I don't even mean a bad thing, necessarily. I mean a thing that is made to normalize the status quo, pave over inherent contradictions in late stage neoliberal capitalism, make even the idea of changing society somewhat seem evil or impossible, and have lots of performative gestures that hide the stench of affluent arrogance. :zizek-preference:
I know it came out well before 2020, but I finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 and I stopped at the instant Tony Stark said "I've successfully privatized world peace." It was bad. Very bad. The original movie was entertaining even if it had some painful deliberate adjustments to the comic book character to make him more like :my-hero: but the sequel played out like Ayn Rand fanfiction, especially the big smart awesome genius giving a speech about how the evil government and the ungrateful moochers were taking the sweat from his brow and so on and so on. :zizek:
The flood of MCU movies wore me out to the point that I stopped watching them and because of that I have only seen maybe half of them by now. Maybe it was a mistake returning to try watching Iron Man 2 because I now have even less interest in seeing anything MCU ever again. :zizek-fuck:
For me it is by a landslide the manga "Sanctuary" written by Sho Fumimura (Fist of the North Star) and nicely illustrated by Ryoichi Ikegami.
The basic premise is about two childhood friends who escaped gommunism as children and came back to Japan with intent to change the country. One of them joins the yakuza and the other goes into politics.
This manga is absolutely convinced that if you just do a powerplay with a smug face you instantly and magically win voters to your side. This manga has the president of the United States (Bill Clinton in spirit) visit a regional japanese campaign to shake hands with our main character, after our main character seduces and sexually conquers (Hillary Clinton in spirit). This manga sees the main character who joins the yakuza RAPIDLY ascend to the top, with an "I can change him" attitude towards the entire japanese mafia, turning them into Good People who are Highly Educated. The political platform that gives them political victory after political victory can be summed up as "what if japanese people worked harder and did better" as if that's not already the platform of Japan's ruling party. Basically, the whole manga is about two smug libs getting the heavens handed to them by pure virtue.
It's hard to convey just how intense this manga's :brainworms: are with mere words. It's page after page of the main characters doing a cool face and their opponents immediately eating shit, and the knock-on effect of that is something else.
I admit to reading the entire thing. It's enthralling, if only in the "I can't believe what the fuck I am reading" sense. Major misogyny content warning.
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This is horrifying. We've got an officer injured just reading this :volcel-judge:
"I can change her... with my dick!" is a big part of Terry Goodkind garbage fires too.
Hmm, that's almost as bad as GATE trying to show how good the Japanese military is, if we could just get rid of this pesky constitutional limit on it being for "self defense"