LA PIEL SECRETA

Hablando de tipos disfrazados y de (auténticos) superhéroes, ya que el otro día charlábamos aquí sobre los superpijamas pego ahora algunos extractos de un extenso artículo del escritor Michael Chabon publicado esta semana en el New Yorker. En él, el autor de LAS ASOMBROSAS AVENTURAS DE KAVALIER & CLAY (novela para la cual se documentó a fondo sobre la industria del comic-book de los años treinta y cuarenta, inspirándose para ella en autores reales como Will Eisner, Joe Simon o Jack Kirby) y guionista de la serie de cómic THE ESCAPIST, diserta largo y tendido sobre la naturaleza del traje del superhéroe, que según Chabon es "por definición, un objeto imposible", un objeto que "no puede existir":

Now the time has come to propose, or confront, a fundamental truth: like the being who wears it, the superhero costume is, by definition, an impossible object. It cannot exist.

One may easily find suggestive evidence for this assertion at any large comic-book convention by studying the spectacle of the brave and bold convention attendees, those members of the general comics-fan public who show up in costume and go shpatziring around the ballrooms and exhibition halls dressed as Wolverine, say, or the Joker’s main squeeze, Harley Quinn. Without exception, even the most splendid of these getups is at best a disappointment. Every seam, every cobweb strand of duct-tape gum, every laddered fish-net stocking or visible ridge of underpants elastic—every stray mark, pulled thread, speck of dust—acts to spoil what is instantly revealed to have been, all along, an illusion.

(...) But realism is not, in fact, merely difficult; it is hopeless. A plausibly heroic physique is of no avail in this regard, nor is even the most fervent willingness to believe in oneself as the man or woman in the cape. Even those costumed conventioneers who go all out, working year-round to amass, scrounge, or counterfeit cleverly the materials required to put together, with glue gun, soldering iron, makeup, and needle and thread, a faithful and accurate Black Canary or Ant-Man costume, find themselves prey to forces, implacable as gravity, of tawdriness, gimcrackery, and unwitting self-ridicule.

Por otra parte, para Chabon hasta que aparece Superman (1938) no existe realmente el género de superhéroes. Aunque por entonces ni siquiera existía aún esa palabra, como puede leerse en el relato de Eisner del post anterior, digo yo que precisamente creamos nuevas palabras para nombrar cosas o conceptos que nos parecen nuevos. A lo que íbamos: según Chabon, es en Superman donde se inventa y agota el género. "Todos los tropos, clichés, convenciones, posibilidades, anhelos, deseos y neurosis que han conducido y alimentado y cargado los cómics de superhéroes durante los últimos 70 años estaban implícitos y contenidos dentro de aquel pequeño cohete rojo que se precipitó hacia la Tierra":

There were costumed crime-fighters before Superman (the Phantom, Zorro), but only as there were pop quartets before the Beatles. Superman invented and exhausted his genre in a single bound. All the tropes, all the clichés and conventions, all the possibilities, all the longings and wishes and neuroses that have driven and fed and burdened the superhero comic during the past seventy years were implied by and contained within that little red rocket ship hurtling toward Earth. That moment—Krypton exploding, Action Comics No. 1—is generally seen to be Minute Zero of the superhero idea.