Late Capitalism and the Supervillain

We are attempting to shed some light on the peculiarity of the 'supervillain' of our Hollywood times. Anyone familiar with Hollywood's most popular movies of today knows that the supervillain of today is usually the professor, and here we try to illuminate some qualities of the professor that may make him a supervillain. There are two facets of this supervillain which are discussed here, which have important implications for the discussion concerning late capitalism: one is the fact that this supervillain seems to possess a creativity, and more specifically, an enterprising attitude (although this supervillain's creative potential is always utilized to make some form a weapon and never for other more nuanced functions, such as the creation of strategies to beat the superhero)¹. The other interesting fact about the supervillain is that he is, in this reading, above and beyond the villains in reality. Villains in reality are burglars, people of color or communists etc, but the supervillain seems to resist such categorizing altogether; he is a single individual acting out of individual interests. He is neither left nor right, neither for the people or against them, and, quite surprisingly, he is not even interested in benefiting his own self. Having said this, we will still attempt to place the supervillain within the capitalist system as a peculiar 'character' of late capitalism.

How could such a villain develop in Hollywood, and what is it about the superhero-supervillain movie format which makes it so appealing to Hollywood and to capitalist societies in general? Hollywood is supposed to be concerned with 'propagandizing,' implying that the villain should be based on real life social formations and identities. And this is not just any villain, but a supervillain, one that is on par with the superhero in terms of his power and ability. But, whereas the superhero is in many ways a representation of the people, an extension of the passion of the people, the supervillain does not have his own team. His best characterizations arise when he embodies the Freudian uncanny: he is an alien, uncanny and differentiated from everything which is expected of in reality and in the movies. What we mean is that this villain is not only once removed from the hero, but twice removed from the ordinary villain itself. He is once removed from the small other (the ordinary villain) and hence, he is the big Other². What we must first realize, then, is that the uncanny is the style taken up by the big Other, the uncanny is the garment worn by the big Other. Whenever someone seems uncanny to us, we may speculate that we are in the presence of the big Other.

We have heard of the claims (made by Zizek) that the big Other is the unreachable depth of the subject, and here, the big Other supervillain is precisely the depth of capitalism. What we are claiming is that the supervillain is an enemy to capitalism, insofar as he is also a capitalist himself. In late capitalism today, the concern is not so much with the 'other' threat, the external threat: the threat of the communists, the threat of the people of color etc, but rather, late capitalism, of which Hollywood is one of the primary institutions, considers internal enemies to be more dangerous. This biggest threat to capitalism is a form of capitalist itself. In this case, it means that late capitalism is more about management than war, in that, it is about the careful management of the internal threat rather than an external one. The threat is inherent to capitalism and not outside of it. And we may ask, why are there sequels of the superhero movies? Precisely because the villain is never killed (for one does not kill what is inherent to oneself) but he/she keeps returning in different garbs. The villain is managed away, consigned, maybe imprisoned or trapped, but never killed.

In a sense, Zizek's accusatory claim that corruption is at the core of the system of capitalism and not outside of it as an external threat is not really a dramatic accusation but rather a statement of fact. With the supervillain as located within the late capitalist system, we arrive at an answer as to the two observations made of the supervillain professor: one, that he is enterprising, and two, that he is not defined by any social identity along race/class/gender lines. The professor creates something, and therein he expresses himself as a desiring subject. His desire is peculiar, as it is not ultimately motivated by a will to belong to a race/class/gender, but rather to separate oneself from such categories. Unlike the communist enemy, he/she does not want to belong to a group of people with satisfied needs, rather, he/she deliberately wills his detachment from belonging. He/she is the expression of a radical death drive; he/she is the expression of the subject whose desire is self-castration. It thus seems that desire itself is the enemy of capitalism.

And with desire as the enemy, we arrive at why enterprising villains are the supervillains of Hollywood. They want too much of what late capitalism is about: individualism and servitude to consumerism (that is, finding the consumption of the other pleasurable). The enemy for late capitalism, which is managerial capitalism, is enterprising capitalism itself³, which is an earlier form of capitalism still expressed among some subjects. Perhaps managerial capitalists find that the proliferation of capitalism without responsibility, without a balancing act, is not something positive for the world at the moment. Capitalism with checks and balances is the aim at this period. In a self-critical vein, the enemy for late capitalism is capitalism itself. But this type of self-criticism always positions the refined self in a more permanent position: it bolsters and strengthens managerial capitalism itself so that the evolution of capitalism to other sub-types will be more tough. To put it more abstractly, the self is preserved as a site of superiority, and other further enemies to capitalism are slowly being developed. One of our predictions is, therefore, that the enterprising class will be the newest 'other' or excluded group of capitalism, same as people of color are (in some readings). What we have come to is a peculiar observation: that the more problematic movement in capitalism is from the big Other to the small other, from the Other which is a part of the self and not addressed, to the other which has to be discarded and ignored. We can predict and say that late capitalism itself will begin to show authoritarian and strict tendencies in its management of populations.

Ultimately, this paper is about how people should best enjoy the late capitalist superhero movie. There is no point in enjoying the movie by identifying with the superhero: in fact, we are in a time where the sinister enjoyment of an audience member identifying with the supervillain is more relevant than the enjoyment of someone identifying with a superhero. In managerial capitalism, we must begin to enjoy the interactions and the dialogues between the two antagonistic characters, and we must find the resolution not in the film's plot line and structure, but in other scenes and with other, marginalized interpretations of the film's characters. We must learn to enjoy as manager and not as hero or villain. The ego's identification with a character on screen must be swiftly resisted. In a sense, we have returned to Greek theater, where the chorus stands in for the audience, and inaugurates the audience itself within the theatrical performance. We must act as if we are the chorus of the superhero and supervillain dynamic, for therein is the managerial role.

1The supervillian's inventiveness is probably Hollywood's way of rationalizing the proximity between science and creativity, so that science is seen as an adventurous endeavor.

2We are here deliberately resisting Lacan's claim that there is no other of the other, and reading keenly on his lack of comment on whether there is a big Other of the small other.

3But entrepreneurship being the enemy is not the problem in managerial (late) capitalism, which is the more astounding fact for us.