Critical legal spectatorship and the affect of violence: a cultural legal reading of Netflix’s The Punisher

Abstract

This paper engages in a cultural legal reading of the character Frank Castle (a.k.a ‘the Punisher’) as rendered in Netflix’s Daredevil (2015–2018) and The Punisher (2017–2019). Situated within the superhero genre, Castle is an extreme vigilante who instead of simply capturing criminals, kills them, presenting a critical interrogation of law and justice. The paper focuses on the explicit and implicit justifications presented for the Punisher’s death-dealing violence, examining not only the way he goes beyond the law but aligns to and represents modern legality. Contributing to the literature on law, superheroes and sovereignty, it argues that Castle’s malleable relationship to the law challenges the presentation of the superhero as a figure of exceptional justice. By analysing both the narrative production of death-worthiness alongside the visceral and affective responses elicited from the viewer, the paper considers the ability of a critical legal spectatorship to judge cinematic images of violence.