Premium
The ‘superman’ solution: ‘Super soldiers’ and ‘superheroes’ in the United States military
Author(s) -
BICKFORD ANDREW
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8322.12605
Subject(s) - superman , variety (cybernetics) , proposition , sociology , law , psychological intervention , aesthetics , environmental ethics , media studies , political science , psychology , history , epistemology , computer science , art , philosophy , psychiatry , artificial intelligence , art history
Current US military research focused on the development of pharmacological ‘super soldiers’ – soldiers enhanced through a variety of pharmaceuticals and biomedical technologies to perform far beyond what unenhanced soldiers can do – draws from and often mimics popular or pop‐cultural conceptions of the superhero. These biomedical and pharmacological interventions pose profound ethical problems and possibilities that are solved – in part – by imagining the new US super soldier as a superhero. Drugging soldiers to enhance their ability to fight and survive is a frightening proposition, and one that makes people uncomfortable; the solution is to imagine them as superheroes – as positive representations of the enhanced soldier on the side of good, somehow contained and controllable and fundamentally safe and unfrightening.