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Institutional agency
Having worked with, if not the high and mighty, their mundane (Arendt might even say banal) middle managers, I am fascinated by the tension between the institution and individual agency.
UPENN’s elite Wharton School (an ivory tower from whence the high and mighty emerge ever ready to rule) says that an individual cannot, by him or herself, change an institution.
David Graeber agrees, in a way, noting that superheroes are, by default, upholders of the status quo, continuously using their excess of power and wealth to maintain some preconceived balance that, once lost, will (according to the script) plunge everyone into violent chaos.
(Graeber goes so far as to note that it is the supervillains who seek structural social change but who — again, according to the script — must do so in a violent, mass murdery way so that we, as viewers, don’t identify with the villain too much…it’s better for the film producers if we identify with millionaire playboy Tony Stark or the elitely educated — possibly at Wharton — Hulk. One needn’t wonder why this perspective is cinematically endorsed given film…
