• jack [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    It's an unsurprising shame that Falcon and The Winter Soldier has worse politics than the typical Cap comic

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Captain America was always an ideological pastiche of what America "should be".

      Falcon/Winter Soldier are much more accurate depictions of what America actually is.

      But Cap is considered an icon, because he's... a blonde-haired, blue-eyed straight white military dude of the Greatest Generation. Meanwhile, F/WS are problematic because one's a swarthy-looking jive-talking urban millennial and the other is a long-haired unshaved Slavic-looking hippie with PTSD.

      Comic books are the trash bin of ideology. :zizek:

        • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Because they’re fucking bootlickers.

          It's Capeshit. They're all bootlickers.

          Falcon was an antifaschist in other Cap stories, and he was great there.

          Falcon was just another guy fighting Red Skull, a character that very deliberately existed to blur the line between Nazis and Communists as a generic "Foreign Man Bad".

          Multiracial neoliberal hegemony is not an admirable goal because neoliberal hegemony is not an admirable goal.

          Falcon is the personification of the old 👏 More 👏 POC 👏 Drone 👏 Operators 👏 meme. He's neoliberal now. He's been neoliberal for over two decades. And his introduction as New Captain America was explicitly about Owning The Chuds in a way that granted a pass to American imperialism while pretending at Antifacism.

            • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Also I was talking about the comics.

              The comics and the movies have been echoing one another for decades. "Marvel Unlimited" was explicitly created to facilitate this.

              Red Skull definitely sounds like a “communazi” name, but everything about his portrayal is fascist.

              https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Albert_Malik_(Earth-616)

                • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  In an issue that comes out at the tail end of the Cold War.

                  Weird how we have a Soviet Red Skull character from roughly the beginning of the Cold War to its end.

                    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
                      ·
                      4 years ago

                      The two Skulls

                      They made a second Soviet Skull and ran it for thirty five years during the thick of the Cold War.

                      This Malik guy is written like an afterthought.

                      A thirty five year long afterthought.

                      There are franchises with shorter print runs.

        • maxwellhill [doe/deer]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I would rather have the people ruling us look like me TBH. At least then I would have preferential treatment that white people do.

    • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah, they went from humanizing the flagsmashers to "look at this monstrous thing she did that makes them all monsters" right quick.

      • SirLotsaLocks [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        It's like they couldn't find a way to make them actually bad so fuck it they blow people up now

          • SirLotsaLocks [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            explained solely with "it's the only language they know" like that makes sense for a group who's goal is one world one people.

      • Janked [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Ah, they pulled a Bioshock Infinite, huh?

        • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          I'm not familiar with Bioshock Infinite but basically

          spoiler

          the flagsmasher's leaders' mom or grandma died of tuberculosis which is heavily prevalent among the refugees in the camps. So, after their latest heist of stealing supplies being horded by the ones in charge... The guards were all tied up, and she blew them up as they left. Much to her follower's dismay. because "it's the only language they understand." Honestly, I would still find that humanizing, but my life is filled with libs and you could see in their eyes that the switch had been flicked.

          I'd say this actually really good propaganda for putting a damper on the inevitable violence against those who are killing us via climate change, hoarding foods and homes, keeping healthcare from us. Violence against those people can easily be justified as self defense (Seriously half a million preventable covid deaths in the US alone) but the media will make sure that anyone that steps out of line will be lumped in as terrorists. Just look at the eco-"terrorist" movements that have disappeared since the 80's and 90's who were absolutely correct.

          • Janked [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            Yeah, that seems completely justified to me and actually not as bad as Bioshock Infinite.

            In Infinite the leader of the revolution uses a child as a human shield and then shoots them for stupid reasons that I don't remember.

              • garbology [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                They retconned it in the DLC to make it somehow even more awful.

                spoiler

                IIRC the dimension travelling twins convince her to kill the kid and die in order to progress Comstock's and Elizabeth's story.

      • jabrd [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I gotta say I love Cap as a reflection of bougie libs thinking through “what would a person who represents the hopes and possibilities of America think about this,” and again and again it’s just Cap being quietly horrified by our nightmare society. It really does betray that even the libs at the heart of the bleeding machine know it’s dying despite being the ones most integrated into it

    • RNAi [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      I don't give a shit about capeshit

    • PeludoPorFavor [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      i had zero interest in watching the show from the get-go, but i've heard it's just straight propaganda...

    • LeninsRage [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      So far its pretty bog standard Marvel fare, basically "American liberal militarism and imperialism are good, actually, but can go too far sometimes." Usually in mortal-terrestrial bound stories in the franchise theres a faction of villains or anti-heroes who represent the "but can go too far sometimes", in this case Walker the "new" Captain America.

      • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I was just rewatching parts of Civil War and it's such an obvious peak for the MCU. That shit ruled.