#masses of people as a blank weapon with no purpose but Purpose. very evil stuff

[pochapal-pokespe]

long time no see, god's least favourite horrors-riddled hivemind

[emperorren]

[pt 1 of 2] Thanks for the awesome reply! I <3 your meta. I’ve never been a comics reader, so your explanation + the video really help make sense of it. I also think the MCU influence explains why people would think that 1:1 political analogy is the only real kind, since when those movies are good that’s what they’re doing. But SW has a different structure + "taste culture" and people need to accept that even if it's not their thing.

I find them overall quite emotionally sterile and very male-centric, both in the male leads but also in the story emphasis. It's fine but the buddy-buddy team up para-military stuff is empty for me personally. And if I can respect people who love it they can respect my jam

To be clear though: what they're doing CAN be art. The 1:1 political stuff and approach in Black Panther proves that. I hope Captain Marvel is similarly excellent. I just want there to be more room for the stuff that's my jam and recognition of it as actually doing something different rather than failing/being "problematic" at being an MCU movie. 

^ About the MCU approach to political analogy, I'll never grow tired of referring to this post by cephiedvariable, particularly the part that says:

[...] the idea that Captain America as presented in the MCU (or any character in big, colourful PG rated popcorn flick for that matter) is a new, revolutionary, un-problematic kind of hero is how we saw so many people unblinkingly and uncritically swallow ‘The Winter Soldier’ as some politically rebellious masterstroke of leftist defiance when it was actually a very careful, very safe, very neoliberal script that took tepid aim at something everyone agrees is bad (the Patriot Act) without offering any substantial commentary or praxis and while *still* stroking off American exceptionalism and perpetuating the inherently reactionary message of superhero vigilantis.

[...] I’m not saying 'The Winter Soldier’ is bad and you’re bad for liking it, I’m saying that I think the conversation we had about it as a culture was exactly the conversation Disney wanted us to have about it. The idea that these are “important” statements, that these black & white, a-thematic stories told in broad strokes across multi-million dollar canvasses are meaningful moral constructs is what Disney and similar companies want you to think.

The “political” statements in the MCU boil down to essentially a series of simple and uncontroversial clichés (nazi-coded organizations are bad!, killing half the world population preemptively is bad!, using weapons of mass destruction against innocent civilians is bad! Every single life matters!) that are framed and spoon-fed to the audience as revolutionary, greatly heroic messages. Meanwhile, the villains (Killmonger, Thanos, Zemo, Pierce, Raza, Ultron, etc.) are the ones who actually try to subvert the status quo by individuating social illnesses and reacting against them. But since they’re also batshit genocidal maniacs, with no exceptions, their revolutionary impact along with whatever decent point their ideology was trying to make is normalized as Evil(TM) and eventually nullified and condemned by the narrative, and the status quo is restored peacefully and without any substantial attempt to fix the wrongs the villains tried to bring up. Moral of the story: yeah, society is full of flaws but war is bad and killing people is wrong so let’s defeat the bad guys and their Wrong, Horrible, Not Good At All approach to fix said flaws and then sit down, have a beer and hope for the best, god bless america.

It’s a very conservative, extremely safe approach to political analogy, and in the context of this genre it works well, as it easily creates high stakes and a simple, relatable, accessible moral divide between heroes and Complex Villains With A Cause. But it’s not the brilliant, revolutionary political commentary that people think.

Star Wars makes it even simpler and more universal (in the movies, it’s not even clear what’s the ultimate purpose of the FO, what makes it different from the Empire, what the hell they’re trying to accomplish or reacting against---the evils of democracy? political corruption? unequal distribution of resources? too equal distribution of resources? slavery? anti-slavery?). We don’t need a lot of details because the political conflict is transparently just a backdrop or large-scale allegory for the personal/existential conflict; the battle is life / love / creation / democracy VS death / hate / destruction / tyranny, rather than two concrete ideologies at war against each other; it’s just slightly more political than Fantasia’s battle against the Nothing. (the political aspect is much more prominent in the supporting materials, but those aren’t essential to understand the movie trilogies).

I find them overall quite emotionally sterile and very male-centric, both in the male leads but also in the story emphasis.

I’m actually a fan of the MCU, and I appreciate that it’s getting more and more female audience-friendly. I’m HYPED for Captain Marvel. But I also take it as what it is---I agree on the male-centricness (see also: Not Heroines, but Female Heroes) and I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem, provided that (as you said) it isn’t regarded as the highest touchstone in the action fantasy genre that every other franchise needs to conform to. As for the emotional part (or lack thereof), I personally read between the lines and use my transformative gaze whenever I can, even if that means treating the actual movies as a blank canvas to project my headcanons upon. The transformative approach makes every piece of fiction better than it is, but I find it particularly true for the MCU.