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moontheoretist · 3 days

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You didn't want to address it, but I will: the imperialist implication of the Team Cap's behavior was not created in a vacuum. It was a build up sentiment over several movies that non-american audiences had. The fact that Cap behaves as if he has a right to enter countries willy nilly, with no oversight or approval, is the problem we have here.

The only issue Steve ever spoke of in CW is that "Accords are a red tape that stop him from helping where he is needed". There is nothing wrong with wanting to be useful and help, but if the country that you want to help doesn't want you there but you enter regardless? That's a problem. Especially when you are a superpowered person that can throw cars at people, and doesn't even look properly if that car doesn't hit some civilian by accident. (That's the entire point of CW movie, that Avengers lost oversight with the fall of SHIELD, and when I spoke to more people from Europe about this movie they told me it was very clear to them that Cap was in the wrong there simply because of the lack of said oversight in place that would allow him to operate legally).

If not being able to help was the only issue Cap had, it'd be a valid point. But because he also just wants to be able to go to any country he wants without asking anybody, it's insulting to other countries, especially because Cap is not just some average Joe but a man that represents America with his very being. If Cap just dropped from the sky in my country without asking my government for permission and then fought some bad guys with 0 regard for civilian lives, and then just ignored the destruction he brought to my country and skipped into the sunset, I'd NOT see him as a hero. I'd see him as an invader who thought he knew better what he is doing than everybody else around him. That's a problem that Team Cap has on top on the fact that Steve didn't even want to listen to the countries that had issues with Avengers, didn't want to have an open dialogue with them, and instead just went on rejection route first. (Let's not even bring up the fact that Steve as a singular person should not even have to sign the Accords, because his country would have already did so in his place and he as an American citizen would be expected to follow along with the decision his own country made).

That's my issue. But by extension my issue is how the entire situation with the Accords is handled. Or more like: how awfully it is handled and portrayed in CW. If you pay attention while watching, you will see that in the CW movie Accords are not established in any way, shape or form. Any information we get are scraps, because nobody deigned to sit and write it properly. I'm a writer, so I know how important it is to establish your world properly, and I just don't see it being done.

So yes, I will hold TV show producers and writers accountable for not doing a proper research, when they have all the reasoucers to do so.

As a writer I understand that some hand waviness must happen, but not to such extend that we have nothing to base our idea of the Accords off other than some subjective accounts of characters that we can't trust to be objective about it (like Ross). So my issue is that Accords are not established well, because nobody deigned themselves to add a goddamn lawyer character to CW and at least TRY to explain what Accords are about to the audience, so we could form our own opinion about it rather than trust Cap (who is a focal point of that movie as it's a Captain America movie afterall) that he knows what he read and understood it correctly. Instead we got several people who read the thick ass document and made their own interpretation of it, and now we have to guess who is right about it because we have no objective focal point to use that is reliable. There can be, of course, an argument made that audience should be able to establish their own view based on all of the characters they were given, but considering how emotionally polarizing those characters that give us info about Accords are, it's very hard to not assume the worst from very little information, with basically no foundation for it.

Furthermore the fact that you say that you dislike the Accords because "they violate Universal Declaration of Human Rights" tells me that you have some kind of idea what Accods are about, when according to the movie you should have been unable to know what is actually inside of that document. Considering that, you shouldn't be able to know if Accords violate Universal Declaration of Human Rights, US constitution or any constitution of any sovereign country. (Not to mention that it would be really hard to make 117 countries agree to sign a document that violates their own constitutions, so if it violated US constitution do you think USA would sign such a treaty?) I however have an idea where your information comes from as most people who have a strong idea what Accords are about use MCU wiki as a base for their information. The issue here is that I don't trust MCU wiki at all. I checked that page and it contained information from sources that are dubious at best like Agents of SHIELD, which is a TV show that is very loosely and weirdly connected to the MCU, as it was not made with explicit intention to connect to the movies.

Most of early Marvel TV shows are loosely connected to the MCU, because they were not created with connection to the movies in mind. At best they only were allowed to make some easter egg offshot comments, nothing more. So Agents of SHIELD, depending on how you look at it, are either canon or not, because there may be some parts of the show that directly contradict the movies. While the rest of the shows like Jessica Jones, Daredevil etc. were made as standalone TV shows, not related to the MCU and were later re-aquired back. Which makes them canon, but from the purely writing perspective makes the entire universe even more muddled. Not only movies tend to contradict each other due to the fact that nobody ever keeps an eye on the writing and tries to make it as accurate as possible for other movies, but now we also have the old TV shows to account for that are not well connected to the universe. It makes the entire MCU very shaky. From all of the shows I only could trust one to be canonical for the Accords. It was WandaVision as it was made later with the intention to connect to the movies. The info found there was just a simple sentence, quoted verbatim by one of the characters straight from the text of the Accords, which is more than any other show ever gave us before. That is the only thing I can trust to be in any way accurate when it comes to the text of the Accords. Please remember that this entire document is a thick legal document, not written for a typical person to understand, but in a legal-speak.

Then we have She-Hulk TV show, where there is dropped a line that makes no sense if you think about Accords as an international treaty.

And like I said before if you make a show about law where there will be court cases discussed and shown, you should have anough of a backbone and dencency to do just enough of a research to be able to build some solid foundations for it. Everything from our world that doesn't work for MCU world can be handwaved, but MCU is heavily grounded in our world, so most of the stuff can be accurately build using the existing laws. My issue is that it wasn't done. That line was dropped and when you do a bit of research it doesn't make sense as there was nothing established that would even remotely suggest that all of the countries that supported the Accords dropped it within the last several years. One line is not enough to establish such a huge change. Especially in a visual medium that relies on visuals not the text to build its world (text is secondary in movies and TV shows).

Which is also another issue I have with that universe: MCU skips over stuff it shouldn't have skipped over and establishes stuff with a lip service rather than actual scenes. I know they don't have enough time, but some scenes should have been prioritized to avoid creating issues like this. Every important foundation needs to be established first.

"With the competing interests of Russia, China, and the USA, something like the Accords could only end poorly", and here we agree. All 3 of those countries have the incentive to make Accords bad. The issue is that audience doesn't see it. Movies and TV shows follow the rule of "show not tell" so it must be shown in a way that audience will understand. It must be established visually how bad the document is, but it isn't done in the movie at all. Everybody that ever tries to establish what it is, says what it is, and it is always a biased view of that character alone. Hell, if they shown Accords as an awful legislature that infinges on human right, Cap would have far better argument than he has in Civil War. "Not to mention the general incompetency of the UN and their inability to do anything about anything (Remember the Rwandan Genocide? Hell, look at our current situation)". Yes, that's exactly what should have been used in that movie but wasn't. This is far better foundation for any argument or critique of the Accords that Team Cap could have made than anything Cap ever said in that movie. He could have just argued that he doesn't trust any of those 3 to have the best interest of enhanced people in mind, but he isn't allowed to, because when any of MCU movies even dared to criticise America for anything? For example: half of those movies if not all are super happy with American military and don't even dare to criticize it, even though there are characters who are part of the military in those movies that could have criticized it and demand change (I guess they tried a bit with Sam but in the end didn't manage to do so well). No, instead what Steve argues about is virtually "I want to go where I want to help (even if someone doesn't want me to help them)". Again I understand that he wants to help. There is nothing wrong with that. The issue people are having with his approach is mostly that he wants to help by disregarding souvereign borders and wishes of the countries that he goes to help, which is not how a hero should operate. Not to mention the fact that CW and other movies in the MCU establish Avengers as people who fight with little regard for civilian lives that are lost and in CW itself Cap tells Wanda that they "can't save everyone" but not in a way that is supposed to teach her how grave it is to be in a position of a hero. You can't see him to be conflicted about it or see him feel horrible that he can't save everyone he comes across, or that he used to feel bad about it, but accepted it as something that can't be avoided but can at least be minimized. No. It is portrayed as if he couldn't care less about their lives which further reinforces the bad attitude of non-american audience towards him. That's the source of the imperialist feeling that a lot of people outside of USA have when we watch this movie. We get the feeling that Cap would trample over our souvereignty if he himself, alone, decided it's something that must be done, rather than follow the rules and international law and defer to the institution above him.

We all saw what happens when America goes somewhere "to help" and sadly MCU Steve Rogers is a walking reminder of that to us all. His character is botchered to hell and back, because he never is allowed to be more than American posterboy that embodies everything that is wrong with America. He doesn't think and doesn't dare to stand against America like his comic counterpart did many times, and by opposing the Accords he virtually gives America and Ross all the cards they needed to push for even worse legislature (which is one of the reasons why the argument could be made that the Accords that characters from TV shows refer to, are the version that was made after the Civil War and what Team Cap did, so there is also this angle to consider). We would have a completely different attidute towards him as well if he didn't go rebelious route instantly. If he was shown in the movie to actually try and speak on UN forum about his fears and what he thinks is wrong with the Accords, and only after being rebuffed there went with more hands-on approach, we would support him. If he was used to establish what is actually wrong with the Accords, if he was allowed to say "I want oversight, but Accords are not a good approach" in a full blown scene in front of the UN commitee, we would suppot his claim. Hell, if that was the case and we were shown that countries are willing to break human rights in order to control the enhanced people in a very visible way to the audience (btw as far as I'm concerned RAFT was never UN's idea and was USA's prison only, especially considering that it was managed by the Secretary of State - Ross, and the fact that USA has an established history of building prisons as inhumane as RAFT - yes I'm aware that such prisons exist in the comics too, but considering those comics are American I'm fully not suprised that their idea of prisons is so bad), then Team Iron Man would have no reason to try to convince Team Cap about the relevance of Accords unless there was some reason established for them to actually be on board. Only in a movie where we don't know what Accords actually say the entire issue over them can exist, because the moment we learn what they're about then the movie has to establish why Team Iron Man would still support them (Accords are not SHRA). And we all know it was not done either.

Don't forget that Accords in that movie don't exist to create a political issue that Team Cap and Team iron Man can have a violent but in the end needed discussion about. No, they exist only to create a ground for the actual plotpoint of that movie - the personal beef between Steve and Tony stemming from the fact that Steve didn't tell Tony his parents were assassinated by Hydra. Accords are not fleshed out in that movie because they don't matter. That entire squabble doesn't matter, because the point was to make Tony and Cap beat the shit out of each other for very personal reason. Which is also one of the problems of this movie. That it doesn't commit to the idea it initially goes with, then skims over it and goes into something entirely else.

If you read any of my posts about the Accords that I have pinned on my blog you would know I'm not saying it as some raving lunatic. I'm a media scholar. I watch movies critically and dismantle them into individual pieces to understand them. I critique lackluster writing and lack of willingness of the movie makers and showrunners to do the actual research (if they did, Sokovia would not be a made up country and instead they would just sit down and do some research about a real slavic country instead of insulting us all with their madeup bs). The fact that I critique American media is simply because most of the media we consume nowadays is American and most of them are lazy with worldbuilding and writing. It's very glaring when you analyze it. The lack of research in American media is so bad it's hard to miss tbh.

BTW, you could have actually read other posts I have before making an assumption that I wouldn't listen to your argument. But instead you chose to insult me based on me not being American. How nice of you.

If you didn't want a response or a conversation about this topic, you could have just made your own post instead of targeting mine and calling me to the table as if you wanted to talk about it at all. But it looks like you simply wanted an excuse to insult me to my face. Do you really think that as a queer person living in a country where I have no rights, and as an avid X-Men fan I'd support a document that clearly was infrinding on human rights in any way? Ofc I wouldn't. My issue is that Accords are not fleshed out enough to even tell me what they're supposed to be about because the entire movie doesn't care about it. If you think me such a monster that would willingly excuse bad laws then I guess we really have nothing to talk about at all, especially with you being all ready to insult me and dismiss me with no conversation.

Then: You don't like what I write? Don't read it. End of story.

“Sokovia Accords were repealed! Team Cap was right! Team Iron Man must feel really stupid just about now!”

Actually no. We do not feel stupid at all. Because we actually did research about law that MCU writers did not for a TV show that is supposedly all about law, and know that the statement that Matt made was bullshit at best and ridiculous lack of knowledge at worst. Sadly, characters in MCU are written by people. If Matt and Jen were actual living, breathing lawyers specialized in international laws and international treaties, they would know that making such a claim would make them sound as if they slept through the law school and impact their carrier negatively, simply because Sokovia Accords were a multilateral international treaty signed by 117+ countries. So no, we do not feel stupid. We are trying to not laugh about your naivety, and we also are horrified that MCU once again bullshitted something about law that is completely untrue, because they just cannot sit and do research. As if it would kill them if they did.

I did that research for them, and it looks like that for multilateral treaties (that Sokovia Accords are) “termination” would mean that the treaty ceases to exist for all States parties. There was no mention of repealing, but there was mention of withdrawal in the sources I found. So USA could only withdraw from Sokovia Accords, not repeal it as it would be then a case of termination, and it would mean that all countries who signed them would have to agree to that and the Accords would then cease to exist for all of them. I only saw the word “repealed” used in context of bilateral treaties, which are between two parties, usually two countries. And I do not think UN is considered a side with whom the repeal could be processed. So yeah, USA could only withdraw from it, which would then also mean that Sokovia Accords still exist. Team Cap was not right. Team Cap was stupidly not realizing the imperialist implication of their own actions, and everybody who doesn’t live in America and knows how America can fuck up foreign countries “for reasons” knows that.

Sokovia Accords are portrayed in a way that is not true in regard to real life law and the version of our universe that MCU uses as its background. And it is not the only example of such gross disregard for international law representation in the media. It was done many times before in many other shows. Accords are just another example of how entertaining the audience seems to be more important than accuracy and quality of the worldbuilding in American mass media.

#reply #mcu critical #pro-skovia accords #but mostly because they're an empty vessel in that movie #if they were truly represented the same way as SHRA it'd be a no brainer that they're bad #but because they aren't it's such a polarizing issue in fandom #because everybody projects what they want onto them

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