Marvel: Age of Oppression

It’s no stretch to say that we’ve entered into a golden age of comic book films. The success of 2008’s Iron Man arguably paved the way for Marvel’s 2012 record smashing billion-dollar team-up film The Avengers, bringing the rich mythology of the superhero into the consciousness of the mainstream.

And unless you’ve been isolated in Hulk’s rage container onboard SHIELD’s Helicarrier then you’re fully aware that the super-powered sequel Avengers: Age of Ultron will be premiering on May 1^st and, by all indications, is set to shatter the record for highest movie opening in history, a record previously held by its predecessor.

In addition, Marvel and Netflix recently released all thirteen episodes of the series Daredevil, which takes place in Hell’s Kitchen after the events of the alien attack in The Avengers. Blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), who also doubles as the eponymous super powered vigilante, works with his law firm partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and several other concerned citizens to fight villain Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) and his forced gentrification of their lower income section of Manhattan.

Marvel has successfully fashioned an unprecedented interlocking cinematic and television universe where characters interact, cross over into shared plotlines, and, most importantly, create narratives that filmgoers from across the sociological and age spectrum are eager to shell out money to watch. And it is this atmosphere and feeling of community – one that will soon be shattered in next year’s Captain America: Civil War – that attracts and excites us, especially amidst our rather non-heroic world of divisive politics and, particularly, polarized religious views.

We live in a society where faith, most notably Christianity, is divvied into countless subsets, echo chambers of belief ensconced in their specific bubbles of ideology. From those calling for a return to the alleged Judeo-Christian backbone of the 1950s, to the “Jesus was a capitalist” proponents of the health and wealth gospel, to the vitriol spewed by Christians angry at progressive movements such as feminism and the legalization of gay marriage, it’s not difficult to see that there’s no such thing as a monolithic Christianity but an erratic gathering of Christianities that rarely play well together.

Much like the factions that make up contemporary Christianity, the Avengers are often at cross-purposes, with their own agendas and egos blinding them to larger developing threats. As the gamma-fueled doctor Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) describes them, “We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time-bomb.”

Within the Marvel universe, why would an avowed capitalist, a jingoistic patriot, an introvert with anger management issues, and a demi-god who is quite literally above it all, ultimately decide to work together or even deign to be in the same room with one another? The answer is simple: systematic oppression. In the film Avengers: Age of Ultron, the psychopathic titular android seeks to eliminate humanity entirely through violence and destruction. “I was designed to save the world,” Ultron says. “There’s only one path to peace. [Humanity’s] extinction.” Due to the overwhelming oppressive threat Ultron represents, the Avengers manage to set aside their disparate philosophies and dogmata to fight for a larger purpose, standing in solidarity with all of humanity. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), lamenting to his fellow heroes the seemingly insurmountable challenges he and his compatriots face, asks, “How were you guys planning on beating that?” Captain America (Chris Evans), not missing a beat, responds, “Together.”

In the series Daredevil, this sense of community is less of a metaphor and far more specific. Fisk, aka Kingpin, is determined to usher in his “Brighter Tomorrow” through force, making the city safer for those who can afford it by means of a blanket of oppression that silences the police, the press, and anyone who speaks out against him. Not surprisingly, Fisk does not initially see himself as the oppressor but as a savior, and the cultural silence to his despotic hegemony is deafening as any resistance is violently crushed. As Fisk tells Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer), his love interest and owner of a prestigious art gallery in the neighborhood, “I would do anything to make it a better place. For people like you.”

Fisk’s character as rendered by D’Onofrio is one of the more layered and nuanced figures to emerge out of the Marvel cinematic universe. Avoiding the cigar chomping villainous stereotype from the comics, Fisk, in some sense, is an emotionally tortured man-child still suffering from his own tyranny and abuse experienced at the hands of his violent father. From his perspective, the gentrification of Hell’s Kitchen is a righteous cause, with the end result being the elimination of poverty and street crime in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, Fisk does this not by addressing and changing the systems that created the destitution and desperation of poverty in the first place, but by pushing impoverished citizens out of the city altogether, similar to Ultron’s strategy of eliminating the “problem” of humanity rather than redeeming it. Fisk says of Hell’s Kitchen, “I want to carve something beautiful out of its ugliness. Set free its potential…Money and influence is not enough to usher change on such a scale. Sometimes it requires force.”

Matt Murdock, driven in some part by his faith – messy and battered as it might be – and in some part by his roots as a child of Hell’s Kitchen, stands up against Fisk and the criminal power elites as they seek to replace the low-income housing of the neighborhood with shiny new condos and chain coffee shops. As the Daredevil, he finds solidarity with others in the community who, though they may take exception with his tactics, stand with him against a force of oppression that seeks to destroy their community. Echoing the sentiment of Captain America, Murdock, reflecting on the death and destruction that Fisk’s oppression has wrought, closes the series by saying, “All we can do is move forward. Together.”

In her essay “Love of Neighbor in the 1980s,” Theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz writes that solidarity is “understanding the interconnections among issues and the cohesiveness that needs to exist among the communities of struggle.” This cohesiveness, even if temporary, is at the heart of Avengers: Age of Ultron in general and Daredevil specifically. In the second episode of the Netflix series, the Daredevil is interrogating a Russian human trafficker in the hope of finding the location of a kidnapped boy. Getting nowhere, Claire (Rosario Dawson), a nurse who comes to treat many of Murdock’s battle wounds, suggests ascertaining the boy’s location through bodily torture by stabbing the Russian in his trigeminal nerve just above the left eye. Claire has already heard of the heroic exploits of the masked vigilante and sees her cause as that of a healer in Hell’s Kitchen cohesive with the overall cause of justice embodied in the fledgling superhero.

This is violence as metaphor, of course, and the subsequent single take hallway fight scene as an injured and wearied Daredevil battles his way through a horde of heavily armed men to reach the kidnapped boy is reflective of the literal fight against societal oppression: exhausting, brutal, and not without a substantial amount of pain.

And while it would seem that Marvel understands the ideas of oppression, solidarity, and community, this sympathy seemingly fails to translate for contemporary Christianity. Whether it be issues such as the death penalty, war, immigration, or recent state legislative acts designed to legalize discrimination against entire groups of people, western religion as a whole has a difficult time not only battling oppression, but on deciding what oppression even is. In Daredevil, Claire agrees with Murdock about the oppression engulfing their neighborhood, but disagrees with his tactics, struggling at working “with someone who is so damn close to becoming what he hates.” Despite this philosophical or ethical difference, she sees value in standing with the Daredevil and helping him in his campaign against Fisk.

Similarly, Murdock’s friends Foggy, Karen (Deborah Ann Woll), and the reporter Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall), while unsure of the tactics of the masked vigilante, eventually come to see the value in his strategy of confronting the domineering forces head on. Karen advocates for the hero, arguing, “I’ll take the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen over Fisk any day.” And even though they choose to address oppression within the neighborhood differently than the Daredevil – working to keep citizens such as the elderly Mrs. Cardenas in her rent-controlled apartment through legal channels and hands on assistance – they understand that disparate ideologies of action are not necessarily insurmountable blockades to cooperation as long as the reality and source of oppression is agreed upon.

The heroes of Hell’s Kitchen and the Avengers are activists willing to separate themselves from their philosophical and moral dogma in order to combat a larger oppression that threatens all of society. Their solidarity is less about agreement and more about shared feelings concerning the state of the oppressed in our world. Isasi-Diaz goes on to write, “Solidarity with the oppressed and among the oppressed has to be at the heart of Christian behavior, because the oppression suffered by the majority affects everyone.” And while there are Christian organizations and denominations that take the fight against oppression seriously, there are just as many who acquiesce to the cultural hegemony, or worse, defend it outright, embodied in the character of Vanessa in Daredevil who warms rather quickly to Fisk’s violent plan to radically restructure her neighborhood.

Interestingly, in the final episode of Daredevil, Fisk tells the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan, saying that, despite his brutal tactics, he always saw himself as the righteous man healing the wounds of the unfortunate individual within the story who was attacked and left half dead. He comes to admit, however, “I’m not the Samaritan…I am the ill intent who set upon the traveler on a road that he should not have been on.” Similarly, the mysterious Gao (Wai Ching Ho) tells Fisk, “Man cannot be both savior and oppressor, light and shadow. One has to be sacrificed for the other,” echoing the sentiments of Jesus who taught that a house divided against itself cannot stand. In both examples, the emotionally tortured Kingpin saw what he must become, embracing his role as oppressor.

In the same sense, contemporary Christians must come to understand, as the heroes of the Marvel universe do, that petty ideological differences must be set aside to combat oppression, and that they must follow the example of the Jesus archetype and embrace the role of savior for all, eschewing persecution, bigotry, and inequality no matter who it affects.

Whether binge watching Daredevil on Netflix or standing in line for the midnight showing of Avengers: Age of Ultron, we are bearing witness to extraordinary narratives created by Marvel that challenge us to this higher calling, imploring us, no matter our differences, to unite as a society in order to confront the systematic and intersectional oppression that, whether directly affecting us or not, threatens to ultimately repress us all.