When I first started writing popular press essays in 2018, I wanted them to aid larger academic publications I would eventually or potentially write. Since then, and particularly during recent reflections on my sabbatical, I have come to view those essays, collectively, as serving additional functions. Functions that may be useful for other academics who operate or are considering operating in this space. Some have a build function, some have a simmer function, and some have a test function.

There is only so much a constitution or shared normative structure for and by humans can do to address the social fact of superheroes, as they are metahumans. So if working together, as President Ross asks Sam Wilson/Captain America to do, is really possible, it would need to be under a new constitution or shared normative structure that updates what it means—for humans, metahumans, and the state—to have responsibilities, rights, and recourse.

He shared with me how artists and producers sometimes (or often) create soundscapes aimed toward communicating a certain mood, sentiment, or theme. Some examples he gave were recording the sounds (1) of everyday activity while walking around town, (2) snowboots make when walking in the snow (for a song related to the winter), and (3) of making beats on a classroom desk (for a song about high school). Through these examples, I interpreted the notion of a soundscape as akin to a sort of sound ecology or sound outline, where the artist or producer wants to usher in or invite listeners into a particular sound environment in a structured or semi-structured way.

During my sabbatical, as I have reflected more on the influence of hip-hop music on my development and the progression of my scholarship since 2018, I have, in typical Justin fashion, been exploring potential connections across these two influential areas or domains of my life. Namely, that there are parallels between how different music elements are modified and combined and how different ideas and analytical frameworks or perspectives are brought to bear in (my) academic writing. And by “music” I am referring to the elements related to the (1) track itself, (2) lyrics and rhyming style (e.g., the use and combinations of words, ideas, etc.), and (3) synchronization of (1) and (2).

Through contrasting the perspectives of Matt and Frank, we gain a better understanding of what it means to remain within a system desperately needing change and what it means to opt out of that system altogether. Decisions that, taken together, clarify their respective orientations toward justice and others as Daredevil and the Punisher, while simultaneously encouraging us to reflect on the nature of our own lives as co-creators of our social existence.