Skulls and Flags: Contemporary Appropriations of Marvel's Punisher

• In Event: Anti-democratic Metapolitics? Right-wing Appropriations of Cultural Productions

Abstract

The Punisher is one of Marvel’s most troubles ‘superheroes’. Created as a critical commentary of superheroic vigilantism, the character Frank Castle – a former Marine with PTD who seeks revenge for his murdered family, thereby becoming a ‘punisher’ of criminals – is often vilified within the comic book universe for his violent tactics and extra-legal killings of civilians. What to make, then, of the adoption of the Punisher’s skull iconography by conservative and right wing groups, including groups aligning themselves with the military and police? The skull appeared at the ‘unite the right’ rally, but in recent years it has also been taken up by the ‘blue lives matter’ movement and was controversially incorporated into the official insignias of several local police units. The paper considers this appropriation in light of Marvel’s recent treatment of the character on Netflix’ The Punisher.
Like many superheroes, Castle embodies questions of democratic legitimacy, the limits of state sovereignty, and extra-legal violence. Yet the Punisher connects Castle’s actions, and his significant personal trauma, to the parallel violence and extra-legal actions of the state. I argue the adoption of the Punisher skull should be seen as an attempt to hegemonically assert a specific political and moral cosmology, one deeply connected with what Sheldon Wolin describes as the political imaginary of ‘superpower’. By this view, political contest is compressed into a single opposition of good and evil, while political legitimacy and honor are tied to exceptional, heroic acts of redemptive violence that defend, or avenge, a constantly imperiled moral order. Yet while Punisher articulates this cosmology, I argue it also exposes the dangers of this orientation, as well as the personal and political costs it exacts. Through the constant conflicts which Castle’s world generates with civil institutions, constitutional right, and the ongoing democratic engagement of other characters on the show, I therefore consider if the Punisher might provide resources for resisting the kinds of anti-democratic politics for which its iconography as lately been claimed.

Author

• Elizabeth Barringer, Bard College