Page - 77 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/01

Shadows of the Bat | 77www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/1, 75–104 mote the ideas of peace, safety and freedom and seek to restore the planet to a nostalgic harmony.”4 to promote these ideals, the superhero narrative is typically premised on the conflict between hero and villain, the mythical struggle between good and evil. In the superhero genre, good and evil mainly fulfill narrative functions. the struggle between hero and villain produces suspense and drives the plot, where, ironically, the roles of protagonist and antagonist are switched: the vil- lain, and not the hero, plays the active part, as his evil actions initiate the story and call upon the hero to act. According to richard reynolds, “the common outcome, as far as the structure of the plot is concerned, is that the villains are concerned with change and the heroes with the maintenance of the status quo.”5 the evil antagonist is a necessary counterforce who challenges the pro- tagonist and allows him to be good. the rise and fall of the villain is a socially required evaluation that crime does not pay, while the certain triumph of the hero reminds the audience of the superiority of the values he represents. As far as the narrative structure of the superhero story and the ideology it conveys are concerned, good and evil are mutually dependent, one cannot exist without the other. the threat from the villain forces the hero to act, his malignity enabling the hero to show off his goodness. Superhero mythologies therefore seem to promote a Manichaean worldview. recalling the dualistic cosmology of the late-antique prophet Mani, life is conceived as a constant struggle between two external forces – the spiritual realm of light and the material realm of darkness. In a ying-and-yang balance of opposites, the existence of one is defined through the existence of the other. this bipolar explanation of the world is questioned by the more ambiva- lent take of contemporary superhero films, as Johannes Schlegel and Frank Habermann remark. Postmodern films like Unbreakable (M. Night shy- amalan, Us 2000) or Hellboy (Guillermo del toro, Us 2004) display in their “metanarrative”6 deep distrust of the absolute distinction between good and evil, which they expose as constructions rather than natural quantities: “the dichotomy of good and evil in contemporary superhero films is first and fore- most negotiated, performatively generated and constantly debated, rendering it an unstable phenomenon of produced and ascribed meaning that has to be reaffirmed perpetually”.7 this essay argues that good and evil are socially con- structed categories that regulate the world and explain human behavior. their order-obtaining duality is culturally mediated in narratives and visual texts such as superhero stories. Ultimately, some of these texts not only reflect but also 4 Gray ii/Kaklamanidou 2011, 3. 5 reynolds 1992, 51. 6 Lyotard 1997, xxiv–xxv. 7 schlegel/habermann 2011, 31.