Green Arrow, Delineated
I didn’t want to head back to DC quite so soon, but the Thor and Daredevil posts aren’t quite ready yet and I’m already late.
So here we descend into politics.
The idea of a ‘political’ superhero is a great one. The problem is it takes a certain intellectual maturity to deal with the subject adequately. Intellectual maturity isn’t exactly the foundation of a character who fires green boxing gloves on pointy sticks at his enemies, but to be fair intellectual maturity isn’t exactly the foundation of political discourse fucking anywhere.
Case in point: How many times have you seen Oliver Queen described as a ’socialist’, or ‘practically socialist’ hero? The very first superhero message board argument I ever read (back when I accessed the internet via a P75 and a 36.6 kbps modem) was about whether or not Queen could be described as a socialist, and if so did that make him only a few degrees away from being a Nazi. I think now what I thought then: 1) of course he isn’t a fucking socialist, and 2) even if he was, it in no way makes him anywhere close to being a Nazi. In fact, it would put him on the opposite end of the scale entirely.
The thing is, people have a hard time understanding exactly what we mean when we talk about ’socialism’. It’s problematic enough here in the Fair Country, but my experience of conversations on this matter with Americans tends to err on the side of being utterly bugshit nuts. The heart of the problem is the cartoonish argument that anyone further to the left of, I don’t know, Mussolini, is essentially a stinkin’ commie. Flash Fact: Just because Green Arrow has a thing about social improvement, doesn’t make him a socialist. Flash Fact: Nor Barack Obama.
You see what just happened? I went to talk about Green Arrow, and instead spent a couple of hundred words giving you all my viewpoint on the political spectrum. And that’s a problem, because this isn’t unusual where this character’s concerned. The politics swamp the character, and make him difficult to deal with.
So let’s clear the politics thing up. To my knowledge, Oliver Queen has never recommended nationalisation of any industry, espoused the virtues of syndicate collectives, or any specific point of view regarding the redistribution of wealth. His criticism of the demands of capital stretches about as far as an undirected dislike of corrupt corporate fat cats. He’s a liberal, not a socialist.
But what kind of liberal is he? He’s written as a blowhard a lot. I’m not sure exactly where that came from. Well, I do, it came from the O’Neal/Adams GL/GA run. The thing is, the point of those tales is that both characters had faults in their worldview, and learned from each other. But while Hal Jordan has been allowed to grow, Oliver Queen is the same prick he’s always been, because it’s just easier that way. I suspect that writers, even liberal writers, prefer the caricature of a gasbag lefty. Oliver Queen, the PC Police incarnate! It makes the character a frustrating read sometimes. Nuance, it would appear, is a little too much like hard work.
I suppose my point is, yes, the guy’s a prick. But he’s a prick because he keeps cheating on his partner, not because he’s a little left-wing in his politics. It would be nice to see the two things distinguished, once in a while.
Right, with that out the way, let’s take a look at function.
Core Genre: Hm, a difficult one. Broadly ‘Crime’, inasmuch as the character’s a rip-off of Batman. Broadly ‘Science Fiction’, because how else is a boxing glove even vaguely aerodynamic? Broadly ‘Fantasy’, because he turned his back on wealth and industry to help the common man (kidding! Kidding!).
No, I think here I may have to add a new category: ‘Adventure Fiction’. It’s an old-fashioned kind of genre that overlaps a little with certain areas of crime fiction. It was far more popular in the heyday of the pulps, but is pretty niche now, the itch that it scratched now largely taken care of by action cinema. It encompasses Robin Hood (the most direct inspiration for the character, obviously), Hawkeye, Doc Savage; indeed, Indiana Jones, the most popular modern character derived from old adventure serials. This kind of fiction’s still around, but it tends to either be an exercise in nostalgia (as with the McSweeney anthology from a number of years ago) or to hide in plain sight with the rest of ‘General Fiction’ (Clive Cussler, perhaps?)
It’s interesting, really. Batman was also directly influenced by the pulps, and Green Arrow was a rip-off of Batman, but while Batman developed into something that doesn’t fit comfortably in that category anymore, Green Arrow is perhaps (with Daredevil) the character to remain closest to these roots. But we don’t really see that very much, do we? No, for some reason we instead see the character made mayor of his home city. Very strange.
A) Bow and Arrows (regular and trick)
B) Left-wing politics
C) Reckless
The further away from the so-called ‘A-list’ characters we get, the more difficult the analysis becomes. Batman and Superman are easy to take apart, because they have a very clear set of operating principles. The further down the list we get, the more the characters become copies of the more popular ones. Green Arrow, just another derivative of Batman. And this is a problem, because it means we have no clear definition of how he locates his villains, or the context he finds them in. He’s not really a hunter like Wonder Woman, he’s not really a detective, and he certainly doesn’t have any special powers. What does he actually do? Stand around on a rooftop waiting for someone to get mugged?
Unfortunately, yes. That’s exactly what he does. Does anyone have any example of Oliver Queen being a bit more proactive than just waiting for trouble?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a perfectly good motivation if deliberately chosen by a writer. James Robinson’s Starman didn’t go on patrol. That was a specific choice by the writer, and told us a lot about Jack Knight’s character. What does it tell us about Queen? Nothing. On one hand, we’re meant to believe he has a passion for social issues and change. On the other, we’re meant to believe he doesn’t do much more than stand around waiting for Crime. It just doesn’t seem consistant to me, and makes me wonder if we’re actually dealing with a character with flawed engineering. How on earth do we use this character to reveal anything about his villains, or his surroundings? What mechanism does he use beyond pointy bits of wood? Is he just a walking gimmick?
In looking for the character’s controlling factors, aside from the arrows all I find are his politics (yawn) and a lack of self-possession that should make him a great adventurer but a lousy significant other.
Conclusion: This post makes it sound like I don’t like Green Arrow. Which isn’t true at all, I think he could be a great character. I just think he’s never really been utilised effectively. Regardless of what you may think of the Kevin Smith run, it gave the character a new lease of life. Unfortunately, the new direction was squandered by some very poor writing and story choices. I’d wager that the answer is in understanding the flaws in the engine, giving the character a more fully realised raison d’etre, and embracing the pulp adventure roots of superhero tales. Green Arrow is the perfect character to use to comment on masked adventurers as a whole. Oliver Queen needs his own James Robinson, or Neil Gaiman, to better define him.
You know what he should be? The concept should better embrace the Robin Hood iconography. He should be a legend to the oppressed everywhere, an urban myth within social activist circles. He should appear in places of strife and inequality, his enemies located and contextualised by a distributed global network of individuals. Not the Shadow’s network of servants, but a grassroots collective that opposes injustice.
Yeah, that would work. That would work nicely.
