POSTMODERN ANTI-HEROES IN POPULAR CULTURE:
AN ANALYSIS OF NETFLIX’S “THE PUNISHER” SERIES
For those who are interested in popular culture studies only.
Readers beware.
Introduction
This paper seeks to analyze the anti-hero ‘The Punisher’ from its Netflix series to understand how anti-heroes have an appeal to audiences, as well as their role in popular culture. Post-Modernism theories will be explored to explain the phenomenon of the growing popularity of the anti-hero portrayal in this series.
“Anti” should be understood as “non” or “the opposite of”, not as antagonism. The antagonist is the “opponent” of the hero, often called the villain. Villains are not called anti-heroes as this might mislead some people. The anti-hero is the protagonist, just like a hero. The anti-hero’s status equals the hero’s status. The anti-hero differs from the hero on one point. Anti-heroes will fail to accomplish the mission he undertakes almost every time. He would be a character that cannot adapt to society and its values, which are presented negatively in the text. (Ibrahim Taha, 2015)
Marvel’s The Punisher is an example of a heroic Archetype known as the Defiant Anti-hero. The hero archetype is a broad category that has many sub-archetypal characters, such as, the reluctant hero, the romantic hero, the tragic hero, and of course, the anti-hero. (Hunter A. Burnett, 2016) A Defiant Anti-hero brings criminals to justice by any means necessary, even if it means killing people. Anyone who stands in his way will be removed. Although he is breaking the law, he is presented as the good guy. If the police are after him, their inner self may sympathize with the anti-hero and will let him off.
Background
Marvel’s ‘The Punisher’ is a television series created by Netflix. It is a spin-off from another series ‘Marvel’s Daredevil’. The protagonist of The Punisher series is Frank Castle, who is also known throughout New York City or Hell’s Kitchen as “The Punisher”. After he took down several organized crime syndicates by himself, people in New York City were divided in opinion over his deeds. On one side of the fence, people were praising him for what he did to the notorious crime syndicates that were ravaging the city, something that the law enforcement agencies failed to eradicate. He was even regarded as a hero of the city as he cast fear on the villains by ‘punishing’ them. On the other end, people see him as a pure psychopath that kills mindlessly.
Frank Castle’s family was killed during a day trip out to a carnival, where they were caught in a crossfire between several crime syndicates, which were dealing with drugs there. Frank Castle lost his wife, son, and daughter in that incident. After their death, Frank went on to live as a tortured, angry and damaged person where all he sought was to avenge his family. While exacting revenge on those responsible, he uncovers a larger conspiracy beyond what was done to his family, which involved the CIA, and a covert mission ‘Project Cerberus’ which he was involved in when he served in Kandahar as a Marine Corps soldier.
For this paper, we will be examining scenes from episodes number 1, 9, 10, and 11.
Anti Heroes In Popular Culture
Definitions of popular culture will bring into play a complex combination of the different meanings of the term ‘culture’ with the different meanings of the term ‘popular’. The history of cultural theory’s engagement with popular culture is, therefore, a history of the different ways in which the two terms have been connected by theoretical labor within particular historical and social contexts. We can find reasons why the anti-hero is thriving from the definitions of popular culture. There are four current meanings of popular culture that are being ‘well-liked by many people’; ‘inferior kinds of work’; ‘work deliberately setting out to win favor with the people’; ‘culture actually made by the people for themselves. (John Storey, 2009)
Heroes in popular culture are depicted as persons who are admired for their courage, special achievements, and abilities, or noble qualities. In myths and legends, they are often figures of divine descent endowed with great strength or abilities. In recent times, with advancements in cinematic graphics and technology, Marvel Comics and DC Comics have given new life to heroic characters that only existed in comic books and films. Popular comic book heroes such as Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Bat Man, Wonder Woman, and Superman were brought to life in films. This sparked more blockbuster sequels such as The Avengers and Justice League, giving these characters and their actors worldwide fame.
During the peak of superhero creations, the anti-hero class was born. It had gained momentum and popularity in films and TV series, thanks to successful film productions of hero films. Anti-heroes are characters who have the opposite of the traditional attributes of an ideal hero. Some common attributes anti-heroes possess are that they rarely speak, like being a loner, either observe extreme celibacy or extreme promiscuity, have parental issues, occasional bad dreams, and flashbacks relating to a dark and troubled past.
Notable fictional anti-heroes include characters such as Jack Sparrow from The Pirates of the Caribbean, Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series, Robin Hood and Riddick from the movie Pitch Black.
Anti-heroes are well-liked by many people
Popular culture can be defined as a culture that is widely favored or well liked by many people. The “popular” in popular culture demands the inclusion of a quantitative dimension gained from the examining of sales figures of books, CDs, and DVDs and attendance records at concerts or television viewership. (John Storey, 2009) Products of Marvel Comics holds a 39 percent market share in the comic books industry, topping as the market leader with over 2.7 million copies of comics sold in 2017. (CBR.com 2017). The popularity of Marvel’s The Punisher can then be quantified with its comic book sales by its owner Marvel Comics.
Frank Castle is a sympathetic, as well as a likable character in the story. Likable characters often have qualities such as generosity, humility, honesty, confidence, gratitude, and commitment. In the case of traditional heroes, they are always portrayed to be morally flawless and possess heroic qualities or extraordinary powers. To make the character of Frank Castle likable, he begins as a SEAL team veteran who served in the United States (U.S) — Afghanistan war. In a survey by Pew Research Center, Americans continue to see veterans’ services as an important priority, with 75 percent of the surveyed said that if they were making the federal budget, they would increase spending for veterans’ benefits and services (Pew Research Center 2017 )
Veterans are a well-liked group by Americans. Military service also impacts people’s attitudes and abilities, improving attitudes supposedly to be carried over into civilian life after a person leaves military service. This creates the perception that veterans are more patriotic and more prepared and willing to serve the county.
In Episode One (05:50), the Punisher had gone into hiding and lived as Pete Castiglione, who spent his days working hard at a construction site. His colleagues teased and insulted him often, calling him ‘retard’ and kicking his lunch box. Hardworking is a likable trait in characters as it humbles a person and reminds audiences that even as the Punisher possesses formidable killing abilities, he has a day job like any normal person. It creates empathy towards the Punisher as audiences can relate to the struggle to make ends meet, in turn humanizing this anti-hero character.
Also in this episode (42:00), Frank Castle sees a group of his thug-like colleagues from the construction site beating up a new worker. The group had just committed robbery and stole from another group of notorious thugs who were gambling. The new worker named Donald botched the robbery attempt by revealing his identity and compromised the rest of the robbers. The party had no choice but to kill Donald to prevent the thugs from seeking them out. Frank couldn’t help but intervene in the murder. He has a code or a principle, which is that no innocents would be killed on his watch. He broke his cover and killed the robbers. Before killing off the last robber, he got him to reveal the thug group’s location. Frank saved Donald, who was drowning in a cement container by dropping him a line with a bag of loot money that says “Leave town”. Frank then went off to kill off the rest of the thugs, eliminating the threat that may harm Donald completely.
This scene depicted the Punisher as a hero although he committed murder. He eliminates crime in his own cruel ways, using his military skills to ‘punish’ the criminals and save people who were kind to him. It is a likable trait to “do the wrong things for the right reason”, just like the classic anti-hero Robin Hood. Robin Hood stands out so strongly in our cultural conscience because he represents the inner fire in all of us to correct injustice wherever we may find it even if it means operating outside the law, just like how the Punisher did.
Anti-heroes are inferior kinds of works as compared to high culture
Before the rise of anti-heroes, a particular genre of films called ‘film noir’, translated to English as “dark film”, might well have agreed on a formulation that defined noir as ‘a kind of modernism in the popular cinema’. Modernism might seem to be separated from both Hollywood and pulp fiction by such qualities as its formal complexity and technical display. Film noir is associated with high culture while it rejects classical narrative. (Lee Horsley, 2016) The Punisher series could be defined as neo-noir, a post-modern motion picture rendition of film noir that contains noir themes and noir sensibility. These later films are likely to contain the same alienation, pessimism, moral ambivalence, and disorientation. (Mark Conard, 2007)
High culture appeals to a small number of people while popular television programs targeted attracting millions. High culture prides itself on the individuality of tastes that is difficult to attain while popular culture tries to appeal to the masses through easy access. This results in some popular culture work falling into the lowest denominator of taste. In the Punisher series, gore and violence are their selling points to the masses.
In Episode 11 (34:10), The Punisher makes a dramatic entrance into the scene. It was coupled with characteristic elements of neo-noir films such as chiaroscuro lighting, which is an advanced cinematographic technique that adds contrast through the use of colors instead of just shadow and light. (Tomáš Bazika, 2013)This technique emphasizes the character and details in a scene. This scene was also shot in an industrial backdrop and filmed at night, providing a sense that violence was going to happen.
The violence which happened following the next six minutes in Episode 11 (34:10) included the Punisher killing his enemies one by one with methods such as strangulation, hanging, stabbing, shooting at point-blank range at the face, and holding on to a cut off head strapped to a grenade. This conveyed that the Punisher’s mental state was in chaos and the violence portrayed was excessive.
Towards the end of that violent scene, the Punisher sat down in the middle of the pile of bodies, feeling lost after realizing that he had failed to kill his main antagonist, Billy Russo, who had betrayed him. All the killing done was now in vain. The scene expressed a pessimistic attitude found in film noir. The dark theme of this scene matches the film noir genre, which can be traced to the feelings of American society after the Second World War. The war changed how people viewed morality. Audiences were pessimistic about the future and adopted a detached, cynical view of things as a form of protection against such feelings.
Anti-heroes as a product of mass culture
Mass culture is closely related to American culture. The commercialization of the Marvel series has been so successful for the past ten years that it pushed the production of the Marvel Universe heroes series and films to at least two blockbusters are produced a year, earning billions in box office sales since 2008. With surging sales and increasing popularity, the masses have chosen what they want to see, causing producers to continue along the line of superhero films.
Netflix joined in the fray in 2015 and started producing television series of Marvel’s brand of anti-heroes such as Daredevil, where The Punisher made its first debut. Following that Netflix produced Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. Netflix went even further, putting together the first four series into one, producing Marvel’s The Defenders. Finally, in 2017, Netflix launched Marvel’s The Punisher television series.
This endless consumption of Marvel’s brand of comic character films by audiences is evident according to data from box office sales. It is a partnership between the producers and the audiences, with no end in sight. Where there is a demand, there will be supply. The association of The Punisher is a product of the popular Marvel Comics automatically makes the series a product of the mass culture.
Anti-heroes are made by the people for themselves
In order to produce culture cheaply for ordinary people to consume, creators of anti-heroes appeal to the aesthetic standards it holds in common and emphasizes content that will be meaningful to as many in the audience as possible. (Herbert Gans, 2010) Americans can empathize well with the character of The Punisher, associating him with many soldiers that come back from wars, are broken mentally, and suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sympathy for The Punisher is further reinforced with the tragedy of losing his whole family in a crossfire in a park right after he left the Afghanistan war for good. He was left with nothing but an empty shell fuelled by vengeance and rage.
The Punisher’s plain looks with superb soldiering skills appeal to the audience more aesthetically as a normal human being capable of ‘doing good with what he had learned in the military. By ‘doing good, it meant that The Punisher kills only the villains and takes back whatever that was wrongfully taken from others by the ‘bad guys’. His antics are similar to those of Robin Hood, a classic anti-hero who robs the rich to give to the poor. Although The Punisher’s way of heroism is morally flawed and anti-constitutional with no regard to the law, watching The Punisher ‘punishing’ the evildoers and executing justice with his own hands provides a form of escapism for the audience. It is something that most people think about doing but is repressed by social norms from doing so.
In Episode 1 (42:50), Frank sees his thuggish colleagues at the construction site preparing to execute Donald for botching the robbery. At this juncture, most people would have either called the police upon witnessing such a situation or run away from the scene to avoid getting implicated. The “Frank Castle” here represents the inner hero in all of us, a hero who wants to heroically save Donald themselves instead of running away or waiting for help.
Ambivalent Sexism at Work
According to the Ambivalent Sexism Theory, sexism is a multidimensional construct that encompasses two sets of sexist attitudes, hostile and benevolent. Hostile sexism involves antipathy and negative stereotypes about women, such as beliefs that women are incompetent, overly emotional, and sexually manipulative. Hostile sexism also involves beliefs that men should be more powerful than women and fears that women will try to take power from men. Benevolent sexism involves overall positive views of women, as long as they occupy traditionally feminine roles. Individuals with benevolently sexist beliefs characterize women as weak and needing protection, support, and adoration. Work superiors who are higher in hostile sexism should discriminate more against women in the form of gender harassment. Gender harassment can involve hostile terms of address, negative comments regarding women in management, sexist jokes, and sexist behavior. (Cailin & Leanne 2015)
In Episode One (26:43), Wolf was asserting his authority as the department chief by associating Madani with female body parts such as “left tit”, referring to her as a “poster girl”. He also mentioned that he finds tenacity qualities “hot” in women. This scene depicts Wolf as someone sexist who stereotypes women's roles as the inferior sex and always subordinate to men in society. relate to the impact of the society now
Further in the conversation, he talked about his intolerance towards insubordination, and disallowed Madani, the newly arrived detective, to carry on her investigations on the Kandahar case. Madani on the other hand tried her best to defend herself while giving due respect to Wolf by making light of his insults and submitting to his authority by saying “You’re the boss.” Wolf further reinforces his status as the superior sex by saying “Yes I am” before walking out of her office. Hostile sexism is further perpetuated by the use of masculine language such as “I do not tolerate insubordination”. It is also an important issue regarding gender bias in the workplace, as the use of masculine language increases gender bias in favor of males. (Michela & Monica, 2017)
Female audiences may feel that females are the struggling sex in this series. There are only two female main characters, Karen Page who is an investigative journalist, and Madani, the detective. Both are depicted as women working in male-dominated industries such as the news agency and law enforcement. The hostile sexism was displayed by Wolf through sexist jokes and gender harassment, something that is faced by working women in the U.S. About four in ten working women in the U.S say they have faced discrimination on the job because of their gender. (Pew Research, 2017)
Mythologies
Mythologies conclude with the important theoretical essay, ‘Myth today’. It takes Saussure’s schema of signifier/signified equals to sign and adds to it the second level of signification. He claims that it is at the level of secondary signification or connotation that myth is produced for consumption. By myth, he means ideology understood as a body of ideas and practices, which by actively promoting the values and interests of dominant groups in society, defend the prevailing structures of power. (John Storey, 2009)
By using Saussure’s schema, the word “Punisher” would be the signifier, which is the physical word that creates communication. The signifier is represented as a symbol in the form of a skull, which does not resemble the signifier represented. The concept of what makes the Punisher, which fits in as the signified, would be that the strikes terror in the hearts of evildoers and executes justice by killing them. The signified and the signifier equate to the sign, which is represented by the character of The Punisher, which connotes the representation of an anti-institutional and a vengeful individual who does justice in his immoral ways.
For the sake of consumption by the masses, the word “Punisher” goes through a second level of the schema of signifier/signified equals sign. The second level signifier would be the skull symbol of The Punisher, which would now be signified as “delivering punishment to evil”. This results in the next level of sign, which may connote the skull symbol as “Quick Justice”.
After repurposing the skull symbol by draining the ideas of its real meaning, the symbol was repackaged into the form of myths. The skull symbol was stripped of its meaning when removed from its proper context. The skull symbol had spread to the masses with an ideology of “quick justice”. The sign of the skull symbol bears little relation to the Punisher’s or Frank Castle’s actual qualities. The reality was that he was willing to kill to avenge his family. When stripped of this context, the skull symbol had become a sign with other uses. The repackaged myth of the skull symbol was then exploited by the consumer’s eagerness to identify with qualities that they believe symbolizes the general idea of “Justice”.
The popular skull logo of the Punisher appeared in many places of conflict. In the Netflix series, it strikes terror to criminals and civilians, as the Punisher leaves behind a scene of bloody mess every time he appears. In reality, it was adopted in the Afghanistan wars by U.S. soldiers and also by policemen in several U.S. states on police vehicles. (Abraham Riesman, 2017) The skull logo now connotes “Justice” to the audiences from the governmental departments. They saw what the Punisher did as serving justice while protecting innocents. In the actual comic books and Netflix television series, what the Punisher did denotes murder with firearms. In comics, the Punisher also kills hero characters who stand in his way. The only redeeming point in the Netflix series is that he only kills the bad guys. Users of the skull logo chose to ignore the unlawful acts of the Punisher but worship him for the steadfastness in demolishing crime and terrorist syndicates faster than the law does.
The irony of the use of the skull symbol by government authorities such as the police and army shows that there may be a loss of trust in court proceedings and law procedures in people who are serving the law and defense departments. The actual meaning of the sign, which was explained in Episode Eleven(21:07), was “Memento Mori’’ in Latin. It translates to English as “Remember you will die”. It is used to serve as a reminder to people that everyone will die one day and we should value our lives. This contradicts the Punisher’s way of life in the series. The motivating factor for the Punisher is revenge with a tinge of “justice”, as those who were killed are coincidentally criminals. He often puts himself in dangerous situations where he may lose his life.
Dreams
Dreams provide perhaps the most dramatic staging of the return of the repressed. The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to the unconscious. Dreams are always a ‘compromise structure. Dreams contain wishes which we are ashamed of and must conceal from ourselves. They have consequently been repressed and pushed into the unconscious. Repressed wishes of this sort and their derivatives are only allowed to come to expression in a very distorted form. Censorship occurs but wishes are coded in an attempt to elude censorship. A dream is a disguised fulfillment of a suppressed or repressed wish. Dreams move in two levels, the manifest content, and the latent content. The manifest content shows what actually happened in the dream. (John Storey, 2009)
In Episode One(40:20), the manifest content of the dream shows that Frank was resting in bed and was being woken up by his wife, Maria. Maria asks him to rest awhile more while she gets breakfast for him. When she was leaving the room, a masked man came from behind, shooting her in the head with a handgun. The masked man looked like him, in an attire that he wore during his Kandahar tour. During the Kandahar tour, he shot an innocent policeman during an interrogation upon orders given by his commander, Agent Orange. Frank wakes up when Maria’s blood splatters on him.
The latent content is the hidden message of the dream and reveals the true desires of the dreamer. Freud is clear about the impossibility of interpreting a dream unless one has the dreamer’s associations to it at one’s disposal. This dream scene may reflect Frank’s regret of shooting the policeman because of an order from his commander. By coming back as the masked soldier who shot Maria in his dream, Frank might have been pushing back his moral conscience into the unconscious, which he lacked when he was in Kandahar.
Frank Castle’s guilty conscience may be how it looks on the surface in this particular dream, Freud also suggests that most symbols in a dream are sexual symbols. Male genitals are represented in dreams by symbolic substitutes such as pistols. (John Storey, 2009) Frank Castle’s dream may also be a reflection of how he misses his wife sexually. However, the logic of Freudian psychoanalysis tells us that dreams will always have different meanings to different people.
With access to Frank Castle’s dreams, audiences are able to connect to the character of Frank Castle on a deeper level, with his mixed emotions of guilt, shame, and rage all in a scene of one dream. This dream scene occurs a few more times in other episodes in similar ways. It makes up an important part of Frank Castle’s inner turmoil. The connection grows even stronger and would have caused audiences to be interested and stay involved with the character.
Representations
Representation is a depiction, likeness, or a constructed image of something in real life. Just as everything in the media is a representation, everything is also unreal. In the media, the reality is subjective. The series shows us only one version of reality but not reality itself. There are different aspects of realism that we can see in the Punisher series. They are surface realism, inner or emotional realism, the plausibility of the narrative or plot, and technical codes and symbols. (Val Pope, 2002)
Surface Realism
The Punisher series was filmed in New York City, including Brooklyn, and Astoria, Queens. The series was staged in New York City, also known as Hell’s Kitchen. Hell’s Kitchen is an artificial city in that it was only brought into existence to represent New York City. Hell’s Kitchen is also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City that includes roughly the area between 34th Street and 57th Street, from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River. The city has a history that's rich with gangsters and murders. Through representation, the image of the once city of crime and violence became far more powerful than the reality of the city itself. The Hell’s Kitchen of the Punisher series is the New York City that actually exists in reality, portrayed in the form of its troubled past.
Inner or Emotional Realism
Representation is a construct and is used repeatedly to let audiences feel natural about it. It requires interpretation and judgments are made based upon the audience’s own experiences and background. The media producers could have wanted their audiences to assume qualities of a character based on existing representations of such a character so that they can have a faster connection to the story. Karen Page was talking to the terrorist, Lewis on the radio show in Episode Nine (17:25), where she called Lewis a “coward” for the bomb that he set off, hurting the office workers. Karen’s reply would have reinforced the audience’s perception of this character, that she’s strong and would refer terror acts as cowardly acts on national radio while talking to Lewis the terrorist
Plausibility of the Narrative or Plot
In Episode Nine (05:20), the story starts with the birthday celebration in an office when an explosion went off. It then showed people recovering and started panicking while trying to orientate themselves after the explosion. It was followed by a news report by the news station narrating the incident. This scene is very similar to the September 11 attacks incident that happened in the U.S in 2011. The plausibility of such an incident happening had become very real. This reinforces the audience’s reality of the real world, where there may be a terrorist attack happening at any time.
Technical Codes and Symbols
The sound effects of Episode Nine (22:00) correspond with what is expected during a fight scene between Curtis the Corpsman and Lewis the terrorist. The sound of punches on the face and the squishing sounds of Curtis’s prosthetic leg hitting his face repeatedly was realistically done to let audiences believe that there were serious injuries on Curtis’s face. In the next scene in Episode Nine (48:00) Frank Castle was seen hijacking a police car after attacking two policemen. The police car had authentic-looking colors of blue stripes, the words “NYPD” which represents the New York Police Department, and also the mission statement of the real NYPD which writes: Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect on its car doors. Audiences would believe that it is a real police car, even though it is not really one.
Cultivation Theory
Cultivation theory further reinforces representation. It states that high-frequency viewers of television(TV) are more susceptible to media messages and the belief that they are real and valid. Heavy viewers are exposed to more violence and therefore are affected by the Mean World Syndrome, the belief that the world is a far worse and dangerous place than it actually is. Television viewing can have long-term effects that affect its audience. Attitudes are being ‘cultivated’ through the viewing of TV. It makes people believe that the world created by television is an accurate depiction of the real world. There are two levels of cultivation. The first order is a general belief about our world and the second-order which are specific attitudes, such as hatred or reverence for law and order. The theory suggests that this cultivation of attitudes is based on attitudes already present in our society and that the media take those attitudes which are already present and re-present them bundled in different packaging to their audiences. (Gerbner & Gross, 1976 )
Prior to the release of the Punisher series, U.S citizens were caught in a mass shooting done by a lone shooter in Las Vegas. The launch of the series was delayed because of the sensitive nature that the Punisher is a lone, gun-wielding comic book anti-hero. Shortly after, there was another school shooting incident that happened in Florida in February 2018. The country got embroiled in protests in many states to ban firearms in schools due to the recent rise in school shootings since March 2018. (Joe H, Marissa J. and Susan S, 2018)
In Episode Ten (14:20), Senator Stan Ori, Karen Page, and the radio host discussed a recent terrorist incident done by Lewis, the veteran turned terrorist. Senator Stan debated that the country needed tougher gun control laws. He made a statement “Less guns, less deaths. That simple”. The radio host replied that if a good person had a gun, the hero would have been able to shoot the terrorist and saved the day. It is even considered a right of the citizens to shoot down the terrorist if he possesses guns. The discussion in this radio show scene speaks of the real-life dilemma currently faced by the citizens of the U.S, whether gun laws would be going against their ideals of freedom and liberty. The dialogue in this episode mentions that guns were not the cause of the problems as Lewis the terrorist was killing people with bombs. It was trying to defend that if people had guns with them, the terrorist might be deterred to act or even be killed before performing the bombing. A similar rationale and solution were brought up by the current President of the United States, Donald Trump when he wanted to arm teachers with guns to deter shooters from terrorizing schools. It was hotly debated and discussed in the news and media after the Florida school shooting incident. (David Smith, 2018)
With a combination of the representation theory, the cultivation theory, and the real-life shooting incidents that happened, will reinforce and cultivate the audience’s mindset that the U.S is no longer a safe place, with individuals possessing firearms that can inflict mass casualties if they wished to. Freedom and liberty become a double-edged sword as people can freely own guns and rifles. The situation may also create copycat vigilantes who want to act out what the Punisher does in the TV series, causing society to be even more unsafe and unstable.
Conclusion
The Punisher series from Netflix features a protagonist who is a normal human being. It shows the combination of personal and selfish motivations of the Punisher. With no superpowers to help him achieve his goals, he struggles like any normal person and depends on his determination, rage, and wits to keep it going. The notion of being bad for the right reasons is appealing to audiences. Anti-hero films depict real life better than most superhero films. Superheroes always possess heroic qualities and this stereotyped representation of them is getting boring. Audiences are always looking for different and interesting storylines to watch, connect and empathize with.
The franchise of Marvel superhero films has been flooding the cinema industry and encouraged consumption by the audiences on unprecedented levels. The recent Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War grossed a total of 640 million dollars worldwide in the first week of its launch. (Forbes, 2018) Anti-hero films may be riding on this trend and will gain more success in the future, as long as they are tied and connected to the superhero narrative in some ways.
Popular culture had always been deemed as inferior and belittled when compared to high culture. However, its ability to connect all of us had also been hidden away. Just like how the popular “S” symbol is known to represent Superman in popular culture, the skull symbol now represents the Punisher. Popular culture has created a common language for us through the use of semiotics. Signs and symbols in popular culture can be interpreted visually and create understanding even when languages are different. Popular culture should never be trivialized as it has the potential to be a universal language for all civilizations.
The role of the anti-heroes in popular culture is to be a representation of repression in reality. Anti-heroes satisfy our desires to connect with our repressed selves. Everyone hopes to possess heroic qualities so as to succeed in every situation in life. The anti-hero represents that failure exists in reality. No one can fly like Superman or punch like the Incredible Hulk in real life. What we are really drawn to in the anti-heroes are their values, strong beliefs, and their conflicted representation of good and evil.
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