Why Marvels Daredevil Can Never Be A Good Superhero
Why Marvel’s Daredevil Can Never Be A Good Superhero
Contents
Matt Murdock is caught between two ideals he can never fully embody: being a good Catholic, and being a good superhero in a violent city.
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There is no Marvel superhero who represents the concept of justice more than Daredevil. Left blind by radioactive chemicals in a freak accident as a child, Matt Murdock lives a double life unlike any other: working as a lawyer by day and hitting the streets past sundown as Daredevil. Between his day job and his nighttime excursions as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, Matt Murdock rarely gets a reprieve from his lifelong judicial pursuit.
Daredevil is shaped by three factors in his life. A resident of New York City, like many other Marvel characters, he battles against the network of organized crime and corruption in the city both as a lawyer and as Daredevil. Though he is blind, his other senses were heightened to superhuman levels by the same chemicals that blinded him, allowing him to traipse across rooftops throughout the city with the grace of an acrobat. Lastly, Matt was raised Catholic and found solace in the church after his boxer father was murdered, heavily informing his sense of morality as an adult.
Still, like any other hero, Daredevil has his own set of emotional weaknesses, namely the cognitive dissonance between his Catholicism and his violent methods as a vigilante. Matt is driven by his desire for justice in the world, but as he witnesses firsthand the shortcomings of the justice system up close in his dealings as a lawyer, it is alarmingly clear to him that the justice he seeks to gain cannot be attained through legal avenues. Shepherded by both his training as a lawyer as well as the Catholic values from his youth, Daredevil is at a unique crossroads between being a “good” superhero and a reckless, vengeful vigilante.
The tension between Matt Murdock’s Catholic background and the street justice he seeks as Daredevil plays out dramatically in Chip Zdarsky’s Daredevil (2019 –) series. Starring a perpetually exhausted Matt who worries that Daredevil has been framed for murder, this Man Without Fear is caught between two ideals he knows he can never conform to: Jesus Christ, and the good superhero. The split between these two forces is a distinctive dimension to Daredevil’s story, as well as to superhero fiction as a whole. It connects the religious component of Matt Murdock’s story to his life as a superhero, tackling the emotional costs of the idealism inherent to the superhero genre through a Catholic framework. Daredevil believes that he can never be a good hero because being Daredevil in the first place goes against Catholic ideals of nonviolence.
Idealism Is Built Into the Superhero Genre.
The basis of superhero fiction lies in the image of the hero as a moral ideal, or someone that the reader can learn from or look up to so they can do the right thing. Many writers, particularly since the 1980s with the work of Frank Miller, have since departed from this approach. Even so, a moral undercurrent remains in the superhero genre, whether or not a writer chooses to engage with this narrative of the superhero as an ethical mentor. For Daredevil, this dynamic is made even more complicated with the presence of Catholicism, a moral code built upon stories involving its own ideal figure, Jesus Christ, in Matt Murdock’s life.
As a result, Daredevil is placed at a specific intersection between two different narratives about morality. The cruelty of the New York he knows and lives in justifies, in his mind, the use of violence in order to defeat his foes (though it should be said that Daredevil adamantly refuses to kill). It is a story fit for a comic book superhero tale. But the figure that Matt Murdock looks up to most, Jesus Christ, would most likely not see Daredevil’s work as entirely heroic due to his use of violence.
Daredevil’s Catholicism Is At Odds With His Life As A Superhero
The tension between Matt’s Catholicism and the violence that he sometimes engages in as Daredevil is felt most intensely while confessing his sins to a priest during the Catholic sacrament of Confession in Daredevil #1 (written by Chip Zdarsky, art by Marco Checchetto, colors by Sunny Gho, letters by VC’s Clayton Cowles). In a flashback scene from before he even had his red Daredevil costume, Matt admits to having used “great violence… for good.” But the fact that he is saying this during Confession reveals that he still believes violence to be a sin he must be absolved of. This illustrates the inherent contradiction of being a superhero for Matt: he cannot fight against the intense corruption in his city as Daredevil without committing what he believes to be grievous sins.
The scene continues further with Matt’s justification of his behavior through his citation of Jesus Christ’s actions. After the priest expresses concern over the possible gravity of Matt’s actions, Matt recalls, “didn’t Jesus drive out the money changers from the temple with – with a whip? Isn’t violence sometimes justified? Can’t I be… the Hands of God?” Matt’s positioning of himself in relation to Jesus demonstrates the intersection between the idealism of the superhero narrative with the idealism of Jesus Christ in Catholicism. It is clear that Matt looks to Jesus as an ideal to model his behavior off of: it informs the center of his actions as Daredevil and his pursuit of justice. But Matt’s attempt to evaluate his actions within a Catholic framework as “the Hands of God” reveals his understanding of the incompatibility between his life as a Catholic and his life as a superhero, especially one operating in such a corrupt city.
The priest’s response shuts down the possibility of Matt truly embodying Catholic values as Daredevil. “The Mind controls the hands, son. Is it truly God controlling yours? Yes, Jesus drove them out of the temple with some degree of violence… But he was the Son of God… You are just a man.” This effectively explains why Daredevil can never be a good superhero. Matt is able to draw parallels between the idealism of superheroes and the idealism of Jesus Christ, but it leaves him unaware of how that line of thinking is incongruent with Catholic belief. Within the world of superhero idealism, where heroes are seen as moral paragons, a character like Daredevil who aims to do good no matter the cost would be placed on a comparable pedestal to the ways that Catholics try to model their behavior off of Christ. But because Matt does not live in that world, due to Christ being the ultimate figure of the ideal in his life as a Catholic, he is unable to engage in that fantasy.
This discussion while Matt is in Confession sets the stage for events later on in the series. When the Punisher (Frank Castle) rescues Daredevil from being arrested by the police under the watchful eye of his enemy, Mayor Wilson Fisk in Daredevil #4, the two characters argue the merits of their differing philosophies for crimefighting. In contrast to Daredevil’s disgust for killing, The Punisher will not hesitate to kill those he finds deserving of it. When Matt calls Frank a “psycho” for his nonchalance about murder, Frank interrupts, telling him, “All you do is break the law… You dress like the Devil. You’re operating on a whole different level, and you know it. What do laws mean to the Devil?”
As the complete opposite of the priest Matt spoke to earlier in the series, The Punisher brings up uncomfortable truths Matt is too afraid to acknowledge. For all of Matt’s efforts to be a good Catholic, he still maintains an alternate identity where he operates outside of the law while dressed as the Devil. Matt’s Daredevil costume represents another reason why he can never be a good hero as well as a good Catholic: his hero identity is dressed in the vestments of his moral enemy.
Daredevil and The Punisher’s argument brings up several contradictions in Matt’s life as a lawyer, Catholic, and a superhero. In challenging him on the particular iconography of his superhero persona, The Punisher opens up an alternate understanding of Daredevil as a product of the dissonance between Matt’s Catholic background and the reality of the corrupt city he lives in. Because the world that Matt inhabits is so far removed from an ideal moral scenario of his faith, it is not entirely surprising for someone with abilities like his to turn to the image of the Devil. In embracing the moral opposite of Christ in his characterization as a superhero, Matt addresses his corrupted world in the language that it knows best.
Daredevil Is A Better Hero Because Of These Complexities.
Daredevil is unquestionably a unique hero, not only for the application of his powers in innovative ways but also for the specific ways that his cultural background yields new understandings of what it means to be a superhero. Due to the looming presence of Catholicism in Daredevil’s story, the moral foundations of the superhero genre are brought into a new light. Matt Murdock runs around New York City in a devil costume as Daredevil because he knows that he can never conform to a wholesome image of goodness. His embrace of the Devil in order to right the wrongs powerful people have done unto the vulnerable evidences the instability of moral absolutes to begin with. The decision to represent himself as the figure he least wants to resemble in his conscience acts as a constant reminder of who Daredevil’s real enemy is: the evil that men do. Though he may not believe himself to be a good hero all of the time, this personal crusade of his suggests otherwise.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/marvel-daredevil-good-bad-superhero/
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