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| Marvel's The Punisher |
For the most part, The Punisher walks the tightrope admirably. But there are missteps here and there, which seem to be the necessary pitfall of long term storytelling. Part of the problem arises in the realization that Frank Castle, the titular "Punisher," is not a character who translates well to long form serialization, instead working better in a more old fashioned procedural, "story of the week" format. His character arc is relatively small and tough to trace over the course of 13 hour-long episodes without beginning to feel stale and repetitive. However, the slog through the sometimes meandering story is made worthwhile by the fact that the writers have a remarkable understanding of the primary character, and by Jon Bernthal's ferocious performance as the haunted, tragic Castle.
The story is relatively straightforward. When the series begins, Frank Castle is dead, as far as the world is concerned. But Pete Castiglione is paying the bills by hammering down walls as a construction worker in New York City. Castiglione is, of course, an alias. He is actually Castle, alive and well, living under the radar. He works long hours, swinging his hammer until his hands bleed, then goes home at night to try and power through the rest of Moby Dick and catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. This proves especially difficult considering that his dreams are haunted by the faces of his wife and children, who were killed many months prior in a hit gone bad. In the wake of their deaths, Castle had gone on the warpath, carving a bloody trail through the New York underworld as "The Punisher," a one-man army, taking his revenge against those he believed to be responsible. Now, with his family avenged and the Punisher believed to be dead, Castle struggles to function in the aftermath.
But the past is not so easily outrun, and through an encounter with brilliant hacker and former NSA analyst David Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Castle learns that the people responsible for the deaths of his family are still out there, all tied to an illegal CIA operation, one that Castle was unwittingly party to during his time in the Marines. This brings the threat closer to home than he could have ever imagined. Thus begins the resurrection of Frank Castle, the Punisher.
Castle's uniqueness as a protagonist is worth noting here. There is an effective storytelling trope in the vein of the Byronic hero, which sees a protagonist tormented by a dark past. When it comes to characters who are assassins—characters like Frank Castle—these characters are usually brooding, tired of killing, and looking to leave that life behind. The Punisher stands in stark contrast to this stereotype, because Frank Castle worships violence. In the wake of his first round of revenge, when our story begins, Castle doesn't know what to do with himself. Any chance he had of leaving this behind died with his wife and children. Now, he can barely function as a human being. He only snaps back to life the moment the possibility of revenge rears its head. As the time for the kill draws near, a kind of excitement overtakes him, and every kill is carried out in a state of religious rapture. There is very little heroic about Frank Castle, at least in the traditional sense. He functions more as an antihero, one who operates from his own set of ethical principles. On one hand, this makes Castle the most moral character on the show. He has a clear sense of right and wrong, and the punishment he deals to wrongdoers is absolute and final, usually coming in the form of a bullet. The problem with Castle lies in his power of self-determination. He singlehandedly judges what is right and what is wrong, effectively acting as judge, jury, and executioner. Castle thrives on violence, finds his purpose in punishing those he deems deserving of it.
The toll this takes, not just on Castle, but on those around him, becomes the driving force of the show's first season. There's a brilliant moment in the fifth episode, when Castle meets with an old acquaintance, journalist Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll). There are shades of Faithful from The Pilgrim's Progress in Page's character, as she's the one who stays the course and, in doing so, helps the protagonist to do the same. Castle espouses his usual belief that he has to find the people who murdered his family so that he can kill them, to which Karen finally asks, "So where does that end, Frank? Because I look at you and my heart breaks because all I can see is this endless, echoing loneliness." And perhaps the most telling thing of all is how quickly Castle retorts, "I'm not lonely, Karen." The truth is that Castle cannot see himself, he marches ever forward on his quest for vengeance, never once stopping to consider himself. His relationship with Page is crucial. He is drawn to her, but she perplexes him. Perhaps it's because she sees right through him. Viewers who aren't watching carefully might be tempted to see a hero in Frank Castle. The truth, however, is exactly what Page describes as endless, echoing loneliness. It's this trait that makes Castle a sympathetic, almost pitiable character. What The Punisher gives us is a man who simply refuses to cope with loss, and grief. Someone who deflects it all and reaches deep into the well of rage that, by his own admission, has always been present in his life, even from childhood, in order to manage his trauma. It's a tragic dimension of character, a willful act of self-destruction that Castle refuses to see about himself. He thinks he's keeping himself alive, when the reality is that, little by little, he is suspending more and more of his humanity with every life he takes. "I want there to be an after for you," Karen says to him, telegraphing where this story is heading, and the choice Castle will ultimately have to make. In many ways, this pivotal conversation lays the groundwork for Castle's character arc for the remaining episodes.
Yet another powerful conversation occurs in the eleventh episode of the season, between Castle and the hacker, Lieberman. The Punisher is known for wearing an iconic white skull. When Castle emerges with the skull painted on a suit of body armor, Lieberman says, "That skull? That's a memento mori. It's Latin for, 'Remember you will die.' In Rome, victorious generals would return from war, and so they didn't get blinded by glory, they'd have a slave who would say, 'Remember, you're only human. You are gonna die.' Well, it's meant as an admonition to value your life, to live it well." While Castle dismisses him, Lieberman's insight is a powerful one that, again, viewers who aren't careful can miss: the Punisher is not a hero. He is, like Batman to Bruce Wayne, Frank Castle's singular act of wanton self-destruction. While Castle might find his purpose as the Punisher, he is stunting himself emotionally by refusing to deal with his trauma.
All this makes the final scene of the season the most profound. The show's final episode, tellingly entitled "Memento Mori," sees Castle, having emerged from the shadows to finish bringing down the conspiracy that got his family killed, finally attend the veterans group run by his friend, Curtis Hoyle (Jason R. Moore). For the first time, Frank speaks openly with the group about himself in a stunning monologue: "If you're gonna look at yourself, really look in the mirror, you gotta admit who you are. But not just to yourself, you gotta admit it to everybody else. First time, as long as I can remember, I don't have a war to fight. And I guess, if I'm gonna be honest, I'm just... I'm scared."
Castle's final words can seem oddly out of place for a comic book character. His words signal a movement from within. Because of Karen Page and David Lieberman, Castle has, to some small degree, thawed. He, for perhaps the first time, sees himself. It's an admission of guilt, to be sure. But more than that, it's an acknowledgement of fear. We like the heroes we worship to be larger than life. The problem is that the heroes we worship tend to be profoundly human characters with serious deficiencies of being. Our tendency now is to look to antiheroes, to men like Frank Castle, with the same reverie as those standing in the lineage of men like Atticus Finch and Shane. The truth is that there's no correlation at all. But that doesn't mean that men like Frank Castle have any less to teach us about ourselves. In fact, it's likely that most of us are more like Castle than any of the truly great men of literature. Which is why we should pay special attention to this iteration of the Punisher, and note his character arc.
It's a rare thing that an antihero emerges from his self-medicated state to see himself for who he actually is, much less take steps in the right direction to course correct and become a better man because of it. Yet that is exactly what happens with Frank Castle, and that is exactly what makes The Punisher worthwhile. We travel with Frank Castle through his dark night of the soul. We experience the cathartic release of witnessing him finally unleash on the ones who murdered his family, all the while haunted by the notion that though justice is rightly demanded, perhaps we take the power of self-determination upon ourselves at the expense of our very humanity. And, ultimately, we see Castle make the hardest choice of all, to do the truly courageous thing and take a good, long, hard look at himself and admit that he doesn't like what he sees. And then to look outside of himself for help in dealing with it. That endless, echoing loneliness that Castle finally confronts within himself is actually a terrifying prospect that I suspect is all too real for so many men in the modern era, myself included. And when we're standing on the knife's edge, threatening to stumble over into that dark void and lose ourselves, then we can hope to have the strength of Frank Castle to do the right and necessary thing.
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