Myisha Nawar
Moviegoers are flocking to go see the latest entry in the highly successful Marvel film franchise, Captain America: Civil War. The film began circling around a tragic catastrophe involving inexperienced heroes with Iron Man and Captain America as the two main protagonists. (Hey, I’ll keep the spoilers shunned.) Okay, I’m pretty sure everyone knows this part so it won’t be a spoiler. The story revolves around the US government passing a law requiring all superheroes to register with the authorities in light of some recent superhero-related disaster. Registering with the government would mean revealing their identities to the authorities, submitting to training and being held accountable for their actions. Basically, it would place restrictions on their actions. Iron Man and Cap had a falling out regarding the issue of the registration, each leading a group of heroes in support of their respective causes. This corresponds to their core ethical positions. Let’s look into them, shall we?
Allow me to introduce the pragmatic utilitarian: IRON MAN who is trying to look into the well-being of the greatest number of people. He was the first of the heroes to get news of the impending legislation. He debated in front of the Congress against this new law, assuring them that the heroes will police themselves for government oversight aided them in protecting people better.
However, once the legislation was put into action, iron Man molded to the new situation and decided that supporting it (eventually taking charge of it) was the best was to move about peacefully and ensure a sense of trust in the people for their super powered protectors.
Next up, we have CAPTAIN AMERICA who has been the stalwart defender of principles over pragmatics which limelight issues of right and wrong rather than better or worse. He viewed the new law as a threat to the civil liberties of people who devoted their lives to protecting others. He argued that revealing their secret identities would make them susceptible to leaks and this could put their loved ones in danger. (He has a point!) He opposed any effort to enforce the registration. Cap agreed with what Iron Man said to Congress about the importance of heroes being free to help people without being tied up in bureaucratic red tape, but his decision to go against the new legislation was grounded more in the idea that it was wrong.
I’d like to point out how general moral philosophies such as utilitarianism and deontology rarely settle ethical issues. Instead, they give us tools to think about them. Most of us want to do the best thing and also the right thing, but sometimes we can’t do both, and in those cases we have to turn to our moral judgment to judge how those two imperatives have to be balanced.
Throughout the Civil War storyline, we picture Iron Man and Captain America—as well as Spider-Man, feels the conflict more personally than either of them—struggle with these very questions, and this gives us examples of how we can deal with them in the real world. This struggle is especially transparent when it comes to heated debates over liberty and security, two concepts that are both of central importance. Our task as a society is not to choose between them, but to decide together how we are going to balance them to achieve the pros of both—and I hope we do it more peacefully than Iron Man and Cap did! The world can’t cope with an actual Civil War!