Superhero or a superjerk: watching Deadpool with Sigmund Freud

According to Freud «Superego», it is a part of consciousness, which represents the moral rectitude of the inner superman. But why, then, perfect heroes seem to us so vanilla boring?

Remember, straight-A students were beaten at school, Jesus was stoned to death. Even in Superman vs Batman fight, most viewers will be rooting for the harsh and humane Gotham Knight. Our essence is defined by the issue of an internal everyday struggle — we crave for an ultimate aspiration in life, but we still feel for commoner heroes. We empathize unbearable Tony Stark, with his Posttraumatic stress disorder in «Iron Man 3», morose Jessica Jones, who is trying to wipe the slate clean after the rape, or even cunning Loki, who’s driven by babyish resentment. Say nothing of Bruce Wayne, whose fears set the groundwork for Batman’s muscles.

Yet with a certain comic character, artist Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza did their best. His name is Deadpool and he definitely would have been a favorite patient of a famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, if the last one was born 100 years later. Judge for yourself: a fun-mercenary killer, with a sore head, prohibitively ridiculous sense of humor, an irresistible craving for violence and a sharp tongue, against which Tony Stark seems to be a chanter in church choir, who got «E» for geometry homework. Dreamed about the part of chatty thug since the first «Wolverine», the Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds arrive at this quite complex character on screen.

For about 6 years, Reynolds been putting up with failures that Hollywood Bosses gave to him for the desired part. Then, almost at his own expense, he shot a test patch of film that quasi accidentally leaked into the net. A “fight in the car” snippet had spread viral and became a kick for movie bigwigs to bow out and give the green light for Deadpool. Now all eyes on this charming psycho: he bark to watch his movie in Super Bowl half-time, invites you to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day in his company, or he kicks the ball with Manchester United players. So why the former outsider suddenly became everyone’s favorite?

First things first Deadpool is an parody on golden age superheroes. A guy in a suit with the moral principles of the Cheshire Cat, and with a bag of jokes that Monty Python creators would get jealous for. He knows that what is happening is only a theatrical stage, when the sacred duty of Deadpool is to entertain the reader. That is why the badass talks to audience trashy as a knives hawker, incessantly trolls Hollywood, jokes about Wolverine testicles and shows he’s little too much easy with his superhero duty. By the way, Wolverine get badly often a lot to bear from Deadpool, probably he couldn’t forgive him for that sewn mouth from «X-Men Origins: Wolverine»
movie.

To absolutely upgrade Deadpool’s idiocy, authors simply took a handbook of mental disorders and bestowed their hero with schizophrenia, paranoia, narcissism and a pack of other diseases. That is you, whose mental health is greatly overrated, they say. At this point Freud would have his palms really sweaty. Movie madness still keeps taste and decency, while in comics Deadpool’s clinical record can knock the Hulk out. In the appendage to the above, Wilson suffers from hallucinations and hearing voices in his head. Killing him would be merciful, but just as a Wolverine, he learned to rake himself together after a dubious military experiment.

Deadpool takes care of all the viewer’s attention, as he realizes that our whole life is a big theater. He replaces Morgan Freeman’s voiceover in the movie with a dignity and explains what’s happening in his signature style. In some editions of the comic book, he recalls the previous stories, kills its writers and artists, he drops jokes about your mama, and then he threatens to give you a rape session. In «Wade Wilson’s War» arch, he even invites the reader to guess whether what they saw was true or Deadpool’s played out fiction fantasies. That is exactly why Wilson often gets misunderstood not only by his enemies, but by his partner too.

Wade also made a couple of invisible friends in his head, when gained immortality in the Department X. The first one urges Deadpool to follow his instincts and to live by a code «no compassion to no one», the second one, on the contrary, recommends to restrain burp in public and gives notice that live kittens are no good to be kebab filling. Doesn’t that seem familiar? I mean, Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychological structure, not your moral torment at the party with the last piece of pizza.

In the view of psychoanalysis trailblazer, human personality consists of three parts. The lower part of the psyche is the «Id», the unconscious part of the psyche, which is guided only by instincts and basic needs. It is the «Id» does not see anything bad to spoil the air in the elevator or troll the aged blind African-American woman. So we can call it an «Animal». Deadpool’s «Id» is a lustful mercenary with an irresistible craving for murder and stupid jokes. «I will cut your hands off and you’ll jack off with your feet!».

Above the inner animal is «superego» — the voice of conscience, the medium of moral values, which marks actions in the context of social morality. However, do not believe this sign. Deadpool’s «superego» rarely reaches the highs and moves regardless its course in due form of Donald Trump’s behests.

«Ego» stands even higher over all. It is the higher human consciousness, which uses the «Id» and «superego» as the councilors, but makes own decisions. If a person is healthy mentally, and his «ego» doesn’t go on a tear for a week, then it is like a clever rider tamed a black horse. But we’re talking about Deadpool, who has all three voices waffling in discord inside his head, when «animal» and «ideal man» agree only that Deadpool is an idiot, and they are unlucky to get stuck in this mind. Freud would surely write him a prescription for cocaine (until 1880 year, cocaine was used in experimental psychiatry) with such symptoms. This inner voices choir perfectly illustrates how person makes decisions, when caught between the hammer and the anvil of his own psyche.

So what motivates Deadpool? Funny, but that is love. He must defeat the villain and save the princess, why else laying out this masquerade show? According to Freud, «Eros» lays at the heart of this desire. He embodies the desire to live, to love, to celebrate Friday 7 times a week, to copulate with females and to keep his ass safe. Unlike the movie, in comics Deadpool flirts with every chick get in his way, and his hallucinations are mostly about sex. After he has trip, he just can’t figure out whether it was real or another «deadpoolvision»?

In Deadpool’s head, across the street from Eros lives «Thanatos», which embodies an aggression tendency and self-destruction. According to Freud, all things alive are aiming to death and Deadpool is rushing straight ahead toward it with persistence worth admiring. In a movie, he creates terribly reckless and life-threatening fights, when in comics he can simply bust a cap his own head. Just because been unable to withstand another one speech of Captain America. And in one of the comics’ arches Deadpool fell in love with death itself. He kept, literally, killing himself in many different ways, if only to see her one more time.

Killing such a jerk would be merciful. Or maybe curing him could worth a try? Let’s check. In «Deadpool: a team game» comics, authors put their thinking cups about that and came to a definite conclusion. In the story, to defeat the invincible enemy, in whom Deadpool’s inner voices grown together, Wilson put a knife in his brain and cut the corpus callosum, which bounded brain hemisphere. This method was once treated for epilepsy: a person received two independent word centers, but periodically experienced a feeling of bodily “out of sync”. As if with one hand you are stroking the cat, and at the same time, with a second hand you punish the cat, because he pissed in your slippers. And then a perfect silence came in Deadpool’s head, but it was so sad and precise like a-slo-o-o-w-w-ly-moving freight train loaded with sludge. «So that’s what it means to be a complete imbecile like you are!» — he talks after recovery.

The words he says, referring either to the villains, or to readers. How else? After all, the crazy sense of humor and the voices in his head tease Wade Wilson out of other comic book characters. During his life he almost screwed death, punched Captain America in the balls, kicked Hulk’s ass with a help of road sign to save the world, earned a lot of money and bought a dozer, which was used as a pirate ship. Indeed, can’t remain serious, when the guy saving the world donned in red underpants and a villain assign himself the alias Killgrave. So leave your idealism to the X-Men, because we see a different movie here.