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Ableism and Classism in Marvel’s Daredevil

“My grandmother, she was the real Catholic. Fear of God ran deep. You'd have liked her. She used to say, "Be careful of the Murdock boys. They got the devil in 'em.”

-Matthew Murdock- Episode 1: “Into the Ring”

These are the words that Matt Murdock utters during his confessional, setting the tone for season one of Daredevil. Netflix's original series is an origin story for  Matt Murdock, a man blinded at a young age in a chemical spill saving another man’s life. When his blindness causes the rest of his senses to increase tenfold, he embarks on a journey leading him to become the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

What sets Matt apart from your expected blind protagonist is that he isn’t bitter about his disability. He is unapologetically disabled and that is what makes his character a fan favorite. The first episode, in particular, does a fantastic job setting up his disability. When Matt’s best friend and colleague, Foggy Nelson, calls him to wake him for a meeting with their realtor it loudly repeats the name of the caller until he answers.  Later, Foggy informs Matt that realtor said that “blind people are God’s mistake.” Instead of reacting to her incendiary language or confronting her directly,  he does everything in his power to make her feel guilty. Upon meeting her she holds out her hand to shake and deliberately holds his out in a different direction, forcing her to accommodate him. Matt continues this and makes her walk her around the office space and describe everything in detail. Foggy and Matt end up agreeing to rent the office space, laughing over the realtor's faux pas when she leaves.

The attention to detail is what clues in the audience to Matt’s daily limitations. When going over casework, Foggy has to input all the files into a machine so they can print in braille if they aren’t available electronically.

 He has to feel for clasps to open things.

 He’s so high functioning, the people around him express disbelief numerous times towards his blindness. Matt has accepted his disability, however, there is some evidence that it’s affected him more than he lets on. In his interactions with others, Matt comes off as emotionally stunted. With both of his romantic relationships in season one, he’s portrayed as someone who has a lot of emotions to express but holds all of it in. In a flashback to his days in a  Catholic orphanage, the nuns mention giving up on him because they don’t know how to care for a blind child. This may explain why he shuts himself off from others. The only person he acts blase around is his friend Foggy. Foggy is wonderful in the way that he never blinked an eye at Matt’s blindness. When they first met as college roommates, Foggy comments on how attractive Matt is, looping that around to his blindness “being a chick-magnet.”

Something else that jumps out is the way Matt keeps his face rigid. His face remains devoid of emotion until he’s attempting to endear/empathize with someone. He comes alive, stumbling over his words and becoming a person the audience can connect with. This might imply that since it's been so long since he’s seen his own face he doesn’t know what it’ll look like, making his default expression blank. 

 Despite all this, he manages to jump across rooftops to protect the people of Hell’s Kitchen. Early on in his vigilante career when he was known as “the man in the mask”, he pursues a group of men who kidnaped a young boy without any backup. The fight scene that ensues is iconic. It’s even more impressive when you remember that yes, Matt has zero light perception and despite his other senses, he is blind.

Classism is a major theme in Daredevil that ties in heavily with the reason Matt became a vigilante. With Matt being a defense lawyer striving to protect the innocent, Nelson and Murdock primarily take on clients who have been wronged by white-collar officials. Hell’s Kitchen is mainly comprised of the working poor. Which brings us to Wilson Fisk aka Kingpin.

Fisk is a man with all his irons in the fire. A native of Hell’s Kitchen, Fisk had a rough childhood with an abusive father, leaving him with an impulsive desire to control his surroundings. He’s the pinnacle of class and the surroundings of Hell’s Kitchen make him sick. His goal in season one is total gentrification, making his moniker “Kingpin” well deserved. The characters, Fisk and Murdock, are perfect foils for each other; similar traits yet contrasting values. They both labor under the idea of saving Hell’s Kitchen and use whatever’s at their disposal- Matt with his fists and Fisk with his deep pockets. Fisk personally believes that Matt’s method of making the world a better place by helping the little people is a foolish goal.   

 “I want to save this city, like you. But only on a scale that matters”.

-Wilson Fisk to Daredevil- Episode 6 : “Condemed”

 This is Fisk verbally denouncing most of the people in Hell’s Kitchen by insinuating their lives can be sacrificed to reach his endgame. Needless to say, once Matt works out the civilian identity of Kingpin he isn't happy. The problem is that the police force has been bribed by Fisk to make his plans come to fruition at an accelerated pace. They dismiss Matt publicly in the police department, originally with the basis of his blindness interfering with his facts and then pointedly denying Fisks’s involvement. With no one else to bring his evidence to, Matt takes the law into his own hands.

In Episode three, titled Rabbit in a Snow Storm, the viewers are introduced to a painting of the same name. Fisk is drawn to the artwork, explaining to the curator of the exhibit that it reminds him of his bedroom in his childhood home, that it reminds him of possibilities. This is a subtle nudge at the main theme in the show: who are you? What are you becoming? Fisk’s bottomless pockets and the connections he has in the criminal underworld are a major factor into his identity and the painting acts as the imagery to explain this. Fisk is shown staring at this painting throughout the show, depicting his rise in power as he corrupts the city with his influence.

 As a mirror to Fisk’s ascent through society, Matt struggles to remain above the crime syndicates he entangles with. He frequently is seen inside the confession booth speaking to Father Lantom trying to justify his sin. Matt eventually finds strength in his faith, using God to strengthen his resolve to protect humanity. He uses his personal limitations to create his own superpower while fisk hides behind his massive frame and wealth to obscure his personal failings. The dichotomy between Wilson Fisk and Matthew Murdock is complex but  Daredevil makes one thing very clear, you don’t have to be the richest or the strongest- justice is truly blind.

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Look In The Mirror, What Do You See?

My mother is a firm believer in public school ruining children. When I was younger I didn’t quite understand. Everyone would trade snacks with each other and nap time was the highlight of my day. I think the main reason why she hated my school so much was due to it being “lesser” in her eyes. There was an even mix of black and Hispanic children at my school and approximately ten to fifteen white kids overall. Eventually, the teachers who cared about our education slowly disappeared, to be replaced by adults who would act as though their job was a chore. Around the end of fourth grade my elementary school was ranked fourth worst in the state and coincidentally our lease on our cozy apartment was up. After tearful goodbyes to all the friends I made I got my uniform and started my final year of elementary school at a posh private school on the north side of town.

My mother and I were the only black family in the neighborhood. My mother made our neighbors one of her apple pies as a show of goodwill. When we stepped onto their porch a man immediately opened the door with a smile and started chatting with my mother until he noticed me.

“Where are your parents,” he had asked me with a smile. I decided that I didn’t like him.

I gestured to my mother, offended. We had the same nose, the same eye shape, the same coarse hair that grew out instead of down. People would always tell me that I’d grow up to look exactly like her. How did he not see we were mother and daughter? My mom sighed and explained that I was not adopted, how she had albinism and that she was a black woman with little to no melanin in her skin.  He nodded but even when I was barely ten years old I could tell he didn’t fully grasp what she was saying. My mom fobbed the pie over to him and we returned to our home.

The rest of the summer passed uneventfully.  I refused to get to know any of the kids in the neighborhood, choosing to reminisce on days spent playing double dutch with the companions I left behind. Eventually, the first day of school was on the horizon. I got my first and last school uniform of khaki, white and navy. I giggled in the store when my mom showed me my uniform because at my old school khaki was considered a “white people color”. I was mortified, having sworn ages ago to never be caught dead in khaki and for the first time, I was grateful for the miles between me and my friends.  

Fortunately for me, I had the mysterious guise of the girl who no one had ever met to use when I went to school. Surprisingly everyone was very nice to me. I had expected far more suspicion from the other children when I arrived. Several girls came up to me and said they liked my cornrows. However, a few kids weren’t as welcoming as the rest. They were the “bad kids” one of the new friends I’d made whispered to me at recess. Their leader was named Anthony and he had curly brown hair and sharp grey eyes with a menagerie of bobble-headed boys backing him up at every turn. I thought I could win Anthony over and make a new friend so at lunch about a month into school I tried to give him some of the chicken salad my mother packed for me. He slapped it out of my hands and yelled: “I don’t any of your stinky food you bald gorilla!”

His yes-men began a chant that swept through the whole cafeteria, “Vanilla, vanilla, bald gorilla!” they shrieked at me. I left the cafeteria in tears.

Fifth grade was the year I truly learned how to hate.

I hated how the friends I had made in those first idyllic months of school turned from me as though we had never talked before in our lives like I was a ghost. I hated how with a few words I felt ashamed of the hair that my mom took care of and braided for me. In hindsight, I was nowhere near bald.  My hair had gone to the tips of my shoulders in the fifth grade. It was the way Anthony had spit those words out with pure vitriol, his sharp eyes cutting just as deeply as his tongue. He wholeheartedly believed the poison he was spreading. It hurt that it was so easy for others to wash their hands of me.

I went to great lengths to shed my “gorilla” attributes. I was proud of the light brown color skin(my grandmother once told me it was the exact shade of a fancy drink she had in Paris when she was younger) so I focused on things that were easier to change. I started to fry my hair trying to make it as thin and straight like my classmates. When Christmas rolled around I asked for designer clothes and a Vera Bradley backpack. I hated paisley then and now but if everyone else wore it must have been a part of the white culture I missed out on in my old school.  I shackled myself to white culture attempting to erase what made me so unique. It got to the point where I got rid of my pink glasses to exchange them for green contacts.  When I graduated my mother informed me that I’d be returning to public school. On the outside, I complained incessantly to cover up how elated I was at the news.

I reunited with my old gang. From time to time they’d call me out on some of the habits I picked up “Morgan that's so bougie look what the white people did to you!” We became inseparable up to the moment we got our diploma. Eventually, I became more comfortable with my heritage. By the time I graduated high school I was back to my glasses and letting my poofy hair do its own thing. If I bought clothes that happened to be designer I’d be pleased but it wasn’t as manic about them as before. I donated anything in my possession that could even be considered paisley. People from my fifth-grade class would come up to me in the halls and joke about how I never wore my glasses and squinted at everything like we were old pals. It was surreal in a way- the way that humans remember events differently.

Anthony sat two rows in front of me at graduation. I had no idea he even went to our school. I braced myself for a sneer, all the confidence I had gained over the years floating away. When he got up to receive his diploma he stared at me and nodded. I nodded back.

That’s really all I can ask for, isn't it?