Often perceived as a menace to society, these teenaged superheroes consequently felt “ambivalence toward society and their place in it” (Lang and Trimble167), an allegory of adolescent anomie.The X-Men, however, were a different proposition. These teenagers were, as the comic book cover proclaimed, “The Strangest Super-Heroes of All.” Cri