Marvel’s Behind the Mask (Jacobs, 2021) is streaming on Disney+
Firstly, an update on yesterday’s newsletter about Inception.
We did dig out the 4K version for a re-watch and guess what? While I enjoyed the big set-pieces more than I did back in 2010, generally speaking my opinion hasn’t changed. I find that one of the key things about understanding complex or convoluted plotting is to give a stuff about the characters in the first place. Not the case here.
For today: I found Marvel’s Behind the Mask while browsing the depths of Disney+ the other night after we finished the final episode of Secret Invasion. (I’m still deciding whether that merits a recommendation or not.)
In its favour, Behind the Mask is not about the movies, it’s a short (one hour) history of the comic books from an interesting perspective.
Featuring interviews with cultural academics and a diverse bunch of Marvel writers and illustrators, BTM is about how superhero comics have changed from stories about alter-egos (e.g. mild-mannered Clark Kent v Superman) which mirrored the often hidden or suppressed personal origin stories of their creators to being full-on positive representations of American communities of colour (see Luke Cage – no mask required).
These changes reflected the changes in American society through the decades and no one can argue that Marvel wasn’t following the money, but the film contains lots of sharply observed examples of how those comic books inspired young creators to tell their own stories inside the covers of those comics.
My wife talks about a pedagogical theory she loves called “Windows and Mirrors”. Essentially, it says that young people need both in the stories they see and read: Mirrors to see themselves reflected and Windows to other worlds of imagination to inspire them and develop empathy*.
Behind the Mask shows how Marvel’s storytellers have moved from Windows to Mirrors and now often combine the two.
*This is a very simplified version of this theory. I take the blame for any inaccuracies.
