Socialist superheroes and the villainy of… | Little White Lies

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Social­ist super­heroes and the vil­lainy of gentrification

10 Oct 2016

Words by David Hughes

A superhero-like figure in a dark costume stands in a dimly lit alleyway, with a billboard advertising "For lease by owner" visible in the background.
A superhero-like figure in a dark costume stands in a dimly lit alleyway, with a billboard advertising "For lease by owner" visible in the background.
Like Super­man dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, today’s super­heroes are in-sync with our com­plex polit­i­cal climate.

At the south­west cor­ner of West 57th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, stands a mon­u­ment to the per­ni­cious­ness of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion – The Win­der­mere. Once a hand­some 19th cen­tu­ry apart­ment com­plex hous­ing the work­ing and cre­ative class of the city, an aggres­sive wave of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion encour­aged the building’s own­er to ter­rorise and harass his ten­ants away. Today, The Win­der­mere is set to become a lux­u­ry hotel.

This is a famil­iar sce­nario to most city dwellers. It may also read famil­iar to view­ers of Marvel’s Dare­dev­il, the Net­flix series about a blind lawyer oper­at­ing local­ly as a noc­tur­nal super­hero in – where else? – gen­tri­fied Hell’s Kitchen. Matt Mur­doch aka Dare­dev­il (Char­lie Cox) takes on a mul­ti-nation­al crime syn­di­cate seek­ing to rede­vel­op Hell’s Kitchen in their own totalised image. Mas­ter­mind­ed by Wil­son Fisk (Vin­cent D’Onofrio), a man with a utopi­an vision of mak­ing Hell’s Kitchen some­where beau­ti­ful” by any ugly means, he under­takes a Win­der­mere-inspired process of social cleans­ing and prop­er­ty redevelopment.

His­tor­i­cal­ly speak­ing, our filmic rep­re­sen­ta­tions of this issue have been severe­ly inad­e­quate, even cor­rob­o­ra­tive. When a bohemi­an Hugh Grant saun­ters his way through a homogenised white Not­ting Hill, despite the areas rich Afro-Caribbean cul­ture, it’s racist by omis­sion. Cin­e­ma audi­ences are mere­ly tourists wit­ness­ing a gen­tri­fied qua­si-soci­ety made clean, pret­ty and cor­po­rate as some desire it to be. So let’s not under­val­ue pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment engag­ing with social anx­i­eties. Ask any work­ing New York­er, or Lon­don­er, what the preva­lent threat to their liveli­hoods is and it isn’t extra-ter­res­tri­al inva­sions, it’s gen­tri­fi­ca­tion. Marvel’s Dare­dev­il and Luke Cage depict this threat as vio­lent class con­flict like Marx fore­saw it. Not since Super­man debuted dur­ing the Great Depres­sion have our super­heroes held such strong social­ist val­ues, defend­ing the 99 per cent against the one per cent.

Matt Mur­doch uses his arcane law knowl­edge to defend the down-trod­den against plu­toc­ra­cy, and the bul­let­proof Luke Cage shields Harlem from the infec­tion of white-col­lar vice. Rather than func­tion as pri­vate super­heroes à la The Avengers, they belong to the pro­le­tari­at. They labour and inte­grate them­selves into their com­mu­ni­ty. Mur­doch and his cohorts, Fog­gy Nel­son (Elden Hen­son) and Karen Page (Deb­o­rah Ann Woll), work all-nighters and spend their down­time in mom-and-pop restau­rants or at the com­mu­ni­ty dive, Josie’s Bar. It’s a shit hole,” Fog­gy says, but it’s our shit hole.”

He explains that the city tried to shut Josie’s Bar a few times, only for his own legal exper­tise to pre­vent it (if only Islington’s Fab­ric night­club had Mur­doch and Nel­son Law Office). In an ear­li­er episode, while view­ing poten­tial office spaces, Fog­gy bemoans the view of cranes and scaf­fold­ing, to which the retail agent retorts, Hell’s Kitchen is on the rebound, Mr Nel­son. In 18 months you won’t be able to run a broom clos­et at this price point.” Words like rebound’, regen­er­a­tion’ and revi­talise’ are all too famil­iar to those on the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion hitlist.

In anoth­er telling scene, vil­lain Fisk is din­ing with his date, Vanes­sa (Ayelet Zur­er), a bour­geois art gallery employ­ee. Dis­cussing Hell’s Kitchen’s rapid trans­for­ma­tion, Vanes­sa tells Fisk, it would be a shame to see all the char­ac­ter scrubbed away.” Vanes­sa is the essence of Pulp’s song Com­mon Peo­ple’ – class voyeur and tourist, attempt­ing to latch onto the vital­i­ty of work­ing com­mu­ni­ties, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly destroy­ing them via a pen­chant for over­priced cof­fee. Fisk responds to her state­ment with you didn’t grow up here, did you?” The open­ing titles of Dare­dev­il estab­lish appre­hen­sions about free-mar­ket rapid devel­op­ment; entire cityscapes lit­er­al­ly con­struct them­selves from blood, drip­ping with human cost.

Like­wise, when we meet Luke Cage, our pow­er-man is sweep­ing the floor of Pop’s Barber’s and wash­ing plates at the res­i­dent night­club in order to make his rent. It’s called work,” he says. He’s not Tony Stark, he’s one of us. But in a soci­ety where not being white is polit­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant, Cage cel­e­brates a proud and unapolo­getic hope for black cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty in a chang­ing city milieu. Here is an empow­er­ing black man in a hood­ie imper­vi­ous to trig­ger-hap­py officers.

While Fisk want­ed con­do­mini­ums no one can afford,” the das­tard­ly plan of Luke Cage’s neme­sis, cor­rupt politi­cian Mari­ah Dil­lard (Alfre Woodard), is to embez­zle funds for… social hous­ing? This afford­able hous­ing ini­tia­tive is going to change things, man,” she states. Sounds like left-wing pol­i­cy rather than a crim­i­nal mastermind’s plot. But her aspi­ra­tions become appar­ent as she stum­bles from utopi­an designs into dem­a­gogue. Dillard’s cam­paign logo, Keep Harlem Black,” exploits fear of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in black com­mu­ni­ties; some­thing direc­tor Spike Lee recent­ly termed, Christo­pher Colum­bus Syn­drome’. In 1950, 98 per cent of res­i­dents in Harlem were African-Amer­i­can. By 2008, that dropped to 40 per cent. So as invig­o­rat­ing as it is to see a major­i­ty black cast, this is already an anachronism.

Influ­enced by vibrant depic­tions of the city in noir and Blax­ploita­tion, it’s impos­si­ble not to admire the com­mu­ni­ties Netflix’s Mar­vel series depict. When Matt talks about sav­ing Hell’s Kitchen” and Luke sav­ing Harlem”, this doesn’t strike as cheesy sen­ti­ment because we recog­nise the real­i­ty in the fic­tion. As Bob Dylan put it, There’s a bat­tle out­side and it’s rag­ing.” It’s less lit­er­al than dra­mat­ic super­hero con­flict, but the notion that the soul of a city is under threat is a res­o­nant and atyp­i­cal­ly sub­ver­sive one. Like the V for Vendet­ta mask, expect to see bul­let-rid­den hood­ies as potent sym­bols of the impor­tance and unfor­tu­nate fragili­ty of com­mu­ni­ty life and culture.

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