Hate to bring this rubbish up again, but I just have to say that, for me, the messed-up part about Bucky and Rhodey’s narratives in CA:CW is absolutely not Rhodey being paralysed nor Bucky being basically suicidal. I mean, look, regardless of what tumblr’s very bad no-good discourse might say, arguments from authority are actually terrible, so I’m not saying here that, since I am disabled, I have an automatic and thorough insight into what is and isn’t ableist (if I do have a decent insight into ableism it’s, yes, from experience, but also from other people’s experiences, critical analysis, discussing things with disabled people who may not necessarily agree with me, etc). What I am saying is that, as someone with both serious physical and mental disabilities, I do actually want to see a superhero popcorn film in which one of the heroes has suffered a permanently disabling injury, and in which one of the heroes is dealing with the psychological impact of trauma and abuse. Not in a didactic way, just as a thing that exists and is a part of the characters and impacts the narrative, like “being displaced in time” or “palladium poisoning”.
My big, big problem is a) that’s absolutely not what I got or will get and b) the appalling framing. Rhodey doesn’t get paralysed because they wanted to have a paralysed character, he gets paralysed because otherwise he would logically have gone with Tony to Siberia and the Russos and M&M needed a way to push him out of the narrative, and what better way to bench a character than giving them a disability? He gets paralysed to give another character angst (note that we don’t even see Rhodey realising he’s paralysed, or learn this information along with him, there’s not even a cliched “I can’t feel my legs” bit when he’s lying on the ground, he’s in a Convenient Coma and the information has to be relayed to us by Tony), and even Rhodey’s last scene in the movie is from Tony’s PoV and about Tony.
Likewise, with Bucky, I don’t have a problem with him blaming himself, wanting to punish himself, wanting to do the PG-13 equivalent of killing himself, etc. Trauma almost always comes with some very ugly and dark places (that have nothing to do with any Trauma Makes You Evil nonsense cliches) and I do want fiction to show that. What I have a big problem with is everybody around him going along with it with the excuse of the poorly thought-out trigger words nonsense so we can have the PG-13 superhero popcorn flick equivalent of an euthanasia scene, complete with white clothing and soft lighting, ~he’s better off like this~, ~sacrificing himself for others~ and whatnot.
Nor do I think for one second that if we ever see these characters again (lol, I’ll believe it when I see it) we’ll have anything other than off-screen backstory magical cures. (Again, I’m not saying I want to see something didactic or issueifc-y. An equivalent of the way Charles Xavier’s disability is handled in X:A would be fine and genre-appropriate, and that’s hardly a high bar. Still I’m sure they’ll manage to slide right under it.)
tl;dr, having Rhodey be paralysed is all well and good in and of itself, Bucky having mental disabilities is all well and good in and of itself, having disabled characters in big pop culture media franchises is all well and good in and of itself, my huge, colossal/gonna die historic on the Fury Road problem is the shitty way this was all framed and handled, it’s the execution and the noxious tropes around it harold, and even though I usually couldn’t care less about fandom opinions since all our nonsense is pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, I have to admit it bothers me a bit when I come across complaints about Rhodey being paralysed per se as opposed to everything around it, or basically “oh, M&M walked it back and said Bucky wants to punish himself as opposed to objectively deserving to be punished, that makes That Scene OK, that was the big problem with it and their comments”, it reminds me of how I had so many problems with Nat’s narrative in AoU and then saw other people also having problems--yes!--only the argument they were making was “female characters are not allowed to think of themselves as broken or monstrous”, which... buddy... no... that’s not what I was objecting to...
