Superman is Jewish? The intersection of history, religion, and popular culture in comics

I have blogged previously about Art Spiegelman’s Maus.  The books were an eye opener for me, seeing the powerful emotions, a storyline that personalizes history while not minimizing it, and a format that invites in reluctant readers.  Graphic novels (books in comic book format, with illustrations, and often dealing with topics that align more with adult themes) are a great entry point for both strong readers and reluctant readers.  The art form of comics allows two media to be conjoined and to deepen the experience of the audience.  Comic books have traditionally been in the realm of pre-teen and teenage boys.  The simplicity of the illustration can fool many in to believing that there is little worth between the covers.  Surprisingly - thankfully - there is so much more going on inside of these books.  Seemingly because of their innocuous nature, they are able to convey adult themes, open doors to history, and deal with current events in a way that can be both profound and easily overlooked at the same time.

 

In 1941, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon created the character Captain America.  On the cover, Cap has infiltrated a Nazi bunker, and is punching Adolf Hitler.  A great image from today’s standard, and nothing less than we would expect from the stories we are taught in our textbooks.  But, the comic came out in March 1941, before the US was committed to the war.  The war was "over there," and Americans wanted nothing to do with it.  Kirby and Simon were young Jewish artists and decided to turn current events into their story.  Their work did not start the war, or increase patriotism.  It took current events and pushed them to the forefront.  It demanded attention and erased ignorance.  It piqued interest and awoke a younger generation.  (Very much in the same vein as Comedy Central’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, today.)

The Holocaust would come up again in popular culture in the 1950s.  Several different stories would deal with the history in different ways.  Stories would continue, ideas would be shared.  And in the 1960s, Stan Lee would create the story of the X-Men, a group of humans that are different, and therefore feared.  I began reading the series in the 1980s, and was immediately drawn to the storyline of exclusion.  While not overtly mentioning antisemitism, it would be hard to deny, even as a boy, the historical basis.  Seeing America’s transformations throughout the 90s - the cultural acceptance of interracial dating, homosexuality, and other minority communities - the X-Men storylines reflected society, and built empathy. 

At some point, I stumbled upon the graphic novel, X-Men:  God Loves, Man Kills.  My eyes were opened.  A part of the story deals with violence aimed at those considered different, and therefore, considered unworthy of life by some (an arching theme in the X-Men universe).  Two young children are hung from a swing set.  They are found by the arch-enemy Magneto (created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, both Jews).  This sets up the backstory.  Magneto will become a complex character that several writers will work to flush out.  Ultimately, in Magneto: Testament, published in 2008, we discover that Magneto is raised Jewish in a German home. His family flees the Nazis and are caught in Poland.  Long story short, his past helps shape his views, and quite possibly reflects the nature of the creators. Magneto’s complexity will be reflected in the movie series, but will not be as effective at generating the empathy and complexity of the character.  The films, though, do provide a decent entry in to the comic world. 

Most recently, Disney has paired up with several creators to develop a film and online graphic novel set entitled, “They Spoke Up:  American Voices Against the Holocaust."  This is an interesting series, and I am just breaking in to it as I write this, but looks to be a promising resource.   I will blog about that in the coming weeks.  There are other great works available out there including a great story entitled 2nd Generation: Things I Never Told My Father, in graphic novel form, dealing with the complexity of the Holocaust that allows entry and absorption at multiple levels.  They just aren’t available in the United States. 

As I was researching for this post, I came across a recently published book (2012) entitled Superman is Jewish? that relates similarities in Jewish culture with the comic book storylines.  The author makes a wonderful comparison of the alien that would become Clark Kent being rocketed to safety by his parents before their destruction:  An interstellar “Kindertransport.”  Comic books are much more complex than we can even imagine. 

Sadly, there has been little new in the way of Holocaust graphic literature.  The stories of the 1950s provided shock and awe at a time when it was still fairly new in the cultural psyche.  The Holocaust is rarely invoked as a teaching tool in modern mainstream culture.  It has been moved to the shelf of distant history.  We must be careful to not lose the lessons learned in such a hard fashion.  We must follow the lead of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, use the media of comics and graphic novels to shape the future generations in a less blunt fashion.  Truly, it is often those that need the lesson the most that will be most likely to pick up this form of literature.  Rather than just re-illustrating Anne Frank, let us seek to build on the exploration of humanity by find new avenues and new stories to tell in different formats. 

The Milgram experiment and what it means

In 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram invited volunteers to participate in a study on memory and learning although the true nature of his experiment was to investigate obedience to authority.  He told participants that they were randomly assigned to either the role of teacher or learner when in fact all participants were assigned to be the teacher as every learner was a paid actor.  The participant and learner were put in separate rooms, so they could not see each other but could hear each other. The participant was to ask a series of questions to the learner, and as the teacher they were told to shock the learner whenever the learner gave an incorrect response. With each incorrect response, the participant was to increase the shock voltage by 15 volts with a maximum voltage of 450 volts, which can be lethal.  Another confederate, John Williams, was dressed in a white lab coat and acted as the authority figure in the room responding that the participant should continue the study if or when they protested.  Once the study was completed Milgram reported that 65 percent of participants repeatedly administered shocks that they believed caused severe pain and possibly death to the learner.   

Milgram conducted this study because he was interested in trying to explain the behavior of Nazis during the Holocaust.  According to Gina Perry, who is a psychologist and author of a new book entitled Behind the Shock Machine, at the time Milgram’s research was first published the American public was fascinated by the images of Adolph Eichmann that they saw on their televisions from his trial.  Hannah Arendt, covering the trial, described his impassivity and ordinariness as terrifying.  Milgram wanted to show that everyone was capable of being both ordinary and evil if one surrenders his/her will to an authority figure.  For many, Milgram seemed to be justifying the “just following orders” defense of many Nazi perpetrators.  Milgram in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority, argued that subordinates, such as those under Adolf Hitler, fall into what he described as a  “profound slumber” where a man is capable of things “alien to his nature,” and feel “virtually guiltless.” Milgram wanted to re-create this “profound slumber” to see if ordinary people really engage in evil behavior.  And according to his published article, and later his book, the answer was yes, ordinary people would engage in evil behavior. 

The reason I’m writing about this experiment is because his experiment is usually accepted as valid, and then used as evidence of a psychological truth that we are all inherently evil and that evil will come out when given permission by an authority figure.  But the evidence for this supposed truth is much less credible than originally thought. Perry discovered through archival research that the results Milgram published were not always an accurate portrayal of what he observed in his experiment.  Thus his description of Nazi perpetrators committing crimes in a “zombie-like” state may not be as accurate as his original publications imply; meaning that the “I was just following orders” defense may not be as supported by Milgram’s experiment as is usually believed. 

For example, Milgram wrote in his original article that 65% of participants conformed to the authority figure and administered severe pain to the learner.  This number implies that there was one experiment, but what Perry discovered was that Milgram conducted 24 different variations of this experiment and when Perry took into account all of the variations she found that in over half of the 24 variations a majority of participants disobeyed the authority figure.   So the statistical evidence is not as straightforward as was presented by Milgram.  Another issue was his methodology.  One reason for conducting a lab experiment is to have tight controls over all variables so that you can be certain your independent variable (authority figure) impacted your dependent variable (shocks) and that your results are not due to some other extraneous variable.  When listening to the audio recordings, Perry noticed  that John Williams, the individual playing the authority figure in the room, was not following a clear script.  Milgram in his publications wrote that Williams followed a strict four phrase response to any questions asked by the participant (teacher) but according to Perry’s research, Williams often went off-script and commanded subjects up to 25 times to continue with the experiment.  This hurts the credibility of his findings as that type of behavior shows the researcher trying to create a certain response, so the participant response is no longer organic but produced by the researcher. And finally Perry discovered correspondence between Milgram and his participants after the study was completed documenting how some participants were suspicious that the scenario was a hoax.  As Perry points out, Candid Camera was the most popular show on television at the time.   For example, participants told Milgram that the learner cries seemed to come from the corner of the room, like from a tape recording.  Others noted that they actually decreased the voltage yet the learner’s cries intensified.  As Perry writes, the skepticism of the participants hurts the validity of the study, as the participant’s belief in the scenario was crucial to measuring how much pain people were willing to inflict on someone.  If participants were suspicious, they may have demonstrated demand characteristics and simply started to do what it was clear the researchers wanted. 

Perry’s research is important for us to know about because many believe that Milgram provided solid evidence to support the supposed truth that we are all ordinary and all capable of evil. Because once we begin to accept that as true, we begin to act in ways that corroborate that truth; thus we become self-fulfilling prophecies.  Whether you believe that Milgram’s finding are valid or not, he does provide an important reminder that we should all be critical readers and thinkers. 

Perry, Gina.  The Shocking Truth of the Notorious Milgram Obedience Experiments.  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/#.Uulo_xaBXww.  October 2, 2013.   

"Little Eichmanns" and the misappropriation of Holocaust terms

Adolf Eichmann was an SS officer and a staunch member of the Nazi party.  His logistical skills serve him well in his rise through the SS where he eventually came to lead office IV B4 as an expert on Jewish Affairs.  Eichmann was chosen by Reinhard Heydrich to organize the logistics behind the mass deportation of the European Jewish population to the death camps.  In 1942, Eichmann attended the Wannsee Conference as recording secretary.  It was at the conference that the details of the Final Solution were disclosed to the government agencies that would play a role in the Holocaust.  Eichmann was not a simple bystander at this conference, but instead an active participant seeking to advance his career at the expense of humanity.  To allow Eichmann to be considered any less than an architect of active destruction is to reduce his role to a simple yes man.  Eichmann would later stand trial in Israel for his crimes, and was executed in 1962.  While in custody, he admitted his work in planning the movement and destruction of the Jewish population, and his zeal for the work.  Adolf Eichmann was a man who fully understood the ramifications of his actions, and the destructive power of his choices. 

History of the phrase “Little Eichmanns”

In 1995, John Zerzan, in an essay defending his friend, Ted Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber, used the term “little Eichmanns” to describe a member of the “establishment” who threatened the masses. 

“The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life?”

Mr. Zerzan is an anarchists, and coined the phrase, seemingly, to describe people in the American system that he felt were responsible for executing the goals of the government and business.  Ward Churchill, a professor at Colorado University, Boulder, released a rant against the powers that be, picking up the phrase, “little Eichmanns” to describe the victims of 9/11 as the mindless automatons that pushed an economic system he disagreed with. 

“Little Eichmanns” in the news today

With the current government shutdown, the term “little Eichmanns” has again been misappropriated.  In this case, conservative bloggers and writers are characterizing members of the Executive branch and employees of the National Park Service as “little Eichmanns." In an attempt to understand the linkage between the historical person, Adolf Eichmann and the use of the term “little Eichmanns,” we must understand two things: 
1) What is the truth regarding Adolf Eichmann’s actions and culpability in the Holocaust;  and
2)  the final intended purpose of the misappropriation of the historical figure. 

What did Zerzan and Churchill, both extreme political leftists, hope to convey with the term “little Eichmanns”?  Eichmann’s role can not be denied.  He was instrumental in the planning and implementation of the Holocaust – the systematized murder of 6 million Jews during World War II. Eichmann's guilt as a perpetrator of the Holocaust has been substantially proven and the excuse of “following orders” carried no weight in his defense.  Unfortunately, all who misappropriate his name, including present-day extremists from both sides of the political spectrum, are suggesting that the targets of their accusations are guilty of perpetrating a CRIME akin to GENOCIDE. 

Ultimately,  the misappropriation of terms and names like “Holocaust,” “Eichmann,” “Hitler,” and to a lesser extent, the term genocide, do damage to the actual meaning of the terms.  When these words are used to make a hyperbolic emotional or political points, they degrade the true meaning of the words. 

These terms are unique, and not transferable.  They should not be appropriated for common use to manipulate the emotional power associated with the name/word.  As teachers, we must not allow ourselves to minimize or overlook the power of words.  We must teach our students the danger of misappropriation and work to protect the veracity and the strength of words.  We must teach our students to protect themselves, also, from those who seek to confuse, manipulate and control a conversation through misappropriation.  All things must be kept in perspective, and the actions of men like Eichmann must not be minimized in any way.  To reduce the term for a simple political cause is a degradation of ourselves, our culture and our history.  Our students must be taught to guard against such actions.

Teaching about victimization requires context

Tonight, as my seven year old did homework, a commercial came on for the new Jackie Robinson movie, “42”.  Her question to my wife got me thinking:  “Who is Jackie Robinson?”  She has heard of Martin Luther King, many Catholic saints, and the Obamas.  She understands that these are important names and important people, can tell you their roles, and a little from their back story.  I realized, in her question, that she wanted to know his story.  

Here is the clincher:  As we deconstruct racism, the pushback of those with power (what is sometimes referred to a perception of reverse racism/sexism, etc), and expand the lesson out from there, we can turn this into a study of dominant group and how history education is subverted by accident.  Stick with me here:

First of all, with young children, recitation and memorization are a standard and acceptable part of education.  Nuance is not something that young children are capable of at an Elementary level.  To understand that Jackie Robinson was the first black baseball player to play professionally in the national leagues is a response that my seven year old can completely memorize.  But, does it help her understand Why they made it a movie?  Is it clear to her the context of the role Jackie Robinson played?  Absolutely not.  

If I raise my children in the dominant (white) culture of the United States with no background of our racial history, without a context for what we are today, then so seeds of our own destruction.  If my children are taught to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., without understand the world he fought so hard to change, then we are left with something simple:  his skin color.  To understand this fully, if I am seven, have no history background, and see a movie preview, and the answer is that this was a black man who played baseball, it shapes me.  If Obama is celebrated as the first black president, and I don’t understand the Civil Rights Movement because I am only a child, then I left with the surface.  We celebrate his election because he is black.  

To build on that, as I grow with this limited understanding, without a proper understanding of the history to fully flesh out our understanding, we are left with a power struggle.  I am a young white child.  Here is a man celebrated for being black.  What?  Don’t worry, when you get older, we’ll fill in the rest of the context.  By the time you are in your junior year, we’ll explain that Jackie Robinson was treated poorly because of his skin color.  But that is ten years down the road.  

Now, if we expand this same concept beyond race, and we look at any group that we hold out as a symbol of victimization who rose above, we run the risk of creating a pushback in education.  We must be careful that we don’t create a sense of victimhood or separateness for groups that are not dominant.  When we teach Holocaust Education, we must not take the victims out of the context.  When we teach, at as early an age as we can, we must be sure to be clear not to separate ourselves from the victims.  We are both human first.  We must give the full context, not just the simple answer.  Genocide happens when a dominant group is able to convince their children that another group is a victim and is a threat to their hegemony.  But, it is never that clear.  Instead, we put it in ways that are more invasive.  “They make poor choices for themselves, and don’t take personal responsibility.”  “They are getting handouts/taking opportunities from us/degrading our culture.”  “If we allow them to continue, they will bring this country/culture/party/etc to its knees.  We must stop them.”  

When we teach historical topics to our youth, we must be sure to keep them in the context of the event.  We must not stop at the easy answer.  We must give a complete response that leads to more difficult questions.  We may not have the answers, and it may not be a comfortable question, but when we are asked “Who is Jackie Robinson”, or “Who is Anne Frank”, we can’t stop with he was a black baseball player, or she was Jew fleeing Hitler.  We must do justice to those who gave their lives, willingly or unwillingly, to change the world. 

Nazis and aliens...

I happened to be up late recently grading essays when a television show came on titled, “Unsealed:  Alien Files.”  In it, they claim to be “unearthing the biggest secret on planet Earth,” and proceed to start saying that the Nazis had alien technology that enabled them to become the world power they did before and during the war.  I could not believe my eyes and ears.  After I closed my open mouth, my first response was to want to write the station to tell them how I could not believe they would be so irresponsible as to air such a ridiculous story.  But, then, I remembered that there were all types of “reality” television shows on that attract such “fringe” viewers to them.  Some of the “experts” who were featured on the show were publishers of UFO Magazine and the web site TheBlackVault.com, which I obviously do not subscribe to or visit, or I would have already known that Hitler was trying to build a time machine.

 My most pressing concern was that Holocaust deniers would use something like this to say that the Holocaust did not happen, that people were not responsible for the atrocities that happened, and that the truth was unknown.  Sometimes, it is difficult for me to understand how anyone could deny the Holocaust happened, and then I see this on television, and I think anything is possible.  However, there is more evidence that the Holocaust happened than I saw evident on the show that aliens helped the Nazis rise to power during World War II.  This is once again validation that Holocaust education is so important to make sure that people know the truth.  I just hope I was the only person watching this show.