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2 Responses to “Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism”

1. Anonymous
   November 24th, 2009 at 10:25 pm

   Captain America and the Crusade against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism; Book Review Extrapolation September 22, 2004 No. 3, Vol. 45; Pg. 320; ISSN: 0014-5483 Kapell, Matthew As I sit writing this, American troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq, some of those troops have recently been implicated in the possible torture of Iraqi citizens and the President is quite sure that the decision to invade these two countries was the correct one. I believe that the President should read Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil very carefully. (Assuming he reads, that is. ) Jewett and Lawrence have brought together some of their most powerful arguments from the previous book, The Myth of the American Superhero (see my review in Extrapolation, 44, 2: 247-249), and an excellent knowledge regarding American foreign policy to produce a book that, though written before the current conflict, seems almost prescient. The authors undertake this project by examining American popular culture as part of an American civil religion that has as its central theme that only America can redeem the world. Jewett and Lawrence see American civil religion in comic books, television shows, films video games, political discourse and a host of other mediums. Their thesis is, as they put it, “to explain why America, in the wake of September 11, seems so proudly resolute about repeating the errors of the Cold War” (5). To do this they trace the American conception of itself though the repeated use of biblical language and rhetoric, holy war, crusades (against Native Americans, Communists, terrorists, Iraqis, you name it) through all of American culture. Obviously, this is a large-scale task and one that can only be accomplished through a strong central thesis and theme holding the entire project together. They use as their central metaphor for this American cultural belief the character of Captain America. For the authors, Captain America represents the American hero who comes in as a lone fighter for the American way, destroying the “evil doers” because it is so obvious who they are: the non-Americans. Repeated references to films such as the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises as well as other sf films make this a useful book for Extrapolation readers. Jewett and Lawrence have presented a thesis useful not only for understanding how Americans think, but how the classic representation of the hero (especially obvious in sf) is problematic in that it is antithetical to small-d democratic ideals. Jewett and Lawrence find the stories in popular media that Americans enjoy are too often centered around “a cool and reluctant killer willing to forsake love and law to rescue a decent life for the community” whose democratic institutions are incapable of working well enough to save itself (31). And, of course, this model is present in a host of sf works, and it is worthwhile to reflexively think about that. But to accomplish this feat they must go back to the early days of the English colonies, noting the specific sense of mission that those early settlers had, and how those beliefs shaped the way we think about ourselves as a nation today. From Cotton Mather to Timothy McVeigh, from the nineteenth century frontier ideology that effectively destroyed so many Native American cultures, to the current so-called “war on terror” for Jewett and Lawrence all find themselves with a similar cultural, rhetorical and narrative structure. This structure is specifically Biblical in nature, and was transplanted to these shores by the Puritans. For the Puritans violence would be “redemptive, it would convert the world” (250). This violent tendency with American culture weaves its way through the developing cultures on the continent from that time until today, providing an ideal cultural justification for the destruction of other cultures, other nations, other ways of life. I happen to collect old history textbooks. One that I have from the middle of the 1920s has as its final chapter title, “America Enters the Great War to Make the World Safe for Democracy. ” That title might do more to explain what Jewett and Lawrence are attempting to understand and explain than would anything I could put into this review. Captain America is a wide-ranging book, as you would expect from the authors. They have been working with this topic in one form or another since the 1970s, and it shows: they have a clear, clean style, and obvious mastery of their topic, and the willingness to explain their thesis in a variety of ways. Thus, the conquering of the American West is as an important topic of the Cold War, the first Gulf War, and September 11th. Their backgrounds are complimentary for this work as well. Jewett is a religious scholar teaching in the American Studies program at the University of Heidelberg, Lawrence an Emeritus professor of Philosophy from Morningside College. Thus Jewett brings a wonderful knowledge of Biblical texts and their interpretation by Colonists and, after the revolution, by Americans. His interpretation of the eschatological beliefs of the Puritans brings much to the text. Lawrence wonderfully traces the effects of such beliefs through the culture–especially popular culture–and its effects of the American philosophy of itself over time. But in the final analysis what Jewett and Lawrence are trying to do is not disable the paradigm of American heroism, but only to modify it. It is, they write, “not an alien vision, though it is vastly different from the one America has recently been following” (314). In the end Jewett and Lawrence do see a shining city on a hill, there is no question of that. But it is a shining city that demands no war to build. It is a city of peace, where all are welcome, where individuals and groups can work through problems without resorting to the removal of democratic conditions. It is a city in which I would very much enjoy living.

2. Maddox
   November 25th, 2009 at 12:54 am

   This is a book with many important points to make. Other reviewers have done a fine job, so I’ll point out just a few. OK, here’s the disclaimer first. I am not saying we should not fight terrorism, nor am I denying that “jihad” is a term usually used in reference with making the “world of war” submit to the “world of Islam”. That said, I still find the central points of this book very much worth considering, since it seems our nation’s foreign policy is in some ways mirroring the jihadist’s foreign policy. The book’s cases in point? OBL and Bush both have these commonalities in terms of foreign policy. One, both see God as blessing their worldviews. Two, both have enemies in grip of the devil (Great Satan is us for OBL, Iran etc and the Axis of Evil is OBL, NK, Iran, Iraq and everyone who doesn’t help us). Three, victory is measured by killing or converting the Other. Thus four: violence is a means to do this, and God blesses it as in some way redemptive. With much of the Republican Party being a wing of the conservative, pro-Israeli Christian movement (no longer interested in “Reaganesque” small government), Captain America is revived from the dusty pages of the comics to fly again, this time for the cause of God- are we not the city on the hill? These and other points raised in the book should cause us to pause for a moment, and question both our real motives for our policies and to really think about their affect upon the rest of the world. This doesn’t excuse terrorism’s evil reality, but it may help us be more thoughtful in our response to the underlying causes of “why they hate us” so much, instead of a muscular, steroidal reaction which is actually playing right into the hands of the Islamist revolutionaries’ playbook with a “see, I told you so” response leading to 1000 more OBLs.

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