Daredevil: Wuxia and Superheros

(edited crosspost here)

This is going to sound weird since I've been in the Cap fandom for the last year, but: I have a hard time identifying with superheroes. I blame wuxia novels for spoiling me.

I've been thinking about this as I watch Daredevil: "Wow, I just don't care about the central story at all." The same way that I often find it hard to care about Batman's manpain.

It's curious, though, because I love the theme of people pushing themselves to act beyond themselves for the greater good in the face of hardship and fear. And I grew up on Wuxia (Chinese martial arts) novels, which seem to have some very similar themes/tropes: vigilante justice, individuals putting their lives on the line for what they believe in, and when push comes to shove, fighting/physical violence can solve all conflicts. So by all rights, I should *love* the superhero genre, right?

But there are subtle differences. And Daredevil is a very *well done* superhero show -- it presents its themes clearly and follows through over the course of the 13 episodes. Clearly enough that I can use it to attempt to think through Wuxia vs. Superheros.

One is the relationship with society. So much of being a superhero or a supervillain is that you're above society -- The City/The World is something you Save. Whenever I get to that part (of Daredevil, of Batman, of Arrow, of Avengers, of Agent Carter), I just roll my eyes super hard. Sure there's often the lampshading of "but can one man actually save the city" and "the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs." But at the end of the day, after the necessary bout of manpain that comes with said lampshading, it's still "their" City. One thing that Daredevil did particularly well is to clearly present the conflict between Wilson Fisk's desire to "save the city" and Matthew Murdock's desire to "protect the city." vCity and Matthew Murdock's City. And there's that dramatic moment at the end where Wilson Fisk makes a speech about how he's not the Good Samaritan, he's the ill intent. But I sit there going, "What makes you think you have the right to be either?"

In contrast, the wuxia heroes are all about making their way through society and trying to find their place and making do. You don't fight to save the world -- maybe just your family, or your school. Or you fight to clear up a misunderstanding. Even when you're fighting to take down a corrupt system, it's not framed as the end-all-be-all, and it's not framed as some sort of greater duty to The City. Yes, it's driven by a greater sense of justice, a desire to right wrongs, but it's never Your City. Injustice is always taken on a case-by-case basis. If you think of it as Your City, you're probably the bad guy in the wuxia story, or at the very least part of the system that the hero is trying to correct.

Then there's the superpower exceptionalism bit. Radioactivity or Cosmic Rays or Science generates these superpowers, and then comes the responsibility to use those powers for "Good". So a lot of superhero stories are about that struggle -- what is this burden of Good that you must shoulder? Can you pursue the good even if it means hurting the people you love or sacrificing personal desires? What makes you different from a supervillain? I think Daredevil does a really good job of addressing this later in the series: People really question Matt's choices -- Claire, Foggy, the Priest, all point out that Matt's not always doing it out of a sense of Duty -- that he craves the action, the "devil" if you will. But of course, at the end of the day, Matt is the Only One: The only one who can stop Wilson Fisk. The only one who can get where the law can't reach. And no matter how many questionable things Matt does, in the end he will choose to do Good, and that somehow absolves him of all the previous questionable bits. (Of course it can be dredged up later as angst fodder)

But in Wuxia, the abilities are ostensibly acquired through study and practice, so *first* you must decide that you want the great responsibility, and *then* you acquire the great power. A common central conflict is what you want the power for: to rule to martial arts world? To advance in social standing? To seek vengeance? Those are all viable options, and along the way you'll meet other people with varying power levels with their own myriad motivations. What that translates to, is that there isn't the burden of exceptionalism: the power is often divorced from your motives and your values. In fact, in 天龙八部, two of the three main characters acquire great power by accident. And since it's not something they wanted or needed, they don't really use it. There isn't anyone to give either 虚竹 or 段誉 any "Great Power Great Responsibility" talk. 段誉 got the "you're a frickin' prince of a southern kingdom, stop chasing girls and learn to rule" talk, and 虚竹 got the "your powers aren't in the shaolin style so we guess you have to leave our school, sorry" talk. Or in another example, 张无忌 spent the first half of 倚天屠龙记 a small sickly boy about an inch from death, with no powers to speak of, and yet he tries to do "the right thing" just because he's a decent kid.

This extortation to do Good in superhero stuff is often distilled into this No Killing mantra. Good guys don't kill people, bad guys do. There's a whole episode of Daredevil where the priest says to Matt, "are you [conflicted] because you need to kill him but you don't want to? Or because you don't need to kill him but you want to?" Yes, the struggle of To Kill or Not to Kill is an interesting one, but (a) that can only be done so many times, and (b) I feel like this obsession over this arbitrary No-Kill Line also erases other interesting points of tension. Killing is always on the table for Wuxia heroes, and as a result, there's a lot more time spent considering the ramifications of killing on a case-by-case basis. For example, there's a great scene in 倚天屠龙记 where a guy badmouths 张无忌's dead mom, and he gets *super pissed*, and picks him up and is about to kill him. But then he thinks: if I kill him, I'm going to ruin any chance I have of brokering peace between these two groups, and really, that would be far worse, both in terms of lots more people dying, and in terms of preserving my mom's legacy. So he decides not to kill. I can't help but feel that a superhero version of events would be "I won't kill you because I'm the good guy." By leveling the playing field by putting killing back on the menu, you really get a chance to explore *all* of the ramifications of the hero's actions. In the case of Daredevil, beating people to a pulp or removing a person's ability to earn a living or saddling someone with crippling hospital bills is clearly *so much better* than killing. Sure, Matt didn't directly kill anyone in the series, but Wilson Fisk probably would have been able to enact his vision for the city with much less bloodshed if Daredevil wasn't poking around. And if you look at the property damage and the ruined lives at the end of the series, Hell's Kitchen is hardly "saved" or "protected." This is probably why I liked Karen's shooting of Wesley so much: Karen saw an opportunity, and took it. No angsty priest confessions, no grim statements of "I'm not one of them." And in doing so, she totally threw a wrench in the bad guys' schemes.

Then there's the masking/secret identities thing. I think masks happen for 2 reasons? One is the "vigilante justice" thing, which implies that the criminal justice system is broken. Which then begs the question, if the system is broken, is running around beating people up the best use of your exceptional abilities? And what gave you the right to judge others? And then comes the wangst: Oh noes people are misconstruing you as a bad guy because you're a masked vigilante -- but it's a burden you must bear, because you're noble like that. The mask means that you need to suffer in silence. You are the special one. Wah wah wah. In general, why does doing good have to be extralegal? Particular to Daredevil, there's this whole thing of Fisk being "out of the shadows" and therefore vulnerable to having his "true self" revealed, while Murdock chooses to remain in the shadows and accept the slandering of his name because "truth will prevail" and "this city needs a symbol." In Wuxia, the legality issue is rarely a point of conflict -- if you kill someone, you just hop out before the cops show up (the greater threat is retaliation from other groups.) And if people think you're a bad guy, no amount of masking or unmasking is going to help. Just ask 萧峰 -- he keeps on doing good after the wuxia world pegs him as a teacher-killer and a barbarian, but *none of it helps.*

The other is the "protect family/personal life" thing. I *love* the hidden identity trope, but sometimes in superhero stories it sometime seems super contrived. Especially when it brings up the whole "I must protect my female support character from getting hurt," which brings on a lot of manpain as said character invariably gets pulled into the role of damsel in distress. Whereas in Wuxia, the reason for hiding is often "I don't want to be part of that life anymore" or "I want to focus on the happiness of my family." Secret identities in Wuxia is most often played as part of a "hidden abilities" trope that I absolutely adore -- the idea that people are more than what they seem. Don't underestimate that old man playing the erhu because he's actually a master swordsman, he just chooses to keep his powers hidden. Sure, there are cases of "I must rescue them without them knowing who I truly am!", but the reasoning is less "I must protect them" and more "I need to protect myself." The conflict is often framed as "is the situation dire enough for me to bear the cost of revealing my secret abilities?"

I guess in general, the big difference is that in Wuxia, power isn't seen as a "burden" or a "right". And sure, fighting solves conflicts, but the central question is always "At what cost?" The option to walk away is always on the table, as is the option to kill. As a result, stakes are less melodramatic. (No manpain, no world-saving)