What the Marvel Cinematic Universe Can Teach Us About Geopolitics
By Daniel W. Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University
One is a fantasy with roots in World War II. The other boasts Spider-Man.
Twenty-first century political scientists have not shied away from using their conceptual wares to analyze significant pop culture phenomena. Name your favorite piece of intellectual property—Harry Potter, Battlestar Galactica, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, and Star Wars—and political scientists have written a book about it. There are entire podcasts devoted to the intersection of political science and science fiction. Rumor has it that some crackpot even wrote an international relations textbook about zombies.
The latest addition to this lineup is The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a University Press of Kansas volume edited by Nicholas Carnes, a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University, and Lilly Goren, chair of the history, political science, and religious studies department at Carroll University. Even among behemoths like Star Wars and Harry Potter, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) might be the hegemonic actor of the pop culture universe. Eight of the 25 highest grossing films of all time are Marvel films, more than those registered by the Star Wars, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and DC Extended Universe franchises combined. In 2021, Statista polling revealed that 82 percent of U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 34 had seen at least one MCU film.
For those Foreign Policy readers who have been paying closer attention to Latin American politics or Middle East turmoil than superheroes in recent years, a brief primer: The MCU has its origins in Marvel Comics, created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, who produced an array of superheroes designed to compete with DC Comics’ more established Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Marvel’s edgier superheroes range from the X-Men to the Fantastic Four to Spider-Man to the Avengers. Since its 2008 debut hit Iron Man, Marvel Studios has released more than 30 films (this month’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will be its 31st), around 20 television shows, and an array of shorts and one-off specials.
The MCU ranges from conspiracy thrillers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) to comedy (Guardians of the Galaxy) to Afro-futurism (Black Panther). The MCU is also known for quips and interlocking plots and cameos that make each character part of a larger universe. Marvel—which Disney acquired in 2015—proved to be more successful at this project than DC. Last year, Warner Bros. launched a 10-year plan to model DC’s extended universe after Marvel’s.
With great power comes great expectations of an edited volume, and The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe clocks in at more than 400 pages, suggesting that political scientists could—in the words of Captain America—“do this all day.” At their best, books like Carnes’ and Goren’s use popular culture to court new readers and then use political science to inform them about what makes the cultural artifact tick. While only a superficial knowledge of the Marvel universe is required to comprehend the material, I would recommend some familiarity with political science. As one of my editors put it: The difference between political science and Marvel is that one is a fantasy universe mostly invented in the 1960s with roots in World War II—and the other has Spider-Man.
Carnes and Goren organize their volume around three topics: sociopolitical issues in superheroes’ origin stories, the role of governments in the MCU, and shifts in representation (i.e., who gets to be a superhero) over time. In their introduction, they note that “the MCU can be a driver of contemporary political and social currents, but the MCU can also be driven by those same forces.” One could make a similar claim about political science analysis of the MCU.
Not all the nooks and crannies of the MCU universe get equal treatment in the book. There are currently a combined seven films and one television show covering Thor and Ant-Man, but they are referenced sparingly in this book. The book also covers more adult Netflix television shows, such as Jessica Jones. Like the rest of the MCU fandom, however, the volume’s contributors have made the sensible decision to pretend that Iron Fist never existed.
Political scientists clearly have favorites within the MCU. There are multiple chapters devoted to the politics of Black Panther, for example. This is to be expected—political scientists Allison Rank and Heather Pool point out in their chapter that the fact “that [filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s] blockbuster film manages to open such important questions while also being a rousing action film is truly impressive.” Captain America, Jessica Jones, Captain Marvel (the character who inspired Carnes and Goren to assemble this book), and Agent Carter are also covered in multiple chapters.
The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe offers lessons big and small about the relationship between the MCU and politics. Multiple contributors quantify various political aspects of the MCU. For example, political scientist Ora Szekely’s chapter confirms that Black Panther was not only a standout film because its protagonist was a person of color but also because it featured the highest ratio of female to male characters of any MCU film. Researcher Bethany Lacina’s chapter reveals the diversity of MCU audiences: “People of color are the majority of the MCU’s eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old audience,” she writes.
The book’s more conceptual arguments are also interesting. Multiple authors point out that key MCU superheroes (such as Black Panther, Captain America, and Thor) have origin stories rooted in national interest and provide, in the words of Goren, “a kind of gentle, nostalgic nationalism.” Multiple chapters also connect the exceptional role of superheroes within their fictional societies to questions about emergency politics and sovereign power in the real world. Indeed, political scientist Christopher Galdieri’s chapter delineates how and why Captain America—a human so worthy he can wield Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir—rejects the all-American idea of institutional checks on his power. The whole plot of Captain America: Civil War revolves around Captain America’s resistance to the idea of political oversight of the Avengers, a team of Marvel superheroes.
Contributors do not always agree in their interpretations of the MCU. The two chapters on environmentalism, for example, are at odds over whether mega-villain Thanos was right to wipe out half of all life in the universe in the name of environmental sustainability.
Multiple authors also bemoan the objectification of the MCU’s female superheroes. Political scientist Kristin Kanthak asserts, with just a hint of hyperbole, that, “We demand that Captain Marvel defeat Thanos entirely on her own while simultaneously keeping the house clean and the kids fed, all while looking dead sexy.” But political scientist Daniel Cassino’s exploration of how the MCU treats masculinity suggests a different perspective: “[T]he male superheroes we’re shown are impressively muscled and not shy about showing it off. Indeed, one of the more progressive aspects of the MCU is its tendency to sexualize male, rather than female, bodies.” Cassino’s exploration of Captain America’s evolution hints at the MCU’s surprisingly subtle take on masculinity. The superficial superhero archetype is muscle-bound men smashing their way to victory. In the MCU, battles incur costs: Iron Man suffers from PTSD and Thor from depression. Captain America copes better in no small part because, while counseling survivors of the MCU’s various disasters, he embraces a more capacious view of masculinity.
As big as The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, I wish it was bigger—because the book leaves out some fascinating political questions raised by the MCU. Surprisingly, there was no extended discussion or debate about how a superhero is different from a vigilante. (This might explain why Spider-Man, Daredevil, and the Punisher did not feature significantly.) Another trend that garnered little analysis is the steady disappearance of ordinary civilians from the narrative. Most early MCU films are about how a superhero copes with their new powers within their preexisting network of friends and family. But by the time the MCU got to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame in 2018 and 2019, nearly all the protagonists were superheroes. As Carnes notes in his chapter, the U.S. government’s prominence in MCU films also recedes over time. The politics of the MCU may change in a world where almost everyone with a speaking part is a superhero and normal Earth-bound institutions seem invisible.
The biggest gap in Carnes and Goren’s book is the absence of, um, foreign policy. Most of the chapters are concerned with questions of domestic U.S. politics or political theory. Political scientist Stephen Saideman’s chapter discusses civil-military relations, but beyond that, there is little mention of traditional international relations questions. That is not due to a shortage of subject material: The question of whether Black Panther’s Wakanda can be an isolationist superpower, for example, merits further exploration. How great-power politics on Earth will progress after the reveal of alien civilizations like the Skrulls or the Kree seems like an important topic too. And don’t get me started on the effect of time travel on credible commitment mechanisms.
Perhaps the greatest irony of the MCU is that over time, even as its characters become more representative, the MCU universe has been drained of the political institutions that we take for granted. In other words, the MCU now looks like our world—in every way but its politics.
This piece is republished from Foreign Policy.