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Julian Schmid, "Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Po
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Julian Schmid about his book titled Marvel DC and US Security, the Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the 21st Century, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2025. Looking at, of course, the superhero genre, as the subtitle suggests, but particularly in the context of 9 11. Now, of course, to have that context usefully examined, we go before 911 to look at the superhero genre and its intertwining with American politics and national security, and then look at that moment and kind of what happens afterwards as well. So it's not just examining what happened in the comics. It's also looking at kind of how the comics can help us make sense of what's happening in politics beyond the DC and Marvel universes. So there's a whole bunch of things for us to discuss. Julian, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
Thank you so much for having me.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
Yeah. Yes. Thank you so much. Again, My name is Dr. Julian Schmidt. My original idea came from way before I entered academia to kind of think about superheroes I was a witness and eyewitness to 9 11. Not in real life, but on television, as I think many, many other people have been. And after 9 11, we can really see and observe this massive invigoration of the superhero genre that has been around for a long, long time. But now they really start to get onto the cinematic, the silver screen, so to speak. And that was a phenomenon that really interested me. And I was thinking about how the kind of politics that came, the war on terror and post 911 security discourses, the reaction of America and the American, especially the Bush administration at first, how that was kind of like connected to this rush of superhero. Superhero themes, especially in the cinema. You mentioned comic books before. So comic books as well, are kind of, like, reinvigorated in that era, but especially on television and in the cinema, they're kind of like, really starting to surge. And that was just something that really interested me. Being an Austrian also means that, you know, I come from a central European space that still is very much kind of connected to or influenced by, let's say, global Americanized themes and popular culture. So that's kind of what I started to get interested in. I was never a superhero fan in itself. Maybe now I actually do have a couple of favorite superheroes, I guess, and, you know, comic books that I like to read because people give them to me and ask me for their opinion. But it was just really this kind of connection between this almost synergetic moment of, you know, 9 11, the kind of turn to 2000, 2001, the new millennium, and this, you know, kind of completely new engagement with terrorism as a political issue. And on the other hand, superheroes, you know, kind of starting to get on the silver screen. So that was something that I found interesting to navigate and to look into.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, it's certainly there's many things to look at with that sort of project impetus. So thank you for giving us the backstory.
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
The.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
Given that initial goals of the project, now that you've come to the end of it, the book is out in the world. What are some of the key goals and contributions you're making?
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
So there is a growing and kind of like, really nice and collegial community within international relations and security studies that I'm part of. I've organized the 14th Popular Culture and World Politics Conference two years ago in Vienna. I just came back from the 16th Popular cultural politics Conference in Lisbon. It is a growing community of a couple of hundred scholars, I would say, that work on international relations and security and the Key question that I think connects all of us is this question of how does war and violence start, right? Like, how can we make sense of certain security regimes? And rather than being interested in, let us say, you know, human nature is vile or these kind of things, or even. Rather than being interested in, well, you know, wars just happened, that's just kind of the baseline of it. We really asked this question, where does all of that start? And a key moment for us, I think, really lies in this. In. In the realm of. Of kind of discourse of culture. You know, the assumption that violence doesn't just happen. It starts very, very early on. When you tell people that, you know, there are specific groups that might be a threat. Or when you. When you essentially. When you essentially see and watch and read about what can be a threat, then you start to think like that, right? So as that connecting factor, I would argue my contribution as well as the contribution of others really tries to identify these kind of moments when violence starts to grow, when violent thoughts start to grow, way before they actually become a full fledged war or terror attack or a violent event. So we're really interested in kind of the root causes. And me, as well as, you know, this kind of group I just described, I think we really see this as. As a cultural product and culture, popular culture and politics as inherently connected, not as two opposite sides of things, but really as something that we have to think together essentially at all times. That's kind of the logic that I'm employing here.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's very helpful to understand the contributions here in terms of how we should be thinking about these things in relation to each other. I'd love to now go through some more specific examples about how we can do that with different time periods of comics and different aspects of politics, too. So one thing that I think is particularly interesting throughout the book, really, is the connections you make between what we might consider national myths in the, quote, unquote, pure politics sphere. You know, things that show up in history textbooks or classrooms, and then the sort of tropes and myths that show up within the superhero genres. You know, there's a lot of common themes there, but as you mentioned, we don't always put them together. And yet you've done that. And there are some key similarities between, for example, superhero origin stories around World War II and the kind of aftermath of that conflict and myths that relate to, like, the founding of the United States and how that conflict went. So can you tell us about some of those connections between two groups of myths that maybe we don't Put into conversation enough.
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
Yeah, thanks for the question. I think one key aspect of especially American popular culture that I look at here is the role of the individual. So heroism and kind of contributions to a form of community. And of course, the US Understands itself, has always understood itself as, you know, a creed that's kind of like a form of vocabulary that's employed quite often. We're a creed, we're one people, and all these kind of things. But it always relies on a very strong role that individual plays. So we look at the Founding Fathers, for example, but we always highlight specific individual contributions that, for example, George Washington has made. Right. It's kind of like a key founding father. Thomas Jefferson would be another example. So that kind of like, leads us to an avalanche of cultural and historical artifacts within American popular culture, where the individual is always foregrounded. So the community might exist as, you know, again, something that's to be upheld, the nuclear family, for example. But also, I don't know, you know, pioneers and the kind of like the frontiers, men and women as a form of community. But it always hinges on individual contributions that are quite often violent, by the way, I might add. And this. That leads us from the founding of the United States essentially all the way to World War II as well, where we do have this understanding of camaraderie. You know, the military is a space where everybody's equal and everybody contributes. Contributes in the same way, but we're still foregrounding individual acts of heroism. And that very much differs from other, shall we say, you know, nations. On national myths, for example, if you look at Southeast Asia, you know, I. In kind of some of my contemplations, I sometimes look at Chinese or Hong Kong cinema, where, for example, the role of the individual just functions completely differently as more kind of like there's an understanding of individual sacrifice that is not. That is. That functions differently from the one that we can see in the United States. So in the United States, it's very much around the role of the individual as part of the bigger picture, essentially. And that's what I would say leads as a. As a thread essentially from the founding of 1776 all the way to, you know, the 2000s, and then also further on, of course, the Bonterra.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
So it's the end of that period, I think I'd like to talk a little bit more about before we get to 9 11. Do we still see these myths kind of having the same sort of power as the US Leaves the Cold War and sort of goes through the 90s into 2000.
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
So from a. From a superhero perspective, right, we have, as cultural markers, as cultural texts, the Batman films between 1989 and 1997, made by Joel Schumacher and Tim Burton, as kind of like really reducing a bigger role of heroism to, you know, kind of Gotham and fighting crime. And this is something that we can see over and over again throughout the Cold War as well as after. Namely, that superheroes always take on the mantle of being a kind of a global savior. But then we can also see periods that align with U.S. foreign policy, essentially, where superheroes also take a step back and really kind of become almost like private citizens and fighting their own battles and their own, you know, kind of kind of battles of conscience and guilt and all these kind of things. And it's really reduced to kind of the very narrow homeland, essentially. Again, Gotham is like one example. This is a reflection of the crisis that we can see after the Cold War. The Cold War. The end of the Cold War signifies a moment of triumph. We have especially conservative international relations scholars calling this a unipolar moment where we don't have multiple poles of power anymore in the world, but just the United States, essentially, that is left. But paradoxically, this leads the United States into kind of like an identity crisis. Right? The United States is always, you know, head to face and was facing existential battles for its own survival and for the survival of its specific form of civilization. And after the Cold War, that doesn't exist anymore. So it's almost like the United States needs an antagonist. It's, again, a reflection of the superhero genre in itself, right? Like, superheroes do not have a purpose if they cannot fight an antagonist. And that is what is really lacking. You have the launch of the War on Drugs by Ronald Reagan, for example, at the end of the Cold War. But that is not really fulfilling the role of the antagonist, right? Maybe if they had pinned it on a specific state that was kind of trying to destroy the US with drugs, maybe this could have worked. But the War on drugs was not really fulfilling this role of the antagonist that the United States needs. And so superheroes as well as the United states in the 1990s, and that's also why this section is relatively short in the book, is because they. They are just really missing having this antagonistic other, this evil other side, where they can prove to the world essentially, that they are fighting for the right things. And then, luckily, if you want, the War on Terror comes along, that absolves them from this identity crisis. So the 1990s, the end of the Cold War, I really identify as a massive identity crisis for United States foreign policy as well as superheroes.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
We all know now how clearly words like evil were thrown around as soon as 911 happened. Right. It very much goes back to that kind of clarity you were talking about being lacking in the 1990s. How can we further understand the way this was all being kind of talked about in the aftermath of 9 11? By adding an analysis of superhero tropes the way you do in the book.
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
Right. Thank you. So there is this issue of especially cinematic texts, of course, always lagging a bit behind specific crises. So superhero films cannot directly react to 9 11, of course, after the ones that come out after 9 11. But that is not necessarily the point that. That I'm making here. So, for example, if you look at Spider man, which comes out In May of 20 and 2, it was supposed to come out actually at the end of 2001, but it was not released until later. Precisely because it plays in New York. And New York is a space of violent endeavor at the time, is a very critical ground. Of course, the film material was altered a little bit after 911 as a reaction to 9 11. So it was produced and shot before 9 11. But then it comes out in May 2002, so half a year a bit more after 9 11. And it was seen at this point by consumers, by audiences, as a post 911 film. So without actually, you know, superheroes directly capable of reacting, cinematic superheroes not directly capable of reacting to 9 11. They are immediately read as such. Right? Immediately. Red is kind of post 911 a reaction to 9 11, even though that's actually not possible. What you will find in the book, for example, is a reflection on a couple of comic books that come out. There is an. There is a collection of comic book themes coming out very shortly after 911 that engages with the failure essentially of superheroic power. Why? Well, because the ultimate attack on. On ontological security, on the sense of security that the US Always had, was kind of collapsing. Right. This is the first attack on. On New York from a foreign power ever since, you know, I don't know, the War of 1812, for example. Right. But it's kind of the first foreign power, the first foreign violent act enacted on American soil. If we ignore Pearl harbor, for. For. For that matter. And there is more this sense of that there is a. A Spider man comic strip, for example, that comes out where Spider man appears on Ground Zero. And people ask him, but why did you. Why. Why did you not prevent this? So superheroes really Reflect this sense of like absence in that moment, an absence of superheroism. We could not prevent this with this hit is really unexpected. And of course, superheroes usually are not very vulnerable at this period in time. Superheroes, you know, kind of. They might get wounded, but they don't get weakened essentially by it. Right. So they kind of battle their way through their scars and all this kind of stuff. But at this point in time, this really doesn't. Doesn't help anymore. So the on the comic book side, we have a very quick reflection that reflects despair, that reflects almost like a surprise about the vulnerability that the US experienced. And then in filmic productions there is this attempt to reflect on what does it mean if we have violent endeavors, especially in New York, also in other cities. And the city really becoming the battleground for the survival of civilization. That's kind of how 911 is reflected in this period. Couple of years after 9 11.
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Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's really interesting to see the reflections there. Especially, as you said, given the time lag, it kind of makes for an interesting, I suppose, wrinkle to the analysis. That kind of adds complexity and nuance to it. So that's very interesting to understand in the immediate aftermath. But of course, the war on terror continues well after 2000 or 2001 and becomes especially politicized. You know, Democrats and Republicans ending up in very different places on it. How did superhero films navigate that and remain sort of popular no matter which side of the political divide someone was on?
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
One argument that I'm making is that superheroes are so popular because they can always be read from different sides, from different sides of the political aisle. That's one point. Yes, absolutely. You will find debates throughout the decades of ever since superheroes have existed where you have reflections about would Captain America be a Republican or a Democrat, Would Iron man be a Republican or Democrat, etcetera, etcetera. I am actively not trying to reply to this question for the simple reason that I don't think it can be solved. There is a second point here that I want to make which is if you look at superhero texts in itself, they also seem or come across as appealing or are at least known by people who actually never watched superhero films. So it's not this. The book in itself, as well as my argument is not made for people that are superhero nerds. Right. I mean, I hope that I. That I also can contribute something to that, to that. That group, that culture. But the big understanding here is that superhero narratives super and kind of the visualities, you know, the super Superman s. Or the Batman symbol. And these kind of things are visually and narratively known to audiences, even if they've never watched a superhero film. Right. This also goes to, you know, everybody knows Rambo, for example. Everybody knows the Terminator. So this goes a long way back, essentially. And because they're so well known is I think superheroes really manage to never declare themselves. They never kind of make any kind of political statement in that sense. Which is also why, especially something that I talk about in the book the Dark Knight in 2008, which comes out in the summer before the elections when Obama gets elected for the first time. That film was read widely by liberal audiences as confirming that, you know, this is the ultimate reckoning of George W. Bush's policy regarding the war on terror, regarding torture, regarding surveillance. And it kind of did. Reading the Dark Knight is a form of critique of that. Whereas you have conservative, conservative commentators who actually say, well, Batman uses these kind of, you know, enhanced interrogation techniques, torture, whatever, and surveillance. And that proves that finally Hollywood understands in their logic, finally, Hollywood understands that Bush was right all along. So, yeah, this is a good example of how superheroes manage to never declare themselves. They have all. They were always capable of being read from different perspectives. But you're absolutely right that in this phase, when the initial war on terror kind of breaks down a bit in the first couple of years, there's a lot of support for. For the Bush administration for the engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. And after that kind of leads more into disappointment in, like, 2006 and 07. And Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina really kind of dampens his reputation. That's when you can see a little bit of a more nuanced discussion on superheroes. But again, it always seems to get back to, if you're liberal, you will think that Batman is a liberal. If you're conservative, you'll think that Batman's a conservative. And that's, again, another thing we can see also in the years after going forward. My name is Percy Jackson. Getting in trouble is like breathing for me. The hit series returns to Disney and Hulu. The danger the camp is under is greater than you can possibly imagine. For the key to our survival, three of you must quest to the sea of Monsters. Let's go do the impossible. I'm not gonna let some stupid monsters stand in my way. Percy Jackson and the Olympians New season now on Disney plus and Hulu. Learn more@disneyplus.com what's on?
- [23:29]
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- [23:59]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Something that shows up in the Bush administration. You discuss in the book that also in the Obama presidency there's sort of attempts to recast superhero myths in politics and in the films. Can you tell us maybe about this time period?
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
Yes. So the, the first films that come out in during the Obama administration are kind of like reboots. So we have already seen, you know, kind of certain reboots of Batman and Superman, etc. In the early 2000s. The X Men, of course, come out in 2000. So that's kind of the first millennial superhero film. And then we have the resurrection of as I, as I identify in 2011 especially. So kind of like the, you know, midterm period of the first Obama administration of Captain America and Thor, who both personify a specific form of masculinity that deviates a lot from what we've seen in the first couple of years of the One Terror, namely being more modest, being not as power driven, reading itself as kind of benevolent force for good, which is a reiteration of themes we can see throughout the 20th century as well. But what that means in this case is that everybody's kind of fed up with, you know, kind of foreign engagements, foreign intervention of the United States. Again, especially Afghanistan and Iraq become really a big issue. Four consecutive American administrations and Thor and Captain America specifically really illustrate this kind of defensive masculinity almost which Obama tries to play on as well a lot. So Obama is always the one that says we have to be very aware of the power we wield. Captain America fits this really well. Captain America wears a shield as essentially a shield and the weapon at the same time, but it's a different, a defensive tool. Right. Which of course connects back to World War II where he originates, this understanding of that. Also World War II was fought against the backdrop of fighting for the protection of civilization, against, in this case, fascism. And in the 2011 film Captain America the First Avenger, that kind of comes back. So it ties us back to the good war of the second of the Second World War as a good war. Whereas at the same time saying we just try to be protective and not aggressive. And that really fits well into what Obama, how Obama tries to re narrate the war on terror. Obama and Hillary Clinton, as a state secretary at the time, are saying, well, we won't talk about the war on terror anymore as a thing. They really tried to recoin rephrase the war on terror. And that's where superheroes fit in really, really well in the first Obama administration specifically.
- [27:03]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's very key to think about kind of how the pieces come together in that particular moment. And I'm glad you clarified the first Obama administration because when we move into the second Obama administration, things change. And I was particularly intrigued by the comparisons you made between the second term of the Bush administration as well and kind of the critiques happening around their different foreign policies with what do we see here?
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
So the second Obama administration really sees two themes, I argue. On the first hand, it tries to come together. It tries to bring together especially the Avengers, then also later on the B.C. side, the Justice League as kind of like a team, the team effort of the nation. This is something that happens quite often in multiple cultural, popular cultural narratives throughout really decades, if not hundreds of years by now, I mean, next year it's going to be 250 years of the existence of the United States of America. So quite a long period by now. There is always this attempt as a response to crisis, let's get back together as a team. And that quite often results in preliminary success. So you have the Avengers coming out in 2012, where it's about the rescuing New York of all places, of course, and saving them from an alien invasion and from a nuclear attack actually as well. And then you have in 2016, the Justice League, for example. So you have this bringing together of all Americans, all creeds, and again these kind of narratives, these kind of themes as a big team to secure America. On the other hand, you do have kind of more critical texts coming along. So any genre, really, any kind of cultural genre, when it goes on for a long time, will develop these kind of critical points as well. So the second Obama administration, Captain America, the Winter Soldier, which comes out in 2014, is usually read as this kind of question of, okay, we know Obama said he's gonna, you know, no boots on the ground anymore. Fair enough. But he does develop a drone program, right, that actually kills people. And this becomes known to the public around the time. We do have the NSA scandal where we suddenly realize that surveillance also of foreign policymakers, for example, is A massive thing that the Obama administration support courts and Captain America Winter Soldier really reflects this and says, well, you know, what kind of resources do we want to see in whose hands? And in this sense, it's a. You're absolutely right. It's. It's an interesting reflection of the 2008 the Dark Knight film, for example, which was again, seen as mostly broadly a critique of. Of the Bush administration. The interesting thing in both cases, though, is that they still make the point of, well, as long as power is wielded by the right hands, violent power, that is, it's actually okay to use it. And that's where I would argue in both of these phases. At the end of the Bush administration, at the end of the Obama administration, we can see critiques, we can see counter narratives, but they don't really push the point. Right? They stay very much on the surface. They say, well, you know, the. The biggest gun should be in the hands of the best guys, actually. And the question then that I would ask is, is that really a proper systemic critique of things, or is it just, like, superficial? And, you know, in order to actually really critique things, to really develop counter narratives, we have to go a lot further.
- [30:53]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
And that sort of making a point, but not really pushing it. Is that what we saw in the first Trump administration as well? And to what extent can we sort of make any conclusions about what's happening with the second?
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Dr. Julian Schmidt
So the first Trump administration is interesting because at this point in time, we have to understand that Trump, Trump and Trumpism is not a. Is not carried and supported by half or even more a majority of the American nation. Right. Republicans made a really good living, essentially political living, out of the fact that maybe 25 to 30% of Americans support them. So we're really talking about a minority that somehow in the last 20 years, 25 years or so, has really managed to sound like the majority. I need to preface this here, because making films that criticize Trump are, from a. An economic perspective. Not. They're not very. It's not very. It's not a. It's not a big risk. Essentially, you still will have Trumpists that will go watch the good guy punch the bad guy, right? That's kind of like the understanding here. So it's not a very. To be critical of Trump is like. It's like, really easy prey, because it's also so easy to be critical of Trump. Right? So from a. From this perspective, it's not. It's not a big risk to take. It's not a big risk to Say, well, you know, clearly we have superheroes in the Mao cinematic universe or the DC Extended universe who are very responsible with the powers. And then we have this guy who just shouts around all the time about foreigners and makes sexist jokes and that kind of stuff. It's kind of like the first part. The second part is you do have, even on the right, this kind of. There is a, you know, there's the beginning of the so called culture wars, which is mentioned by Trump and by others. And superheroes, of course, are then also criticized for being like, oh my God, you have so many female superheroes. Suddenly you have, you have Black Widow as the first standalone film about a female superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example. You do have a Wonder Woman coming out and the second part of Wonder Woman coming out. You do have the TV shows. That might be an important point as well. You have the TV shows that start to kick off where you have WandaVision, you have Ms. Marvel, et cetera, et cetera. You have Captain Marvel as a film, of course. So there is this critique of this is really, this is woke and this is not good, etc. But when Black Panther comes out in 2018, for example, you do have right wing groups appropriating that text. So Black Panther is being read by many as, you know, the personification of a kind of Pan African, sorry, Pan African experience. Right. Is a black, black experience, Black superhero. Now you could argue, is he Americanized or not? And you know, this, this would lead in a different direction. But what's happening online is that you have alt right groups that actually appropriate the image of Black Panther and saying, he's one of us because he's protectionist, he's nationalist, he believes in his own race and all these kind of things. So even a black superhero can be read apparently, you know, from an alt right, right wing, conservative point of view as one of their own. Right. So yes, the superhero genre at the beginning of the Trump era criticizes Trump and Trumpism on, again, a very superficial level. But the texts still operate in a way that the right has no problem reading themselves into them as well.
- [34:52]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's really interesting to see how even through the first Trump presidency, the idea of the films being able to be read by different sides of the political divide kind of continues. Does that continue even as far as sort of during and after the 2020 election that was so contested?
- [35:10]
Dr. Julian Schmidt
Yeah, I mean, thanks for the question again, what's happening during the 2020 election is that, well, firstly, it's against the backdrop of the Pandemic it's against the backdrop of the sense of everybody, essentially, in the whole world probably, to feel in this massive moment of crisis. And what happens is that I think now, in reflection now, in hindsight, if we look at Biden's dissent, essentially, and Biden's issues where he had to hand over his president's presidency, his candidacy for the next presidency, we can see how he becomes this almost superheroic figure from a very unlikely position. He's no Obama, who had a lot of charisma and really worked in a specific historical point of time, but he becomes this counterpoint to Trump. And Trump himself, you know, retweets videos of himself as Thanos, for example, as the big super villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that the Avengers have to fight in unity. And so Obama, sorry, Biden, also becomes this figure of. It's not just one hero. It is essentially the whole American nation, everybody again working together in a team effort to fight the supervillain, which then actually also successfully happens. And what I found, a very interesting point here, is in the moment when cnn, after three or four days, calls the election for Biden. I remember I was awake after days of not sleeping, essentially. CNN calls the election for Biden, and we see Van Jones, a former Obama. Former Obama, like, advisor. Advisor. Thank you. So Van Jones, a former Obama advisor, his first reaction, he's shown as first on cnn. And his first reaction is, this was like Thanos against the Avengers. And this works because CNN at the time could be received globally. I watched it on my laptop. CNN was received and watched on a global level as well as in the United States. And we understand this image of Thanos versus the Avengers without, again, actually potentially having seen any of these texts. So that's where we land in 2020, essentially, where it is this sense of, like, it is about civilization against the backdrop of a pandemic, against the backdrop of an administration under Trump that was very chaotic and problematic for, I think, very obvious reasons and authoritarian, etc. And then this team moment again, of almost the whole world coming together, or at least the American nation getting together as a superhero team to fight the bad guys. So that's why it also mattered a lot in this specific historical moment.
- [38:19]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's really interesting to understand in this. Again, the specific moment of these things coming together kind of keeps coming up through the analysis. So what do you hope could maybe happen in the future in terms of using and looking at superheroes to make sense of politics and foreign policy discourse?
- [38:38]
Dr. Julian Schmidt
So what we can see in the last Couple of years is a retreat of superheroes into a more private setting, into a more private field. So we have these TV shows that come out. I mentioned a couple of them before. She Hulk would be another one. Jessica Jones, which, by the way, is one of my favorite ones. We have quite a few TV shows that come out. Echo would be another one that really talk about the kind of private and very, very individual struggles of superheroes. So superpowers of, for example, she Hulk, are not necessarily seen as something positive. Right. There's something that almost resembles a flaw that can have potential, but at the same time comes with incredible risk or even weakness in certain settings, in certain situations. And that's kind of what we can see here. Again, this is a reflection on a longer circle where superheroes always kind of meander between these kind of saving the world. And I'm the last stance of, you know, global civilization essentially versus these individual struggles. It's something we can see in, for example, western films as well, where the flawed individual hero is really highlighted through his flaws rather than anything else. So I think that will. That. That is the phase we're in right now. We see superheroes on the screen at the moment and in TV shows that are incredibly flawed, where it's not so much about saving the world anymore, which is not so surprising, because how can you save the world from all these crises that we're having right now? Right. They're not necessarily geopolitical. Even if superhero. Even if Superman flew into Ukraine and, I don't know, created peace there or whatever that means, it would not really contribute to solving kind of bigger issues. Right? The issues we're talking about right now are geopolitical. Yes, but they're also, of course, we live in incredibly fragile economic times. We live. Still live in kind of the post pandemic era, and we live in the time of the anthropocene of environment, environmental change, of climate change. And superheroes don't really have an answer to that. There might come a time when superheroes will be able to answer these questions. I can't at the moment see how, though, because superheroes are very much used to, and I would argue also nation states and the way we conceive of national security and international security, very often things along the lines of force. And what we're confronted with now are crises that cannot be solved by the employment of force. So I'm actually not going to give a proper answer to your question, I think, because I'm also really waiting for how superheroes are going to solve all These crises.
- [41:34]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
I mean, I think we're all going to have to sort of see what happens. But thanks to this analysis, at least we have a better idea of what to look out for while we are waiting to see what the future holds. What might you be working on now that this project is done?
- [41:49]
Dr. Julian Schmidt
So I actually am turning a little bit into this question of which are the questions of popular culture, you know, what critiques of popular culture could be useful. So I'm very much interested in thinking further about the Anthropocene. I think this is the moment where we have to take this seriously. I think from a political science perspective. Again, I teach at a college here in the United Arab Emirates on security. I've seen other places that think of security as very much geopolitical. And I think it is really, really necessary to think about the Anthropocene, about climate change as the biggest threats that we are facing. This is something that's being discussed in security studies, in international relations. But I think there needs to be a shift to understand why superheroes are so hope, hopeless or powerless at this point, precisely because they can't give an answer to these kind of questions, I feel. And one key that I will look at is how maybe looking at popular culture through the last couple of decades and how it engaged with questions of the Anthropocene, of nuclear anxiety as well, can actually help us to maybe understand how we can really face these problems head on. Because again, I think this is. These are the things we should be talking about right now rather than anything else.
- [43:24]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Well, that will definitely be very interesting and as you said, important to examine going forward. And while we are all doing that, of course listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Marvel DC and US the Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the 21st Century, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2025. Julian, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [43:46]
Dr. Julian Schmidt
Thank you, Miranda, for having me. Here.
- [44:03]
Marshall Po
We have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu.
- [44:18]
Dr. Julian Schmidt
Is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [44:20]
Marshall Po
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [44:22]
Dr. Julian Schmidt
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