Captain America and the nation's conscience

What does it mean to be American? For one superhero, it means donning yourself in the colors of the American flag, sticking up for the little guy, and making sure you stick to your morals. This week, we dive into the comics of Captain America, and what happened to him – and to the country – post World War II. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from NPR and Throughline. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the US that began 250 years ago.

• 0:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  Over the past few months, we've been exploring how people have pushed and fought to make the promises laid out in the Declaration of Independence come true. And in so doing, they've defined and redefined what it means to be American. And what better example for understanding the identity of the nation than an American superhero?

• 1:02Speaker 02

  We shall call you Captain America.

• 1:07Rund Abdelfatah?

  Captain America. Because of all the heroes, Captain America has always been a mirror into what it means to be American.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

• 1:23Rund Abdelfatah?

  First introduced to comic readers in 1941 on the eve of the United States' entry into World War II, Captain America was depicted as a blond-haired, blue-eyed, white, super soldier. To this day, his superhero costume is red, white, and blue with a giant white star on his chest. He's pretty much wearing the American flag. And his only superhuman power is his strength. He carries no weapon, only a shield. And he fights only when he must.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  He's not someone who has always known power. So he is someone who knows what it is like to be the one getting sand kicked in their face. He's on the side of the little guy. Time for Captain America to go to work.

• 2:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  Many of us know Captain America from the Marvel movies he's in. But let's face it, out of all the superheroes, he doesn't have the coolest superpower. He can't fly, or shoot webs, or turn invisible. But what he does have going for him, aside from his super strength, are his morals.

• 2:32Speaker 05

  He's a character that all the other characters in Marvel look up to when they don't know what's the right thing to do.

• 2:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  The right thing to do.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  I came here to save blood, not to shed it.

• 2:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  In some ways, Captain America is someone many of us might want to be, or might want to believe in, kind of like America itself. We want to live in a place that stands up to bullies, that knows right from wrong, and calls out injustice.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  You are never going to be Superman, unless you suddenly find a lot of money from somewhere. You are never going to be Batman. But there's always that chance, isn't there, that you could one day be Captain America?

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Justice will always triumph.

• 3:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  You, me, any one of us, we could be the good guy, doing the right thing. But what happens when what's right isn't so clear? How does a comic book hero designed to represent America's values survive in a changing world? On today's episode, through-line producer Devin Katayama brings us the story of what happened to Captain America after World War II, and what his identity crisis tells us about what it means to be an American today. That's coming up after a quick break.

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• 4:45Speaker 06

  I'm Kevin Ruess. And I'm Casey Newton. And together, we've been tech journalists for decades. Now, we're your hosts of Machine Gods, a new podcast from NPR that makes sense of what AI means for your work, your life, and all of our futures. Twice a week, we'll be exploring the biggest moves in tech and give you unmatched access to the real titans of industry. Listen to Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  This week on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we talk with fashion designer Daniel Vasevic about why he is in charge of renovating his parents' house. I don't have an architecture degree. Yeah. I'm not an interior designer, but I'm gay. Right. Well, there you are. So how hard can it be? Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our games. Listen to the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  Like all superheroes, Captain America has an origin story. And his goes like this.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  This scrawny guy named Steve Rogers is too weak to volunteer for the army, but he's got grit. So when the US government asks him to be part of an experiment, he doesn't hesitate.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Don't be afraid, son. You're about to become one of America's saviors.

• 5:59Speaker 05

  They inject him with a serum to give him super strength. And?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  There!

• 6:07Speaker 02

  We shall call you Captain America.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  During World War II, Captain America fought Nazi saboteurs and Japanese soldiers.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  Come on out, you skunk!

• 6:20Speaker 05

  He epitomized American power and identity, wearing a red, white, and blue costume that looked like a reimagined American flag.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Justice will always triumph!

• 6:33Speaker 05

  But after World War II, when the US emerged as a global superpower, Captain America didn't have a clear enemy.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Captain America, without a big war that the country is involved in, almost becomes directionless.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  This is Danny Fingeroth. He wrote the book?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee.

• 6:53Speaker 05

  Stan Lee is one of the most well-known comic book writers in history. But at this time, he struggled to find an enemy worthy enough for Captain America, and Cap disappeared from comic books in the 1950s.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  But then, 10 years later, in 1964, Stan Lee brings Captain America back.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Stan somehow made this appearance of Captain America the most important event of my life. I bought three copies. That's right, I invested 36 cents!

• 7:24Speaker 05

  But all of a sudden, this American war hero was in the middle of the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, a war in Vietnam was going on. So where does Captain America fit into all this?

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Cap became this, like, Hamlet kind of character, just always with his hands stapled to his forehead in grief and anguish.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  I don't belong in this age. In this year. No place for me.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  By the late 60s, Marvel was also printing letters from fans inside the comic books, where they would debate who Captain America should be and what he should stand for.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  His roots belong in the past, not now. No one but a dreamer can think the world is safe and peaceful.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  It became known as the patriotism-centered controversy.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Captain America is not a superhero. He's a super American.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Stan saw things were changing, and he also saw that his audience was changing. So it was a big problem for somebody in

• 8:25Speaker 05

  Entertainment like that, you know, if you take a stand on an issue, you potentially lose half your audience. So Stan Lee tried to play it safe, but there was a lot of pressure for Captain America to be something more than a relic of World War II, which is what happened when the next generation of Captain America writers took over. I always wanted a secret room like Batman had, you know, where you go through the grandfather clock and go into the cave or whatever. This is comic book writer Steve Inglehart. I met up with him at his home in Oakland, California. And so we built this. It's a bookcase. That's a secret door.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Inglehart wrote Captain America comics for Marvel in the 1970s after becoming a conscientious objector during the war in Vietnam. So here's this anti-war writer in charge of writing for a war hero. And Inglehart begins to wonder if maybe where the writers perform went wrong was trying to equate Captain America with the American government or military. Instead, Steve thought. What if he stood for American ideals, the stuff that transcends whatever America's doing at this particular time? And then? They caught the Watergate burglars breaking into the Watergate Hotel to burgle the Democrats.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  The incident raises a number of serious questions about the credibility of politicians and political groups.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Inglehart was hooked on this story, as was most of America, and he asked himself. If I were Captain America, what would I do?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  The Secret Empire.

• 10:06Speaker 05

  Steve writes a story that parodies the scandal. So I recast stuff. Nixon's right-hand man was Haldeman, who had been an advertising guy. And I came up with a character called Harderman, who was an advertising guy. And Nixon's reelection committee was the committee to reelect the president, which was known as Creep. And I came up with the committee to regain America's principles, which is known as Crap. And he doesn't say it explicitly in the comic, but the head of the Secret Empire is basically Richard Nixon. Nobody is in doubt, really, who that's supposed to be.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Captain America one day discovered that there were ads being run by the committee to regain America's principles, saying that Captain America was a vigilante, not to be trusted. Then Captain America got thrown in jail.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  But he breaks out of jail and chases the head of the secret empire.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Into the White House, into the Oval Office. All right, mister, into the line. It appears that my gamble has finally failed.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  Captain America wins, of course, but he's also broken.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  So to have that guy find out that the president was a crook, I saw the possibilities of that guy being disillusioned.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  And Steve Rogers stops being Captain America and instead becomes a superhero called Nomad.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  He doesn't want to stand for the America that he just saw.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  Less than a year later, Steve Rogers went back to being Captain America.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  He could stand for ideals even if the president was a crook.

• 11:51Speaker 05

  But Steve Inglehart had forever changed the idea of what patriotism could mean to Captain America, that he could love his country and also not love what his government was doing. And that mutating identity would become the constant as new writers came in. The iterations that followed have often been a response to the moment they're born in, up until the present moment. Cap's been more militant. He fought terrorism after 9/11. Then he was critical of Guantanamo Bay. There have been black Captain Americas, a native Captain America. In the latest Captain America movie, Cap teams up with a superhero originally named Sabra, an agent for Israel's national intelligence agency, Mossad. After

• 12:34Speaker 05

  getting backlash, the studio decided to call her Ruth and had her work instead for the United States. These debates about what Captain America should stand for, who he should fight for, and what is right or wrong, they're all part of the conversation we continue to have about who we are and who we want to be.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  They all ask us, if we were Captain America, what would we do?

• 13:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. If you want to hear the full-length episode all about the origins and many transformations of Captain America, check out the full-length episode, Does America Need a Hero? And join us next week for a look into how America got sold on the prosperity gospel. God says it, I can have it, I believe it, that settles it. The story of what happens when religion, capitalism, and television collide. That's next week. Don't miss it. This episode was produced by Kiana Morghadam and edited by Christina Kim and Julia Redpath, with help from the Throughline production team. Music by Ramtin Arablouei and his band,

• 14:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Kane, Irene Noguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Miner, and Lindsay McKenna. I'm Rund Abdelfattah. Thanks for listening.

• 14:36Speaker 00

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  This week on Up First, we're in the final days before the midterm elections. And this is one of the wonderful things about politics, one of the wonderful things about humanity. We have all this data, we have all this information, and nobody really knows what's gonna happen. We're gonna follow it day by day, through Election Day and beyond. And you can listen to Up First every morning on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:04Speaker 06

  American journalist Austin Tice vanished in Syria over a decade ago. For years, we've been searching for him. And now, we finally have some answers.

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  This is the prison that Austin was in.

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  Oh my god. We found Austin's file. Listen to Where Is Austin Tice? from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.