Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence by J. Richard Stevens is a comprehensive academic, yet very readable, look at the changing ideas on masculinity and violence as presented through the character of Captain America.

Very well researched and documented, this book takes Captain America through his various changes and looks closely at what they reflect about society's views as well as how it might also help to develop those views. From conservative to progressive, from anonymous to known, Cap's character always offers a view into what constitutes, in each era, a moral type of justice and even patriotism, though in some ways the patriotism becomes tempered with some reality rather than the rose-colored glasses of many types of patriotism.

Whether you're a fan of Captain America or primarily interested in the intersection of popular culture with issues of gender, violence, politics and ethics, this book has something for you.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

Free review copy. Academics are often trained to distrust a very clear political viewpoint, at least when reading texts: it’s often enough to identify racial, gender, or other messages in a text, with the condemnation of discriminatory attitudes left implicit, especially when the texts are historical and the political orientation of the commenter presentist. This book, by contrast, wears its politics very much on its red-white-and-blue sleeve, condemning Cap’s storylines when they’re racist or militaristic and approving of them when they get more progressive. I enjoyed it and found it insightful, but don’t expect the kind of critical depth you get from Will Booker’s Batman Unmasked. Still, there’s lots of fun stuff (did you know that Cap is the Kevin Bacon of the MCU, with an average distance from other characters of 1.7—more than any other character?). Stevens identifies a number of distinct periods in Cap’s comic history—anti-Nazi jingoistic crusader; (failed) Commie-puncher; liberal crusader (teaming up with the Falcon); consumerist/superficial icon; conflicted agent of the war on terror; civil liberties advocate (Civil War); and most recently conflicted symbol of optimism struggling to find a way in a chaotic new world order.

Stevens argues that, like any long-standing comics survivor, Cap’s story is regularly updated in meaning while the official narrative is that nothing has really changed—he offers a particularly compelling illustration of this by tracking Cap’s willingness to kill, among other things noting the numerous changes in how deliberate Cap was in causing the death of the Nazi agent who disrupted the supersoldier experiment. He argues—drawing on existing scholarship—that comic heroes, because of their continuity and change, are good measures of both American social values and how American society reconciles its current values with its account of the past. Cap, in particular, is a symbol of our culture because he’s an alien in it, ever since the frozen storyline took place in the 60s.

One other thing that leapt out of me was that in the original series, Cap constantly saved his young sidekick Bucky, not Peggy Carter (or Betty Carver)—that is, the Cap stories that were airing during the actual time period Agent Carter is set in didn’t regularly feature damsels in distress. The fact that they do in the TV show reflects our current issues—exactly as you’d expect. (See also: Bucky’s current arc versus the 1950s stories that have Cap resisting attempted brainwashing because “REAL AMERICANS NEVER TURN RED!”) When he was revived in the 1960s, Cap’s story for the first time included guilt over causing Bucky’s death, but also presented him as “a source of wisdom from a golden era, trapped in a politically charged culture.”

Stevens suggests that comic books have a changed place in modern culture, not just because they’re now raw material for the more popular movies but because they used to be a “uniquely exaggerated and absurdist expression of adolescent concerns and sensibilities,” and now the rest of popular culture has the same features. (I think of this as The Onion problem: satirical headlines are harder and harder to distinguish from reality.) In response, Cap became a more complicated character, rejecting easy answers—including jingoistic responses to 9/11—and rejecting the anonymity that kept him isolated from the larger culture. Anonymous action, Cap’s current position suggests, is an abdication of responsibility. He fights concentrated power by using examples from history. But he also has little faith in the public, not using his charisma to sway public opinion. ( )