Somewhere in the mid-1990s, comic book writer David Quinn drafted a story-line for Marvel wherein the character of Doctor Strange, quote unquote sorcerer supreme, had his power halved. The concept was later explored by other writers, particularly Mark Waid, and the idea itself crossed over into another medium with the more recent WandaVision television series subjecting the Scarlet Witch character to the same threat of having her magic removed. A few years ago I was interviewing Quinn, the article being the usual retrospective of a career in progress that all my interviews conducted were, as opposed to marketing for a particular project as all other interviews tend to be, but when I brought up this point he entirely flaked out on our discussion, stopped responding to messages altogether without explanation. Even though it was a friend of his who had initially approached me to do the interview.
What bothered me about that story was frankly what ended any interest I had with the capabilities of comic book writers generally and the mainstream of their chosen profession. All of my media work held the ulterior motive of prompting as many persons relative to the industry as possible to engage in self-doubt, to instead use their skills and talent for anything tantamount beyond the closed circuits of entertaining or being entertained. The offensive thing that turned my path wasn’t merely the dismay for how so many writers and editors seemingly understood so little about magic, but rather how they consciously wanted to suppress the reality that knowledge is power. I wrote only yesterday how power is devoid of responsibility as conveyed across popular culture and displayed by elected leaders one and all. The most harmful thing about civilization is also the very thing which everyone wants for themselves, with no irony.
Magic is knowledge, and the idea even for the sake of throwaway fantasy that knowledge might somehow be taken away from someone so finitely is not only a suspension of disbelief but one of nefarious ulterior motivation of its own. One cannot simply unlearn years of study in the blink of an eye, short of undergoing brain damage. Cultivation doesn’t work like a light switch or power button. Building knowledge generally is time and trial and effort, not a mood swing or a point of sale.
But this separation of knowledge from power is widely given a free pass, with the most heroic characters up to director Zack Snyder’s big budget, cinematic version of Superman himself mindlessly rendering billions in property damages and untold casualties in his fisticuffs with Zod onscreen, while never having his heroism called into question. In the WandaVision show, the Monica Rambeau supporting character bluntly declared that heroes do not torture, yet that is precisely the crux of the Scarlet Witch’s actions in the series, and at the end of the plot the other characters acting heroically did nothing to reprimand her for the harm and damages she wrought, thus contradicting Rambeau’s line. Because contrary to Rambeau’s claim, heroes of the Disney-owned Marvel catalogue of IP, the Warners-owned DC catalogue presenting its only real competition, as well as those rewarded hero status in real life alike, do not act with hindsight or foresight in mind, and regardless of the destruction they proactively unleash still get the fanfare and happy meals. The ends justifying the means being rather objective for a subculture so ready to vilify what they interpret as Objectivism, while opting for the same law of the jungle, might making right pathology shared by actual Objectivists, soldiers, rapists and murderers the world over and throughout recorded history. When Marvel’s Avengers and DC’s Justice League teams have both in recent years indulged in story-arcs where the flagship characters busy themselves with massacring multiple alternate realities filled with countless denizens, “heroically” billed as preemptive self-defense, then when variations of the ordeal occur in global politics of the real world lesser minds will have been made that much more susceptible to the irrational justifications. I mean, the Pentagon is not in smoldering ruins so the public must be entertained by the mass murder inherent to their bipartisan government’s ongoing military occupations in the majority of nations.
By contrast, perhaps what is appealing about metafiction is not the breaking of metaphorical fourth walls, but the capacity for self-awareness along for the ride.
I would not consciously infer that knowledge by itself is magically synonymous with morality, as it’s certainly not the dropouts like me producing genocidal nukes for governments or addictive pharmaceuticals for corporations, but considering power’s naturally corrupting influence as observed by wiser minds than my own, power without knowledge can only possibly be that much more of an impulsive and reactionary thing, because power without knowledge lacks the capacity for consideration whether to be benevolent or malevolent. And as such, is invariably immoral in effect even were immorality never the intended aim, simply by reason of not pointedly striving for benevolence. Power without knowledge is carelessness. Only censors are asinine enough to assert that information all by itself might be good or bad, when it is how information is used that actually decides such a thing. Alternately, sunscreen is a thing because power all by itself is harmful. But knowledge unto itself, while not automatically moralistic, does lack any inevitably corrupting influence. No matter if it’s social or physical, power expands until it implodes, but knowledge at least carries potential for achieving matters other than destruction or self-destruction, like basic problem-solving. This is what has been suggestively downplayed by themes in our fictions and in our nightly news disassociating power from knowledge, to ignorantly grow the corrupting influence. Which is conflicted with an informed populace were that populace aware of hindsight’s lessons learned and foresight’s predictable consequences. Urged instead to celebrate power when inflating power’s worth perpetuates power’s authority, while pursuing knowledge might lead elsewhere.
It is very likely this is not some vast conspiracy, as powerful people are relentlessly more self-assured than informed, but among the many too cool for school comic book professionals and bloggers, all seem wholly oblivious to such a dangerously mass-distributed theme. Oblivious, or they have no personal objections to disassociating knowledge from power. If it is to be regarded as a given, a fact of life, that power comes free of knowledge, then such a revelation should be outrageously embattled, rather than accepted as a status quo worth aspiring after. And by default, if knowledge comes free of power with the two so purportedly being unrelated, then it comes across as a grotesque rationale for never self-sacrificing or bettering oneself. What would be the point to learning, in such framework, if no power would come of the effort, over oneself or their environs? Whether such writers or their publisher’s editors or the producers in satelliting media are aware of it or not, the messaging of such a theme promotes burying one’s head in the sand all the more. Leaving one’s ass conveniently exposed for the powerful.
Because just as magic itself is fundamentally knowledge, knowledge is power. But contrary to the purposes of creative industries or free market Capitalism, pursuits of knowledge do not have many openings for the glamours of entertainment, the powerlessly codependent nature of entertainers or the entertained.