Marvel's (Deceptively) Empty Politics, Explained | A Video Essay
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- Alternate title: Catharsis, Coercion, and Marvel's Conservative Cinema
The MCU could actually be influencing our society, politics, and ideology, more than we realise. This video delves into the normative politics of the MCU and the way it dilutes ideology and radical sentiment through the theories of Augusto Boal, Aristotle, and Machiavelli. Join me in a journey from the ancient Greek roots of modern drama to the present day, as we figure out just how and why Marvel films support the status quo.
Check out my Patreon! / pillarofgarbage
Join the Pillar of Garbage Discord server! / discord
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:47 Chapter One, Aristotle and Drama's Social Function
9:02 Chapter Two, Catharsis and Coercion
15:30 Chapter Three, Marvel's Centrist Catharsis
25:35 Chapter Four, Machiavellian Virtù and Bourgeois Myths
32:01 Chapter Five, Marvel's 'Great Men' and Establishment Values
36:08 Chapter Six, Alternative Viewpoints
39:13 Conclusion
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is an American media franchise and shared universe that is centred on a series of superhero films, independently produced by Marvel Studios and based on characters that appear in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The franchise has expanded to include comic books, short films, television series, and digital series.
#marvel #mcu #politics 
Развлечения
So basically Marvel movies indirectly support the conservative idea that we should not try to change the government because it’s the best it can be, the only ones that dictate how to operate the world are the powerful and exceptional while the others are powerless. That is presented by the heroes in Marvel movies being exceptional, not only physically, but mentally whilst the villains are revolutionaries that are acting too radical. If that’s the message that the video says Marvel movies are (feel free to correct me if I am missing or misinterpreting something), I gotta say, I agree with the fact, that it can be a problem. Silencing people and sustaining the status quo isn’t usually the right thing to do.
That's not the Conservative opinion. The Conservative opinion is "the government is already in enough of my life".
The left desire more government interference, a safety net under every aspect of life. A Conservative is willing to say "shit happens, leave me alone"
Exactly. Exceptional people are morally obligated to change the world as they see fit. Everyone else need to shut their trap and be a good little cog in the machine.
Dawg, its a series of movies where costumed dorks fight eachother and say the corniest shit on earth. Why are all of the leftist/ right wing theories so scitzophrenic😂
That is not the conservative idea. We do believe that the government should be changed. Not dramatically, but that it does need some small tweaks like set term/age limits, reaffirming of the amendments in more firm language and ultimately, that government needs to be as small as possible and as Un-invasive as possible within reason.
Nah conservative believe in police state 🤣now they d riding them to the max , not sumting cap belvies in
You're one of the few people that truly gets what "Civil War" was actually trying to say. Most people still believe that the film wanted the audience to pick sides when in reality Tony was the villain of the story. You'll see a lot of people still saying that they're team Iron Man which indicates the surface-level opinions that the majority of people hold in the modern world lacking any nuance.
_Sounds like something a Team Cap traitor would say._
As I mentioned in the vid, I’m definitely planning to go deeper into this idea soon, but yeah, structurally Tony is the villain, and - while there is perhaps a little more subjectivity when it comes to the movie’s themes - I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that CW treats his views as wrong and Cap’s as right. The really interesting part, though, comes when you dig into the implications of why the MCU ‘needs’ Cap to be right…
@@PillarofGarbage because super heroes are inherently individualistic, they’re “special” for some reason and stand out from the masses in various ways
@@PillarofGarbage the fact is, towards the end, even the movie gives up on the idea of the accords. Like, even Tony goes off on his own to find Cap in the end and he promises to give him and Bucky some leeway. HISHE put it bluntly-nobody cares about the accords. Everyone who was on team iron man's side was there because they had their own set of agendas and once they were met they immediately switched sides or left the team. Not to mention, Steve being a guy who started out as someone who believed in the system and then going against it seeing how corrupt and agenda driven it has become-being run by people who care more about their own political gain and their own growth rather than serving the people they are supposed to protect-makes more sense. Not to mention, seeing falcon and the winter soldier, seeing how the government wants to have its own version of cap and passing him off as something of a U.S. figure when Steve since the beginning has always gone against orders and the government.
Even shows like Young Justice deal with this premise of superheroes being sanctioned and approved by the government with similar results.
It REALLY sounds like he doesn’t get what Civil War was actually trying yo say then, and neither do you. Because this is completely false.
Excellent video. Art brought by big corporate conglomerates will always be pro status quo, as they have already attained power by their own virtuous means - According to them. We have to look to the small creators for messages about true change.
How do you explain Final Fantasy VII?
The only MCU movie I felt to be politically interesting was the first Iron Man, it put a billionaire weapons manufacture in a situation where he had to reconcile with the horrors of his own productions and comments on how those weapons can fall into the wrong hands. It’s an interesting story where he shifts from businessman who had no concern for the betterment of the world to an actual hero.
Edit: since some weird stuff happened in the replies I want to elaborate further for those who might experience similar misunderstandings. What I’m saying specifically refers to the first Iron Man movie, I’m aware Tony went back to producing weapons in the MCU, I’m very much against that, and I’m speaking on this movie alone.
And then in winter soldier we see he's gone right back to making weapons
& homie said movie instead of installment clearly not considering either DD or CapFalcon
The thing is: does he actually change to an "actual hero"? He isn't worried about how many people the weapons he made killed, he's worried about how many US citizens were killed by them, he doesn't give single fck about "the horrors of his own productions" if those are made to non-US citizens.
It also contextualizes why he goes the hero path. He can’t mass produce, because he can’t trust people anymore, given what happened to his other weapons, and he can’t just give money to charity, for the same reasons. He needs to see the people who die and who live at his hands with his own eyes, because of how much harm his ignorance has caused. It's not a healthy or unproblematic aproach, but it's an understandable one. Can’t do nothing, and cannot leave it to others.
@@lydiasteinebendiksen4269 great analysis
i feel like tony was painted as wrong in civil war because of why he was pro accords. Tony was acting off of guilt, but cap was against the accords because they went against his beliefs. In actuality, the conflict of civil war is mostly about bucky. I feel like marvels issue is disney. See, disney wants to pander to as many people as possible, and they fear isolating certain groups, so marvel cant fully politically cater to onside or the other. I feel like the mcu is great at human emotions (loss, guilt, PTSD) but isnt great at real life human conflicts outside of allegory
Tony is a tool. Tony is unable to responsibly handle himself let alone handle world-threatening decision making. He learns to be a hero but he is a deeply flawed person. Guys relate to him but what ARE you left with when you take away the billionaire playboy philanthropist factors and are left with the average man, a financially struggling romantically-challenged chauvinistic alcoholic?
Rant over, but Tony is a tool for the authoritarian government and can easily let his emotions be used against him. In this respect he is just like Peter quill but worse. Tony had to be personally bombed before he had the epiphany that making weapons to hurt good people was bad.
@@indatube Peter is never really presenting himself as hero, which may come from his space pirate origns, and is in less a position of power puts himself into, and repeatedly abuses. So yes tony is worse.
Its worse that the narrative iron man one and 2 aside never call him out on that. Even in civil war, ok he gets thanks to hawkeye but not enough.and there he literally is a useful too to a shady in the mcu universe ex hydra led organisation.
Its more than about bucky, as its about trusting the institution that harbored hydra. Through he isa catslyst, other than tony being guilt tripped to put his issues and sins, on the avengers. He made ultron, he made iron man suits some got stolen, his past and parents leadibg to dangerous revenge, thats mainly tony.
And ross and hulk, doubt hulk would be happy.
Very much this, and I think their allegory game doesn't always get the credit it deserves. Thor Ragnarok literally blows up colonialism because it cannot be saved from its toxic history. Wandavision unambiguously places all of its lead character's trauma at the feet of the US government, while pointing out that its fictions do their best to paint over their sins. All of the S-M Trilogy reiterate what a bad role model Stark is and have a deep mistrust of authority. It's rarely nuanced, and never explicit (as you say, Disney) but at its best it is there.
Lol the boldest stance the MCU has been willing to take was “Operation Paperclip was really weird and we probably need to reflect on the potentially very real consequences that may have come from embedding literal Nazis in our government and research programs.” Yeah, pretty uncontroversial, but it was also a pretty amusing thing to see a mainstream blockbuster tackle.
@@davincic0der except Thor Ragnarok literally ends with Thor getting inspiration from a war criminal and making the same mistake as he becomes a king of refugees(do you realise how fucked up that is) by taking the throne and Spidey trilogy antagonises the working class as the main character never for once, questions his misguided trust in Stark and hell, doesn't even bother with what Keaton and Gyllenhaal are even saying about him. The second film in particular ends with Peter keeping Edith which is basically a third drone warfare program made by Stark(he learned nothing from his past experiences)
Fantastic hearing that a gent from across the pond understands that the present American administration is nominally center left but actually conservative. This progressive has been trying without much success to demonstrate this to American Dems that don’t understand the difference between centrism (particularly that which props up oligarchy) and progressive change for decades.
It is heartening that the truth of the matter is objective enough to be clearly seen by someone outside of the clamor. Gives me hope that eventually domestically those who should be able to recognize the difference just might do so and effect real change.
Much love.
The USA has no left
From a conservative, I feel like the administration is not even center left but comfortably left. So I guess it all matters on where ur viewing from
I would like to point out that view obscures something. For the past forty years, the US has been stuck with neoliberal economics, and the current administration is trying to change that. Now, with that being said, the results of that effort might be less than what was intended, since two Democratic senators and the Republican Party got in the way. Let's take the Build Back Better Act, for example. If it passed the Senate, it would have radically altered almost every part of life in the US, even in its post-Joe Manchin negotiation version. In its original version, that transformative power would have been amplified. I would hardly call that conservative. Sure, it's not getting the country as far as many European countries, but no one law can, and this was a massive step forward. It is also worth noting the foundation of the legislation was proposed by Biden's campaign revamp back in July 2020--because his campaign worked with Bernie Sanders. His original campaign was moderate, but not his later campaign and presidency. Terms like moderate, conservative, etc. can really over be viewed in-context, and that context needs to be determined appropriately. In this case, sure, the results of the Build Back Better Act might have been moderate, but only from the perspective on the outside, and in terms of how much it would change things, it would definitely not have been moderate. Those terms need to define how much things are changing, not just the results. Going back to how this whole thing started, if you are calling the administration conservative, then that includes the Build Back Better Act, so...are you indirectly calling Bernie Sanders conservative? Or, rather, which parts of the situation are you calling conservative? I might have been jumping to conclusions in that last set of connections, but I am not really sure what your argument is. It just rings a bit hollow, shall we say.
@wyatttomlinson3475 well said. I think the word conservative means different things to different people, and I would have better phrased my original post to have said 'centrist' rather than 'conservative'. You are not wrong here overall, but my larger point was that I would like to have actual progressive leadership in line with actual progressive platforms and policies. The core issue I was trying to express is that centrist dems masquerade as being progressive, but don't actually fight for progressive policies. If Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg or any of the other centrists who ran against Bernie in the 2020 Primary election cycle) would like to change my mind on this, they are welcome to push for universal Healthcare.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading your thoughtful response, and I remain hopeful that one day the United States will experience true progressive leadership, and start to catch up with Europe. I remain convinced that as the right keeps moving further right, centrism isn't going to get us where we need to be. Centrism in a game where the goal posts are shifting right is centrism that is also shifting right to accommodate remaining in the center of the new playing field. Hope that makes sense.
Have an awesome 4th.
@@make.and.believe I think this is where we slightly disagree. I don't think Biden is centrist, just not as left as Bernie or others might be. The US would have started catching up with Europe if the Build Back Better Act was passed, so I blame Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema to a lesser extent, not necessarily Biden himself. Is he going as far as I want the US to be? No, but at least to me he's not necessarily centrist. In the topic of what is centrism and what is progressivism, you can't really define a certain policy as the benchmark, since all progressivism is is progressing beyond what we have now in a big way. This is why I define Biden in some respects as progressive--though certainly not as progressive as Bernie or others, and not completely progressive, even compared to his economic policies. I'm just pointing out it isn't the best idea to define an idea such as progressive as something arbitrary or a specific policy, because even something that changes things a lot but doesn't hit that exact policy isn't considered progressive, which is, to me, iffy. It is okay to do that in some respects to keep the perspective of change in mind (for example if things change a bit, it is useful to put that change in perspective), but at some point that breaks down. I hope all that makes sense.
As an addendum, Biden was pushing for universal healthcare, just as the public option route and not via a single-payer system. Though, oddly, it hasn't come up in his term yet. Maybe it will, especially if he is re-elected. But that's a slight digression.
Oh, and regarding centrism changing, it can shift the other way too, to the left. That's what Biden did after his campaign talked with Bernie's--his policies shifted to what we saw in the summer of 2020, and later, with the Build Back Better Act.
Very based video, nice to see that the superhero community isn’t as reactionary as it often comes off as being to newbies like me.
There’s too many reactionary / alt-right pipelines in the superhero community, I feel - one of the things I’m trying to accomplish with this channel is to become a voice of reason in that same cultural space.
I feel like something that could help is introducing character with superpowers who aren’t really heroes or villains but just regular people who sometimes do good or bad things, it might help divorce the concept that those with super abilities (equivalent to extreme wealth or fame) aren’t fundamentally different from the rest of us and that their flaws & virtues should be judged no differently than if they were powerless. Maybe it wouldn’t do any thing if the sort, but at the very least it would be a nice way to break up the tropes a bit
Mutants from the X-men fit that description to some extent.
The funny thing about mutants is that despite being able to do things normal people can't, they aren't necessarily more capable of shaping our reality than we are.
Like, Tony Stark being a genius means that he has the potential to affect the entire universe. But mutant kids in the X-men universe struggle doing normal things such as living integrated in society.
I'd say that X-Men are hardly about individualism or upholding the status-quo.
I have to say, for all the pseudo-Marxist "breadtube" video essays you can find applying supposedly Marxism to ____ media, to varying degrees of success or quality, this really took me by surprise. You have done an incredible job actually explaining the forces at hand, not falling into using Marxist terminology haphazardly on a given media, or using a piece of media just to talk about a concept, but manage to actually teach and then presciently apply a critique.
This video doesn't just discuss dialectics, but does dialectics, you explored the base and superstructure without necessarily even referring to them by name. Not only is this a fantastic teaching tool, but the essay makes its genuine critique part of the education, not using one to justify the other. Boal seems fascinating, and the breakdown of virtue in drama and its role in justifying the superstructure, emerging out of the Enlightenment was wonderfully direct. Nothing felt like a diatribe, the theory and subject synthesize as best as they can.
Honestly I'd love to see you do something about more explicit media on revolutions, beyond the milquetoast criticism that media made by the bourgeoise will reinforce itself. Explaining HOW it does so and how things developed this way is so important.
regardless, keep up the good work!!
Commenting for engagement. I have always had the feeling that MCU movies followed an otherwise politically moderate ideology and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was the most contemporary example that came to mind in the wake of the uprisings in the US, but seeing and hearing someone do the argument so much justice was one for the history books. Thank you for putting the effort in!
Glad you liked it, thanks for the comment!
No please do not thank him this is an extremely brain dead take on film in general he thinks that because they have powerful characters it makes it bourgeois propaganda but that doesn’t even make any sense he’s manipulating a story to try to make it seem like it’s something it’s completely not based off misunderstanding ideas and plots he is completely wrong I have never seen such a terrible take like this before
@@thecowboy2541 ok bro chill
@@thecowboy2541 Why are you so upset? Its a RUclips video about kids movies.
Stop being so triggered, and remember freedom of speech.
@@wtfcrazygaming i agree that hes overrreacting but saying it doesnt matter cuz theyre kids movies isnt rllt correct either , u say that like u cant have intelligent discussion about these movies just bc hes happening to do it from a place of criticism
Marvel’s always had subliminal messages, why do you think there was so many Russian Supervillains back in the 1960’s? Earth’s Mightiest Heroes clearly is apart of the conspiracy too, like one episode, Assault on 42, Wasp points out how all her allies with her (Thor, Captain America, Ms. Marvel, Clay Quartermain) are all blonde! Coincidence, I think not!
You’re braver than I am. I had to cut the section on the Blondspiracy out of the video - they have eyes everywhere…
All named Chris too. Blonde chris' are all clones
@@ianfyfield6292 Clearly Red Skull is cloning his army and sending them as spies within the Avengers
Wait till you see how many superheroes have blue eyes. Blue eyes are only something in the ballpark of 8% of the world’s population but something like 40% of superheroes. It’s ridiculous.
@@miggypeso909 There’s only one rational answer…THEY’RE ALL NAZIS
Honestly, I can't get behind Steve's arguments against the Accords in Civil War (as they're presented in Civil War, the way AoS and the Marvel Wiki portray them just raises further questions), because... well, American Flag Man leads a paramilitary group with a reputation for collateral damage and says that they should be allowed to do paramilitary group stuff wherever and whenever they want without accountability, otherwise they "surrender the right to choose." The only reason Cap comes off as being in the right in that movie is because he's Steve Rogers and his opponent is Tony Stark. Imagine John Walker making the same argument. Or, hell, imagine the same argument being applied to police accountability.
And it's funny that Tony comes up so much in this video, because I think the Iron Man trilogy is probably the most neutered series in the MCU, politically speaking. Iron Man 1, a mostly great movie, *could* have been "billionaire who's part of the military-industrial complex sees the harm he's brought first-hand, decides he wants no part in this and starts literally fighting the military-industrial complex" but they subvert this by having Iron Man only fight the military by accident and having Stane be working with terrorists and therefore a Bad Weapons Manufacturer, as opposed to the Good Weapons Manufacturers who only work with the military. I have a version of IM2 in my head where Vanko is basically a working class Iron Man, his motivation is that he sees Tony's actions as wasting the arc reactor's potential, Vanko's treated as a good guy who happens to be an antagonist by the narrative, and Howard was *actually* bad instead of being revealed through exposition to have been an Ethical Billionaire All Along. Instead we got... what we got. And then there's Iron Man 3, which can be summed up as "somehow the US military has nothing to do with the powerful American backing the terrorist group made up of all the scary non-westerners we can think of, instead the military is represented by Iron American Flag Man"
I agree with a lot of this, especially the dodgy politics of the IM franchise - but I’m interested in your word choice. The way you describe those films doesn’t sound very ‘neutered’ - it sounds like a pretty pointed series, politically speaking, in support of American foreign policy?
Oookay, it’s clear you did not watch Civil War at all, because nowhere does Steve say or even imply that they should be allowed to do paramilitary group stuff wherever and whenever they want without accountability.
This is something you’ve completely pulled from your ass.
Had you watched the film, Steve raises the point that them having to be supervised to do anything at all by people with agendas is dangerous because agendas change. This is supported by what he went through in The Winter Solider, when SHIELD was infiltrated by HYDRA, whose ideals were so aligned that this infiltration wasn’t even noticed.
It’s almost humorous how you claim you can’t get behind Steve’s arguments against the Accords when you didn’t even listen to his arguments, and instead opted to make up your own.
@@RM-cn8pw Exactly. Steve wasn't against accountability. He was specifically against the accords which was a horrible thing that planned to strip some powered people of their right. Some heroes just have tech like Iron Man, but some like Wanda have powers that can't just be taken away.
@@RM-cn8pw except US Government is NOT United Nations. United Nations doesn't interfere in international borders to do macho blackops shit without any concern for civilians or casualties. Rogers is supposed to be a superhero but he fundamentally makes it clear that "he cannot save everyone" and that's okay when in reality, he isn't even trying. What happened to the guy in the 40s who risked his life and went out of his way to save his comrades? Oh right, Disney magic is what took over his head
@@nalday2534 I never said the US Government was United Nations, Mr Strawman.
And you flat out haven’t watched any of those films if you say Rogers isn’t even trying to save anyone.
“What happened to the guy in the 40s who risked his life and went out of his way to save his comrades?”
Literally nothing. In fact, you’re complaining about him continuing to do exactly that.
“Oh right, Disney magic is what took over his head”
Outside of that statement just being flat out wrong and stupid;
Disney bought Marvel in 2009. Captain America: The First Avenger came out in 2011.
You suck at math.
When you mentioned you didn't agree with Killmonger while heavily implying T'Challa's response wasn't doing much of a difference (opening opportunity centers... in the fucking US, ofc), I think you missed one particular trick at play here. The TL;DR version is: heavy use of the popular fake horseshoe theory, left and right are identical, only the center is pure. That isn't really horseshoe theory, but now is not the time to clear that up and the popular misconception is useful here since it does summarize the issue anyway. Now let me explain.
You see, T'challa's and Falcon/New CA's """solutions""" aren't presented to us as the result of the hero's individual choice after pondering over multiple possible ways to implement their defeated foe's ideals/message in a better way. It is presented as THE correct way. It is always the wrong way of the antagonist, or the way of the hero that must be correct. There are never "and so Wakanda split into 5 tribe-nations, one who kept the old hidden ways, another that went on to do charity and affirmative action in the richest planet on Earth, and the other 3 did something else that I the writer would have to genuinely think about and take a stance on actually, which would also implicate the company releasing this movie", or "and Falcon had a talk with Walker, Bucky, T'challa from the alternate reality BP ending, Spider-Man, and of course a whole lot of people from the communities he dares to speak for and of the several proposals that were heard, which you the audience can also listen, this is the one he taught was the best one for him to do, which doesn't mean it was in fact the better option, or the only option". It is always presented in a binary "the other extreme ways of everyone else, wrong ways" vs "the chad totally correct status quo but kinder super right way", and nothing else. The absurd false dichotomy and lack of imagination of multiple ways, the lack of discourse, the lack of the possibility that the hero could also be wrong in a different way, that is a powerful tool. Gotta hide that the status quo and a borderline cartoonishly bad path are in fact not the only possibilities.
Good point, thanks for commenting!
I can’t behind the politics of either civil war or falcon and winter soldier because their stories muddle up the messages.
Civil war’s big fight comes down not to if the avengers should be held accountable for stuff but because Bucky is on trail because it took Tony way to long to check his emails or whatever
And Falcon and winter soldier is just not well constructed with its story and message fighting against each other with my favorite example is Karli saying that the only thing she regrets about killing Lemar is that his life didn’t matter which considering it’s also a show that wants to address racism in America using those words is like seeing somebody have no self awareness
It could be intentional irony in a way. And why she is the antagonist, representing the same views under different circumstance.
Neither of their stories muddle the message at all.
Then again, from the rest of your comment, it’s clear you didn’t watch either of them. Because no. Tony didn’t “take way too long to check his emails.”
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is actually incredibly well constructed, largely because it’s story and message aren’t fighting each other at all. This doesn’t even make any sense, which would explain why you don’t back it up in any way.
“with my favorite example is Karli saying that the only thing she regrets about killing Lemar is that his life didn’t matter”
So your favorite “example” is something you’ve completely made up. Because she never says anything even resembling this.
I'm in awe of this channel. For being such a relatively-young channel, it's introduced me to so many new ideas and methods of analyzing media.
Additionally, it inspired me to watch A:EMH! That's significant for me as I don't even watch television nor care for the Avengers much lol.
Thanks so much! I will do my best to continue analysing stuff in new and different ways :D
There is a an inherent propaganda element to all media, we are social learners, allegories have messages and watching media passively we learn from them reinforcing those ideas, its why I like media that disturbs me because its touching on something deep with in me that up sets how I see the world. To hear it expanded upon and drawn out like this and to hear where the ideas come from is deeply satisfying though thank you < 3
honestly respect the hell out of this you for talking about topics like this, love this channel
Now redefining "coersive?"
Coersive -- Using force to persuade people to do things that they are unwilling to do.
Now you would like to say that "coersive" is subtly convincing people of ideas through using emotional stories.
Interesting video. These are a few other things I've noticed about the MCU (and superhero fiction in general) that may or may not tie into this video.
1. You bring up a good point about Civil War's marketing, but another reason the "debate" doesn't work is because the Accords aren't actually what the Avengers are fighting about: every conflict between the 2 factions revolves around Bucky, with the accords being a peripheral factor at most. The Avengers may split into different sides of the debate early on, but there's no reason to assume they'd fight had Zemo not intervened. Being Team Tony (regarding the movie's main conflict) is impossible because he's objectively in the wrong.
Isaiah's
3. I like him as a character, but the MCU seems genuinely incapable of substantively challenging Captain America's ideology. There's nothing wrong with his beliefs, but the few times they're truly challenged he never responds
In Avengers 2012 and WS, Cap criticizes Fury and SHIELD for creating weapons to defend Earth against aliens (I understand HYDRA was a factor, but Cap held this belief before finding out) but his counterpoints are flimsy. He claims SHIELD's fear will override freedom but the movie never point outs that fear of the mass death seen in A1 could be justified; likewise, no one ever points out how and that Insight and Phase 2 could prevent said death and destruction. The most TWS does is vaguely imply Cap's generation did shady things, which Cap blows off as being done to protect freedom; by that logic, Fury's shady weapon development was done so people would have the freedom to live. What give Steve the right to decide Earth shouldn't be able to defend themselves. Steve similarly criticizes Iron Man's creation of Ultron, but using Cap's logic Tony created Ultron for the same reason as well as so the Avengers would be free to have lives of their own.
When Rhodey rightfully calls out his arrogance in Civil War, he has no response. He says that the groups who desire oversight are run by people with changing agendas, but no one points out how Cap's agendas have changed over time (promoting the war effort to fighting in the war, to doing black-ops with SHIELD). The movie being so vague on the Accords' terms (combined with Bucky being the actual source of conflict) only further pushes the film's favoritism of him. This also applies to his scene with Wanda early on, where he says the Avengers need to live with not being able to save everyone. Saddressed
In Infinity War, Vision makes a good argument in favor of sacrificing himself that Steve instantly rebukes because the Avengers "don't trade lives": when Vision rightfully argues the similarities between Steve's sacrifice and Vision's, he just says nothing. Moreover, it goes unacknowledged that in preventing Vision from trading his life, Steve ending up trading the lives of countless Wakandans (I actually think most of the blame for this is on Wanda, but not entirely. Steve should've recognized this as a possibility and Banner should've tried to remove the stone at Avengers HQ).
I acknowledge the problems with Insight, Ultron and the Accords but that doesn't change how little nuance is in Cap's conflicts.
Interesting points, thanks for sharing!
Such a great point! I think Cap (or the writers) buy into his own myth and there's the mentioned assumption that Cap's way is the right way even though, as you've pointed out, his agenda has changed several times. He really views himself as the capital hero and therefore he's the only who can see what's right
For me the most damning thing in FAWS was Sam's outing of Isaiah, like, Isaiah explicitly tells him not to do this because he doesn't want to be killed by the US Government to cover up the crimes committed against him and other African Americans during WWII. Sam just outs him to win the argument, like goddamn man, at least put the man under the protection of the Avengers if you're going to do something that petty.
I think it would have been interesting if at the end of civil war, after Cap breaks his teammates free, he goes and turns himself into the authorities as a way of answering for all the damage and problems he caused. Then you start off infinity war with him standing trial/custody unable to reach the fight right away because he's answering for his crimes. He then starts endgame off as trying to make up for his decisions he made in civil war because of he couldn't be there for the fight in Infinity war and feels partly responsible for the events of the snap. Give him some type of realization that what he did saved Bucky but was still wrong in a way. Hell they could have given him a scene where he's being trialed and has to explain himself. One of the things that always bothered me about Cap in the MCU is that he never answers to any of the things he's done. At the end of the winter soldier, Nat takes the stand and Steve isn't even there to at least support her. He just allows her to take that whole responsibility. It's always "I'm right, and I don't have to explain myself", which doesn't seem very Captain America-like.
@@Nomad-1993 Your last point ties into my belief about Cap never truly being challenged. Take his scene with Wanda early on, where he says the Avengers have to accept they can't save everyone.
The problem with this scene is that Cap never has this belief challenged. Tony meets Miriam, an innocent civilian who lost someone due to the Avengers' battles, and this caused him to change. But the only person Cap meets who was negatively impacted by him and the Avengers is the film's villain, so any legitimate point Zemo could've made would be undercut and Cap has no reason to evaluate his position. This is the problem with MCU Cap as a character: his position as the franchise's unequivocal moral center prevents his beliefs from being challenged.
You bring up a really good point about Natasha, I never realized that until now.
I can't say I came into this video with the most open mind, but the evidence you put forward is very strong, and enlightening to boot. This is a deeper level of abstraction than I've ever consciously considered a piece of media in. I have a few miscellaneous thoughts bouncing around my head after this, not very organized, but here goes.
I suppose a key question is, are people willing to engage with stories in which catharsis is absent, or are we too used to it to make such an adjustment?
I think I have a few small counterpoints, not anything groundbreaking though.
I'd be inclined to say that the MCU isn't a monolith for one thing. Thor Ragnarok, I would argue, does upset the status quo. Granted, it isn't earth based, but the lessons can be applied to earth. Thor discovers that his home has a dark imperial past and that it gives power to Hela. It seems to me Hela symbolizes the dark elements of the rich and powerful. She puts on a facade of regality but underneath is a deeply immoral person. So, to defeat her, Thor destroys his home. I believe one can apply these lessons to the real world: sometimes drastic change needs to be made to make the world better. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Ragnarok, and whether it is an exception to the rule, or if there's an element I haven't considered.
As for your point about (and I apologize if I've misinterpreted this) how the heroes symbolize the idea that those in power deserve to be there because of their skills, and that it causes a feeling of complacency among those outside of power, I believe there might be another way of looking at it. The key thing is, there are plenty of villains, also powerful, who I believe show that sometimes power goes to the morally undeserving. I believe the lesson the heroes are meant to impart is not that they are powerful because they are good, but rather that they are how the powerful should be: heroes who care about those less powerful than them.
Now, Winter Soldier. Your perspective is interesting and very well thought out. My takeaway from Winter Soldier, and the Captain America movies in general, have always been that the idea of civil disobedience is necessary and a large component of true patriotism.
In the Winter Soldier, he takes down Shield, a quasi-government organization, because he finds out that it has a parasite, Hydra. One could derive a similar lesson from this as Ragnarok: majorly flawed systems need dismantling, even if it means doing away with some good things. Sure, there's the argument that Pierce represents a departure from the status quo, and that's fair, but then there's the argument that Shield itself represents the status quo, a system that is willing to do unspeakable things to keep that power.
Sure, these are authoritarian villains, but my takeaway wasn't just that authoritarianism should be eschewed in favor of the superior current system, but rather that sometimes you need to take a look at the systems you are a part of and make changes, if necessary, drastic ones, even if it means provoking the ire of said system. This is what Cap did with shield. The fact that it isn't actually him challenging the US government, I don't think lessens the impact of the message, at least not for me.
I think there are certainly examples that fit into the pattern you discussed, however, especially Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Perhaps people interpret art to fit their worldview, rather than art changing it? Perhaps it's a mix.
I hope I didn't make any missteps in putting together my counterpoints, if I did, feel free to point them out if you wish and I'll try to address them and alter my argument as best I can.
This was an excellent video by the way. Thoughtfully made and engaging. Gets a like from me, easily.
Hi, thanks for the thoughtful comment - here are some of my thoughts.
I think I’d slightly disagree with your Winter Soldier point - because while I agree the film shows our hero coming to the conclusion that changes need to be made, I don’t know that these changes are ever really made. Sure, Shield is dismantled - but it’s back up and running a few years later (FFH) or even sooner if you view AoS as canon, or consider the AOU rescue. Regardless of this re-establishment, there continue to exist officially sanctioned shield-like entities in this world, like WandaVision’s SWORD or even Stark’s drone program from FFH. The destruction of Shield in TWS doesn’t fundamentally change the world of the MCU or the role of the hero within it.
I think you could make a similar objection to Ragnarok - that despite destroying the city to defeat Hela, Thor retains his royal(/imperial?) titles, and even reaffirms them in Endgame through his transferral of them to Valkyrie. Thor in IW continues to hold onto imperial legacies - just look at the whole nivadellir sequence (royal uru weaponry can perhaps be visualised as a symbol of colonial plunder). I think you’re right, though, that Ragnarok has more nuance to it than some of the other examples.
Your point about villains is interesting, because the very idea that this almighty power (resembling Machiavellian virtú) is morally deserved by some but not by others (presumably depending on their relative benevolence to ‘normal people’ and their current state of existence) feels a little like an expression of the Great Man myths cooked up by the bourgeois to defend their supremacy. Does anyone deserve this sort of supremacy? *can* anyone? (I realise I’m starting to sound like Zemo, but I’m rolling with it.)
I don’t think you’re wrong that the presence of these heroes and villains in the MCU is a little more nuanced than I made out in this video - but I think that things like this suggest an multi-layered philosophy in the franchise, in which the same concepts can express multiple, sometimes contradictory, ideological forces, simultaneously (similarly to the idea I close the video with, the ‘pockets of resistance’).
@@PillarofGarbage You bring up some good points about Ragnarok and Winter Soldier. On your point about shield however, I think there's something to be said for the fact that the organization's darker elements (HYDRA) were at the very least expunged. Doesn't make it perfect, but I think it makes it better than it was. Perhaps that's the best we can hope for in modern society, rather than drastic changes like the complete dissolution of some of our institutions. There is an argument that subliminal issues will persist in Asgardian society, since the legacy of colonialism won't be broken, but I believe to subversion of Asgard from a colonial power to refugees offers some interesting nuance to its story, and might perhaps alter they way the nation conducts itself in the future.
You bring up an interesting question in terms of power and whether anyone should have it. Are there ways for society to function without some hierarchy of power, at least on a broad scale? If not, does the cost of giving individuals said power outweigh the benefits of such a society? Would a more scaled down society be better for the majority of people, one without nations in which we are more intrinsically tied to our communities? That could lead to xenophobia, however, but then again so do nations. Perhaps the best we can do is give power to the best of us, but perhaps there's a better way. Being raised as a western-minded individual I am inherently limited in the scope of what I can imagine. These might be questions neither of us can answer, but they're worth thinking about.
And Zemo is one of the more philosophically engaging villains, so sounding like him in certain ways isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Thank you for taking the time to respond by the way.
@@soldofpol7026 what you mention about the bad parts of shield (hydra) being removed giving hope is similar to a philosophy of a certain wizarding author whose works hint at bad institutions but then show that you just need to remove 1 or 2 bad seeds and that the institution itself is fine (whilst doing nothing to correct the underlying flaws of the institution) .
As pillar of garbage said: once shield is gone a hundred others spring up to take its place (sword, ddoc and whatever the purple haired woman is part of) implying that these institutions are inevitable/necessary, you just have to keep them in the hands of the "right people"
@@Cheesusful to be honest, short of downscaling society, I'm not sure it's realistic to eliminate all forms of institutions like these.
Consider the functions these institutions serve. Shield is essentially a covert defense organization. I suppose the best real world equivalent would be the NSA. Damage control could be likened to the FBI. My understanding is that, at their simplest, these organizations deal with foreign and domestic threats. Now, do they always do it well, with the greatest respect for human life? Absolutely not. There is no doubt that changes need to be made.
But the core function they serve, or are supposed to serve, is necessary, at least as long as human beings have bad intentions, and countries exist. Even with world peace, there will still be the occasional instance of dissent. Now, in some cases, dissent is absolutely necessary to fix a broken system. In other cases, it's extremism that leads to senseless bloodshed. In extreme cases, it can be bloodshed on a massive scale.
Now that's assuming world peace. Personally, I doubt we'll see that anytime soon. There are too many competing ideologies in the world and the mindset of live and let live is not widespread enough. So, at least for a while, countries will likely still have bad intentions towards other countries. Hence, the necessity of an institution to quash those bad intentions, lest they lead to bloodshed, or worse, civil collapse. One might argue for civil collapse, but if one did, they would inevitably be arguing for death on a massive scale. Supply lines would be a disrupted, people would starve, murder could be committed with impunity, hospitals would falter, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Now these institutions in their current form naturally have some glaring flaws that need addressing. Racial profiling comes to mind.
This does not change the fact that, at their core, at their simplest, they are necessary to maintain a large scale society. Maybe I lack imagination, and I'm certainly willing to hear alternative solutions to these problems, but covert defense seems necessary in some form or another. Would it be nice if it wasn't? Of course. But as long as humans employ violence to achieve their goals, and as long as countries exist, they will be. It would be naive to assume otherwise.
Again, it's possible there's alternatives that I'm not considering.
Overall the heroes rarely ever do anything besides fighting the bad guy (who always wants brings change be it good or bad). They never use their immense power and makes them stand out from ordinary people to do good. It applies to Marvel, DC, etc. I think in the case for DC it’s even worse since they have even more god like powered heroes and they simply sit and wait for the next villain instead of helping building a better world
Are Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight the 2 greatest Superhero movies of the 2000s and have great writing yes they are and they do I always enjoy watching video essays on these movies so I hope you'd one day do one on Spider-Man 2 talking about one of its many great qualities but this video was also nice and I really appreciate it.
The Dark Knight is one of the greatest films of all time.
@@FriendlyBatDoom watch more movies
The Dark Knight.
Starting with ancient Greece is always a plus for me, keep doing what ya do, Pillar
I don’t let any of these films sway my opinions on real life topics. There is an inherent need to extreme uprising in some cases, which we are experiencing in our real world today.
But when “good” people, such as those portrayed in these films (and books) take it upon themselves to make changes, we support it. That is because our history with them allows us to see they are genuinely good and honorable.
We have nothing or no one like them in our real world.
Vou até comentar em português pra exaltar a sua base no Teatro do Oprimido! Que vídeo incrível! Necessário
Now that I finished watching, a comment in English. Loved this theme, thank you patrons! And I feel like it's up to us, the audience, to not let ourselves fell for the ideology of defending the status quo, but lean on to these bits of resistence, as it will be very hard to just stop watching and looking up to the heroic figures
Obridgado!
(Sorry, that’s all the Portuguese I remember!)
But thank you for the kind comments, I’m glad you liked the video!
Eita, outro brasileiro
@@pedro_. Nós filhos da Globo, estamos aqui em peso por isso.
Boa noite do lado oriental do Atlântico
This is a good video, and makes me wonder how exactly X-men are going to fit into this MCU, since they always have been the most political franchise at Marvel (even when Stan & Jack writing, they had humans attacking them for being mutants and building giant robots to murder them).
I fear it will either be something milquetoast or they'll do like I've seen some people suggest and just make Xavier, Cyclops, Wolverine, etc, all black and do a victory lap (because apparently according to some people online, the only minorities that exist are black men) saying "See? We're diverse!" or something without actually saying anything, particularly since there's plenty of complaints about wokeness in movies and shows that are clearly not very progressive by any means.
I would really like to see stuff like, say, Wolverine running a kill squad to hunt religious nutjob terrorists or Cyclops throwing a presidential medal of freedom (that Cap. America pressured the president to give to him) in the ocean or invading police stations to rescue mutants and punching cops in the face, but I strongly doubt it.
Uh thats a fucking liberal thought right there... "make all of them black", come on
Okay there are many things to unravel here. Firstly although Aristotle was somewhat biased about the state of Athens (and you can hardly blame him if you compare Athens to the rest of the ancient world) I don't think his idea that firstly we must examine concrete reallity before we ascend to the ideal means we must accept the status quo, but have an understanding of it before we try to change it. There are so many moments in human history where people had the ideal in their mind and tried to force it to the world they lived in, which in turn lead to chatastrophic disaster. We can take ancient Athens as a counter example though. The fact that Athens and democrasy worked in that particular time period in human history is almost miraculus. Before I get into that, the video accuses of Athens for having slavery without examining how slavery was in ancient Athens. Slavery at least in Athens wasn't as we would assosiate slavery with today, the Athenean slaves were considered part of the families and many of them were educated and were used as teachers for the children. They resembled more like servants as opposed to litelary the rest of the world who also had slaves and didn't treat them as fairly. Also in ancient Athens politicians and citizens were one and the same therefore it didn't have the relationship of goverment and citizens we have today. Now back to our subject, democracy didn't begin as the perfect idea in the minds of the Atheneans, no one wrote a democratic manifesto (ironically manifestos are the epitomy bourgeoisie thinking), but as time pased it was built up and evolved into the real world, therefore the best way to change it. The real world is very complicated and has many nuanses and can have problems that the human psyche cannnot predict therefore it's better to built upwards. Number two Marvel cannot depict actual social change if that change already hasn't happened in the real world, it can simply show a direction the world must move towards. For example in the first Captain America comic book where he punches Hitler you can't show in the same comic book the end of the war. The first CA comic came out when the US had yet to join the war, what writter and artist did is to point at a direction, to depict an idea, but couldn't show the result if the result of the idea didn't happen in the real world. It doesn't have a real closure and maybe that's the point, we must create the closure. Thirdly I don't think Marvel's depiction of its superheroes as inherently superior is a fair argument. Besides the fact that I recognise they are a power fantasy, what sets them apart is their morality, their decision to use their abilities for good, which isn't inherent, but is learned/achieved (Ironman 1, Thor 1) by pretty much everyone, therefore the public coming out of the cinema can be inspired and they themselves follow the virtues they learned from these heroes in their own way. Fourthly Verfremdungseffekt esentially removes the fun from storytelling as an escapist form. Although storytelling still has politics it's still escapist like meating a friend where although you may discass real world politics you still very much enjoy the discasion and experience their ideas though them. In alienation storytelling becomes less interesting it basically becomes second to learning history or watching a documentary about real events and those are much better because you learn stories that happened in the world you live in rather than the mind of person whose made up events in the real world would probably unfold diferently since people aren't all knowing beings. Even if the distansing effect is also used in fantasy it would basically be bland, since we can see the "magic" world, but do not "expirience" it through a person. Although I disagre with many points I really enjoyed the video and I'm glad discussions such as these happen. I really hope my comment doesn't get lost in the sea of comments. Sorry for grammar and spelling mistakes.
Thanks for the comment. To be honest, I personally disagree with a lot of your points, but I appreciate you sharing them regardless - and I’m sure other viewers will be glad to read an alternative viewpoint :)
I have to disagree with you about a lot. While it's true slavery in Athens didn't quite look like what we think of in present day, that was a product of who the slaves were as opposed to the power structure. It's hard to other people who look like you, and are only slaves because of debt, or war. There were still cruel slave owners, and slaves had no freedoms that weren't given by there masters.
Citizens and politics might have gone hand in hand, but citizenship also looked very different back then. You had to be a male who owned land to qualify. In a sense, there was a wealth requirement, even if it wasn't stated outright.
While the US has democratic ideals, we are not a democracy. We are a republic. A representative government.
Your point about comics needing to reflect what is happening is also wrong, but maybe I'm just missing the point? A comic could show ww2 ending before the war ended. It's not a history book. They tell a number of what if stories as is. Comics at the time were used as propaganda, and support but there are often ones that discuss the meaning and nature of war in general, or the objectives of certain wars and if they are worth fighting.
As an aside, I know we are speaking about American art in particular, but comics from other countries are also liberal in there ideas about war and such. Often more liberal than American comics
i love, LOVE your video essays. so wonderfully formatted and an intellectual deep dive on things that will definitely have an impact on society much longer than many realize. it's critical and objective and i truly applaud the effort that you put into these, i know it can't be easy!
Thank you for the video friend, that was dense. Cant wait for the next one!
Glad you liked it :D
I am a brazilian and I would like to thank you for introducing me to Augusto Boal. Seems like an interesting fella, I'll have to search more about 'em!
I find it super interesting that your argument about Civil War is the reverse of Jack Saint’s.
His take was that like
Since Avengers, Tony has been motivated by this fear that there’s a huge evil coming that we aren’t properly protected from, and it’s bc of this that we gotta keep fighting the forever war
He argued that because Thanos DOES show up and win, Tony is proven to have been right the whole time, with the MCU taking his side that actually yeah security WAS the most important
This is my first time looking into your videos,looks cool!
Hope you enjoy!
@@PillarofGarbage Yeah i liked it, and some videos on early marvel movies and show would be great. Just like EMH but with punisher movie, Superhero squad and ironman armored adventures, its like another world vibe about the same thing.
And lets me thinking about how we interact with characters based in the first source material we found, like the dancing batman in DC and how later influenced his comics
Stumbled on this while looking through random nerd videos, and what an absolutely compelling critical essay! I say in the kindest way that this is the kind of conversation I loved having back in college and rarely get the opportunity to indulge in real life. Wonderful, thought-provoking work.
Thanks!
"To replace unrest, or righteous indignation, with a nullified calm."
"I think you're confusing peace with quiet." - Ultron
I mean what do you expect from a franchise owned by Disney, obviusly they´re going to tone down any critique of the status quo in order to make safe and profitable products, I mean they´re ok movies but is a little hilarius that The Suicide Squad with a few lines of dialogue did a more solid critique of the status quo than all of the MCU movies combined
There are certain elements of the MCU that have become more prominent as it grows, which can be seen as propaganda (because there's a 99.99% chance they are). The most visible one, at least to me, is how increasingly militaristic it's become. There're a growing number of heroes that are in the military, not even veterans, but active-duty soldiers and people working for the US government's military and intelligence apparatus. The less-alien, fantastic enemies of the MCU are increasingly just enemies of the united states. There're also corrupted allegorical depictions of people and movements critical of US govt. policy. Pan-African anti-colonialism and nationalism were part of the villain's identity in Black Panther, other movies show protest movements as either being irrationally violent or having a secret evil plot while using radical movements as fronts or pawns. Iron Man started feeling intense remorse because his weapons were being used to massacre civilians in his first film, then went on to become an ally of the US government fighting its enemies.
This expanded on some of the thoughts I had when I read Poetics. I questioned what purpose releasing your emotions would have. Theatre of the Oppressed sounds like a book I need to read.
Truly a most fascinating subject! Thank you so much
I don't know if catharsis is the right word, but I think you can spark the flames of political change.
For example, the classic tragedy (and the modern tragedy largely as well) has the tragic hero fall because of their own actions, some essential character flaw that is responsible for their downfall. But what if their flaw is completely unjust? Well, that just sparks an immense sense of anger with the story, sometimes turned towards the person telling it, because we don't want to be confronted with the idea that something like that could end up happening to us, that we could be the victim of systems beyond our control. However, I think if more stories start to get told like that it could wake people up to the injustices in the world, that many people are the victims of systems beyond their control (though this is a mentality that is growing in popularity as systems that used to target a much smaller minority are now covering a majority of the current generation).
Great watch. Interesting topic.
This was fantastic. You did the topic complete justice by including the philosophical underpinnings of the connection between theatre/art and politics - I'm so glad you did not cut that bit out. Absolutely marvellous in the presentation of the argument as well. Another point which results from the clash of the "anarchy/radicalism bad" and "some people have Machiavellian virtues unattainable for the masses" themes of MCU movies is that the Virtuous superheroes always defeat the anarchist/radical - which essentially programs the audience to become defeatist - because even if we were to rebel against the capitalist society today, we would always be defeated by the 1% (which, a la Aristotle, we deserve to be).
A movie which I think recently sends us the opposite message is Glass Onion - A Knives Out Mystery - which essentially tries to unravel this programming in our head that the 1% is "virtuous" or "better", much in the same way the divine rights of the feudal lords of eons past were questioned and unravelled. And the key protagonist in that movie who takes on this 1% is someone who's more ordinary, but shows the qualities which make some "superhuman" - bravery/tenacity etc.
In many ways that leaves us with the question - can we all be "virtuous"?
It also leaves me with the question - whether the replacement of the slave owners and feudal lords by the bourgeoisie and politicians who might get replaced again by billionaires and parallel govt style companies all just tells us that Marx was right and "all history is a history of class struggle".
Lovely video - you have a new subscriber.
I really appreciate the explanation on Aristotle. I study economic models as stories and they also tend to be conservative stories - the very idea of Pareto efficiency is the biggest example of it (and Vilfredo Pareto was a sympathizer of fascism). While the nobility had God as their guarantor, the bourgeouise that followed them had the Market. Now I want to write a critique of Atlas Shrugged (I had to read for research purposes, it was painful, but I think no other book follows the saying "saying the quiet part loud" so ridiculously) using Boal's work, if you at least read the part where they go to Galt's Gulch you'll find hilarious, given what I listened from your video essay.
So the problem of this "subtextual Aristotelian conservatism" is that it might be so embedded in storytelling that you can't avoid it. Especially when the radical alternative has issues, because these issues are exploited by conservative rhetoric (I can mention Albert Hirschman's The Rhetoric of Reaction). The more I study Marx, the more I believe he committed the same mistake of classical political economists and their neoclassical successors without even realizing, of assuming an efficient and optimizing economic agent, that's why the moment class consciousness is inculcated, the road to communism will be open, according to his model, but the problem is that people are much more complicated than that. But the idea that radicalism doesn't work, so let's stick to conservatism because it works at least for some people (i.e. the ones in charge) sounds like the premise of political horror stories when thought deeplier.
Also I loved Brecht's Life of Galileo, need to read more from him. Brecht did try to do something different.
Ohh what an excellent video! I'm subscribing.
When i first saw the notification i got a little worried but you settled those fears in the first minute
I am really greatful to this channel and doing such an amazing job of articulating how I feel about the MCU and well a lot of media in general as of late. I often do a deep dive into media I enjoy in anyway I can to have a greater understanding of it and how it reflects on me and how I view the world. It has lead me to have a broader though I admit imperfect grasp on where they want to go and if they accomplished that and I'm always trying to re-evaluate how I feel to be accurate and not always feeling I'm quite "there" yet so to speak.
I'm not well read when it comes to movie anaylsis and I don't like to say I'm good at video game anyalsis in aspects that I care about (Mostly in the realm of story, characters and their arcs and the stories theming) though there have been times when I feel I comfortable talking about where I feel they succeed and where they fail at. Please continue to make videos like this so I can help myself learn more how I can explain these things and hopefully help people analyze their media too.
This maybe a long shot but would love to pick your brain about some subjects. Don't know how big you are into video games but there are some topics I hope I could adequately discuss.
Thanks for the video.
Great video! And quite timely with a struggle I'm having in my own writing. I want to write a story where the status quo is changed- but it's so difficult to imagine something better that wouldn't come across naively or oppressively utopian.
Or is the solution pocket Utopia, where the people get to choose between more status quo options or Utopia, and would the former realistically allow the latter to exist?
Or do I just go the cyberpunk route and say "this is a mirror of our crapsack world, our heroes don't have any better ideas than we do". Which seems less naive, but is definitely cynical and pessimistic.
Then there's Star Wars, which *seems* to paint revolution in a positive light. But what they're really doing is defeating the worse Empire to get back to the status quo Republic. Star Trek seems utopian, but is deliberately vague about how we got there, or some major convenience is involved- "uh, Vulcans showed up, and then we figured it out or something..."
I'm a big Superman fan, and he certainly started as fighting the status quo, but was changed as his powers increased, lest he be seen as a tyrant.
So yeah, that's where I'm at. How does one write the revolution. How do I make heroes that fight the status quo without them becoming, if not tyrants, then at best coercive agents? Or am I just conditioned to see revolutionaries this way?
Have them fight for the removal of oppressive obstacles as well as promoting & discussing the people’s voice. I doubt anyone objects to the fight for shared wiggle-room being a good thing. An openness to and active action towards enacting change with the people’s well-researched concerns at the forefront is key.
As it’s a novel, you can end it before the leadership inevitably slips into totalitarianism or simply acknowledge that you need continuous revolution to bring an end to the concept of status quo itself.
Interesting comment! I’m no great writer of fiction, but my immediate reaction is-
I don’t think you have to propose an entirely consistent + thought out alternative social system in order to tell a story about making the world better. If we’re thinking about it in terms of the ideas I discuss in this video, all that would be required really would be a conclusion which doesn’t reaffirm normative values. Maybe it’s about thinking smaller, and cutting the story off at a point where this is easier - writing primarily against one specific injustice rather than all of them at once? Or rather, by focusing more on the evil being defeated than what follows after?
I’ve no idea really though!
Consider Octavia E. Butler, her parable of the sower and parable of the talent. Cli-fi with a beginning of low level solutions for the dystopia. You may not solve the big problems in your story, but sometimes a smaller community that works for a solution oriented with hope.
This is great, a lot of what I was thinking already but didn't know there was literature existing arguing the same. I will check out those sources. One thing I want to add from my thoughts is that we could look to non-Western poetic and theatrical traditions which aren't rooted in political manipulation as the purpose of the arts.
For example, the theory of rasas in Indian dramatics is somewhat similar to the Aristotelian conception of the emotions felt by drama's characters and the audience, but it holds them valuable in themselves, rather than for some political goal. A celebration of life and existence as it is, prior to and independent of human society, if it is even a separate thing, rather than a form of domination of humans over humans and the rest of the world.
"you protect the world, but you don't want it to change! how is humanity 'saved' if it's not allowed to evolve?"
- ultron
So, when put it simply, message of MCU is "Shut up and get back in line, peasant!" That explains why after each and every MCU movie I saw, I felt either apathy or even antipathy towards it.
Solid video, I learned alot
Well done.
this guy is cruelly underrated
I think the lens of a more recent theory, like Bourdieus, could work even better to show/explain the conservative reproduction in such media. Beginning with Aristotle allows for a nice historical journey, but I feel it made the video jump a bit too much and maybe a too broad. Your analysis on the Marvel side was still really good though, I mostly agree.
The first part is essentially correct, but not particularly enlightening. Disney does not push politics, it just follows and maybe reinforces dominant ideas, like a sunflower follows the sun. In fact, when one wants to know what's fashion in politics, looking at Disney products is a very effective way of doing so.
The second part is not about the MCU, it's at the very least about the broader concept of superhero. And I'm treading lightly, here, because you seem to have a much larger issue with the whole notion of immersive narrative, and well... that encompasses basically everything we commonly understand as narrative.
I always say that when someone is trying to say something very revolutionary, they often say something that can be read two ways: one is true, but utterly trivial; the other is actually revolutionary and thought provoking, but also blatantly false. Now, saying that politics shapes our lives and as such impacts our art is trivially true. But the idea that we cannot make contact with art without being contaminated by subliminal political messages brainwashing us is absurd. There is aesthetics, there is ethics, there is politics, the confines between them can be blurred but you definitely can make a distinction. If you claim that the entirety of contemporary narrative is politics then you are basically saying that everything in existence is just politics. And I' believe you might very well push that idea, but if you do that you'll need a new word to denote *actual* politics, i.e. government of nations and states.
It's also worth noting that the idea that "everything is politics" is far from a neutral analysis of things. Rather, it is itself a very political statement that comes straight as a consequence of marxist theory. You need to deny the individual dimension of art in order to claim that the individual is just an intersection of socioeconomical forces. If I talk about my sentiments, for example, I'm already being anti-marxist because I'm talking of individual feelings... thus, my love poems must be explained as a result of socioeconomic factors, instead of me being in love.
Yeah, I mean, all "theories of everything" do that... let's just be aware that the moment you make a step outside of that specific ideological framework it all falls into pieces.
Just a note on that last point about ‘everything is politics’ being an inherently Marxist idea - it really isn’t. As noted in this video, a similar idea is present in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics.
@@PillarofGarbage the fact that it's marxist doesn't mean that i can't be someone else's as well. That said, Boals reading of Aristotle does not really suit my own, and even less so the consquences you're drawing from it.
For example, Aristotle did not deal in platonic ideas; to Aristotle the tendency towards good is intrinsic to things, it's an internal movement, each being in existence has Good inscribed in its nature, whereas the platonic idea is external, something eternal that is outside of the being. This looks like a small mistake, but it is pretty serious philosophically and denotes a rather sloppy reading of the author. In general, it seems to me that there is a lot more Plato than Aristotle in this video; Plato was much more obsessed with politics, in fact some call him a communist ante litteram.
Most surely, the Nicomachean Ethics was not a political text; in fact, Aristotle's ethics can barely be called ethics by today standards, as its prescriptions were mostly served as life advice; it is most of all "theory of good living". There's very little politics in it, like, a couple pages. Boal's seems to be giving a marxist reading of Aristotle, and he reads between the lines oppression of the masses and the like... but that's only his - very liberal - interpretation, that's not what Aristotle said. I suggest uyou take Boal very cautiously as he is severely biased.
More generally Aristotle was quite the smart guy, the principle of poetics are pretty much universal and effectively define most of narratology in all ages. Fiction without emotional involvement and immersion is just boring, bad fiction. Of course, art vehicles meaning, and as such it can also vehicle oppression and violence, but to argue that then we must avoid emotional involvement in art because it's brainwashing us is very silly.
My stance is that there is no such thing as a morally perfect story. It feels like no matter what happens there will be something morally wrong with your story despite your best intentions. Whether or not it's a deal breaker depends on the person watching. I haven't had the experience where the implications behind something I like is a deal breaker for me but it can easily lower my opinion of it.
It's possible to write morally perfect stories. But morally perfect stories are usually boring. If the moral implications of your story are perfect then your story is likely to be less fun and interesting to watch than one where there really is a moral conflict. Most of the time, a story's philosophical conflict comes from its moral conflict and a morally perfect story is more likely to have no moral conflict whatsoever.
Let's take the Invincible TV series as an example. Hopefully you have watched it (if not please, it's a great show). Are you saying that it is morally right in some away or to some degree for the Viltrumites to conquer earth and, possibly, enslave all of humankind? How so? What is the moral imperfection in the Invincible TV series' conclusion? I think Invincible is an example of a morally perfect story (at least in season 1). I'm not talking about the comic books.
There is no grey area in Invincible's morality. You are either fully committed to saving lives or you will end up sacrificing lives for your personal pleasures (like spending time with your girlfriend), in the case of Mark Grayson. Sometimes, Mark helps the wrong people when he defeats one mob boss only to replace that mob boss with another mob boss, but that just mean he should know who he's helping (instead of being ignorant of who he supports). And you are either in support of humanity's peace and freedom or not, in the case of his father. I don't see any room to question the moral values the show espouses. I can say the same thing for the Tick as well. Can you poke holes in the moral values that these two shows espouse?
I think you're factually wrong about there being no morally perfect show.
Also, you are responding to a video essay about a TV series that has no moral resolution of the moral conflict that it presents. It's flaw is not that it's not morally perfect. It's flaw is not having a moral resolution of any kind. Having a deeply immoral resolution would be better than having no resolution whatsoever. And anyway, what do you expect from a TV series made by a modern, incredibly powerful, money-hungry corporation? What's the likelihood that you would see communist propaganda in a Disney movie? Disney owns Marvel, by the way.
@@behindthepageaudiobooks This is a little confusing to me since you are bringing up a show that is also made by a giant ruthless corporation.
I watched Invincible and read the entire comic, loved both. That said I wouldn't say Invincible isn't morally perfect showwise due to issues with how it wrote Amber. You could argue that is just bad writing but Mark is framed as being in the wrong even though Amber is being selfish.
When I say a show a story can't be morally perfect, I don't just mean the central conflicts, I mean things like relationships as well.
Also the show cut the funny joke where Amber initially worried that Mark's absences were because he was a drug dealer, and states this theory to William and Eve who know the truth.
@@dragonstormx I would not expect a ruthless corporation to make a show that questions the morality of a capitalist economic system. Invincible does not question the morality of a capitalist system. Invincible is not about economics and its story's problems do not stem from socioeconomic problems.
Whereas Squid Game does question the morality of capitalism and I would say that Squid Game is the needle in the haystack. Squid Game is the rare exception to the rule that corporations will not produce content that questions the morality of the existence of corporations.
I suspect that most of the moral errors in writing such as the Amber scene in Invincible are just examples of bad writing that stem from a lack of clarity as to the overall meaning of the story and the nature of central conflict being explored. The Amber scene, with better editing, could have been easily omitted or re-written to match the themes of the show.`
I don't see any inherent reason why a morally perfect story can't be written if its authors are thorough enough with their editing and planning. Why do you think it's impossible for a story to be morally perfect?
@@behindthepageaudiobooks Because even when writers strive to avoid some pitfalls it feels impossible to avoid others.
As this video points out the superhero genre is essentially romanticizing vigilantism. Even when the story does something like Watchmen or Punisher MAX where it tries to say how vigilantes in real life aren't the type of people to admire it presents them as bad people killing worse people, as opposed to bad people who kill minorities in real life. The latter has the issue of using the Punisher's violent acts for entertainment well after it's established he's an awful person so it makes the whole thing look like a power fantasy.
Even if we have a story about rebelling against tyranny, capitalist or otherwise, our protagonists limit the violence to evil people rather killing lots of innocent people like what happens with uprisings in real life. But making such conflict completely like real ones would kill the audience's interest, myself included.
And above all else, perfection is entirely subjective so what is morally acceptable for one person isn't acceptable for another. We might say something is fine but other people might find an issue with something we don't or something we find to be completely subjective.
An interesting example I have seen of moral issues across cultures is the Wuxia movie Hero. This movie has our protagonist give up his revenge on the king fighting a war to conquer the various kingdoms in China, despite losing his family to said king, because the king is the best chance to constant war between the various kingdoms. To the Chinese this is reflective of the country's history history of civil wars (which is has had many, some of those periods have lasted longer than countries' entire history). To western audiences this feels like an endorsement of fascism, which I doubt was the intent of the movie's creator.
@@dragonstormx Okay fine. Why do you think morality is subjective? Why not define morality as whatever action causes the least amount of harm to the fewest number of people possible? Why do you believe that objective morality is impossible?
Are you arguing that no story can be morally perfect, because people have contradictory moral preferences or because all writers who have ever been born and who will ever be born will be too incompetent and careless to not write stories with unintended morally reprehensible social lessons? Or you arguing in favor of both of these points?
Some writers might be secret or unconscious fascists and might advocate fascist ideas without knowing what "fascism" is or what the word "fascist" means. Why can't some people try to pass off their immoral ideas as moral ones, because they lack empathy and think others should also lack empathy like themselves (perhaps we all want others to be more like ourselves to some degree)?
The Unabomber, Ted Kacynzski, famously referred to people with too much empathy as "over socialized" but he never used the words "too much empathy" or even the word "empathy". Just because some people think their lack of morality is the correct character to have doesn't mean morality doesn't exist. It just means that some people have either no sense of morality or a very weak sense of morality. Since, no one likes to be demeaned or looked down upon, I suppose that might be why morally weak people will describe their immoral beliefs as morally righteous.
And why not believe that morality is the product of somatic empathy (it's what neuroscientists call it)? Why not believe that humans and other animals evolved to be moral so that we could raise our babies instead of just eating our babies and then failing to pass on our genes and, thereby, failing to perpetuate the human species.
I've heard the argument that morality is subjective because religions espouse contradictory moral values. But what if religions were not designed to be perfect moral belief systems, but were designed to best cater to the economic problems of the day? E.g. Anthropologist Marvin Harris argues that eating beef is immoral in Hinduism because, historically in India, cows were used to produce enough plant food to feed all of India and help the nation avoid mass starvation.
Or, why not believe that religions vary widely in their moral propensities and they can be moral, amoral or even deeply immoral from an objective point of view, but people will sacrifice their moral values to protect their religious values (to a certain extent).
In other words, religions have their own aims and exist to perpetuate themselves rather than to uphold human morality. Obviously, no organized religion (an institutionalized one) could perpetuate itself if it advocated eating children due to the continued reduction of its members from one generation to another.
14:10 Holy shit! That was eye opening!
I do love how people will quote 'Those who would trade liberty for a little safety do no deserve either.' Don't realize that Franklin was well aware that there were necessary safeties and unnecessary liberties.
The truth is, it's a false dichotomy. You have to fight and work for both safety and liberty. Because losing one always gives a path to losing the other. Lose safety, and your liberties become eroded by coercion. Lose liberty, and your institutional safeties are chipped away.
I mean... we have a hero named capitan america
I know he is not that patriotic but his first purpouse was clear
I think Steve Rogers is the right kind of patriotic; willing to make change to better the country he cares about. That’s how he was originally portrayed in the comics and now in the MCU (in a milquetoast liberal way, though).
He is patriotic,but the right kind that is critical of whdt he loves. And acts if a government does shady stuff, like whisteblower and activists thwt want change and are suspect of that.
At least when well written. And the patrionism people saying they are"patrios hate. Critical one wanting what the love better. Not worse.
@@mobiusygosh1tp0sts37 I am not sure if that was originally on comics (I haven't read his first runs) but yes, he is the good kind of patriotic now, if every "patriot" was like steve rogers the world probably would be better.
@@HectorT52 he was punching nazis a year before WWII and was controversial at the time for it. By the time’s standards, he was exactly the good kind of patriotic.
Argument is one point in it's analysis of the current real & cinematic observation of pop culture in storytelling narrative & politics, thankyou.
Sorry meant to say on point in above reply.
It's interesting you bring up the Greeks so much. For a long time I've felt that the American fascination with super heroes was similar to the Greek's fascination with stories of gods and goddesses. Today people look back at the Greeks and say their stories are obviously myths, perhaps blind to how the most popular storytellers of today are the myth-makers we subscribe to. No story is only for fun or completely values-neutral. The risk of not reflecting on these things is the risk of subsuming a line of thought which one may not actually agree with ... We see heroic characters and pick our favorites, those with whom we identify, subtly coming to identify with the school of thought their character embodies.
But but but…Tony was right! And I’m not even convinced that he was “right for the wrong reason” or whatever. He allowed his guilt AND his compassion to guide him towards a decision to submit the power of the avengers to civilian authority…which by the way is often embodied, depending on the country, by representatives of the citizens of those countries. Government done right (in my opinion) exists not merely to safeguard individual freedom and rights, but just as importantly, to accomplish together that which cannot otherwise occur or exist. While self-evidently imperfect, the Accords gives the power of the Avengers to the people of the world. For all the messiness of the political process, that is a far better outcome. Tony’s distress yes but also his power and conviction caused me to oppose Captain America’s strong but ultimately inferior position, and it was my empathy with Tony and with that mother (Alfre Woodard) that helped me get over my typical preference for Cap (still my favorite Avenger, both the original and his chosen successor). And it wasn’t, as you report the definition, out of pity or fear (I have neither children nor a thought-controlled, bullet proof exoskeleton) but from the anguish portrayed (and likely, in their moments of dialog, actually experienced) by Downey and Woodard, which my body mirrored, and which I would see best avoided, on consideration, by reallocating both responsibility and power along a far more democratic framework.
(By the way, your videos are among the best. I’m binging them today, and I find them well worth my time. Excellent essays, even and especially when I find areas of disagreement and challenge. Very, very nice work.)
I really enjoyed this video
I’m glad!
The problem in the world is that people have forgotten to think for themselves anymore. they take everything at face value and we need people who will think for themselves instead on just following the heard.
36:20 I'm sure others must've pointed it out already over the years, but just in case: Other than the emphasis, which properly is on FREM, the pronunciation was really good. 👍
“There was a time before a time above”
Around 13:40 is when I realized I disagree with Aristotle.
Am interesting, intelligent and knowledgeable video...BIG ideas made into an understandable viewpoint👌
Well done ✅️
Wow...I never thought about it that way. Good points.
The same principles could be applied to the movie The Dark Knight Rises. Bane(from a certain point of view) is revolutionary. A representative of an organisation, The League Of Shadows. Who has spent centuries destroying societies that have become too large, powerful, unequal & corrupt.
And he’s positioned as a villain for his revolutionary ideas to give the city to the many. Who can bee seen literally throwing the 1% out of their homes. Evil is only vanquished, when that same corrupt system is restored.
THIS not to mention, TDK makes it clear that even criminals have humanity present in them but 8 years later they're back on the streets taking control because they're angry that the guy they trusted in turned out to be a con and that the system lied to them but pro-surveillance Batman is still supposed to be the hero that Gotham needs somehow
Wrong.
Bane and the Shadows are hypocrytes and murderers, and most of all, don't get to decide the fate of civilizations.
Bane frees the prisoners, not caring if they're violent, and will destroy the city anyway.
Evil is believing the best idea is yours and forcing it on others without mediation or consensus.
@@pottertheavenger1363 do you know what subtext means?
@@nalday2534didnt destroy his surveilance tech because he didnt want to have too much power of people?
@@jameslee5805yeah what about it?
@Pillar of Garbage, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on my previous comment? Any points/counterpoints or do you think it’s a legitimate reading/critique?
Just wanted to know you’re opinion.
PS love your EMH videos, that show was my favourite and I think your videos on them helped in the show’s resurgence.
I do have some thoughts, yeah - I’ll do my best to get to replying in a little while, sorry! Been pretty busy!
@@PillarofGarbage that’s ok 👍
Hello could you review or react to the Lore of HID&GEM? The fanbases will be so excited to see a video essay like this!
Will you ever do a video about the hulk and wolverine relationship in the yostverse
I should think I’ll get to that eventually, but it might not be for a while, sorry 😞
Think Pillar is subtly saying that we have to depend on the small pockets of radical thought in our entertainment to avoid being trapped in the mind control of individualistic NeoLiberalism propaganda mindset within our American Movies like The MCU.
“HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its Own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.HYDRA created a world so
chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero Sum.” - Dr. Arnim Zola
He sounds like a Hydra Agent. 😂 😂 😂
Worthwhile video.
Quick question: why is pity a “dark” emotion? I think pity gets a undeserved bad rap. Compassion, empathy, sympathy, are of course more desirable. But pity by itself does not reliably lead to negative outcomes. Well, except when pride stands in the way of it’s object. But pity can bring mercy, even a desire for justice for others, and certainly can provide a doorway to sympathy, understanding, and even progress.
that's why books are more interesting in the fact of history because the writer and the editor are a smaller team so they are more free from the political forces to mould it's art.
Whenever I see most Marvel Movies it's like Conservative in Liberal clothing.
A bit of constructive criticism, I hope you take in the spirit its intended. This was a really great and detailed essay. The script was really well made and researched. The problem is that taking it from paper to video it lost something. Something that in reading was really good became a bit long winded and bordering on boring. This was not the fault of the content but of the media difference.
I've never understood conservatism to mean "Keep things the way they are" I've always understood it as holding fast to that which is good and getting rid of that which is not.
You may want to look up it’s definition, then. Per the Cambridge dictionary, ‘conservative adjective (AGAINST CHANGE): not usually liking or trusting change, especially sudden change’
@@PillarofGarbage
yes, this is a, definition but not one that is broadly agreed on by conservatives nor conservative philosophers namely Edmund Burke (who is arguably the father of conservatism) who gives an anology of two individuals who come to a fence the conservative would first want to understand why the fence is there to know if it's purpose is justified, whereas the liberal tends more to take it down without question at the expense of being vulnerable to whatever the fences was keeping out.
@@mikeslifestyletipsreaction833 a few things:
I know the fence/gate analogy you’re referring to, but it’s not Burke’s. Another writer over 100 years later invented it to illustrate their understanding of Burkian conservatism.
Next, I’d be careful with how you’re using ‘liberal’ in this context. It meant something completely different to Burke than it does in modern (American) political discourse.
Also, defending or defining modern conservatism by appealing to Burke, who’s major works are approaching 250 years of age, is probably not the best way to approach this. Sure, he can be understood as a father of conservatism as a political ideology, but many of his positions are so far removed from modern conservatism that it’s akin to approaching a modern ‘liberal’ through the lens of someone like Thomas Paine.
On a similar note, even if that analogy were one of Burke’s, I wouldn’t put much stock in it, because having read some of Burke’s writing, I find him quite the repugnant thinker. Seriously, read ‘reflections on the revolution in france’ and *then* tell me that Burke holds any place in modern political discourse.
And perhaps most importantly, I don’t think that metaphor holds true, at all, to modern conservatism, for reasons which are far too vast for a RUclips comment section. Beyond that, I question the relevance of partisan analogies in a discussion like this, because we both know I could reply in turn, citing a whole bunch of equally profound-sounding analogies which argue *against* the logic and morality of the conservative position. And we both know that they’d all do very little to change your mind.
Personally, I would argue that the death of Charles Spencer merely brought Stark's underlying guilt as the reckless creator of Ultron into focus.However, in a broader sense, Stark's behaviour and thinking was left unbalanced from the moment he re-emerged from the wormhole in Avengers Assemble.
More research went into the first two minutes of this movie than almost all marvel analysis on RUclips
I think two of your points when brought in conjunction are honestly rather hopeful. Saying that in the MCU the villains will tend to have these noble goals to change a system but are doing it in the "wrong way" and so the heroes take up the mantel but are ultimately ineffectual, and then comparing that to how Shakespeare's villains modeled individualist, future capitalist, Machiavellian ideals. That with Shakespeare, it was the introduction of these ideals that even though they were proven to be wrong in the end, are still in their own way, being taught to the masses. They are still shown to have value.
Maybe that's what happening today with villains like Killmonger and the Vulture? These ideals are being shared, but making it more palatable for the status quo by by making them the villain, but they are being shared none the less?
It's a fundamental issue with comics, they refuse to actually change the status quo or allow for characters who change the status quo.
they can't without major work; the pieces are set and they work a certain way
This channel lives up to its name!
I think you can write stories with more radical conclusion without having to remove catharsis. But it isn't easy. The trope of the "extremist" villain is well worn. But there have been establishment villains defeated by radical heroes and the world changed as a result.
It’s kind of crazy how ambitious the story of Iron Man was for its time. Crimson Dyanmo could’ve easily been the kooky Russian bad guy with no nuance since it was a post Cold War era but Favreau and crew went with Iron Monger when the Blackwater massacre happened DURING this movie’s development.
Could you do a video about Nathan Fielder's show, The Rehearsal? That would be a trip!
Haven’t seen it - I’ll put it on the list!
@@PillarofGarbage sweet! I think you'll be very intrigued by it, and at least where I'm from, everyone's been talking about it for months!
In high school, we study John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau (briefly) but hardly ever talk about Machiavelli, who is arguably way more important to our nation than those other guys.
big thing never dealt with in the MCU (since they decided to make Cap3 IronMan4 / Avengers 2.5) is how carter and howard stark hired and (literally) immortalized nazis (and she's shown continuing to do so even in other universes, in D+ Whatif... they're not even pretending she didn't do it any more, they're just shrugging at it).
And this is just... never spoken of?
Black guy scapegoat Nick Fury gets yelled at (despite getting shot because he's on the point of whistleblowing them?) but none of the rich white ppl responsible are ever called out for their decades-long culpability.
(In AOS PC explicitly states that only she, alone, is making decisions about hiring Nazis, while she's doing a job interview with an SS Officer (also: alone). He tortures POCs, was in the SS, etc. and she tells him she thinks his work is "valuable." )
Steve is willing to burn SHIELD down to the ground for harbouring fascists and trying to enact a mass-surveillance state genocide against those they deem deviant (with Stark Jr's help! cuz who cares about our "precious freedoms") in line with their ideals...
But the white people responsible for putting those fascists in a position to do that in the first place (which was public front-page news, not a secret, and plenty of famous ppl spoke out against it IRL) are just... never condemned for doing that?
It is diametrically opposed to what Kirby & Simon created Cap to do. Absolutely unforgivable and a complete betrayal on every level of everything Steve stood for and wanted (all Nazis "dead or captured" not "hired and immortalized.") But in Cap 3 he's attending PC funeral as if he would be sad about the death of a collaborator?
(and dating the niece who... was not included in the 'bring down Hydra' plan in Cap 2.)
And the fact Howard clearly knew about Bucky's situation is also never addressed.
(How'd this guy who's buddies with Zola get WS serum? how'd he recognise TWS as this dude who looks nothing like OG Bucky, whom he's never shown meeting, 50+ years after Bucky's supposed to be dead? when it's dark and Stark's got a head injury and blood in his eyes? But he immediately clocked TWS -- who is sent to kill him w/o his mask on for some Mysterious reason -- as Bucky, which even Steve didn't manage to do.)
And as soon as there's a black captain america... suddenly PC is given Steve's role instead (despite all his costume + weapon + backstory not making any sense for her... everything around her revolves around this man?? not how you write female characters) and she is in all the cap promo instead of Sam, who is never mentioned in other MCU stuff.
There are lots of issues w/ how female characters especially in the MCU are written, but the stuck-in-the-00s white feminism of writers who think they're making 'strong female characters' combined with the refusal to call out any wrongdoing by Starks (cuz ... RDJ's agent would shiv them??) creates a strong cognitive dissonance... they're actually just writing rich white monsters doing heinous ish ...that Steve ought to be disgusted by given his stated / demonstrated literally-Antifa-specifically values. (One of the many things making his EG ending a nonsense.)
I don't see how how a storytelling model that puts a premium on the individual conscience and on the willingness to act can be an opiate of the masses situation
The ending of FAWS was also badly received because the head of the gang was fighting for squatters' rights and because up until this series, the America of this universe was portrayed as mostly integrated and fair. Now all if a sudden it's systemically racist and people who move into abandoned homes don't have to go through any paperwork to do so, and when the dead return, we're supposed to think the only problem is that the gangs murdered others to get their way.
"Garbage" sounds right. Whatever you may think about the canon of western literature, it wasn't created to "repress" people.
If movies influence people more than how their parents raised them we are truly doomed
All "revolutionary" elements in Marvel seem to be what society first rejects...
So basically Iron Man is Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg is Bruce Banner keeping his emotions in check.
“Marvel is political propaganda.“
I thought we had figured that out a few years ago when Captain Marvel dropped?
(Ladies and Gents, this is what we, who do not inhabit the soulless hellscape of Twitter, call a “joke.”)
Broke: Captain Marvel is feminist propaganda
Woke: Captain Marvel is military propaganda 😎😎
@@PillarofGarbage I remember her having the rank of Major in EMH, where she actually outranked Captain America, so technically she should be Major Marvel.
@@MTV2O2O honestly that sounds more baller too
@@PillarofGarbage Major Marvel > The overused Captain Marvel title
Alliterations negate everything else
@@MTV2O2O Also the easiest way to avoid confusion with Shazam’s proper superhero name, that being Captain Marvel.
You make some interesting points. I like a lot of your videos, but I do have to fundamentally disagree with the points you make in chapter five 32:01.
How is a hero’s true strength being their spirit and not there physically abilities a bad or as you put it, “insidious” thing? Would say powers make the hero be even worse and lean into exceptionalism and objectivist type thinking more?
The way I see it, the fact that the MCU has characters like Widow Hawkeye who have no powers (or The privilege that those powers metaphorically represent) show that anyone, aka the 99% have the potential to make positive change it the world.
That’s just my takeaway from that.
They have powers in the way that Batman has powers: privilege.
Because of their skills, they’re given more leeway than most people would in their situation
@@pn2294 privilege ? the batman ,lmao
@@pn2294 widow is a victim of sever mental and emotional trauma who suffers from crippling self hatred to the point where she jumps at the chance to martyr herself. The only reason she's allowed to do what she does is because she does what her superiors tell her to, whether that's shield or Captain America.
Hawkeye is just some soldier who uses a bow for some stupid reason and happens to have a conscience. He has zero say in what happens around him beside his own actions. He has no privilege above any other random mook, and the only reason he gets to hang out with the avengers is because he saved black widow and she's one of shields best covert agents.
Also, if privilege can be as little as receiving the respect of your peers for your deeds, then anyone who wants to do away with that is arguing for a level of communism that even Stalin didnt think was possible, and that man had companies give thanks to the machines instead of the workers so that they couldnt claim that any worker was better than another.
@@scotcheggable that excuse would work if they didn’t show themselves perfectly capable of going rogue when they want to
I wonder what the algorithm is gonna think of this video. Considering it isn't a fan of any video longer than 30 minutes with some exceptions.
It may not be the most algorithm friendly, but I’m pretty pleased with how it’s doing so far!
The issue I have with civil war through then lense of this video is the issue that having cap be 100% right completely ignores the part of the accords that logically does make sense
The avengers had no limits to what they do and yes they do good all the time but with no checks ultron happen, being tony's fault it being a good reason for them to exist. Cap was also based his decision on emotion as him not letting go of bucky basically cause it the entire problem of civil was where even if mind controlled killed alot a people and should be locked up until his mind problem was solved which wouldn't matter where but they solved that later
I understand why Brecht is relevant and I follow his line of thinking, but I wish people would stop uncritically saying that "By doing XYZ it totally does cause the audience to do PQR." That's what Brecht theorized would happen. But often it doesn't actually work.
Geez that was a meaty thesis
interesting video but i's mostly about history and barely has anything related to MCU aside from footage.
one of the good clickbait videos, expectations exceeded.