Dystopian Chaos, Dystopian Order : Differing Ideological Reinterpretations of the Masked Vigiliante in Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Moore and Lloyd's V for Vendetta

• In the 1980s, the comics’ field in the US, and in particular the superhero genre, was revolutionised by among others Frank Miller and Alan Moore. Jahlmar investigates how Miller, on the one hand, and Moore, in collaboration with David Lloyd, on the other, offer radically different, yet equally ideological reinterpretations of the masked vigilante archetype in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and V for Vendetta (1990) respectively. The underlying components in these analyses are dystopian chaos and dystopian order, and the assumption that these categories play into generic expectations in the dystopian genre. Miller’s, and Moore and Lloyd’s reinterpretations of the masked vigilante are diametrically opposed, and Jahlmar argues that this opposition is made possible by the two storyworlds evoked in the respective texts, set in fundamentally different futures.In Miller’s text, dystopian chaos, in the form of rampant criminality, the culture of fear, and the looming threat of nuclear Armageddon, breeds an inherent narrative need for order and consequently allows Batman/Bruce Wayne to become an extreme version of the conservative superhero, at the very least, a figure with crypto-fascist leanings. On the other hand, in Moore and Lloyd’s text, dystopian order, in the form of a de facto fascist government in England, allows for a traditional villain – in structural and ideological terms – like V, to become a hero, and for his acts of terrorism to be understood on some levels through the generic expectations on any opposition to totalitarianism in dystopian fiction in general.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Literatures (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Batman

dystopia

fascism

Dirty Harry

discontinuity

storyworld

superheroes

vigilante

masked vigilante

worldmaking

Litteraturvetenskap

Literary studies

English

Engelska

Batman

dystopia

fascism

Dirty Harry

discontinuity / discontinuities

storyworld

superhero / superheroes

vigilante / masked vigilante

worldmaking

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kap (subject category)