As well as bringing us a whole new way to enjoy comic book favourites, Marvel's Cinematic Universe has taken it upon itself to delve a little deeper into the nature of heroes. Marvel's Avengers, Captain America, and the tie in TV series Agents of SHIELD, have tied their plots up in separating right from wrong, in examining the balance between freedom and security, and in attempting to discern what it is that can be called 'right action'.
In the Marvel Universe, SHIELD is an intelligence organisation, with agents engaged in espionage and sent on missions to eliminate threats to security. The way we have been shown the organisation so far in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in the form of an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand we have been shown a number of well-meaning and decent individuals who associate themselves with SHIELD, wishing only to serve and protect.
Yet, on the other hand, we have been shown that SHIELD is an immense, organised, well-funded institution, willing to construct deadly weapons, and use them; to take away people's rights, and to wield extensive and illiberal networks of espionage tools to spy on, and to an extent control, people in the name of security.
In the première Avenger's movie, SHIELD Director Nick Fury gives his justifications for the darker side of his organisation - and the methods and weapons he turns to in the name of security:
'The world is filling up with people that can't be matched, that can't be controlled.'
Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Agents of SHIELD have looked hard at that darker side of SHIELD through the screen of a Hydra infiltration. In The Winter Soldier, SHIELD's interest in control and order is exposed, explored and subverted. The determination of SHIELD's own people to believe in secrets, in covert operations, and in the projection of massively intimidating military strength, where all exposed by the emergence of Hydra. The course of power and secrecy that many had subscribed to where challenged by the revelation that they where the methods of Hydra - an intolerant supremacist organisation.
In Agents of SHIELD, even before the Hydra infiltration is revealed, Skye's recruitment by Agent Coulson provokes an ideological struggle within his team. Skye's resistance to secrets, determination to find and expose the truth, and disapproval of the darker more militaristic methods, begins to challenge the established values of SHIELD.
In the episode Turn, Turn, Turn, once Hydra has revealed itself, the all of SHIELD's people are forced to examine the way they operate. Unshackled from institutional protocols, commitments to shielding liberty or enforcing order are exposed.
John Garrett: I'll say it again. Best bet to save her - use the ventilation system to get above the sit room. Drop down using Fitz's sweet, little mouse hole, and put two bullets through Victoria Hand's heart.
Leo Fitz: Yeah, it's an option, sir.
Phil Coulson: Without questioning?
John Garrett: Questioning what? Whether she wants to kill us fast or slow?
Phil Coulson: Last time we did that, we shot the wrong man.
John Garrett: Because she wanted us to! Phil, this is a battle for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s soul, and we're on the front lines. History will remember us this day.
Phil Coulson: That's right. It's for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s soul. And murder without consideration is a sure...
John Garrett: "Consideration"? Consider this. She had one of my men killed with a bomb rigged to his gas pedal. The other two were floating in the hotel pool, and they weren't doing the backstroke.
Melinda May: But we can just as easily ice her.
John Garrett: You don't put someone like her on ice. (from IMDB)
The eponymous Winter Soldier is only a dark counterpart to the experiments that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America. Hydra's intended use for the Helicarriers - the elimination of particular individuals who are calculated to pose a potential threat to their world order - is only a darker extension of the threat suppression and elimination for which SHIELD's craft where designed.
And at every stage, SHIELD personnel have been involved. From illegal tests conducted on humans to the construction of secret weapons, to the creation of secret weapon caches behind lies that claimed these dangerous and destabilising items had been destroyed. The heroes of these tales, from Captain America to Black Widow to Agent Coulson are being forced to consider the costs of power and secrets.
The question raised by these kinds of ethical quandaries are important to all of us. Where do we draw the line when we seek to ward off those who threaten peace and liberty, before we fall into treating liberty itself as a threat to security and order. The tales told in Marvel Cinematic Universe expose the way that adherence to protocols and submission to authority can be a dangerous path. By suppressing individual conscience and following orders, rather than thinking for and deciding for ourselves, we leave ourselves vulnerable to manipulation, exploitation and to the distortion of our values.
We expect heroes to rise above these limitations. To root out hypocrisies and corruption, to stand up for our better selves. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe is reminding us that the truth behind right action is much simpler. The methods we use to accomplish our goals matter. It is not good enough for them to simply be effective. We must also count their costs, and consider not just what ends they will accomplish, but how they will shape those ends.
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References:
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+ Joss Whedon's 'Marvel's The Avengers (or Marvel's Avengers Assemble)'; Marvel/Disney; 2012. [Buy Now
]+ Anthony & Joe Russo's 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier'; Marvel/Disney; 2014. [Buy Now
]+ Joss Whedon's 'Agents of SHIELD'; Marvel/Disney/ABC; 2013. [Buy Now
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