Paper # 7503
Pop Culture and Class Conflict in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe
By
Steven Manicastri, PhD
CWA Local 1036
Rutgers LEARN
Rutgers
LEARN
August 2022
75th Anniversary White Paper Series
Labor Education Action Research Network
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
School of Management and Labor Relations
50 Labor Center Way,
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
https://smlr.rutgers.edu/LEARN
presents
“A Better Tomorrow”
Research & Reflections on the Past, Present, and
Future of Workers
Pop Culture and Class
Conflict in the Marvel
Cinematic Universe
Steven Manicastri, PhD
CWA 1036 & Rutgers LEARN
In my teens, I often ridiculed Superman’s
origin story. The disaster sci-fi premise
that Krypton’s planetary core would
explode due to overmining, and that
Krypton’s world government would
dismiss the overwhelming evidence
pointing to their imminent extinction,
seemed so ludicrous that I refused to read
Superman comics for years. Flash
forward fifteen years later and I cannot
help but to admire the authors’
understanding that governments would
rebuff empirical evidence that
contradicted their ideological beliefs. In
this vein, I believe that capitalism,
U.S. imperialism, patriarchy, and white
supremacy, are the primary and
interconnected political struggles of our
time, which must be resolved to avoid the
complete and total collapse of human
civilization. Comic book films are a great
place to think about these political
questions. They have been ignored by
leftists as legitimate texts due to “culture
industry” like arguments similarly
directed at Hollywood films by Marxist
scholars (Rushton 2013), and by regular
audiences who view them as apolitical, or
as “just a movie.” However, we should
not be so quick to dismiss them, as they
can serve as a window into hegemonic
beliefs within society. As with all
commodities produced by the culture
industry, mass production means the
audience will be overwhelmingly
working-class (Hall 2018a, 350-1).
2
It stands to reason then that anyone
interested in class politics should dedicate
time and effort to understand the messages
producers of these films wish to impart,
how those messages are received by a
mostly working-class audience, and in
turn how they influence the production not
only of future films, but of working class-
politics.
My goal for this paper is to present a
distilled version of my dissertation on the
politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
(MCU)
1
. While my dissertation focuses
extensively on the portrayal of race and
gender, the scope of this article will focus
on how the MCU deals with the capitalist
class (those who own the businesses, the
factories, etc.) and working-class (those
who do not own the businesses and
factories). Before we begin the analysis
there is one particular term we need to
define to move forward, and that term is
hegemony. What is important to know
about hegemony is that while a common
internet search will define it as dominance,
it is not a form of domination where one
class always forcefully dominates the other.
Instead, it works a lot by making the
subordinate class internalize the perspective
of the dominant one. The MCU wants us to
view capitalism as a fair economic system
and the United States as a force for good in
the world. This is what a Marxist like
Antonio Gramsci calls a “hegemonic”
perspective, or the viewpoint of the ruling
class, which acts as society’s “common
sense,” and “traditional popular conception
of the world.” (Gramsci 2008a, 199;
Gramsci 2008b, 362). In the MCU and in
our world that hegemonic perspective is
reflective of the interests of a tiny capitalist
class which owns a majority of the world’s
resources.
1
If you’re interested in the full dissertation, please read it here
https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/20002:860653361#
————————————————
Meanwhile, the majority of the population
makes up the working-class, those who do
not own those resources and therefore are
forced to sell their labor to make a living.
For example, if in your life you have ever
believed that one gets rich through hard
work, you have internalized the beliefs of
the hegemonic capitalist class. When the
hegemony of the ruling class is strong,
most people will go about their life without
challenging it, and in their silence
consenting to it. However, when there is a
crisis of hegemony, meaning that a
subordinate class is putting up a counter-
hegemonic challenge to the hegemonic
class, we will witness direct and forceful
interventions by the hegemon. This is
where superheroes generally come in.
According to David Graeber’s (2015, 120)
Utopia of Rules comic-book stories
maintain capitalist hegemony by
reproducing a pattern of storytelling where
the villains challenge the hegemonic order
and cause a crisis, only for the hero to beat
them down and return the world to its
original order.
MCU films typically portray a villain with
legitimate motivations for destabilizing the
current world order, only for them to be
ultimately revealed as irrational or selfish.
The heroes are then called in to return what
was an already dysfunctional world back to
its original dysfunctional order (Graeber
2015). This is especially the case with
working-class villains whose motives are
fueled by their own poverty or that of
others, and whose motives generally
resonate better than the capitalist villains
just looking to get richer. There are two
levels of hegemony at play here.
3
The first occurs inside the universe of the
MCU, where the superheroes forcefully
respond to the crisis on behalf of the
hegemonic class by punishing the villains
who challenged the world order.
The second occurs externally with us as the
audience. We are not so subtly told that if
we challenge the hegemonic class, the state
will push back through the police and
military. However, more subtly, the films
are making us identify with the heroes who
return the world back as it was, with all its
injustices and inequalities, rather than with
the villains who tried to change it.
These crises in hegemony unfold a little
differently depending on which Phase
2
of
the MCU is in question. I will begin with a
class analysis of the protagonists and
antagonists. From there I describe how
their role in the films works to reassert
certain hegemonic norms about capitalism
and US imperialism. Both the capitalists
and working-class’ trajectories have clearly
defined emergent patterns depending on
whether they are the heroes, or the villains.
For example, the capitalist characters fall
into two categories: if they are villains,
then they have simply followed the logic of
capitalism and tried to maximize profit at
all costs, which, in this case, often requires
betraying their country for profit; if they
are heroes, then—contrary to the capitalist
villain—they act outside their own class
interest in the short-term and utilize their
wealth to engage in heroic actions to
restore faith in capitalism in the long-term.
If they are working-class villains, they are
motivated by topical societal grievances
such as wealth inequality, alienation from
their work, access to healthcare, and
racism. On the flipside if they are working-
class superheroes, they will work hand in
hand with capitalist superheroes to end the
class conflict.
2
The MCU is broken down in Phases of films and shows. Phase 4 is the current phase at the time of this
writing.
It is not a coincidence that the MCU’s
protagonist in the Infinity Saga
3
is the US
American billionaire turned superhero,
Tony Stark, very much an allegory for the
capitalist media sensation, Elon Musk.
4
US American media has often favored
telling stories of the wealthy, using
“positive images...to make us believe that
they are deserving of their wealth”
(Kendall 2011, 11).
By presenting positive images of a
capitalist character, the MCU secures
hegemony for capitalism and assures that
we will view capitalists as individuals
rather than as a class. To discuss how the
MCU ensures capitalist hegemony, I will
break down the topic of class into two
main sub-sections. The first will deal with
the MCU’s choice to prioritize Stark as
the focal character and, in general, how
“moral” capitalist characters, such as he
and Hank Pym, serve to save capitalism
from “evil” capitalist characters. The
second section will focus on our primary
working-class heroes Spider-Man and
Ant-Man and how they reinforce
capitalist hegemony by internalizing
capitalism’s morality rather than
identifying with the viewpoints of the
working-class villains. The section will
also discuss how the MCU routinely tries
to undermine the working-class villains’
grievances. The final section will explain
how the MCU’s goal to maintain
capitalist hegemony has the potential to
backfire.
a. “The Merchant of Death”
While arguments can be made that Steve
Rogers, Captain America, is the moral
center of the MCU during the Infinity
Saga, his role is severely restricted in
comparison to Stark’s. This can be easily
proven from a simple accounting of
appearances. Stark never had to share the
limelight in any of his feature films.
4
He was always clearly the protagonist of
the Iron Man trilogy. Rogers, on the other
hand, also had a trilogy of films, but
Captain America: Civil War (Russo and
Russo 2016) featured a cast larger than that
found in the first two Avengers films and
features Stark as an equally important, if
not more important, character than Rogers
himself. When we also take into
consideration Stark’s presence as a
recurring character and mentor to Peter
Parker in Spider-Man: Homecoming (Watts
2017), as well as Parker’s sense of loss in
trying to live up to his mentor in Spider-
Man: Far From Home (Watts 2019), it is
easy to see how Stark, more than Rogers, is
the MCU’s main character.
It is not by accident that the MCU chose
Stark as its focal character. This version of
Stark is very much a product of the War on
Terror and the Obama presidency. From his
first scene, he comes across as a popular
figure that appeals to everyone (Favreau
2008). Despite his enormous wealth and
status, we see him chatting with the
soldiers in his convoy who are there to
protect him. He jokes with them and takes
selfies, which masks the reality that the
War on Terror has allowed weapons’
manufacturers like Stark to make massive
profits at the expense of soldiers protecting
him and, most notably, the people targeted
by his weapons. Stark comes off as genial
and charismatic, which deceptively hides
his class’ authoritarian tendencies. If we
compare him to his mentor, Obadiah Stane,
we can see that capitalists have an easier
time maintaining their hegemony when
they use Stark’s softer approach over
Stane’s forceful one. Stane does not
sugarcoat his power in the same way Stark
does, therefore we are clearly meant to
identify him as a villain.
3
The Infinity Saga represents the first twenty-three MCU movies starting with Iron Man (Favreau
2008) in Phase 1, to Spider-Man: Far From Home (Watts 2019) as the final installment of Phase 3.
4
Who is actually featured in a quick cameo at the beginning of Iron Man 2 (Favreau 2010).
Stark, on the other hand, is an entertainer,
philanthropist, and populist, who gives
the illusion that, regardless of his massive
wealth and power, he is ultimately one of
the people. When, in Iron Man 2, a
Mexican street vendor says he believes in
Stark, one is left to wonder what the two
could possibly have in common? The
vendor is not privy to Stark’s impending
death or relationship troubles with Pepper
Potts, yet he is under the impression that a
billionaire needs his solidarity based on
his seemingly depressed mood. Stark has
done nothing to deserve his solidarity, but
because he is able to present capitalism
with a human face, it is mistakenly
assumed that he is reciprocally in
solidarity with working-class people.
The MCU reinforces capitalist hegemony
by presenting us with a hero like Stark
who appears relatable due to his internal
struggle over how he built his wealth
through designing and selling weapons,
while making him battle other capitalist
villains like Stane, Hammer, and Aldrich.
All three Iron Man villains are successful
capitalists, who cannot quite match up to
Stark’s genius. Nor do they have the same
likeability that he brings to the table,
except for Aldrich, who undergoes a
radical transformation to present himself
as a suave businessman. All three of
them, however, behave like traditional
capitalists whose “boundless drive for
enrichment” guides their actions (Marx
1981, 254). All three villains’ ploys to
maximize profit rely on their betrayal of
the US government, which is meant to
signal they must be morally
compromised. In Iron Man 3 (Black
2013), Aldrich pulls back the mask on
capitalism a little further and is shown
purposefully escalating the War on Terror
to generate mass panic and ensure that his
Extremis project, with the help of the
corrupt Vice President of the US, will
become a staple weapon of the US
military.
5
One of the main ways the MCU encourages
capitalist hegemony is by introducing valid
critiques of capitalism into its stories.
Aldrich’s plan to escalate the War on Terror
by playing both sides is not different from
what weapons’ manufacturers and their
lobbyists ensured the US government
would do with the Iraq War (Hughes 2007).
The war efforts expanded to include
engineering companies to rebuild Baghdad
and a heavy role for private military
companies, such as Blackwater, that were
involved in a number of human rights
abuses (K. Johnston 2009, 95-6; Saner
2016). Aldrich remarks, “Anonymity, Tony.
Thanks to you, it’s been my mantra ever
since, right? You simply rule from behind
the scenes. Because the second you give
evil a face, a Bin Laden, a Gaddafi,
a Mandarin, you hand the people a target”
(Black 2013). Aldrich’s monologue
essentially explains how capitalism
operates daily, with corporations and
stockholders making decisions behind
closed doors, influencing capitalist
governments to act in their interests by
profiting from crises that they often create
(Klein 2007). The framing of Aldrich’s
actions and his eventual defeat by the hands
of “good” capitalists, Stark and Potts,
ensures that what initially appears as a
systemic critique of capitalism is reduced
to the moral and immoral actions of
individuals.
This pattern is repeated in Ant-Man (Reed
2015), with the introduction of capitalist
scientist Hank Pym, his daughter Hope von
Dyne, and his mentee Darren Cross, who
takes over Pym’s company and tries to
replicate the Pym Particle to generate
greater profits for the company. We are
again presented with a dichotomy of moral
capitalists versus immoral capitalists. Pym,
who is fearful of his work being utilized
irresponsibly, purposely sabotaged and hid
the existence of the Pym Particle from his
mentee Cross, who instead zealously
attempts to weaponize it.
As with Iron Man’s villains, Cross’ interest
in developing this technology is to sell to
both the US government and villainous
groups like HYDRA and the Ten Rings.
Through the presence of Stark and Pym,
the MCU digs its way out of its own
surface-level critique that capitalists are
villains. By presenting us with capitalist
superheroes whose main drive is not
maximizing profit, the MCU tries to
underplay the systemic conditions that
require that capitalists constantly generate
new profits to stay in business, all the
while making common unethical business
practices individual character flaws rather
than a systemic feature of capitalism.
One of the elements that the MCU cannot
hide as well about capitalism is the inherent
authoritarianism of capitalists even when
they are doing their best to mask it (Wolff
2012, 15). Stark and Pym, just like their
capitalist antagonists, are used to getting
their way. It is no surprise, therefore, to see
Stark routinely undermine group efforts
with no regard for the consequences. In
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon 2015),
he bullies Bruce Banner into activating
Ultron, which ultimately leads to disastrous
consequences in South Africa, South
Korea, and Sokovia, where millions of
lives are placed at risk and thousands die.
In Captain America: Civil War, Stark
unilaterally decides for the Avengers that
they need to sign the Sokovia Accords,
which only come into being because Ultron
almost wiped out humanity in the battle of
Sokovia. “There’s no decision-making
process here,” Stark explicitly tells the
Avengers, who are debating the potential
ramifications of their missions being
decided by the UN (Russo and Russo
2016).
6
Perhaps, Stark’s most obvious display of
authoritarianism occurs when he simply
stops following the rules of the Sokovia
Accords as soon as he disagrees with the
government assertion that Bucky was
responsible for the UN bombing. By the
end of the film, the heroes working with
Rogers were arrested for breaking the
Accords. Stark instead lies to the Secretary
of State and follows Rogers and Bucky to
uncover who is behind the UN bombing.
Stark’s class status allows him to ignore the
rules that would govern the remaining
superheroes. Stark nonchalantly walks
away from the Sokovia Accords at the first
sign of trouble with no consequences to his
business or ability to be a superhero. A
pillar of authoritarianism is when rules are
not applied equally due to status (Wolin
2008, 46).
Stark’s class status allows him to skirt the
very rules he sought to impose on his
superhero colleagues. When Rogers breaks
out his comrades from prison, none of them
can fully avoid the consequences of their
actions. Hawkeye is forced to retire and
leave the Avengers permanently,
5
Ant-Man
is placed under house arrest, and Captain
America, Scarlet Witch, and the Falcon
become wanted criminals, forced to
continue doing their work in secret. The
MCU is unconcerned with Stark’s quick
about-face regarding the Sokovia Accords.
If anything, the audience is supposed to
applaud the swagger with which he ignores
the Secretary of State’s requests to help
locate Captain America. This is a prime
example of how the MCU secures consent
for capitalism. Stark’s rejection for rules
that would otherwise apply to anyone
without his wealth and status elicits the
very opposite of a rebellious response from
the audience.
5
The Disney+ series Hawkeye (Igla 2021), shows Barton attempt to move on with his superhero life and
spend more time with his family, but past events that he feels responsible for, pull him back in, even when
they are not arguably his responsibility to fix.
Rather than causing audience members to
view this as an injustice, his refusal to
abide by the rules gives Stark a renegade
swagger that makes him look “cool.” A
surface-level viewing of these films could
easily leave us with simple associations
about Stark and his effectiveness. In doing
so, the MCU promotes the idea that
powerful individual men should ignore
society’s laws because they make morally
correct decisions (Robin 2018, 170).
The MCU presents us with another
authoritarian capitalist superhero in Pym,
the original Ant-Man. He entraps Scott
Lang into becoming the new Ant-Man and
into taking on a dangerous mission to
sabotage Cross’ progress on the
dissemination of the Pym particle. Lang
was a working-class felon, who was
arrested for being a whistleblower in his
company and returning stolen money to the
customers. Upon exiting prison, he cannot
find work because of his record and is
driven back to crime. This is when we get
to see Pym’s authoritarian tendencies in
action. He could easily recruit Lang and
pay him a stipend for the job he wants him
to do; instead, he sets up an elaborate trap
to lure Lang into stealing from his mansion.
Lang breaks into Pym’s safe and is
promptly arrested. While in police custody,
Pym sneaks in and blackmails him to wear
the Ant-Man suit and help him, or to
languish in prison again. The tone of Ant-
Man is comedic, which purposefully
minimizes the cruelty of Pym’s actions, but
had Lang disagreed to wear the Ant-Man
suit, he would have surely been convicted
again. Capitalist hegemony is reinforced
because the film makes light of this cruel
behavior on the part of Pym and
subsequently distracts the viewer from
reflecting on the power differences between
the two characters through special effects.
Moreover, the authoritarian tendencies of
the capitalist characters are easily disguised
because the MCU’s working-class heroes
7
have heartedly internalized their morality
of self-reliance to their own detriment.
b. The Name is Parker, Peter Parker
The MCU consolidates support for
capitalism by making the capitalist
protagonists share an emotional tie to
working-class characters (Kendall 2011,
29). Pym, for example, manipulates Lang
to wear the Ant-Man suit because he knows
that Lang is a father like himself, who is
trying to protect and win his daughter’s
affection. After Pym’s wife, Janet von
Dyne, disappeared in the Quantum Realm,
Pym became distanced from his daughter
and secluded himself from the world,
emotionally abandoning her in a time of
grief. Similarly, Lang’s arrest has
physically distanced him from his daughter
Cassie, who nonetheless, during his
absence, remained emotionally attached.
Pym tugs on Lang’s heartstrings by telling
him that the work he would do as Ant-Man
would create a safer world for his daughter
and give him a chance to be the father Pym
could not be for Hope von Dyne. In proper
Hollywood fashion, Lang is moved by this
and agrees to help him. These scenes
solidify the emotional connection between
the capitalist superhero and his working-
class protégé and serve to humanize Pym,
who initially comes off as a cantankerous
and manipulative man. It also conveniently
erodes the class antagonism between Pym
and Lang, which would otherwise be front
and center, especially in light of Pym
entrapping and blackmailing Lang.
Emotional connections between capitalist
and working-class characters are crucial in
generating capitalist hegemony, because
they reinforce the idea that individuals can
always relate to each other regardless of
socio-economic differences, even when this
is usually not the case.
We see a similar dynamic at play between
Stark and Peter Parker. Stark seeks out
Parker’s help in reigning in Captain
America’s group of heroes who refuse to
register under the Sokovia Accords and
offers him an upgrade by providing him
with the signature red and blue comic-
book Spider-Man suit. Parker is
immediately bedazzled by the fact that
Stark is in his living room and the two
share a bond, specifically over their
scientific and technological prowess.
Stark is impressed with Parker’s
spiderwebs, especially since he is a
working-poor student in Queens with few
resources. The affinity between the two,
however, does not erase the inherent
power dynamic between Stark and Parker.
When Parker disobeys Stark’s directions
to back off the Vulture in Spider-Man:
Homecoming, Stark—much like an
employer disciplining an employee—
takes away Parker’s suit and places him in
danger to teach him a lesson about self-
reliance.
The interaction is played off to convey
that Parker’s overconfidence in being
Spider-Man has made him too attached to
the Spider-Man suit as a solution to his
problems rather than relying on himself.
Stark sees this as a moral failure, despite
completely relying on a superpowered
suit to win his own battles. The
hegemonic purpose of the scene is to
teach us, through Parker, that we must all
rely on ourselves first. What goes unsaid,
however, is that Parker would have never
interfered in the FBI operation had Stark
been transparent and told him how he was
going to handle the Vulture with the intel
Parker provided him. Instead, Stark
withheld that information from Parker and
expected him to follow his orders blindly,
in the same way that capitalists expect
workers to comply with orders that make
little sense without knowing the full
picture.
8
Despite the power imbalance and the
obvious hypocrisy in Stark’s punishment,
the MCU works to reinforce capitalist
hegemony by having Parker atone for his
interference by taking on the Vulture
without the Spider-Man suit. It is only after
he is almost killed and stops the Vulture
that Stark welcomes him back to the
Avengers and tries to offer an additional
upgrade to his suit. Parker genially declines
his offer to instead stay in Queens and
“look out for the little guy”; in doing so,
the MCU ensures that there is no bad blood
between the two classes represented by
Stark and Parker (Watts 2017). The fact
remains, however, that Stark did not worry
about Parker’s safety when he deprived him
of the suit, knowing full well that Parker
would, nonetheless, attempt to stop the
Vulture. The MCU conceals the
authoritarian aspect of their relationship by
reducing the conflict to one of moral failure
by Parker, rather than representative of an
unequal power dynamic between an owner
and a worker.
As Ant-Man and Spider-Man are the only
two specifically identified working-class
superheroes, part of their charm is seeing
them deal with the ordinary. Lang deals
with the hardships of being a working-class
convict trying to reenter society. In addition
to his employment struggles, we also see
how this impacts his ability to see his
daughter, since he cannot afford child
support payments to his ex-wife. The
presentation of his misfortune, however, is
always comedic and never tragic, which
helps the audience digest that he is
blackmailed and gaslighted by Pym into
becoming Ant-Man and not doing so out of
his own volition. We also see him under
house-arrest for much of Ant-Man and the
Wasp, dealing with the consequences of his
choice to back Captain America over Iron
Man. Parker, for his part, deals with the
growing pains of a working-class high
schooler who does not have the financial
resources of his peers.
He is routinely bullied by Flash
Thompson, who is the son of an upper
middle-class family and flaunts his
wealth to shame Parker. The issue with
these scenes is that they never try to dig
deeper. Their struggles are window-
dressing to make our heroes seem
relatable, but never take front and center
within the plot.
In fact, one of the notable differences
between the MCU’s Spider-Man and
Sam Raimi’s version, is the portrayal of
Aunt May. In the MCU, even though
Aunt May similarly finds herself as the
sole breadwinner after the death or
disappearance of Uncle Ben,
6
she is not
shown struggling to pay the bills.
Instead, because she is younger than
Raimi’s version, we see her employed in
an office and capable of sending her
nephew on seemingly expensive school
trips to Washington DC in Homecoming,
and to Europe in Far From Home. We
only tangentially see that Parker lives in
project housing during Civil War, but it
never becomes an important plot point.
This is a radical departure from Raimi’s
Spider-Man 2 (2004), where Aunt May
and Parker head to the bank, pleading the
bank officer to refinance her home as it
risks being foreclosed, only for the
officer to deny them on the basis that
they do not have the assets to secure the
loan. Notably absent from the MCU’s
version of Spider-Man is Parker’s
struggle paying rent at his slumlord’s
apartment while taking pictures for the
Daily Bugle and delivering pizzas.
Whereas Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002)
makes Parker’s lack of financial security
a major plot component, the MCU makes
Parker’s poor economic means an
afterthought.
9
The overall result is that we get a Spider-
Man that feels less “friendly
neighborhood” and more James Bond-like,
with a capitalist providing him with various
gadgets to work on his behalf. In doing so,
the MCU transforms its working class
heroes into enforcers of capitalism, who are
heavily militarized like US police forces.
Notwithstanding Spider-Man’s working-
class roots within the comics (DiPaolo
2011), the MCU pays homage to them in
relatively superficial ways. In Spider-Man:
Homecoming, we see Spidey help an older
woman with directions, stop a bicycle thief,
and mistakenly attack a young person
locked out of their car to the dismay of the
neighborhood, which is disturbed by the
car alarm. Regardless of these genuine
moments of Spider-Man helping working-
class people, the role of this Spider-Man is
more to herd working-class folks into
obeying the laws of capitalism. For
example, Spider-Man confronts Aaron
Davis, an African American ex-felon who
tried to purchase a weapon from Toomes’
thugs, about the Vulture’s location. Davis
tells him about Vulture’s location
immediately because he does not want
Toomes’ weapons in the neighborhood
causing havoc. Spider-Man thanks him for
his help and is about to leave when Davis
reminds Spider-Man that he webbed his
hand to the trunk and that he has perishable
groceries in the car. Spider-Man refuses to
remove the webbing, telling him it will
dissolve in two hours and that he deserves
it because he is a criminal. The entire
interrogation is comical, with Davis telling
Spider-Man he needs to get better at
interrogating criminals, but, for the sake of
argument, let us read this more seriously.
6
In Spider-Man: No Way Home (Watts 2021), after Aunt May’s death, her gravestone is not located
next to anyone, implying that Ben Parker may still be alive, and simply have walked away from May
and Peter.
Based on Davis’ older looking car with
plastic and tape covered windshields
and our knowledge that he is an
African American ex-felon, we can
glean that he is clearly struggling
financially and returning to crime
because capitalism has left him no
option. The MCU’s message,
regardless of its comical delivery, is
that the socio-economic circumstances
which lead to crime are exempt from
scrutiny and that individuals who
commit criminal acts are instead solely
responsible for their actions. This is a
typical media framing of the working-
class and unemployed, attributing their
status as self-inflicted. In comparison
to Raimi’s Spider-Man, the MCU’s
version is a lot less empathetic, and it
likely has to do with the studio’s
decision to intimately tie his character
with Stark.
In the case of the MCU, Spider-Man’s
villains are specifically targeting Stark
for destroying their livelihoods, which
seems to act as an internal critique by
the studio of Stark’s callousness toward
workers. His treatment of his
bodyguard/head of security, Happy
Hogan, is demonstrative of how little
he values his employees. We see Stark
bullying Hogan in Spider-Man:
Homecoming as he makes fun of him in
front of Parker for asking to be
promoted from Head of Security to
Risk Assessment Management.
Immediately afterward, Stark assigns
Hogan as Parker’s contact and
instructs him not to get Hogan too riled
up because he saw his cardiogram and
is worried about him, only to then
order Hogan to carry Parker’s heavy
metallic suitcase up seven floors.
Parker graciously intervenes and says
that he can do it himself, but it is a
display of the casual
10
cruelty of capitalists and Parker’s respect for
a fellow working-class person.
For as much as the MCU allows the villains
to criticize capitalism through their
grievances with Stark, they never take this
line of critique all the way, which is to ask,
why are so many of Stark’s villains victims of
his company? Spider-Man, as the working-
class hero, sometimes sympathizes with
them, but ultimately ensures that none of their
plans take fruition. Even in Phase 1, Iron
Man 2 presents us with the initially
sympathetic working-class villain, Ivan
Vanko. We start the film witnessing his father
dying while on the TV Tony Stark reveals to
the world that he is Iron Man. The older
Vanko listens to the television in regret,
lamenting that it should be his son in Stark’s
place. Moments after his father’s death,
Vanko builds a suit to confront Iron Man, and
we quickly learn that Stark’s miniaturized Arc
Reactor in his chest was partially engineered
by Vanko’s father and not just Stark’s. A little
over halfway through the film, however, Nick
Fury reveals to Stark that Vanko’s father saw
the reactor as a means to become rich, and
therefore Howard Stark had him deported
back to the Soviet Union. This scene is
pivotal in delegitimizing the younger Vanko’s
sympathetic quest for revenge. By presenting
Anton Vanko’s motives as not altruistic,
while presenting Howard Stark’s as such,
7
the
film is choreographing that the younger
Vanko’s quest for revenge is solely to replace
Stark as a wealthy individual, and not an
actual critique of capitalism. The hegemonic
purpose is to discredit the villain in favor of
the hero on the basis that his motivations
solely benefit him, thereby deflecting the
more fundamental question, why should so
much wealth reside in the hands of any
individual instead of all of society’s?
In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Adrian Toomes
is the small business-owner of a salvaging
company, who obtains a large contract with
the city to help with the cleanup efforts after
the Chitauri invasion of New York.
7
Despite of course the hypocrisy of a capitalist like Howard penalizing someone for wanting to not be poor.
11
He expands his business, hiring new
employees and buying new equipment
to be able to complete the job. Stark
Industries lobbies the US government
and creates a new agency called
Damage Control to clean up the city,
annulling Toomes’ contract. Despite
this setback one of Toomes’ men
points out that they still have a
truckload of salvaged alien material,
and another one of his men tinkering
with the material realizes it can be
used to develop new technology. This
inspires Toomes to develop powerful
weapons that can be sold on the black
market. The film depicts Toomes and
his men as working-class characters
who are one financial crisis away from
bankruptcy and utilize their criminal
activities to stave off poverty. In his
final confrontation with Parker,
Toomes tells him that billionaires like
Stark do not care what happens to
working-class folks like them and that
he is completely justified in taking the
Chitauri weapons from Stark’s arsenal
to look out for his family and his crew.
When Parker’s appeals to his
conscience do not work, the film
pivots to delegitimizing Toomes on the
basis that the weapons he plans to steal
are unstable and, unbeknownst to him,
will explode over New York City as he
attempts to transport them. This
narrative-turn creates a simple solution
for the conflicted Spider-Man who
does not want to harm his high school
girlfriend’s father. In classical
superhero fashion the socio-economic
grievances expressed by Toomes and
his men are sidestepped for the more
immediate world ending event.
In Spider-Man: Far From Home,
Quentin Beck and all the disgruntled
Stark employees create Mysterio Inc.
with the intent of having a platform
where working-class people will be
listened to by world governments.
Outside of their mistreatment from
working at Stark Industries, their
complaints center on alienation from
their work, or being separated from
what they produced. Beck specifically
recounts how he designed a holographic
system with “limitless applications,”
which Stark renamed “Binarily
Augmented Retro-Framing or BARF”
(Watts, 2019). Soon after, Stark fired
Beck. The workers in Mysterio Inc.
unite to correct these types of
grievances and force the world to
recognize their contributions. Yet, very
quickly, Beck is delegitimized as
“unstable” and forces his coworkers to
enact his plan which will result in
unnecessary casualties at gunpoint.
In the MCU’s Spider-Man films, we
never get a flipped scenario where the
superhero listens to the grievances of
the villain and joins them in their quest
or where his antagonist is instead a
capitalist. This is strikingly different
from Raimi’s Spider-Man, which
showcased Parker fighting Norman
Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, a
corporate villain trying to consolidate
power of his fledgling company while
terrorizing New York City. This film
series also showed Parker forgiving the
Sandman for mistakenly killing his
uncle Ben in a desperate robbery to buy
medicinal supplies for his daughter
(Riami 2007).
12
The qualities which make Spider-Man a
hero to working-class New Yorkers
within the comics are side-stepped in the
MCU’s version of the character. We are
instead treated to a techno-capitalist
friendly version intimately tied to Stark,
thereby minimizing the conflict between
their classes, to reinforce capitalist
hegemony. While the third MCU Spider-
Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home
(Watts 2021), seems to remediate this by
having Parker lose his aunt and the entire
world forget he exists through a magic
spell, it is undeniable that up until that
point the MCU’s Spider-Man has been in
no uncertain terms, Iron Man’s lapdog.
This is in contrast to the more middle of
the road working-class film, Ant-Man
and the Wasp (Reed 2019). The film has
a more leftwing perspective of class than
other entries in the MCU, but it
ultimately settles the matter through what
could be analogous to healthcare reform.
Ant-Man and the Wasp’s antagonist, Ava
(Ghost), is presented as a sympathetic
black working-class “villain” who is
working with her father’s coworker Bill
Foster to take Pym’s technology so that
she can cure herself from a calamity that
makes her body phase in and out of
existence. Pym’s access to the quantum
realm is her only chance to potentially
cure her condition, which she obtained
when her father attempted to perform a
dangerous experiment in an unsafe black
market lab, where she was struck by the
blast. What adds an interesting
dimension to this conflict is that Pym is
partly responsible for her condition.
When Ava’s father disagreed with Pym,
he was fired from SHIELD and
discredited so that he could not work
again. Foster, who was a friend of Pym
until Ava’s father was fired, took her
back to SHIELD, where she was
promised they would find her a cure.
However, SHIELD lied and weaponized
her abilities, forcing her to spy and kill
for them. Once SHIELD collapsed after
the events of Captain American: The
Winter Soldier (Russo and Russo, 2014),
Ava and Foster were left to their own
devices to cure her “molecular
disequilibrium” (Reed 2019). Unlike most
of these films, where the working-class
villain is defeated by the hero to restore
order, Ghost and Foster are not killed or
arrested. Instead, Janet von Dyne, who
manages to return with Ant-Man’s help
from the Quantum Realm, knows how to
save Ava from her condition. Capitalist
hegemony is maintained by giving the
working class a concession, signifying
that systemic issues can be reformed, and
revolution is unnecessary.
The final working-class villain I will
discuss is Erik Stevens, aka Killmonger,
whose goal in Black Panther (Coogler
2018) is dismantling white supremacy
and global capitalism. The film opens
with a young T’Challa (Black Panther)
asking his father to tell him the history of
the fictional African nation of Wakanda.
This simple question sets up the primary
conflict of the film, showing us, through a
CGI retelling of history, how Wakanda
thrived hidden away from the world,
while the rest of the African continent
was ravaged by the West in the
Transatlantic Slave Trade and
imperialism. The young T’Challa then
asks his father why they continue to hide
and the film cuts to an Oakland ghetto in
1992, where Stevens is playing basketball
in the courtyard with his friends. The
scene subsequently shifts to the inside of
Stevens’ apartment where we learn that
Stevens’ father, N’Jobu, is King
T’Chaka’s brother and that he betrayed
Wakanda to the mercenary Ulysses Klaue,
in order to procure vibranium weapons to
African Americans.
N’Jobu confronts his brother telling
him millions of African Americans
languish in poverty and are forced into
slave labor in prison, while Wakanda
hoards tools and weapons which could
liberate them and working-class people
all around the world. He is killed by
his brother, and this catapults the
young Stevens to seek revenge against
the Wakandan monarchy and to fulfill
his father’s dream of arming the black
working-class. The film props up the
Wakandan monarchy as heroes by
showing that King T’Challa changes
his country’s policy of isolation to one
where it will play a major role in the
world with its technology. T’Challa is
moved by Stevens’ actions, but not
enough to tear down capitalism and
imperialism.
Instead T’Challa gives Stevens the
choice to die from his wounds or to be
imprisoned, continuing the legacy
Stevens sought to destroy.
c. The Counter-Hegemonic
Viewpoint
Up to this point I have employed a
class analysis to one of the most
popular cultural industry products in
recent years—Marvel comic book
movies. In sum, we can see that
the MCU features capitalist and
working-class heroes working together
to ultimately deflect systemic critiques
of capitalism and reinforce its
hegemony. However, there is a slightly
different way to examine these events
in the MCU, or what we could call a
counter-hegemonic working-class
viewpoint.
8
This counter-hegemonic
viewpoint in the MCU does not
emerge because of the films, rather it
is a sign of the MCU responding to
anti-capitalist sentiments which have
become more mainstream in the last
decade.
13
In both Phases 1 and 2, even if the capitalist
villains are stopped by capitalist superheroes
to lessen the blow of the systemic critique,
the fact remains that Disney felt that its class
of shareholders would make good villains.
The introduction of Vulture and Mysterio as
disgruntled members of the working-class
ruined by Stark, is a shift by the studio to
contain the counter-hegemonic anti-capitalist
viewpoint. While the fact that they are
working-class villains in and of itself is not a
novel concept, their class critique of Stark is
not directed solely at him as an individual,
but at an economic system where working-
class people are made to suffer to generate
profit. These films offer a slightly more
systemic critique of capitalism, where Stark’s
class status as a capitalist is directly tied to
these villains’ rise in class consciousness. By
making the MCU’s hero, the author of these
villains’ class grievances, Disney
inadvertently solidifies the counter-
hegemonic position which says that even the
so-called “good capitalists” perform an
exploitative function that cannot be
reformed.
In Black Panther, T’Challa tries to correct
the mistakes of his father and his
predecessors by sharing his country’s
resources with the world through a neoliberal
framework. Yet, it also makes the villain,
Stevens, a more compelling and sympathetic
character than its hero. In fact, the film
presents T’Challa as somewhat inept at
understanding the motivations behind
Stevens’ plan and, therefore, less sympathetic
than he should be as the film’s protagonist.
T’Challa’s failure to offer Stevens a different
path than imprisonment, along with the
overall pathos of Stevens’ death-scene, is
Coogler’s indication that the Wakandan state
is ultimately complicit in maintaining an
exploitative and racist system. Even though
the film tries to redeem the Wakandan
monarchy, there is a counter-hegemonic
reading that says Stevens “was right.”
8.
Gramsci argues that it is necessary for the working-class to wrest hegemony from the ruling
class and install a counter-hegemonic perspective as the new norm, or a new “common sense.”
Phase 4 is continuing the MCU’s
pursuit for more gender, racial, and
cultural representation, but this
representation tends to come with the
caveat of funneling all non-white and
non-male characters into what Adolph
Reed (1979) calls the “administrative
apparatus.” In other words, the films
will contain more representation, but it
will in turn require these characters’
fealty to capitalism and US imperialist
projects. The MCU has doubled down
on this formula in recent installments
such as WandaVision (Shakman 2021),
Falcon and the Winter Soldier
(Skogland 2021), and the Eternals
(Zhao 2021). In WandaVIsion we are
introduced to an adult Monica
Rambeau, who was originally
introduced as Maria Rambeau’s
daughter in Captain Marvel (Boden
and Fleck 2019). We learn that after
the events of the first Captain Marvel,
Maria became the director of SWORD,
an agency dealing with interstellar
threats. Monica by the end of the show
obtains superpowers, but her superhero
identity has not been fully disclosed yet
and likely will not be until the
upcoming film the Marvels. She works
alongside FBI Agent Woo from Ant-
Man and the Wasp to stop the corrupt
SWORD director Tyler Hayward. Two
characters of color are instrumentalized
to take down a corrupt version of an
administrative agency to then restore
its legitimacy.
In the Falcon and the Winter Soldier,
Sam Wilson wrestles with a related
quandary of state legitimation—
namely, Captain America’s choice to
pass him the shield at the conclusion of
the Infinity Saga. Wilson does not
believe Rogers can be replaced and
returns the shield to the US State
Department. Instead of honoring his
wishes to place the shield in the
Smithsonian, the State Department
nominates John Walker as the new
Captain America, who unlike Rogers is
14
a good solider, but not necessarily a good
man. What further complicates matters is
that Wilson learns that he would not have
been the first black Captain America, as
Isaiah Bradley and other black veterans,
after Rogers’ presumed demise in WWII,
were experimented on and given the
Super Soldier Serum. Out of all the
candidates the serum worked the best
with Bradley, who was subsequently
arrested by the US government and
experimented on for thirty years, until a
nurse helped him declare himself dead
and escape. Despite Bradley confronting
Wilson about the horrific racist legacy of
Captain America, which calls to mind the
Tuskegee Experiment, Wilson opts to
take on the mantle of his old friend, with
the rationalization that his Captain
America, unlike Walker’s, will not be
under the supervision of the US State
Department.
Wilson’s decision to become the new
Captain America, regardless of Bradley’s
warning, is the hegemon’s way of
redirecting anger against state sanctioned
white supremacy; the gesture assures us
white supremacy is not inherent to the
US’s values as a nation. The final
moment of cooptation occurs in the
finale, when Wilson memorializes
Bradley as the first black Captain
America in the Smithsonian. The scene
comes off as jarring, to say the least. In
previous episodes, Bradley showed no
concern for the recognition of his service.
In fact, he was presented as rightly angry
at the life stolen from him in the service
of US imperialism. Hegemonically, as if
by ideological necessity, the US must
dedicate a monument to Bradley to
nullify the deeper critique of his
exploitation by the US armed forces, thus
transforming the issue solely to one of
recognition.
In the Eternals, Phastos, is a black gay
man, who in the course of the film is
revealed to have helped the US create its
first atomic weapon. While the
Manhattan Project did have numerous
15
black scientists employed in research
and development, the film portrays
his role as equally important to
Oppenheimer’s. His exile after the
weapon is used on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, deflects the US’ choice to
display its might against the Soviet
Union. The first fully fledged gay
character in the MCU is immediately
made a member of the administrative
apparatus, and indirectly responsible
for what is arguably one of the
cruelest military operations in human
history. Similarly, to Isaiah Bradley,
the MCU utilizes the diversity of their
characters to restore the legitimacy of
the US’ actions.
It is less clear how the MCU will
proceed on class issues in Phase 4 and
beyond. After the events of Spider-
Man: No Way Home, the MCU’s
Parker will finally resemble his comic
book counterpart, being down on his
luck in a crumbling apartment in
NYC, rather than Stark’s mentee and
protege. Whether the MCU will
inadvertently produce a more left-
wing Spider-Man due to this, is
unlikely. In fact, it will most certainly
find a way to sublimate Spider-Man’s
working-class politics in a way that
will ultimately continue to safeguard
capitalism. The middle of the road
position taken in Ant-Man and the
Wasp, is likely more indicative of the
path the MCU will take in the future
when it comes to reconciling the
working-class grievances of its
audience. Nonetheless, these shifts in
the MCU’s narrative are
demonstrative of a counter-hegemonic
bloc starting to challenge the once
unshakable “common sense” of
capitalism’s rule. As faith in the logic
of capitalism continues to deteriorate
among the US American working-
class, the more likely we are to see
the MCU change tactics to reassert
capitalism’s legitimacy.
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About the White Paper Series
LEARN launched the "A Better Tomorrow" White Paper series to comemrate the
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