Spider-Man, Captain America….Iron Man??
Right, some might argue that this isn’t technically a fair entry, because superheroes are in a category of their own in that the ‘super’ sort of gives away the fact that they are more than human by default. But look up ‘transhumanist movies,’ and the majority of the results will be superhero movies. The main reason for this of course is that a lot of superheroes started off as ordinary human beings and then somehow ended up with powers that allowed them to ka-pow and bam their way through those limits.
But a couple of them have slightly different stories, and these are the type that tread the sort of fine lines that often come up in transhumanism. So what I’m going to do here is just outline the discussion – the conclusion as to whether or not a superhero can count as a transhumanist is entirely up to you.
Clearly there are a few that we can cross off the list straight away. Kal El (Superman) and Thor weren’t human in the first place, and Batman too can be put out of the picture given that most of his abilities depend on gadgets, and his physical power is nothing more than any other human being could learn provided they had Liam Neeson and an unnaturally gravelly voice.
Hawkeye is in the same category; he may be very handy in a fight, but give him nothing but a Robin Hood fancy dress costume and you’re in trouble.
Then there are The X-Men. With the range of abilities that come from the mutations in their DNA, The X-Men are basically the modern day transhumanist version of the Greek gods. But it is also this that stops The X-Men from being a comment on transhumanism; as much as they conform to the H+ ideal of being born with their super-human abilities, The-X Men movie adaptations have kept to the comic book line, in that they keep themselves and their abilities mostly separate from the rest of the general human population; there is very little crossover.
Spider-Man’s story is probably the first that starts to look at a slightly grayer area: born completely ordinary – inadequate and weak even – Peter Parker only develops his powers after receiving a bite from an irradiated spider. Both Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy (2002 – 2007) and Sony’s later reboot under director Mark Webb (‘Webb’ – no way!) very much drew on the growth of Parker from submissive and insecure young man to the position in which he learns that ‘with great power comes great responsibility,’ which is something that real-life visionary transhumanists have to handle very carefully. On the other hand, transhumanism doesn’t exactly envisage us all mixing our DNA with that of animals: it doesn’t end well in H.G Well’s novel The Island of Dr Moreau, and it certainly didn’t end well for John Frankenheimer’s movie adaptation in 1996. So once again we can probably leave Spidey safely in the comic book genre.
Of all the superheroes, Captain America is probably the most obviously transhumanist. During WWII, ordinary civilian Steve Rogers was subjected to a secret military experiment that turned him into the world’s first super-soldier. Used by the US Military as a symbol of freedom and power, Rogers remained absolutely human in mind, form and appearance but his enhanced strength, agility, speed, and resistance to injury and disease represented the absolute pinnacle of human perfection. It also didn’t hurt that all this enabled him to survive being frozen in ice for sixty years (although I bet he didn’t feel quite as invincible once he’d been exposed to Miley Cyrus or The Karadashians. There isn’t a serum on earth that could have defended him from that sort of onslaught).
But there is one last category, that is actually more complicated than Cap’s case, and that may be more relevant to the reality of some of what transhumanism is actually achieving in the real here and now. These are the superheroes whose powers are intrinsically linked with their defects. The Hulk is one such character; the transformations Bruce Banner experiences following his exposure to the gamma radiation been vital in some situations (especially now he has joined forces with The Avengers), but generally they are unpredictable, unstable, painful and damaging. Not exactly what a transhumanist would order from a catalogue. The best examples are Matt Murdock (Daredevil) and Tony Stark (Iron Man).
Murdock as a man is blind – the radar sense and other heightened abilities which form Daredevil’s powers are both a direct result of this. Daredevil clearly goes well beyond the normal limits of human abilities, but this is only because he has lost his regular human sight.
In Stark’s case, the electromagnet that was inserted into his chest following the attack in Afghanistan actually made him into Iron Man – his suit runs entirely off its power. But, the whole reason it was inserted in the first place was to keep the shrapnel that had wounded him from reaching his heart and killing him – and we saw for ourselves in Iron Man 2 the extent of his weakness should his arc reactor fail. There is no doubt that the electromagnet is a therapy. Yet there is equally no doubt that that very ‘therapy’ is also for Stark now an enhancement.
Iron Man best represents the growing (and brilliant) trend in transhumanism that disability not only need not remain disability, but could actually – with the technology that we have available today – allow people to achieve genuine, bona fide enhancement in place of those disabilities. There is good reason that amputees who now walk on carbon fibre blades cannot compete against non-amputee athletes in competitive sport – and it is not because they would be the ones with the disadvantage: It is because they could literally outrun Batman.