Wild take: Barnes is the Good guy (p.2)
okay so yall can review my p.1 , i've refined some stuffs, in p.1 i've provided evidence of how he actually has animal regression (which is shellshock, i just didnt know the literal term for it)
ANYWAYS in this post i will tell ya what it means if hypothetically Barnes has shellshock (which is proven in p.1) and how it shows more about his character
First, Barnes is the Good guy
And i dont define good guy as a guy who doesnt do harm, but rather SPECIFICALLY a guy who has good intentions in the first place
In psychology we have HSP (hyper-sensitive people), it's about people who's being affected the most [0]
Barnes is a protective guy, behind all of his decisions is [1]"how can i protect my guys"and [2]"how can i give them justices they deserved"
He knows the trade off, in order to save your troops you have to prioritise your people over others regardless of how inhumane or unethical it might cost, i truly believed when he shot those villagers he didnt do it to satisfy his ego or showing off his dark desires (unlike bunny who killed the villagers for fun)
Dude did it because he was in rage [0][2], he suspected them for killing his guy- Manny, before he even got there [2]
"BUT it's still fucked up, and he cant excuse the undone harm" that's what others will tell me, and that's true! But still doesn't change anything, that's because he internalised the toxicity in war [0], specifically toxic masculinities (power and dominance), it's not his core character
if he was naturally a bad guy he wouldnt just do the killing he woulda joined the r*pe his soldiers did to that villagers, why he only joined the killings? because no matter how fucked up his internalisation is, his core character remains as being protective
Specifically i want yall to understand that you need to change your biased perspective on the exaggerating scenes (ex, rape scene, genocide), to see that EVEN IF the film director want to make it clear that core IS evil, in other perspective it can work the opposite, it shows he doesn't care about gender/race/class, for evidence, given the context of the majority soldiers in REAL LIFE and the given characteristics Oliver Stone gave, he would have likely to directly rape/be physically abusive/racist to his soldiers, but he havent done any of that? So you cant tell me that whatever he does aint intented to protect his guys [1][2]
"Devouring Mother", this is the literal term describes Barnes as a character, selfless but when the "children" (refers to Elias, Chris) get independent the "mom" (Barnes) freaks out!
That's why he lashed out he killed Elias and almost did the same to Chris, he wanted them to stay under his control so he could protect them [1], doesn't necessarily mean it is bad, in most cases that's the Best scenarios.
You don't work with people who threaten the machine without the goal to improve the system, so in this scenario Barnes and Elias have clashes in terms of ideologies, but in the warzone you cannot just let the system being threatened for any minute to check whether the challanges were necessary/ethically right or not, what you need to do is to stabilise the system, that's why Barnes did it in the first place in order to save the majority you need to trade off, THAT'S how leadership works and with the given context (war), the urgency needs to be prioritised.
This is not about denying his vicious decisions but about the roots of them and the unexpected outcomes, it shows that you cant be a "good guy" in all scenarios WITH the vague definition of what a good guy is
Now we can clearly see the releavance, Barnes, given the fact that he potentially has Shellshock, and a HSP [0], i firmly believe that it is more like a RESULT of what the war has done to him, he is potentially the one being affected the most to the point of having Shellshock, and also how the war shifts a person to the point you cannot see their core, their intention and who they actually are, given the fact that the plot aims to demonise his character, we, as the audiences, should see the layers behind, because there is NOTHING absolute, you can have the good inside the bad and vice versa
Maybe it's the beauty of it when the dark overshadows the good so well once you have a taste of it you'll realise how exquisite it truly is
