#university of copaganda and fascism

[inklingofadream]

I just had an epiphany about why I so dislike the watchmen/Alan Moore generally/etc "superheroes as fascism" argument. Which, it's obnoxious mainly because so many people who are into that theme are smug, have to be right all the time even though you're literally trying to enjoy a spidered man and not bothering them at all, kinda people. that's not the epiphany.

It's that it feels super incomplete, like it's insisting there's only one type of superhero (or even specifically one type of batman/superman/etc) story, which there's not. Even ruling out stories where a non-allegorical world destroying force shows up and the only option is the justice league or whoever, the superhero-as-fitting-the-fascism-theme is not the only thing happening.

The epiphany being that to me at least it feels exactly like insisting that murder mysteries are universally copaganda because you watch a lot of law and order and criminal minds, completely ignoring your ms marples, your Jessica fletchers, and so on. Yeah there's a strain of moore/nolan-esque superhero stories that are really fashy, intentionally or not, but like... there's a zillion stories where its very much FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD Spiderman, not judge jury and executioner Spiderman, yknow? It's not an incorrect argument, it's just not as universal as its fanboys pretend

[multitrackdrifting]

Going to fire off a hot take for once but spoiler warning for Across The Spider-Verse underneath

So there's people on twitter saying that they feel that Spider-Verse is copaganda, and obviously, no person or representative of any community can speak on behalf of others - everyone is different but I feel like challenging this idea nonetheless because it doesn't hold that much weight.

There are a couple moments that might give people pause:

1) Gwen saying to her father that he's in his position so that bad cops can't be in his position (you don't have to spell out this dynamic, I'm not 5 y.o.). Basically "bad egg" rhetoric

2) Miles and Gwen's fathers are cops that are shown to be decent people but it's rarely if ever framed that it is because they are cops.

I think the notion that the movies (plural because the first movie is also accused of this) that it humanises police and is pro-police is just an argument by aesthetics.

In ATSV one of the major plot points is that Gwen's father completely rejects her role as spider-gwen because he had assumed Spider-Man was a murderer that had killed Peter Parker of her universe.

In criminology there's a phenomena that has a decent amount of literature studying "police culture", and the whole alienation and rejection of his interpersonal bonds in favour of his duties as a police officer [creating a literal us. vs them paradigm in ones own community], while it's not a literal attempt by the authors to discuss that idea it incidentally explains it either way how incapable he is to love his own daughter and fight to protect her because it conflicts with what he is tasked with doing as an officer of the Law.

Of course, I think it's just best to hand-wave a lot of these arguments as an overly critical look at a movie that is largely not about these cop characters rather than a story where they are present, and they're not particularly described in a positive light despite what Gwen happens to say to her father.

In the scene where she says that she's just being conciliatory because that's what she knows her father as, this detective that's raised her as a single-parent some "by the book cop" but the movie showed how flawed he was as a person despite supposedly being a "good cop".

If you can't take that in and like just be objective about it then you're not really interested in the dialogue and you're just saying thing because the aesthetics are there but the ideology is not.

I generally have a no discourse rule I try to adhere to but this shit is just ridiculous man, it's such a good and heartfelt movie with really careful character writing and it's mostly about fate, freedom & identity - not whatever some person on twitter is fixated on.

The copaganda you're actually scratching at is a symptom of the super-hero genre and its relationship with law enforcement & the military industrial complex (which the MCU is far more egregious with) - it's not a primary feature of Spider-Verse specifically.

You know what Gwen's dad does to mend his relationship? He quits his job as a cop because it's not serving the community if he can't even do right by his own daughter. And the whole spider-society trying to uphold and protect fate and prevent people from defying the canon is more of a commentary on power structures than anything, I don't even know how you can conceive of this idea unless you hinge everything on the comic book super-hero genre itself having somewhat uncomfortable elements of fascism that are nigh-inseparable from it [which means that every Spider-Man would be at the mercy of this very idea].

It's not gonna hold I'm afraid because that's not the angle of attack people are taking and honestly, it's very fake deep as someone who has actually read the literature they're doing a very flimsy job of explaining.

I criticise pretty heavily in my own analysis that taking a bad faith interpretation of a work that is not even saying the stuff you're alleging is not critical analysis, it's just an "ass pull" argument. Gwen's dad literally had her at Gunpoint and kept her there after he knew she was Spider-Gwen because his authority as a police officer overwrote his concern for her as his own daughter.

The movie showed more dysfunction with cops (and authority like the Spider-Society) than it did endorse them but if you can't understand that argument because you're fixated on the copaganda train then yeah like, there's no serious dialogue to be had with you because the mere shadow of an object, is proof of its presence even though it's not talking positive about the air force, or the CIA or whatever the hell which is super prevalent in MCU movies by comparison.

With my admittedly limited knowledge of the broader spidey canon, the comics aren't even anti-cop, but they tend to hate spider-man but he's just willing to work with them where it's logistically reasonable to do so - but that doesn't really act as a heavy feature of his stories in my experience. It is a heavy feature in the PS4 Spidey game (which is a good game but yeah this aspect is asscheeks).

Besides, a lot of the movie was about Miles fighting the Spider-society, I genuinely scratched my head for a while at seeing these takes..

There's a world of difference between ATSV & like Brooklyne Nine Nine, Hawaii Five-O or Law & Order or even just the average MCU film and its casual discussion of intelligence agencies and thelike.

Just another day on the internet where you get bludgeoned over the head for free.

P.S. I do not care to deliberate this, if you can't smile and enjoy a genuinely good movie then you're not the kind of person I want to talk to in the first place.