*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*
Matthew
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we’re continuing our wrap-up series, looking at some of the characters who embody the distinctive themes that keep coming up again and again in the stories and media that we love to talk about. And today we’re going to be talking about Amanda Waller. Amanda is a character from the DC universe. She’s shown up in some of the movies, particularly around the Suicide Squad. She’s shown up in some of the live-action and animated shows, and especially was very big in Justice League and shows like that. And she is a character who, as we’ll get into, kind of represents the flip side of what we were talking about last week with Civil War. Because we were talking a lot about what should happen after someone like Scarlet Witch is trying to do the right thing, takes an action as part of trying to prevent tragedy, and it still causes a tragedy, possibly a smaller one, but still, it’s not a perfect situation. What do you do? And a lot of what we talked about there was the danger of letting the individual have too much control. The individual accountability without any oversight. Amanda Waller is kind of the opposite. If General Ross, or Secretary Ross, could do what Amanda Waller actually does, he would be in heaven. She doesn’t have Sokovia Accords, she just has her own protocols that let her do whatever the hell she wants. And she’s always focused on the idea of doing it for protecting Earth, protecting humanity. But she’s able to go to pretty much any extreme. And the character’s written in such a way that sometimes you think maybe she might have a point, even though she’s probably wrong. And so it’s kind of a fun counterpoint to look at someone who isn’t presented as a hero. Someone who’s presented pretty clearly as a villain, or maybe an anti-villain, but in that kind of, “But does she have a point? Is she sometimes willing to go as far as it needs to go?” Paul, let’s just jump right in. What are your thoughts on Amanda Waller?
Paul
So, first of all, I just love her as a character.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
The first time I really remember seeing her was watching the Justice League animated series, Justice League Unlimited, the season three, really, of the overall four seasons. The Cadmus arc, which is like the back half of that season. And she’s not always the same, though, in all different media. I’ve seen her in a lot of things. She was in Arrow, she’s in the Suicide Squad movie, and then The Suicide Squad movie.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
And a bunch of other animated films, and of course the comics. And so I’ve always really enjoyed her as a character. I would preface this whole discussion with: she’s not always the same character, kind of. Or she’s not always acting in the manner you described. And I think we want to focus primarily on what you’re talking about, but I just like to say that, especially in Suicide Squad-related things, she’s often using them to cover her own ass, basically.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
She’s trying to cover up for problems she created by trying to do the things that had the… like, I think usually that version of the character does begin with the intentions you’re talking about, but then ends up in this sort of spiral of just trying to cover up her own mistakes, or the government’s mistakes, or whatever. And as such, I would kind of set that aside and say that’s a more self-serving version of the character, right? That I think is just as good a character, but maybe a little less interesting to talk about.
Matthew
Yeah, I would say let’s set it aside for now. I do want to revisit it, because to me it does feel like all the same character, just with a different focus. Because I do think that we very frequently see individuals or organizations that think they are doing good, and think that you do the most good by protecting that institution, wind up defending the institution and trying to cover up some terrible things they’ve done, because if you take the institution down, you stop the good work they do. So I think there is more of a connection there, but we’ll definitely put a pin in it, and you’re right, focus mostly on her as the more altruistic, from her own perspective, “I’m doing this to make the world a better place, or a safer place.”
Paul
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I mean, the thing I’m talking about is kind of an outgrowth of the thing you’re talking about, right? And I don’t feel like it’s all of a sudden, like, I don’t know, Batman in a Zack Snyder film, you know.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
But maybe a little sometimes, you know.
Matthew
So anyway.
Paul
Yeah, it’s funny though, because we’re talking about superhero accountability and this and that and whatever, right? But what accountability does Amanda Waller have?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
She’s not accountable to the people, because she runs a department that the people don’t even know exists.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
It’s not on the books. It’s an off-the-books, black ops kind of thing. Which of course we have in our own world, which is its own problem.
Matthew
Right. And let’s be clear, she does not have any superpowers.
Paul
Right.
Matthew
She sort of has what Batman has, that he’s incredibly rich.
Paul
Yes.
Matthew
She has a version of that, which is that she has basically the government’s AmEx card.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And so she has great financial resources. But unlike Bruce, she also has the government authority resource, which is kind of a superpower as well.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
You’re right, we have that in our own world. Because she works for a secret organization, but it’s just known enough that she can tell FBI agents to back off. She can order the military to do what she wants to do. She has kind of carte blanche to do whatever the hell she wants within the American political and military systems. And like Bruce Wayne’s money, that’s a superpower.
Paul
Right. Yeah, exactly. It’s that same idea of a non-superpower superpower, basically, right?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
For sure. And in terms of accountability, I suppose there are people higher. She’s accountable to the president, or whoever, whatever little congressional committee created her division of the government, right? But it’s an opaque kind of accountability, right? It’s very different from superheroes being accountable to the Sokovia Accords, right?
Matthew
Right. No one in this world is running based on, “I will increase or decrease Cadmus’s budget,” you know.
Paul
There’s no political movement to defund Cadmus.
Matthew
Exactly. And I’ll say Cadmus is sometimes a private organization, but often is a public one connected to the government. In a lot of ways, I think the best analog for her position is J. Edgar Hoover. And maybe even the J. Edgar Hoover of fiction rather than reality, although the reality was certainly close to it. In that we sometimes get indications that not only does she have the support of the government, but they kind of can’t rein her in, in part because she has dirt on a lot of them. Also because she has more of the… I think for all of the talk of J. Edgar Hoover blackmailing people, which certainly was true, there’s also an extent to which the world was so afraid of communism, and didn’t know what the hell was going on, that it was willing to trust anything that J. Edgar Hoover said was needed. And I think there’s also that aspect in the DC world that Amanda mostly populates. We are so scared of aliens, “we” being the people of those worlds, of America, that they’re willing to say, “I don’t understand what Amanda’s doing, but it’s not my place, because there are darker mysteries out there that I don’t understand.”
Paul
Right. And part of that’s true, right? Within the context of those worlds. And are we gonna go full spoilers on Justice League Unlimited, like the Cadmus arc?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
So you’ve been warned, right? The world in which that takes place, Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, I don’t know if they call it “the animated series,” but it’s an animated series, and Batman Beyond all exist within that same universe, right?
Matthew
That’s all one thing.
Paul
In the Superman show, in one of the seasons, maybe the last one, or just before the end, somewhere pretty deep into it, Superman gets brainwashed by Darkseid or something, and he basically comes and tries to take over Earth.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
This is a thing that happens in that world. And so Amanda’s whole thing… you know, Batman has kryptonite, right? So that he can… and he breaks it out at one point to… actually, it’s not in Superman, it’s a whole different arc, but the point is he has it for that reason. And there’s a parallel universe with the Justice Lords, where the Flash dies, and then all the other Justice League members become these authoritarian figures who just rule the world with an iron fist.
Matthew
Right. And that’s one of the things that Amanda Waller references, seeing this. That’s way, way, way back. When the police showed up at my door while we were recording a podcast, we were talking about Superman killing Lex Luthor in that world.
Paul
Right. That happened there. And in this Cadmus arc, they somehow have this information that this happened in this parallel world. And so there’s a thing where Superman’s like, “Well, but I’d never do that,” and Batman’s like, “Well, you did in the other world, kind of,” right? And it’s like, “Well, that’s not me.” And that’s a fair conversation, right? Maybe that’s not you, just because it’s a parallel-universe version of you, whatever. But the point is, he’s kind of like, “They’re afraid of us,” and Bruce is like, “They have the right to be afraid.” He sees their point, but also is like, “But stop it.”
Matthew
Yeah, and I think that really is a great way of framing it, because it goes to what I was saying about the danger of “good guy with a gun versus bad guy with a gun,” which I think a lot of that language wants to say people are just empirically good or bad, instead of realizing that, first of all, it’s just much more nuanced and muddy, but then also we don’t know who we’re going to be tomorrow, because we don’t know what’s going to happen to us to change us. And so you take something like… you might have had all these people who were like, “We would never become authoritarian Justice Lords. What are you talking about?” And then Flash dies. And I think Flash dies in the process of fighting crime and stuff like that.
Paul
I think fighting Luthor.
Matthew
Fighting Luthor, yeah.
Paul
Or the government or something.
Matthew
And so now a lot of these people are feeling a lot more revenge, or feeling vindictive, or things like that. Effects can change you. And the number of terrible things that are done by people who thought they were good people, and then something terrible happened to push them over the edge. I really like that framing. To me, it’s the flip side of that conversation about Cap. That maybe Cap is the one person who wouldn’t be pushed that far. But when Bucky’s in danger, he’s willing to go to almost any length. Tony certainly, when Tony realizes who killed his parents, because for him it’s about so much of his own repressed grief, and that he never got to say goodbye to his father, and they were having the fight and all that, he stops being able to see reason. Tony would have probably said, before he found that out, “No, I’m never gonna be the person who goes off and tries to kill people just because I’m angry at them, versus there being an immediate danger.” He 100% wants to kill Bucky, because he’s learned this thing that has fundamentally changed who he is.
Paul
Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s important to recognize that that’s a thing that happens sometimes to some people, and that a person feeling like they’re impervious to that is maybe a presence of hubris, a lack of humility, or kind of perspective on just not really knowing exactly what you would always do in every situation that you’ve never been in, right?
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But at the same time, I think the opposite happens as well, where people are like… and this is like The Killing Joke, right? Everybody’s just one bad day away from snapping. That’s a load. That’s not true. Tons of people have had tons of bad days and not snapped, and the idea that everybody is potentially just one bad day away from snapping is ridiculous. At the same time, you can never know what someone isn’t capable of.
Matthew
Yeah, right.
Paul
I think some people probably actually have a really strong perspective on what they are or aren’t capable of and how they would respond in different situations. Other people, I think, have a lot less perspective and are much more just like, “Oh, well, I would never do that,” without actually really thinking about it, right? And personally, as somebody who has given a lot, maybe too much, thought to what I would do in different situations and this and that and whatever, I feel like I have a very strong idea of how I would react to different things. But at the same time, I also think it’s important to acknowledge there are a lot of situations I’ve never been in, you know.
Matthew
Yeah, for sure.
Paul
And I think some acceptance of uncertainty on both ends is important.
Matthew
For sure. I think it’s one of these things where a lot of times, when we try to talk about how a person can be a good person, but then have bad things happen and they start doing bad things themselves, a way to undermine that conversation is to say, “Oh, so you’re saying that about everyone.” And so, as an example, a lot of the violence that is done in schools is done by kids who have been greatly bullied themselves.
Paul
Right.
Matthew
People take that and hear it, and it becomes sometimes a, “What do you mean? That’s nonsense. Look at all these people who’ve been terribly bullied and didn’t turn to violence.” And it’s like, no, no, no, fully agreed. The point isn’t that being bullied makes you violent. It’s that being bullied can be one of the things that unlocks this thing in some, but by no means all, people, and we don’t always know who that’s gonna be.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And so it’s not that you cut down on bullying because bullying means people will go shoot up schools. There are certainly a lot of other good reasons to cut down on bullying, but one of them is because it turns out kids who are really traumatized by really horrible bullying, some small portion of them can lash out violently in various ways and stuff like that. And obviously that is a very complicated subject that I’m reducing to very small ideas here, but I think that’s the whole thing. And again, does every person who thinks they are the good guy with a gun, and comes home to find their partner in bed with someone else, is every one of them gonna go grab the gun and shoot their partner and the new lover? Of course not. Is some portion of them? Absolutely, yes. And some portion of them are the people who we would have thought, up until that day, were the “good person with a gun.” Absolutely, yes, and we can’t tell. And to pull it back to this as well, I think this is one of the things that I love about Arrow so much. The show, and this is somewhat true also of the Arrow-related shows, Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, but especially on Arrow. And we’ll get to Amanda Waller herself in a second, I promise. But I think pretty much every major character on Arrow at some point has the kind of moment, Paul, we’re talking about, of they get introduced to someone from their past, or they find out about some way they were betrayed, or something like that, and they just start seeing red, and they just want to take the mission into a murder place, into seeking revenge or vengeance, and putting themselves or the rest of the team in danger. And the rest of the team has to intervene to stop them and calm them down. And it’s never held up as, “Oh, so, Arrow, you shouldn’t be our leader. Oh, Dig, you shouldn’t be our second-in-command and intelligence guy because you do this.” It’s always like, “No, this happens, but the point is that we have this team to hold us in place.”
Paul
Yeah, the way you were describing that… I didn’t finish Arrow. I watched a number of seasons and enjoyed it, and then eventually it was like, okay. It was around when I found Game of Thrones unwatchable, and I was like, “Oh, I can just quit stuff.” Also, I moved and blah, blah, blah. But I’m sure it’s kind of like things that go on a long time, right?
Matthew
I did not finish Arrow either. It did not go out with a bang.
Paul
Yeah. But the way you describe that, at least, I kind of don’t like it if everybody on the show reacts that way, because I really don’t believe everybody responds that way. And I guess to make a Gotham comparison, there’s the thing where Bruce wants to go shoot the guy, who I think is Joe Chill in the show, I don’t remember, who shot his parents, and then it’s just like, “No, I’m not gonna do that.”
Matthew
Right.
Paul
And granted, he did have the seeing red and wanted to do that and whatever, right? But I do think it’s worth demonstrating the flip side, that that’s not necessarily the only human behavioral response to something like that, you know. But whatever. I mean, you gotta come up with a lot of stories if you’re gonna make a hundred-something episodes.
Matthew
Yeah, it definitely became a recurring plot point that they could go to directly. They tend to cycle. Let’s pull back to Amanda Waller.
Paul
Yeah, I just wanted to say, the Arrow Amanda Waller, she was too skinny.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
I do feel like heavyset people are underrepresented in film and comic book stuff, and I appreciated that Amanda Waller was this heavy Black woman. And she was voiced by CCH Pounder, who I think did a fantastic job of it. And Viola Davis is kind of between the two, you know. But to me, it feels like Hollywood, and things for screen, want to glamorize every character. And it’s not that this character has to be a particular way, but it’s sort of like making Magneto not Jewish, where it’s like, yeah, if you had 20 other Jewish characters, it’d be like whatever, kind of, right?
Matthew
Yeah, I fully agree there. And I’ve seen some other people posting about this recently, that part of what makes Amanda Waller so great is she is heavyset. She’s not an old woman, but she’s in her 40s, 50s. She’s someone with an accomplished career. And she’s not unattractive, she’s very attractive, and she has a magnetism and a power about her, but she’s not a model, you know.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And granted, in Arrow, I don’t think there’s a female character who doesn’t wear five-inch heels at some point in their character arc, no matter who they are, and they all dress like models. That’s just… it’s just Arrow.
Paul
That’s just the show. It’s a superhero soap, really.
Matthew
Yeah. And I remember when I heard Amanda Waller was gonna be in it, I was like, “Oh, is this finally gonna be a character who…” Nope. Okay, there she is, flirty and all that, whatever. And she’s played by an actress named Cynthia Addai-Robinson, who I thought was fine, but it was just all wrong. Because part of what I love about that character is the power and the control that she has as someone who is from a group that is so often overlooked, and seen as, unless you are model-thin and light-skinned, we as a society don’t care about you at all. And so I love that portrayal, and I don’t like the portrayal of her in Arrow, for example.
Paul
Yeah, yeah. And it’s not a criticism of the actress, it’s of the casting choice.
Matthew
Yeah, exactly.
Paul
That’s just how the show is.
Matthew
So, all right. So, with that: this is a woman who works for governmental authorities to rein in superpowered people. This does not sound like it’d be one of your favorite characters. Talk to us about what you like about her.
Paul
I guess the first thing I like about her is I think she’s a great foil for the Justice League, and specifically Batman, you know. Where she thinks she’s got everything thought out, and Batman thinks he’s got everything thought out, and it’s kind of like a matchup of wits. Not like Lex Luthor versus Batman in Batman v Superman, but in a way that, I don’t know, they just have good scenes together. She knows who he is, he knows who she is. She knows that he’s Bruce Wayne, right? Somehow she knows that, right? And then he finds out where she lives and he drops in. He walks in on her when she’s getting out of the shower or something, and is basically like, “Hey, I know where you live too.” And she’s all calm and collected. This is one of my favorite scenes, where she’s all calm and collected and tough and whatever, and then he leaves, and she’s kind of shaking. So you could see she’s a person. She’s a normal human with tons of social, financial, political power, right? But in a one-on-one, she’s not all of a sudden putting on a Lex Luthor mecha suit and then fighting or something, right? So I liked that sort of humanization of the antagonist. And then she thinks she’s getting one over on Lex, because while he wants to be president, that’s enough power for anybody. And Batman’s like, “Almost anybody.” And it turns out that’s not what he’s after. Luthor says to the Question, “Do you know how much power I’d have to give up to become president?” But the thing I like about her is I feel like she’s more than just a generic mustache-twirler, which can be great, but she’s got a very clear point of view. I think there’s a way to justify her actions through her point of view. But she also has nuance and personality. She’s a character who’s a whole person. And I think of her as an antagonist, right? I definitely don’t support her actions. But I think that’s one of the things that makes her a good antagonist. I don’t agree with her. I want the heroes to oppose her. But also, I think she has a point of view that makes sense and is logically consistent for the most part, and she makes a good foil to the protagonists. And then there’s the “Epilogue” episode, which we’ll get to later, which I think kind of ties the whole thing off and really kind of explains that.
Matthew
Well, and let’s be very clear about who she is. We’ve talked about it a lot, but I wanted to put it on the table. So she’s the head of, generally, Cadmus. Sometimes it’s something else, but basically the American, slash kind of the world but led by the American, response to the awareness that we live in a world with aliens and superpowered beings, and, “What do we do now?” And in Suicide Squad, the first of those movies, she gives this great speech of, “What do we do now that there are humans who are basically walking-around nuclear bombs? And what do we have to do? What if Superman flies down to the White House and rips the roof off of it?”
Paul
Which basically happened in Superman II, but it wasn’t Superman, right?
Matthew
Exactly. It was a Kryptonian.
Paul
Zod, I guess.
Matthew
Zod and his people.
Paul
Yes.
Matthew
And yeah, that’s the thing. I think she is the, “Okay, I see all you people, and yeah, Superman is a big blue Boy Scout, like Captain America.” I mean, she doesn’t say that, but that’s the way we see those mirrors. “But what if the next one isn’t? Or what if the green kryptonite gets them? What are the safety measures we can have in place?” And Paul and I started texting about this with my saying, I think she is what the SHIELD Council, who decides to launch the nuke against New York, wishes they could be. She’s the one who wouldn’t even bother with Nick Fury. She would tell Nick Fury and the Avengers, “You guys do your best, but, oh, by the way, I’m gonna send a nuke in as well, and if you guys get killed, oh well, and I’ll never tell you.”
Paul
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew
And I think there’s something really interesting about that. People often talk about the idea of the existential threat. What does that term mean to you? You hear that term used a lot.
Paul
Well, sometimes I feel like I hear it used too much, but it is a threat to existence, right? That’s literally what it means. Like, the threat to the continued existence of A, B, or C, of whatever we’re talking about.
Matthew
Right, exactly. And so it can be your own personal existence, it can be the existence of a nation-state, certainly it’s used by defenders of Israel all the time, or to protect a race, like “we have an existential threat against white people” is kind of the racist bullshit, or it could be against the world itself, against humanity itself.
Paul
Or like the habitability of Earth, you know.
Matthew
Right, exactly. Or the wiping out of the human race, that kind of thing. And the idea of it, I think, makes some sense, but I think it’s often overused, as you said. It’s kind of a “how far are we willing to go against an existential threat?” Because the idea is, what good are principles if we’re literally all dead?
Paul
What good are principles of freedom on a dead planet, you know?
Matthew
Did you see Project Hail Mary?
Paul
I don’t think so. I don’t even know what it is. Can you tell me, and the audience, whoever doesn’t know what it is?
Matthew
Sure. It was a book and then a very popular movie in the last year, by the person who wrote The Martian.
Paul
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.
Matthew
And the idea of it is that an existential threat to humanity is found. And so people are willing to go to these incredible lengths, including doing damage to huge parts of the planet, and millions of people, in order to save humanity itself. And the movie does a really good job of pushing on what your bedrock principles are, and whether there are bedrock principles where the survival of humanity is not worth it…
Paul
Like, does humanity survive if humanity loses its humanity?
Matthew
Yeah, that kind of thing. And I think Amanda is someone who has settled that question fairly thoroughly for herself. “I am willing to cut any corner.”
Paul
It’s like Luthen in Andor too, right?
Matthew
Yeah, exactly. Luthen’s whole idea of, “I’m willing to use the tools of my enemy.” These are the people who are the exact opposite of “when they go low, we go high.”
Paul
This is exactly “when they go low, we hit them in the face, because their heads are down,” right?
Matthew
They represent the existential threat, and so anything and everything is justified in order to take them down.
Paul
Yeah, and I don’t even fully disagree with that idea. I often challenge, both in stories, but certainly much more so in our world, the confidence with which people think something is an existential threat.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
Like you were mentioning, I find people have a tendency to label things existential threats in order to justify actions. Or maybe they have legitimate fear, and by legitimate fear I mean they legitimately have fear. They are truthfully, fully afraid of whatever the scenario is, and they view it as an existential threat, but they’re just wrong. It’s just not, right? Or what somebody considers existence, to me, is just a small part of existence. When we’re talking about the purity of a race, or the existence of a nation, or whatever, to me, I don’t care. I mean, I care against both of those concepts, more strongly the first than the second. But the things that people want to protect, and the things they view as possibly eliminating them as existential threats, I’m like, that’s okay. There aren’t gonna be the same nations 50 or 100 years from now as there are now, and I’m okay with that. I think some of the ways that’s going to happen are probably quite bad and not good things, but East Germany and West Germany no longer exist.
Matthew
Right.
Paul
They individually have ceased to exist, and now there’s Germany again. Some people maybe think that’s a bad thing. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s fine, as long as the AfD doesn’t get power.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But if the US and Canada and Mexico somehow came to a peaceful agreement that it should be something more like the EU, and then the nationhood of each of those countries became less important, I would see that as a good thing, as long as the overall political structure was one that I found appealing. So, yeah, I find the idea of doing whatever needs doing in order to literally prevent an actual existential threat, that’s kind of fine, you know. But understand what you’re losing in the process. And I think it’s probably better when it’s individuals acting independently rather than a government, because then, if that individual’s not gonna assume power, that kind of leaves people to decide for themselves afterwards. The problem is when a government does it. Okay, now the government has seized all this power. It’s this huge power structure. Where’s it gonna go? It’s not gonna just let go of that power, right?
Matthew
Yeah, and I think that’s one of the concerns for me. I think if you look at the US government after 9/11… and I think it is very much not coincidental that a lot of DC stories written after 9/11 explored this exact topic.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
The government very intentionally positioned Arab terrorism, Muslim terrorism, Islamic extremism, as existential threats to the American way of life.
Paul
Right.
Matthew
And that was following up on communism having been declared an existential threat to human life. Now, with communism in the Cold War, obviously I’m not rah-rah America on that, but nuclear war has the potential of being an existential threat to humanity, absolutely.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
A communist takeover of the United States was never really anywhere close to happening, but that would be a fundamental change in our way of life, in massive, massive ways that would make the American way of life go away. And if you wanted to call that an existential threat, I can sort of squint and get there. Although again, not that communism is great, but capitalism’s no picnic. But Islamic terrorism never was anything close to that, and today still is not anywhere close to it. And yet it is presented as that, in part because governments like power. Government was losing a lot of power after communism fell, because it didn’t have that threat. And if anyone remembers, was there back then or read about this, there was like a year before 9/11 happened when we were really concerned about China all of a sudden. We were all talking about China and all these terrible things, and there was an American jet plane that had to land in China and it was terrible. And then 9/11 happened, and we all forgot about that, because now we had a new existential threat.
Paul
Yeah, and I would even argue that terrorism was an existential threat to the American way of life, and that way of life ended after 9/11, because the terrorists won. And I don’t even like calling things terrorism, or people terrorists, or whatever, but I’m going along with it right now. But the point being, so many things… airline travel, just as a very basic thing, is fundamentally different.
Matthew
Yeah, exactly, than it was pre-9/11.
Paul
Exactly. Port Authority had soldiers in camo with automatic weapons. That was a change to my way of life. Going to Port Authority, and instead of being concerned about maybe some mugger with a knife, it was like, there’s all these soldiers with guns. I wasn’t afraid of terrorism. I was not so much afraid. And there was one day, after I think a cop got shot somewhere or something, and there were all of these soldiers in Port Authority. This wasn’t a daily thing, but it was from time to time, with machine guns. And I saw some of these guys twitching. Clearly they were nervous, because there were these heightened things in the United States going on. And it wasn’t good. Having said all of that, ways of life change, right? The world changes, people change, groups of people change over time. And a level of acceptance of that, I think, is necessary to understand why, when something isn’t an existential threat… it’s like, yeah, time is an existential threat to everything. Everything will be different later. You know, “the world will be extinct and your flesh will rot with mine.” That’s a Sepultura quote.
Matthew
Good one.
Paul
But the point being, everything is going to change, and that’s okay. There are some ways we don’t want things to change, and we can say, “Well, I don’t want that to change that way, so I’m gonna try and do something about it.” Fine. But labeling X, Y, and Z an existential threat all the time, to this and that and the other, it is, I think, very, very, very often just used as some sort of justification.
Matthew
Yeah, I think so. And you can look at that with governments. I think any religious organization that has talked about, “You have to support us, or else the apocalypse is gonna come, or the end times, or you’ll go to hell,” or whatever it is, that’s all existential threat fear kind of things. But as you said, we’re thinking about the real world. Let’s now go back to Amanda Waller.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
A lot of the times she is dealing with things that are legitimate existential threats to the existence of humanity.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And again, in some ways, on a galactic scale, humanity is maybe one thousandth of a thousandth of a percent of sentient lives. How much does that matter? Well, to humans it certainly does. Talk about, knowing that there are times where she is facing a legitimate existential threat, how you view her actions in that light and how she reacts to that.
Paul
Well, I think in most of the direct interactions with the Justice League, it’s one thing to prepare for if something goes a certain way. It’s another to essentially attack a group that isn’t doing that at the time, right?
Matthew
Right.
Paul
And so I don’t think the Justice League posed an existential threat to humanity. It saved humanity a number of times from various alien invasions, right? And so I think being prepared made some sense, but then she basically went about trying to destroy the Justice League and basically kill all these people who are just trying to help people, mostly, right? And to me, that’s where it’s like, well, that’s not how you should go about it, you know.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But I do think she changed over time, too. If we watch “Epilogue,” where she is an old woman, probably quite old…
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
…and Terry McGinnis, the next Batman, Batman Beyond, shows up and they have a long conversation. There’s flashbacks and stuff. It turns out, after doing Cadmus, which kind of fell apart after the whole Lex Luthor thing, she became a liaison to the Justice League, kind of facilitating a little more cooperation between them and whatever government agencies. She decided the world needs a Batman, and did some stuff that seems horrible in order to try and manufacture another Batman. And then it didn’t work out, and then he ends up becoming Batman anyway. But I think her underlying motivation makes sense, in that that is a world where there are these real existential threats to humanity that aren’t just climate chaos, right? Or nuclear war, the threat of that, right? We have a few in our world, things that actually could more or less end humanity eventually, right? At least on Earth. And they have a lot more of those in the DC universe.
Matthew
It’s a terrible place to live.
Paul
Don’t raise your kids in Metropolis. The buildings are just gonna fall down every other week.
Matthew
Yeah, I have no idea what property insurance is like in Gotham, but it’s gotta be very, very high rates with incredible deductibles.
Paul
Yeah, but I mean, I’m worried about the life insurance, you know.
Matthew
Yeah, yeah, the life expectancy. And I think with that, I want to turn to the Suicide Squad movies, because we’ll get to how at times she makes it about the threat to herself. But one of the ideas that both those movies seem to support, and granted, neither one of us has seen them in a little while, but I think it’s interesting to talk about: in both, we’re presented with a threat that is clearly trying to take over the world and certainly seems capable of doing that. The sorceress and her brother in the first one, and then Starro in the second one. And in both cases, Amanda Waller’s goal is somewhat to stop them, but especially in the second one, more to cover up all evidence of it. What she winds up doing with this, and what she wants to do with a Suicide Squad, is literally slavery. She’s taking these people who are prisoners, and some people think therefore it’s justified, and that’s absolute horseshit. But basically telling them, “We’re giving you a chance to lessen your sentence, but if you don’t exactly obey us, we will kill you, and we’re gonna put you in a situation in which you’re expendable and will almost certainly die. But if you live and hopefully succeed in your mission, you’ll probably save the world.” And what I’m struck by in both of them is she does save the world. The group does save the world because of what they do, more in the first. In the second one, she really just wants them to cover it up, and then they decide to go save the world. But I guess, what’s your take on that? Is there any place in the thinking of, she did actually do what was needed, and put together a team that was able to stop the problem?
Paul
Not really, because these are both worlds that have other people who could do that, that you wouldn’t have to put a bomb in their brain and say, “I’m gonna blow up your head unless you go do this thing.”
Matthew
Right.
Paul
And maybe actually the first Suicide Squad movie is a little less this way, right? I don’t even know the nature of the Snyderverse, or what The Suicide Squad movie had going on with other heroes. I think in general these take place in worlds where, if you just came clean, there are people who are probably much more qualified to take care of these threats, right? But she’s trying to do it covertly, and in a way that she can then not admit wrongdoing. And I guess she justifies that by saying, “Well, I need to keep doing what I’m doing because it’s important,” right? And, okay, I guess. But to me, there’s a line somewhere where it’s not that your ends justify your means. It’s that you’re justifying your means with your other means, or the ends of your other means, right? Your means are justifying your ends, or something. I felt like there was gonna be an elegant way to phrase that. Maybe it didn’t come together. But that’s kind of the way a lot of her plans come together in things like those, you know.
Matthew
Well, and I think that’s exactly what I was talking about at the start, and now we can pull back in where those movies take it. Because I do think that a lot of the time, when you see yourself as not only the best but the only way to prevent the existential threat, the more charitable reading is you then convince yourself that you have to be defended at all costs in order to stop the existential threat. The more cynical version is you just are protecting your own ass and claiming the existential threat to do it. But again, that’s something that we see all the time. That was a big part of the defense of Nixon and Watergate and stuff like that. In their mind, the Democrats represented the existential threat because they would cave in Vietnam, so any measure was allowed in order to make sure that Nixon won the election. The Catholic Church, in covering up so many horrible priest child-abuse scandals, one of the things that was often said was, “The world needs to believe in the Catholic Church, and so we can’t show people all these problems.” Anytime governments, or institutions, or individuals try to cover up terrible things they’ve done, often it’s with the idea of, “They need us to be strong, and so we can’t show weakness.” And on the one hand, it feels a little out of character. I kind of want Amanda to be a little more above that, and to be a little more idealistic. But I do also think it really fits. I guess because it’s now happened twice… I would want it that one out of every three or four Amanda Waller stories has some element of this, but most of the time, no, she’s just honestly dedicated to the idea that she is defending humanity. You know, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” as Barry Goldwater said. But then every now and then it becomes more about protecting her and Cadmus.
Paul
We’re quoting Barry Goldwater now. You know, that’s where we’ve gotten to.
Matthew
As part of illustrating the problems with her set of things.
Paul
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s cool, it’s cool, it’s cool. I just heard a lot about Goldwater growing up, because of the time when my parents were a certain age, or whatever. Anyway, the thing that I appreciate in all of these depictions that aren’t as much my favorite, and I’ll say the animated series is my favorite…
Matthew
Yeah, fully agree.
Paul
…from the first time she steps on screen until “Epilogue,” I think it’s just pitch-perfect. But in the other ones, I will say this: for the most part, and there might be one exception, a comic book that I read that had Catman in it, I don’t know, but for the most part, there is a consistency to me. Even when she’s just trying to protect her own, she’s seeing something as an existential threat to her ability to continue doing the things that she believes are necessary, that she doesn’t believe anybody else is necessarily going to be able to step in and do. Those things where she’s just covering for herself, I think she believes they’re not for personal gain, right?
Matthew
Yes.
Paul
It’s never to enrich herself. It’s never, “Oh, grab this two million dollars and bring it back to me and I’ll keep it myself,” kind of thing, right? There’s no power for power’s sake. It seems like it really is power for the sake of doing a thing that she believes needs doing. And so I would say, to your point earlier, all of those iterations of the character lie upon a spectrum of where the character can end up in terms of things she’s trying to accomplish.
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
But there is a consistency there, I believe, from what I’ve seen. Maybe there’s one where she’s trying to get some get-out-of-hell card or something, and that’s for her own selfish… she thinks she’s damned because of all the things she’s done, and so she wants this magic card or something, which is kind of hilarious. I’m not sure if she’s a Catholic or whatever, but she’s definitely religious. Which I also always find a little funny in the context of some of these superhero stories, but it makes sense, it makes sense. And she considers herself the sharp sword of the angels, kind of, right? That’s how she envisions herself. And I think there is a real consistency there, even when she’s trying to protect her own power, because she just so consistently deploys that power in the manner in which she really believes is right and just and necessary. And to me, that’s what makes her such a great antagonist, because that’s exactly what the Justice League is doing…
Matthew
Yeah.
Paul
…except I agree with what they’re trying to do, at least almost all the time.
Matthew
Yeah. I think you’re right, and that’s probably the biggest difference: I feel like Amanda Waller in the animated shows makes good points. Whereas in the Suicide Squad movies, especially the second one, where her interest is erasing and defending the American involvement with Starro, not stopping Starro itself. And she’s very much like, “We’re not here to defend Central American countries, we’re here to defend the United States.”
Paul
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matthew
And then I’m just like, A, that’s morally god-awful, but B, how can you not recognize that an alien presence taking over Latin American countries is going to eventually just turn north? And so I like that they explore that plot point, but I would agree with you that the animated one is better, because I think the animated Batman would never in a million years think that the Suicide Squad Amanda Waller has anything important to say. Whereas in the show, she’s raising questions that are hard for the Justice League to answer, and that they should be able to answer, and in that way she’s kind of an important accountability check on them.
Paul
Yeah, he agrees with her concerns, but not her model, basically, in that setting. And I think a nice counterpoint is after Lex hacks the Watchtower, the Justice League’s headquarters, to blow up the Cadmus headquarters, which was empty at the time, I guess. After that, Superman’s like, “We should all turn ourselves in,” and all the rest of the Justice League goes along with him and turns themselves in, to basically say, “Hey, we didn’t do this, but we’re going to be subject to your laws, and it’ll come out that we’re innocent.” And Batman’s like, “Nope.” It’s like, “I’m going to prove that.” He’s like, prove your own innocence, basically. And then, spoilers, Amanda Waller ends up being on the Justice League side and releasing them once Batman brings her the evidence that Lex ain’t trying to be president. He’s trying to take over, and he is literally an existential threat to the Earth, because he’s actually Brainiac then. It’s a whole thing.
Matthew
It’s a very complicated plot. And it’s quite a right turn at the end. It’s like, “Wait, what?”
Paul
Yeah. But I find those four characters, Amanda Waller, Batman, Superman, and Lex Luthor, to have this really interesting kind of everybody’s take on what they’re trying to do, and how they maneuver. And the thing I love so much about the series is I feel like each character is true to themselves. And the fact that Amanda Waller pivots to being like, “Oh, wait, he’s the existential threat. Okay, you guys are fine for the moment, let’s go. Let’s handle that, and then we’ll figure things out,” basically.
Matthew
Yeah, she’s not so locked into a worldview that she’s unable to change in the face of new evidence.
Paul
Exactly.
Matthew
And you’re right, it’s funny, I hadn’t thought about it, but all four of them have that hanging over their heads. Superman is literally the product of an existential threat that came true. That’s why he’s sent there, because his father pointed out the existential threat that no one else on Krypton wanted to listen to. And so he has seen that happen, or at least knows of that happening.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And Lex Luthor, I think, is another one of those characters, like Amanda Waller but even more so, where it’s really hard to pin down who is the true Lex Luthor. Because are there Lex Luthors who are genuinely concerned for the state of the world, and believe that if they don’t stop the Supermans of the world, the world will be doomed? Yes, absolutely. Are there Lex Luthors who just want to make a buck while everything is falling around them? Yes, absolutely. And then are there a lot of Lex Luthors who are somewhere in between? Yes, absolutely. And I’d say kind of like Nicholas Hoult is the first one, Gene Hackman is the second one, and then most of the others are somewhere in the middle. But when you have the more idealistic, “I’m trying to protect humanity” version, it puts him in a very interesting crossfire. Because, to some extent, it’s like if you have three Captain Americas who are all saying, “I’m gonna tell everyone else, ‘I’m like a tree, you move,'” but they’re all claiming it, and they all think they’re right.
Paul
I’m picturing the Spider-Man meme, but with Captain Americas.
Matthew
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I like that. “You move, you move, you move,” all pointing at each other.
Paul
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, that’s generally what conflict is, right? Ultimately, conflict is multiple parties with differing points of view, saying, “No, I’m not gonna give you what you want. You give me what I want.” And then disagreeing on it.
Matthew
For sure.
Paul
Yeah. I think Luthor began mostly as the kind of buck-making, I don’t know if mustache-twirling villain, but he just wants power, right? And then I wonder, not as a comics historian… my words today aren’t… I’m not wording so great. But it feels like a lot of the sort of Amanda Waller things kind of got folded into Lex in various stories, you know. And I’m curious what the order of operations was there, in terms of how that came about.
Matthew
We’re definitely gonna have Jessica Plummer on for the wrap-up.
Paul
Yeah, she’s the one to ask.
Matthew
Yes, right. And I know one thing she and I have talked about is that a lot of the villains who today we think of as having some or all of their storylines be very relatable, that’s still a recent idea. The original Magneto was driving around with a huge magnet on his car, just wanting to rob people and get power. All the ideas of him being an alternative vision of how an oppressed minority can fight for its own survival came later. Because, again, I think the X-Men are another group that has a very legitimate claim to an existential threat. Magneto and Professor X are dealing with an existential threat.
Paul
Right.
Matthew
And also, humanity sees the X-Men as an existential threat.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
And Magneto, like Superman, already faced an existential threat.
Paul
Yeah, quite literally, quite literally.
Matthew
And so that’s all tied in with the idea of, do you make Magneto someone who makes a legitimate case, but maybe his methods are extreme? Actually, I think that’d be a good topic to talk about with Jessica. Because my understanding is that there was kind of a cultural shift towards wanting to have more relatable villains, more sympathetic villains, more villains who weren’t just mustache-twirly.
Paul
Yeah.
Matthew
Along with the end of an era when you literally weren’t allowed to do that, with the Comics Code and stuff like that.
Paul
Right. So, yeah, I’m sure there were plenty of people wanting to tell those stories, right, but being censored.
Matthew
Right, exactly. All right, well, I think that was a good conversation. Paul, any last things you want to share?
Paul
Just watch the Justice League animated series, at least Unlimited. It’s so good. And I think my favorite piece of superhero fiction is the very last episode, titled “Epilogue,” which is Amanda Waller and Terry McGinnis talking about life and Bruce Wayne, basically.
Matthew
And that comes after Batman Beyond, right?
Paul
Yes. In Batman Beyond, Terry McGinnis is a high school kid, and then in “Epilogue” he’s a man. He’s filled out, he looks different. Bruce is really, really old instead of just pretty old. So that’s the latest thing in that story, basically. It’s kind of the end of that whole really long arc, from Batman: The Animated Series to there. And also, independent of Amanda and Terry, a story that Amanda tells about Batman is just really beautiful, and we’ll talk about that in our perhaps last episode of this part of the journey.
Matthew
Wrap-up, yeah.
Paul
As we discuss whether or not Superhero Ethics faces an existential threat, or something else.
Matthew
Well, until then, Paul is an author and does a lot of awesome stuff. You can find his works in the show notes on the website, as well as by going to zenmadman.com. You can find the works of Pete Wright and some other people connected to this podcast in the show notes as well. And of course, in the show notes you can find all the back episodes, all the episodes we reference. Please check those out. Please share this with friends. We really just want to keep the word out there and keep the word going. Most importantly, though, may the Force be with you.
