Does childhood trauma lead to super-villainy? Not necessarily, according to U of C nursing study involving DC, Marvel characters

In a new study on childhood trauma published in the science and medical journal PLOS One, there are some interesting observations about how different people react to difficulties early in life.

Apparently, it can cause you to create mayhem in fits of super-villainy, or you overcome it and become a “force for good.”

These comic-bookish observations are made in the discussion part of the study, released earlier this month by the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Nursing. There are some sobering thoughts about the trajectories of well-known characters who had particularly traumatic childhoods. The Joker, one of Batman’s arch-nemeses and one-time abused child, scored six on an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) questionnaire and mercilessly “wreaked havoc across Gotham City.” Black Widow, on the other hand, scored even higher at eight and yet, after a “period of villainy,” fought Thanos alongside the Avengers in an attempt to save the universe. Applying academic rigour to pop culture is nothing new in universities, even in the nursing faculty. But this was a fairly unusual approach.

“There is a lot of nuance about lived experiences and human experiences in film that we can draw on for clinical practice,” says Julia Wigmore, an assistant professor in the faculty of nursing and lead author of the study. “So there have been connections to books and other types of humanities and the arts in research. But I never quite thought it would be superheroes.”

Or supervillains for that matter. Nevertheless, the study presents the hopeful conclusion that those who scored high on ACE were not necessarily doomed to a life of villainy.

ACE is a standard assessment tool that asks participants under the age of 18 to identify traumatic experiences in their early life, including poverty, food insecurity, divorce, parental death or abuse.

Fourteen researchers from the U of C’s faculty of nursing took part in the study, collectively studying 77 hours of blockbuster films from the DC and Marvel cinematic universes. Twenty-eight characters were chosen from 33 films. That included well-known heroes such as Batman/Bruce Wayne and Spider-Man/Peter Parker. These characters’ childhood traumas have been well-documented in films such as 2005’s Batman Begins and 2002’s Spider-Man. Wayne’s parents were murdered in front of him. Parker’s uncle, who raised him, was also murdered after the teen failed to stop the murderer beforehand.

But there were also more obscure characters studied, including the Huntress, Shang Chi and Black Panther villain Killmonger. The paper was initiated by registered nurses and former U of C undergraduates Bilal Ahmed and Gabriel Joaquino. Each researcher was assigned two or three characters. They watched the appropriate films and determined ACE scores for their heroes or villains based on whatever details were found in the characters’ backstories.

“We needed to make sure we had characters that had enough childhood experiences portrayed in their movies, which was harder than I thought it would be,” says Wigmore. “Some people you know a little bit about their childhood but not a lot, or their childhoods were very convoluted.”

Some of the characters provided unusual challenges as academic case studies. Take Loki, for instance. The supervillain, who is also known as the God of Mischief, is the jealous adoptive brother and nemesis of Thor and has been played by Tom Hiddleston in various movies and TV series in the Marvel Universe. But he is also an immortal deity, which makes determining a linear timeline difficult.

“What is childhood for Loki?” Wigmore says. “We had to be very clear about definitions when we chose our characters. But we wanted a diverse group for sure.”

Wigmore was assigned the relatively obscure character of The Huntress, an anti-heroine played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the 2020 DC Universe film Birds of Prey; and Star-Lord, the superhero played by Chris Pratt in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.

“Star-Lord was pretty interesting,” she says. “With his backstory, his childhood is pretty stable given that he had a loving mom, but she did pass away. His father he never knew and he only comes to know his father in the third movie. So it’s interesting to see the stability that he thinks he has from what he knows of his childhood and then is shattered later on.”

The Huntress, on the other hand, suffered trauma early on.

“She sees her family assassinated in front of her,” Wigmore says. “It’s quite a dark start for her.”

These extreme stories are not standard, of course, when it comes to clinical practice around childhood trauma.

“It’s not quite the case in everyday life,” Wigmore says. “Usually these traumas in these kids are smaller but insidious. It happens over and over again and that’s what makes the trauma rather than something disastrous like the Huntress, where she has watched this mass murder in front of her.”

The study should open up an accessible pathway when talking to children about abuse and trauma.

“It’s a great entry point to talk about really challenging topics like trauma or adverse childhood events,” Wigmore says. “To try and paint the picture through a cinematic lens that is really relatable to people was the hook for me.”

“And I’m a bit of a comic book nerd myself, so I really enjoyed looking into this further,” she adds.