This is a side blog for keeping track of media discussion and fics I want to read, started when I realized I couldn't find my fic in amongst all the anti-endgame salt. I used a random word generator for the name. I have zero (0) actual elephants, sorry to disappoint.
Whenever posts that talk about Jack Kirby get popular, I can’t help but notice they’re almost always posts about Kirby being down to punch Nazis and racists. Less commonly they’re posts about how Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s creation of Captain America was an act of specifically Jewish resistance standing up to both Hitler’s ideology and the American embrasure/inspiration of it at a time when it was not safe to do so. These are important topics and I still don’t think that they are talked about enough.
But I feel like that, partly due to later writers who have deradicalized Cap or kept him stagnant with the times, there is another aspect of Cap as a creation of Jack Kirby that gets overlooked: the fact that in the 1960s, Cap is a reflection of Jack Kirby’s own trauma from the war. Because Jack Kirby did go fight in the Second World War, and it had a profound effect on him. Reading biographies of Kirby’s life and testimonies from people who knew him show very clearly that his astonishing output is in part a coping mechanism from the horrors he lived through. This is further reflected in the narrative threads throughout 60s Cap and the Fourth World in particular.
The mantle of Captain America understandably carries a lot of baggage with it given the very real history of colonialism and white supremacy that America is built on, but Captain America specifically began as a symbol of resistance to that white supremacy and America’s support of it and it’s very disheartening to not only see that erased, but to see people act like Captain America has only ever been intended as a propoganda tool in favor of white supremacy.
As the OP I have to clarify a point the tags have made a number of times:
The Black Panther movies were/are good. Extremely well done. But that creative team was not brought on fully into the bigger MCU as completely as the CATWS crew was, which did hamper their prominence but also gave them freedom to actually make good movies.
There’s a deep discussion to be had (led by Black fans and scholars who know more than me and who I listened to at the time) about how and why the Black Panther team did so much better than anyone else in the MCU, but it also needs to be acknowledged that they were also held to a higher standard, if they had put out the dreck that was Civil War/Infinity War/Guardians etc., they had more to lose.
A film with a Black director and a Black cast was never going to be mediocre. They cast fucking Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan and Angela Basset and Lupita N’yongo and Forest Whitaker, for fuck’s sake.
The Black Panther team had to bring their best. Twice as hard, half as far, etc.
Downey was well known but with a shitty reputation. Chris Evans was a romcom star with one failed superhero movie under his belt already. Chris Hemsworth is fun, but he’s not particularly amazing. Chris Pratt is a nostalgia hire piece of shit people remembered fondly from Parks & Rec and he’s been coasting on it since.
The Black Panther crew has multiple Oscars, Golden Globes, and NAACP awards.
The Black Panther movies are extremely good. They exceed every metric. They also can’t be measured against the other Marvel movies like CATWS can. Black excellence was the bare minimum. It isn’t fair, but it’s true. They are their own thing as a result.
CATWS could have been trash, was allowed to be trash; Civil War and Infinity War proved that it was just a fluke that it somehow wasn’t.
actually no no no it really is sick and twisted that scott’s found family (other ex cons & his ex wife who he was successfully co parenting w) were written out considering scott’s LIFE LONG goal was to steal from capitalists (in his mind criminals) who exploited people for a profit. he went to prison, where he met his best friend luis (who was sentenced to a high security prison for a minor offense, probably bc of racism in the prison system), and when he got out he was forced back to crime because no one hires ex cons. scott had a masters degree, and not even baskin robbins let him keep his job when they found out he did time. he & his friends were forced to start their own business because it was their only option to stay clean. luis lived with scott for two years when he was on house arrest, and helped raise cassie along with maggie & jim. ant man is a story about a man given a second chance, and the people who supported him when he was at his lowest. and now that he’s finally at the “top”, the people who were there for him can conveniently be replaced with a privileged white billionaire family…….?
-scott is a lifelong criminal. it causes problems in his marriage well before he’s sent to san quentin
-he is against rich ppl who steal and exploit poor ppl
-when he gets out luis warns him he won’t be able to get a job. how do you think he knows that???? probably bc he couldn’t get a job himself, nor could his friends
-scott can’t get a job. the only reason he gets a job at baskin robbins is bc he lied on his application. and when they find out, they fire him
-scott turns back to crime bc he has no money, and risks losing visitation with his daughter
-if a white man with a masters degree can’t get a job how hard do u think it was for the other ex cons? for luis, whose dad was deported?
-of course u can call it empowering all u want but the reality is they had no other options. maybe one of them could get a job, but all four of them? and then their business is failing!!!!!!!! the only reason ppl hire them later in antman 2 is bc they’re seen on tv as heroes and in the public eyes they’re finally trustworthy enough to work w
-I have no solid solid evidence but scott “modern day Robin Hood” lang has at least 72 anti capitalist bones in his body, and canonically spent years stealing from ppl who exploited others
What I love about this scene is how much it highlights the vacuity of that sort of patriotic rhetoric. What Pierce says to the Soldier here is what the popular conception of American patriotism looks and sounds like. It’s the rhetoric with truth long gone and with sentiment missing in action.
And why does Piece try this with his Soldier? Why bother with the hoopla when in a second Pierce is going to casually wipe him down and hose the decks clear of anything personal or emotional? Why spend the breath it takes to say these vapid things to a Soldier who needs no rhetoric and who has never needed convincing?
It makes me think that this is the process Pierce always goes through. He makes the speech, knowing the Soldier will do what he is ordered and not for any greater good, but he makes the speech because he wants the speech in the record, so to speak. He wants to be able to believe that he gave the Soldier reasons, not just empty orders.
But this is the first time the Soldier had something on his mind so the scientists are shocked, the guards are frightened, and Pierce’s empty, self-absolving pantomime is revealed to be empty. Pierce seems equal parts empty and disappointed when he gives the order to wipe him: angry that the pleasant lie he told himself got cut off just because the Soldier knew someone.
this is so deep and spot on. The irony and conflict between the language of freedom and integrity and the evil false righteousness it is often a cover for is a key theme and reason why Captain America is an interesting character and story world and not just a one-dimensional good guy. It’s all about truly standing up for what you believe in, and what the opposite of that looks like: Hydra. Alexander Pierce, and his pointless speech of justification to his brainwashed captive.
what I love about this scene, along with the above amazingly analyzed cynical false righteousness Pierce espouses, is the (incredible acting from sebastian stan) expressions on the Soldier’s face during the whole scene. There’s this reluctant hope in his face: this childlike, dependent trust that his handler to tell him everything he needs to know. But you can see this fighting with his bone-deep instinctive knowledge that these people can’t be trusted, that they’re not here to help him, that he can’t believe anything they tell him.
…and then they go to wipe him and he goes blank, leans back and opens his mouth for the bite guard. It’s such a fucking poignant intense depiction of how hopeless and helpless the Winter Soldier was in Hydra captivity.
The victimization rate has been increasing since 2015, according to statistics.
The data shows that from 2017-2019 disabled people accounted for 26% of nonfatal violent crimes, even though they make up only 12% of the population and are victims of violence at almost four times the rate of non-disabled people.
Keep laughing, James Gunn. It’s fucking hilarious.
The number of self-proclaimed progressives unable to see the issue with this joke is disappointing but not surprising. You can’t walk over disability rights and pretend you truly care about women’s rights and racial equality. All of these (and other socioeconomic factors) intersect. As this article points out, disabled women experience the greatest amount of violence. The article doesn’t examine race and ethnicity, but we know from health data - which is usually directly related to disability data - that several ethnic minority populations do poorly compared to white Americans. Do you know who will be hurt most when stealing a prosthesis or mobility aid is seen as “just a joke”? It will be the women and the people of colour.
In the same way that it’s really poor taste to make jokes advocating for violence against women or violence against another race, why does it take so much explanation for people to see that a joke based entirely on violence towards a disabled person is unacceptable?
sorry if this sounds rude but wouldn't steve's upbringing make him sort of ignorant about a lot of things? i think it makes sense that he would be on the conservative side...
alright, anon, here’s what i think:
steve grew up in the 30s and 40s - right smack in the midst of the great depression.
he was the child of a poor, single, working mom who was also an irish-catholic immigrant - a group that was viciously persecuted and discriminated against at that time.
he had a variety of severe medical conditions that likely went untreated due to lack of health-care, and his mother died of pneumonia because of the same lack of health-care.
he was frequently beaten up and bullied because he stood up for himself and others when no one else would.
he volunteered to serve during the war because he so fervently believed in the cause he was fighting for and the people who needed his help and protection.
and then there’s stuff like this:
(from “man out of time” #3)
so basically, anon, i don’t agree with you at all.
he’s got his flaws, yeah, but steve would NOT be politically conservative. he would NOT be aligned with modern republican ideals, and he CERTAINLY would not be ignorant or insensitive to oppression, discrimination, inequality, or injustice.
in my opinion, anyone (or any narrative) that believes otherwise is completely missing the whole damn point of steve rogers.
FUCKING THANK YOU! I’m going to bookmark this to shove in people’s faces when they assume Steve would be conservative (hi, I have strong feelings about this). Also READ THIS ESSAY: “Steve Rogers Isn’t Just Any Hero” by Steven Attewell. Attewell grounds Steve Rogers in the political and social context of 1930s/40s America, making a flawless argument as to why Steve would be socially liberal.
Maybe it’s my upbringing that makes me think the whole idea of Steve being conservative is inaccurate and weird. My grandmother was a teenager during the Great Depression and a coal miner’s daughter. She’s a Democrat, in favor of government aid, and pro-union. Don’t assume that everyone from that time period is/was a raging conservative. Also, understand that the definitions of conservative and liberal have evolved drastically since the 1940s; however, I think it’s 100% accurate to claim that Steve Rogers would be a liberal by today’s standards.
No idea whether Steve voted in the 40’s (a lot of career military men of his generation *didn’t* until they retired since the military is under civilian control - and yes, that included General (later President) Eisenhower), but it’s canon that he supports gay rights (his best friend growing up was gay), same-sex marriage (he defends said best friend’s relationship with his partner as every bit as valid as his relationship with his girlfriend), civil rights, interracial/interspecies marriage, is proposed to by his girlfriends (who are uniformly strong, smart, and competent, not wilting little flowers), has a black superhero partner, has no animus against Communists, worked for the Federal Arts Project as an artist in the late 1930’s, and has repeatedly clashed with hard-right presidents and politicians (see also: his resignation over the Marvel equivalent of Watergate, the Civil War, etc.).
Not only, but the one time that Captain America DID support right-wing causes, it wasn’t Steve Rogers. It was William Burnside, the Captain America of the 1950’s, a fervent McCarthyite who took up the role while Steve Rogers was in the ice. Even better, Burnside, who’d used a variant of the super soldier serum, went crazy, started attacking civil rights workers, and was yanked from the field.
My bet? Captain America is not only a Democrat, he privately belongs to the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. He doesn’t publicize this (“I’m supposed to symbolize the whole country, not just one party or group”) but when he goes into the voting booth in 2012, he votes straight ticket Democrat.
I think part of the reason that people have this image of “conservative Steve Rogers” is because the political make-up of the US changed drastically just after WWII. After the War, the “Threat of Fascism” was all but eradicated, and the new political enemy became the “Threat of Communism.” Prior to this shift in political enemies, communist and socialist political parties were fairly strong minor parties, and it was not uncommon for people to know (or be) members of one or the other. It’s not until after the War that Communism really became a “threat” to the American way of life.
And that’s history that Steve missed, because he was under the ice when that went down. He slept through the entire Cold War, which includes the division of Germany between East and West, the Iron Curtain, McCarthyism and the Red Scare, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Iranian Revolution, the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and of course, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the fall of the Iron Curtain. He has absolutely zero frame of reference for any of these events, because they occurred after he went down and before he woke up. The world changed significantly in those seventy years, not just in terms of technology and culture, but in politics and international relations.
And that, I think, is at least part of what he’s getting at when he tells Fury, “They say we won the war — they didn’t say what we lost.”
wishing every member of the disney-mcu marketing team a very happy screaming crying throwing up as they learn that despite every algorithmically targeted test audience development by market analysis megahit they attempt to manufacture, tumblr will collectively decide without forethought or discussion that the new fandom obsession is a non-existent scorsese film premised entirely on the tag label on a pair of knock off boots
Hey... So I don't understand why so many people like p*ggy??? 10 years ago sure, he'll I liked 10 years ago. I was a dumb kid, saw what she did in the screen and thought 'This is feminism'. Today I look back and I cringe because she didn't represent feminism, she's a perfect woman born out of the idea that man have on the perfect woman, she isn't slutty like Private Lorraine, she doesn't care about other guy's like bucky, she saves herself just for steve, she is the woman born out of white man's fantasy, of what white privileged man think feminism should be. I don't know about you but in these last few years I started to hate HA take on p*ggy 'she can do what Steve does, only is better because is in heels'. I'm sorry for coming to bitch in your asks I am just kind of frustrated I read the Screen Rant 10 reasons why p*ggy is a better captain than Steve and I resolved to share my frustration with someone.
Hey no problem, I don’t mind!
(And I hate those stupid articles. If I wanted to see 1990s sexual politics I’d go watch Buffy! How are we still not past the ‘women have to have impractical clothes and immaculate hair and makeup at all times’ and ‘being physically violent is what makes a character a ‘good’ female character’ stage??)
Peggy is the first character I can recall coming across in media where the beliefs of the writers about what they are, and the beliefs of the actor playing them, just don’t tally with what they’ve actually written. But it’s remarkable how much that can be used to convince credible people that what they’re seeing is good.
(Or maybe it’s more that they’re unpleasant people, who genuinely don’t believe anything she has done is wrong, because they’d do it themselves. So any criticism of Peggy is a personal attack, because they feel she’s just like them, easy to project themselves onto.)
By this point I genuinely can’t think of anything Peggy could do on screen that casual viewers would call out as bad.
She has both assaulted and sexually assaulted Steve, hired a Josef Mengele expy (who killed members of the 107 and personally tortured Steve’s bff, both before hiring and afterwards as a direct result of her hiring) and helped him become immortal (in two universes now she has done this), shouted at/blamed other people for her incompetence, and she has stepped over Steve’s bleeding body to seize power for herself after speaking like Red Skull (and acting like him immediately after) in What If…
What more does it take? Actual puppy-kicking?
It’s like viewers are dazzled by the make up and boobs and can’t see anything else. (To be fair they are amazing boobs).
Like if people have convinced themselves that Brock Rumlow is a nice guy and nothing he did was bad because he’s played by someone hot?
I always had an uneasy sense of ‘I have to act as if I like Peggy, because everyone else is fawning over her, so it must be just me??’ Which I didn’t consciously realise I was feeling until I saw other people voicing doubts.
The real nail in the coffin was finding out about HA’s behind the scenes antics: the air of arrogance and entitlement, the repeated unprofessional, unwanted sexual contact, and the- I think of it as a hint of black rage in her eyes, but always voiced in a breezy, bubbly tone? Creeps me tf out!
I remember her telling stories about Whedon’s criticisms of her performance in AOU, and she was acting like that was a hilariously rude, wrong-headed thing for a director to do. She’d remembered exactly how he worded it, and then repeated that in an interview, to backstab over it and make herself look good. And for CATFA; I remember her talking about how she struggled with the radio scene, but that her audition, doing the radio scene, was amazing, and one of the grips on set told her she’d made him cry.
And just… who does that??
Can you ever recall hearing an actor use an interview to talk about how great their own performance was? What an absolute monster!
So when I look at Peggy now, it’s not just the script that makes her rotten, it’s realising that that is not someone accidentally playing Peggy that way. That’s someone who thinks those qualities of arrogance and vengefulness are just confidence and self-defense; all fine and fun. She strikes me as someone you absolutely would not want to cross.
And the fact that the mind-control guy Fennhoff in AC, hinted at being the person behind the Winter Soldier mind-control method, he thinks she’s an incredible liar. And the ruthless cold blooded serial killing Black Widow? Also thinks she’s great. The way she in fiction and IRL makes both men and women just throw their brains out the door? It’s so dangerous!
God, she could’ve been an absolute shining bastard of a villain!
Alas.
One thing I’ve clocked about Peggy, recently, is the way she avoids answering questions when answering would make her look bad.
(Gives me strong Christian Grey flashbacks. Watch those movies; every time Ana asks a question, he dodges it, or acts as if he’s put his money where his mouth is and proved he would do X selfless thing just because he’s said he would.)
Examples with Peggy doing this:
(Why did you join the army?) Oh you don’t know how to talk to a woman.
(What are you doing here?) Officially I’m not.
(What about you and Stark?) Here’s your transponder.
(What about you and Stark?) Still don’t know how to talk to a woman.
(I don’t know what the right thing to do is). Oh Steve you’re so dramatic.
(Why are you double-crossing your colleagues?) Never mind that there’s a killer out there! (this was in AC.)
While I was googling things relating to this ^ (apparently this is part of gaslighting?) I stumbled across this short checklist of How to Tell If You’re in an Abusive Relationship.
And. Well.
Are you in an abusive relationship?
Your inner thoughts and feelings Do you:
feel afraid of your partner much of the time? (Steve looked afraid while she was shooting at him and braced his shield between them after she walked past. (Does that count as once or twice??) Definitely not afraid of her ‘much of the time’ but definitely afraid of her.)
avoid certain topics out of fear of angering your partner? (With the way she never answers questions I guess there’d be no point… but it’s interesting where his nursing-home visit falls in CATWS; in Act 1. Apparently he never went back to ask her about Hydra or Zola. What would be the point? And after being shot at, he never brings up Howard again, and starts carrying her photo around in his compass.)
feel that you can’t do anything right for your partner? (She shouts at him for, variously: getting in the way of the saboteur, not jumping from the plane at a time she chose, giving her orders, being late/out of contact, being kissed, etc.)
believe that you deserve to be hurt or mistreated? (Steve apparently doesn’t think shooting at him out of jealousy is psychotic!)
wonder if you’re the one who is crazy? (He’s still letting her voice opinions at him after that…)
feel emotionally numb or helpless? (More to do with grief in CATFA and A1, but in CATWS he’s not grieving so much but is definitely like this while still in contact with her…)
Your partner’s belittling behaviorDoes your partner:
humiliate or yell at you? (yes, see above; calls him a lab rat unprompted, also tried to humiliate him in front of Stark by bringing up Lorraine, and then got physically violent when Steve wasn’t chastened enough for her liking.)
criticize you and put you down? (yes, see above; the fact that she peppers cruel unwarranted criticisms in with cloying praise is no less creepy)
treat you so badly that you’re embarrassed for your friends or family to see? (Steve seems pretty embarrassment-proof and spends all his time with his friends)
ignore or put down your opinions or accomplishments? (turns her back and dismisses his questions when he ‘kisses’ someone else; sneers at his desire for love, his ambition to become a soldier, and his success in the USO tour. The only times she can be convinced to say he’s right is when he frames it as originally her opinion: ‘did you mean that?’ and ‘dignity of choice.’)
blame you for their own abusive behavior? (apparently her shooting at Steve is his fault)
see you as property or a sex object, rather than as a person? (omg 1000% percent yes).
Your partner’s violent behavior or threatsDoes your partner:
have a bad and unpredictable temper? (YES, IN TWO UNIVERSES)
hurt you, or threaten to hurt or kill you? (YES)
threaten to take your children away or harm them? (N/A)
threaten to commit suicide if you leave? (No)
force you to have sex? (we never saw them have sex, thank christ; but she does force him to kiss her)
destroy your belongings? (Yes, she shoots at his shield)
Your partner’s controlling behaviorDoes your partner:
act excessively jealous and possessive? (Y E S)
control where you go or what you do? (YES; won’t let him dress himself or be dressed by the nurse; won’t let him leave for Krausberg without being in control of how he travels there, even though he’s already got a jeep; wants to control/know where he is even though that’s obviously not necessary since he walks safely back to camp. The scene where she tells him off for being late/not calling in could be transposed to a modern setting where a controlling gf shows up, going ‘where were you? I texted you and you didn’t answer me! your phone is dead? you’re on thin ice.’)
keep you from seeing your friends or family? (If EG Steve has been around the whole time and married to her then, yeah. He didn’t get to visit until after she was dead and couldn’t stop him…)
limit your access to money, the Internet, phone, or car? (N/A? tho stopping him driving off in the jeep could count as controlling/limiting his access to a vehicle; if you see transponders & radios as the cell phones of their day then she is the one to control/manage/interfere with his both times; and if the internet = information then she often acts as if she’s the only source of knowledge he should rely on, even when she’s just repeating things he already knows, eg. showing a map he’s already seen, saying Nazis will shoot at him *self-awareness check?, mansplaining what Bucky would think/want him to do, how he should move on, etc.)
constantly check up on you? (yes; she and Steve don’t know each other, they’re not a couple, so it’s none of her business to go poking her nose into how he’s doing in the Brooklyn lab, on the USO tour, in the pub (twice). Both times he’s on a plane, in CATFA, it’s Howard’s business to know where Steve is, since he’s the one actually getting Steve to safety. She’s just getting in the way.)
The more “yes” answers, the more likely it is that you’re in an abusive relationship.
#mcu#marvel meta#anti peggy carter#she shot the shield four times… sure she deserves to carry it lol#people saying captain carter isn’t the peggy carter of the main timeline are missing the point#which is that disney keeps bringing her character to the forefront and insisting that she is something that she is not#putting her on a pedestal that she frankly does not deserve#trying to take the attention away from the bad things that she took part in in the main universe#putting steve’s words in her mouth#in not only the main universe but in others (via @groovy-lady )
Your tags bring up a point I wanted to reiterate myself!
Disney has become aware that her behaviour in the main timeline is so bad, and the romance with Steve so non-existent, that What If is their attempt to edit out all the bad things she canonically did in order to be able to claim that she is now a good person… just because she’s from a universe where the opportunity to do those bad things never arose.
(However, since Kevin Feige et al are morons, they have her doing new heinous Fascistic shit in What If… because they aren’t capable of recognising that unless fandom points it out to them. 🙄 )
They also cannibalised Steve’s problematic scenes with Bucky (problematic because of the gay subtext) in order to make new scenes for Peggy, to retcon a het romance which was never there, and to fix the ‘problem’ of Steve’s canon homoerotic subtext by removing the Bucky scenes which proved it.
(Diversity win! The homophobes hacking your narrative to pieces accidentally confirmed that those same-sex scenes were definitely romantic!)
At the same time, in FATWS they’re retconning Bucky as a ‘reformed’ villain, who – unlike Peggy – has to make amends for having done bad things (even though intellectual incapacity, by definition, makes him 100% innocent, and almost-identical characters like Hawkeye get a total free pass.)
All this ^ and FATWS scenes shoving Bucky at every nearby female, while also queerbaiting him and Sam, and him and Zemo, are further proof that they know people read Steve and Bucky as gay and are now trying to distract from that and undo it.
(It’s kind of ruthless, isn’t it, to shove Bucky at other male characters; as if to say ‘see? we’re not homophobic! we still want your shipper money! we just don’t want you touching Peggy’s things!’ )
Marvel have also bought the comics, admitted that they see them more as content-farms for potential future movies, rather than their own medium.
Which is 🤮 …
And have now (of course! surprise surprise!) retconned comics!Peggy into What If’s Kaptain Brexit, matching the Cynthia-Glass inspired MCU Peggy…
(pretending they never adapted a Nazi character in the first place)
…and, naturally, given comics!PC lots of performative woke niceness to further retcon that she was always a good person, actually.
They avoided mentioning Sam or including him even in places he should be.
(Eg. he is never mentioned by name in EG, even when Steve has taken over his old job and he was one of the first people seen dusted. He is only allowed to appear in What If in a mute zombie form, to further queerbait him and Bucky & cancel Bucky/Steve; they have Bucky slay zombie!Steve without hesitation and cheapen their most heartfelt romantic canon line as a quip, as if he never cared much *homophobic retcon alert!* and Bucky is treated as if he’s expected to be upset about slaying zombie Sam, only.)
I keep saying it, but to me all this ^ looks like an Owl House gambit by Chapek and Feige; deliberately under-promote the thing you don’t really want to have (a black Captain America, Peggy being irrelevant, Steve & Bucky being gay retirees) even though people love it, so that when it flops you can blame us for not supporting it enough, and are left free to replace it with the thing you actually like (a status-quo-promoting, authoritarian, white feminist, female Gaston / buff Margaret Thatcher).
never spoke to him in the one week they were in the same place
asks whether he runs away from fights 🤦🏼♀️
(in Europe) doesn’t know that the 107 is his berserk button
ergo, doesn’t know his father was in the 107 or that he also has a best friend in the 107 either
thinks Steve can be dissuaded from taking action to protect said friend
(on the plane) thinks Steve will obey orders
thinks telling Steve ‘you can’t do that!’ means he will then not do that 😆
(in the pub) thinks showing up in a dress & telling Steve she’s available will lead automatically to him pursuing her
(she wouldn’t need to announce her availability to be dated by Steve if she was: 1) already dating him 2) in communication with him via letter)
sees Steve with another woman and assumes he’s taking advantage, being a sleazebag (have you met him?!)
thinks Steve will care about her bad opinion of him
thinks being physically violent to Steve is how you teach him a lesson. 🤣
thinks her subsequent photo (that which is shown) in a propaganda showreel of Steve reflects the reality of his life/wishes
(wouldn’t need to be stealing photos if they were in communication/exchanging letters, because they could far more easily have exchanged proper photos that way; and wouldn’t be trying to communicate/get to know each other better, anyway, since they both announced their intention not to date until after the war)
is shown being in London while Steve and the Howlies are on the Continent for the duration of the war
and appears in no scenes with Steve (over which she could be getting to know him) during that time
she has to ask whether Steve respects or believes in ‘his friend’
doesn’t know Bucky is Steve’s best / oldest friend; even Phillips does
still isn’t on first name terms with Bucky by the end of the war
thinks Steve needs her to mansplain what his oldest friend (whom she didn’t know) would think/want him to do
thinks Steve can be reasoned out of being self-sacrificing
thinks hiring Zola (and letting him achieve immortality via computerisation) is a suitable way to respect Steve’s legacy
is apparently under the impression that Steve lacked courage since:
despite having all her strategic suggestions ignored by him and never being asked for moral guidance by him, she doesn’t contradict a person who says ‘Captain Rogers relied heavily on you for courage, strategy, and moral support.’ (Jarvis in the AC show)
laughs at Steve wanting to do the right thing and calls it ‘dramatic.’
the problem with pggy is that she’s had more than enough time for a decent characterization but she still doesn’t have one. she either appeared or was ref’ed in all captain america and avengers movies and even had her own spin off & is now getting a whole new arc as cap carter but she’s still the most written-by-a-man of all mcu heroines. the carol danvers test imo is an excellent indicator —because despite being sexualized to beat hell by them, nat’s solo film was still hated by many male fans. i daresay pggy is more “punch men!1!!1” than natasha or carol, so why didn’t her show get the hate they did? why didn’t cap carter get the hate jane foster is getting despite the fact that they both got the mantle from their male counterpart? because pggy is a caricature of a strong woman, and she doesn’t go through painful, transformative experiences that humanize her like other mcu heroines. the fanboys are happy with her girl power propoganda because there’s nothing to remind them of her personhood, so she doesn’t challenge their sexist convictions. she’s a sparkly pink banner with girl power written on it, not a real woman who wields actual power (later when she becomes one she uses that power to immortalize the guy who tortured the best friend of the “love of her life”. relationship goals or what). and no, hiring n*zis doesn’t make her multidimensional or grey. it just makes her a bad person lol. a grey character only works if you address their moral ambiguity. mcu and pggy fans gloss over her lack of morals by calling everyone who points it out a misogynist.
still don’t think she’s one-dimensional? just look at the producers of her spin off, the actress and her fans. the only way they describe the character is “badass” which literally doesn’t mean anything anymore. also; not just badass, but badass without having to forsake femininity (the actress’ exact words). i’m gonna assume by badass they mean strong and no-nonsense for argument’s sake, *regina george voice* so you agree? a woman being strong and no-nonsense is only acceptable if she conforms to white western ideals of femininity? and therefore pggy carter was designed to be a strawman of the kind of feminism which men deem appropriate? they really told on themselves.
(in ref to <<<)
The Carol Danvers Test (Your movie/game/book/play passes if it incites men’s rights dipshits to boycott.)
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You're so right when you call Pggy the 'most written-by-a-man of all MCU heroines.'
Because she looks immaculate at all times and, despite being a Fantasy Powerful Woman, has no power or significance outside of a man, she doesn't challenge patriarchal values.
So she's palatable to shallow and/or anti-feminist men, tradfem women, and those lacking in critical thinking skills.
(To the hard-of-understanding, 'not being a housewife' and 'being a feminist depiction' are interchangeable terms).
Pggy has also had more golden opportunities than any other character to speak out against Fascism and Fascist values and explicitly state that she's in the war to combat Fascism, the way Steve was, and yet she still has not.
(And could not, convincingly, since a lot of what Fascism idolises she herself embodies, and she has knowingly worked with and aided Fascists across the multiverse.)
Which, again, is an appealing quality to a certain sort of... Disney fan.
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So, as you say, she has no personhood.
And the stupid thing is, Disney can't even give her any personhood now, because all the backstory they could have used to flesh her out (from comics Pggy or all the other love interests of Steve), has been rendered completely unusable since she's Cynthia.
They can’t even give her her signature hat, because they put her in the wrong location and it was local to the place she lived in, in the comics.
Everything that could have given her an independent identity, outside of a man, they threw away, just because they wanted to show a Sexy Nazi.
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And Natasha is a really interesting character to compare.
Not just because of the Carol Danvers Test, (which, yeah, that flashes up all the red flags for anybody curious to know whether something is feminist or not!)
But because Natasha was both deliberately and inadvertently sexualized in her intro movie (because of misogynist writers/directors).
But whereas she was deliberately presenting herself that way – to manipulate a foolish philanderer – Pggy presents herself that way just because the writers and actress think a woman looking good is Cool and Important, and also that men wanting female characters to look like that all the time is Fine, Actually.
(And, whereas Nat's self-expression is also a tactical choice, Pggy's is never presented as a choice; because no women at all in CATFA, AC, WI, etc. appear anything less than immaculate, even in the background).
They thought all the aesthetics, sexualised violence, and claimed (but not proved) job titles 'fixed' the problem of a sexy female character being there just to be the Male's Love Interest.
But in fact, their failures only exaggerated that problem.
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Despite how flawed and inconsistent Nat's characterisation has been, Nat also nevertheless highlights what strong female characterisation looks like, compared to Pggy.
She gets to be a friend, a sister, an enemy, a surrogate daughter, an employee with a clear remit. Not just a Love Interest. Her opinions are actually listened to.
And, she has a temperament & personality type which make her well suited to being a spy; her comfort level with fluid identity (as a direct result of her unique backstory) is an ideal quality in someone who has to resort to subterfuge.
(And also, conveniently enough, it makes her varying personality between films seem understandable!)
So being a spy is an organic choice for Nat; a spy is a plausible thing for her to be, based on who she is as a person.
And because this is a genderless trait, not part of a restrictive gender role, even though she is sexualised as a woman, her depiction is therefore more feminist. (You see the same cool, remote affect in male spy characters like Agent Coulson).
Compare that to just making a woman a spy because- well, spies are sexy and look at her!!
Pggy, on the other hand, is absolutely all wrong for her (alleged) profession.
She is blunt and brutal, blundering and oblivious, a bull in a china shop.
But she’s a spy (is she tho??) because spies are Sexy!!
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Another aspect of Nat which makes her suited to being a spy, which Pggy lacks, is accurate self-appraisal.
Every single claimed skill Nat has, is supported by canon evidence of her competence.
(Some examples:
she can get 'genius' Tony to hire her with barely a word,
she can do her fake job well enough that Pepper doesn’t query her being hired, despite the obviously-shallow reasons Tony did it,
she can lie so convincingly that even Steve takes a while to notice,
she can disguise herself so well that not even Alexander Pierce realises he's talking to her until she reveals herself,
she can manipulate using misogynist expectations of gender roles (which is more difficult and therefore impressive in a post-feminist society) so well that even the ancient Actual God of Lying does not realise what is happening,
she comes up with the solution to the wormhole over New York over the self-identified 'expert in thermonuclear astrophysics'
she is capable of running SHIELD and is actually shown doing that instead of them just telling us she did it (and is accused of being, if anything, over-efficient!)
etc. etc.
Sorry Steve, but Nat is far and away the most intellectually capable Avenger.
Pggy, on the other hand, merely thinks she's cleverer than everyone else.
Despite all her claims to competence being almost universally (and almost always immediately) disproved by canon incompetence…
(Some examples:
She's anti-bully? But then she's not defending the weak from the same bully (so it's just her own skin she cares about).
She's good at military stuff? But then she's not reaching a grenade in time / or recognising a dummy / not important enough to be told about it (or to be made part of the discussion over who will get serum).
She's in charge of anti-sabotage? But then she fails to clock saboteurs loitering outside the Top Secret Lab, so they're immediately sabotaged.
She cares about the people of Brooklyn? But doesn't give a shit about starting a gun fight in the open street or bombs going off.
She's good at shooting? But then she's missing every shot (and blaming Steve).
Her opinion was important to the men in WWII? But then she's being told nobody gives a damn about her opinion, she can be sacked because she's disposable, and Steve ignores and directly opposes everything she suggests, even from inside a vitaray tube.
She's demure? But then she's groping Steve, accusing him of being indecorous when he is sexually assaulted, turning a blind eye to Howard Stark's overt sleaze, and then mimicking Steve's sexual assault to get a kiss.
She's all common sense whereas Steve is 'so melodramatic?' But she's the one throwing jealous temper tantrums, (quite literally throwing her weight around, in WI), firing guns at her own people (like Red Skull), interrupting and risking the failure of a billions-of-lives-at-stake mission to make Steve kiss her.
She's self-made despite period misogyny? But men are handing her almost every job she's ever had, without interviews (and the ones without interviews were for jobs that would accept either literally any woman, or only women of her class).
She's saying being a woman makes her a better spy than men? But then she's failing to notice a Black Widow has moved in next door until she is kissing her on the mouth.
She's Antifa like Steve? But then she's willingly working with and immortalizing the very Nazi he fought to stop, in two universes. And so on and so on and so on and so on … )
…Pggy continues to believe she is competent.
The writers, and the actress puppeting her, believe that competence (and honour and decorousness and intelligence and perfection) have been shown.
If I was going to mantle-swap Pggy with a character who fits the skillset she actually has, rather than just the one she only thinks she has, it would be some kind of She-Hulk.
Rage, bluntness, and violence against men are already a part of who she is, whereas subtlety and decency are not. (And the people writing, playing, and stanning her already think Woman + Violence = Good Characterisation). So why not?
I can't say I'm sorry someone likeable and capable is actually playing that character though.
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On that note, I was going to say that I've noticed – and this is kind of telling – that the moments when Pggy feels most natural, on screen, are the times when she is irritated and snapping at people, or being patronising.
Sadistically revelling in violence? Sexual assaulting someone out of a sense of entitlement? Talking to someone like they're a child? Praising herself? No problem! Those are the most characteristic moments!
But as soon as HA has to do a scene of Pggy feigning compassion, the acting immediately falls down and becomes stilted and amateurish.
Contrast her with the actors who do moments of humanity and compassion really well; Mackie, Hemsworth, Boseman, Stan, Isaacs, Tucci, Holland. Even greedy RDJ makes Tony’s brief blurts of life-altering largesse, to poor people, come off as very human and believable.
But what HA reminds me of most is Jennifer Saunders doing deliberately-bad acting in her comedy show French & Saunders.
(Seriously. Look up their Silence of the Lambs parody and tell me that's not HA!)
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And I agree, hiring Nazis doesn't make Pggy grey or multidimensional, because specifically fighting Nazis is CATFA's #1 criteria for what makes a person good (like Steve) without room for ambivalence.
And because 'grey' implies an impurity of ethics which none of the people involved (with the writing or acting of Pggy) believe she possesses.
They don't think she did anything wrong!
If they did think hiring Zola was wrong, they wouldn't be rehabilitating him in their animated series. That's Disney's solution to her hiring Nazis. Not even claiming that she didn't do it, just that she did do it, only they were 'reluctant' Nazis, nice Nazis!
Just like the ones the American government collaborated with under Operation Paperclip? Just like the ones Goold Old Uncle Walt welcomed into Disney, right?
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There are a couple of interesting parallels between Pggy and Jane.
First, they have both been brought back from obscurity, just when it looked like a black person was going to be taking over the hero's mantle.
(If they wanted to make Thor female, after Ragnarok, and Jane and Sif were no longer in the picture? Then literally the only possible candidate was Valkyrie. It’s hard not to read Jane’s return as a sign of anti-diversity panic. I'm relieved that the sequel is being handled by Taika Waititi, despite Ragnarok’s flaws, because I'm hopeful he will resolve these unfortunate implications? Maybe sapphic-ly?)
Second, both Jane and Pggy were violent towards the men.
I hated that scene for Jane just as much as for Pggy.
(But whereas Jane was a teeny human slapping a giant invulnerable God, Pggy was firing a gun at a man who is not invulnerable to bullets. Jane was actually in an established long term relationship with Thor, including cohabitation, whereas Pggy wasn't even dating Steve. But the depth of relationship, and the fact that one man could easily survive but the other could not, is beside the point; the violence is equally emotionally abusive and unacceptable in both cases.)
And it’s notable that the female director quit TDW specifically because she was worried about being blamed for a poor script.
So the other movie where a woman attacks their love interest, a female director would rather disavow, but in CATFA it’s feminist?
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Outside of this moment of similarity, of course ‘mens rights dipshits’ hate Jane, (but not Pggy), because Jane has a power base and career outside of men! (Just like Carol!)
She was a world-leading astrophysicist before Thor ever came along, and in fact the only reason she even met Thor in the first place is because she was so good at her chosen profession that she correctly predicted where he would appear (twice!)
And, she was a vital component in Thor recovering his power in T1!
Whereas Pggy's profession was chosen for her by her brother.
And, as charmed as Pggy's life always would be, as an Upper Class woman, if you delete Steve and Howard from her life, who is she?
What has she accomplished or aspired to, outside of those men?
Even in two other universes, her entire career consists of bearing Steve's chosen standard (or based in an organisation named after it).
And yet she is so irrelevant to Steve's life that she fails the Sexy Lamp Test (see link above).
In fact, she would have derailed Steve's Hero's Journey completely, had she ever actually done anything.
If she had stopped the grenade, Phillips never would’ve realised he was wrong and Steve never would've been picked for serum.
If she had stopped the murder of Erskine, other super soldiers would've been made.
If she had stopped the saboteur fleeing, as WI shows, Steve never would've gone after him, never appeared in the newspapers, never been put in the USO tour, never become Captain America.
Steve's empowerment literally, literally depends on Pggy's powerlessness.
And yet people think she is a feminist character!
Oyvey.
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White Feminist Pggy also prevented Daniel Sousa from protesting the suppression of women, just when it would have helped her fellow female agents - because she knows her value (and “no one else's opinion” matters. Including other women's? So, keep the glass ceiling in tact, for them? Defend herself, and her personal simps, from being pestered by men, but not other women from being pestered by Howard Stark? Feminist how?)
Unlike Pggy, Jane is a woman in a position of power who has clearly used her achieved (not gifted) position to uplift other women, because her intern is another woman.
And a good looking woman, too!
And she's allowed near Thor! Even allowed to touch him!! And comment on his good looks!!!
Pggy would never.
Pggy inserts herself whenever nurses try to get near Steve, for his health, (whereas Jane is willing to drive Thor to the hospital even when he is a total stranger and she will get in trouble for doing so).
And (as mentioned) Pggy becomes physically violent when Steve expresses interest in other women. (Which is, naturally, shocking to her, as the Only Cool Girl In the Universe).
But HA, the writers, and the stans, think the shooting scene is feminist just because Pggy is not attacking the Other Woman.
(And, somehow, miss that we've been given 'without a man loving her, this silly girl cannot handle her womanly emotions, abandons all sense, becomes hysterical, and makes a violent Scene at work' and 'violence against men is Fine and Hilarious because Gatekeep Girlboss Feminism Slay'.
Gimme a fuckin' break!)
They're so deep in 'women are just sexual competition for men' mode that no other good-looking women are allowed onto the screen with Pggy unless they're a simp or a villain or both.
In AC and WI, like all good Mary Sue narratives, the supporting cast are quite literally that, support; people are paraded on screen to either praise her or get their comeuppance for not (and die and/or be proven wrong for criticising her).
And if somehow another good-looking woman still manages to become a fan fave? Write her off and insert a fat sidekick instead! That'll fox those pesky lesbians!
Or if fans complain about lack of POC? Wheel on a black man to simp and then be killed, after orchestrating Plot Reasons why he can’t be too sexual!
(Black women may be pictured in the back of shot, but may not be allowed to speak, lest their existence outshines Pggy’s reported wokeness, or their haughtiness offend her.)
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And Pggy hasn’t had to change, because Disney don’t want the extra hassle of having to please the people who are capable of seeing something amiss – if they’re even aware of anything amiss.
HA has only to say 'feminist' for casual viewers to believe that therefore they have been shown feminism, and that anyone who thinks her writing isn't feminist must therefore be a self-loathing misogynist.
Or, my personal fave, that anyone who notices this is just 'thinking too hard' and it's 'not that deep.'
Why is it only ever 'thinking too hard' when you’re talking about something people feel embarrassed for not noticing?
And, hey, what a coincidence, that this precise brand of anti-intellectualism is one of the cornerstones of Fascist thought!
Which is why they imprisoned intelligentsia alongside minorities. And that glamourising 'not thinking hard’ is exactly how you make 'not questioning things' fashionable, too. (Authoritarian bodies want universal acceptance of their answers, not more questions). Which in turn generates homogeneity and conformity. Which is super convenient when someone wants to address you and make money off you!
Like, oh, say, a many-headed media conglomerate?
Is there a reason why this attitude is common among people who love the perfect Fascist woman, who hires, works with, and immortalises Nazis, and now canonically deemed herself worthy to be made an ubermensch, in imitation of the uber-ubermensch, Red Skull?
Nah, it must be that I'm just obsessed with making everything gay, and jealous that they made the 'normal' ship canon.
Yeah, that must be what's going on here.
I shouldn't rock the boat.
If GiantMediaMonopoly says a thing is good, I should just agree.
I shouldn't 'think' too deeply. I shouldn't 'question'. I shouldn't demand to see humanised depictions of my gender. I shouldn't insist that Jewish writers' creations should not be paired off with Nazis or Nazi collaborators, in any universe.
If men want to write women that are nice-looking but ultimately useless, I should either stop noticing, or just shut up about it.
As long as I know my value, anyone else's opinion doesn't really matter.
In this scene Steve let's himself to be captured. He is at his worst after losing Bucky but he still has a mission. For all he knows hydra could have killed him but he can't let that happen. He trusts his comrades enough to arrive in time. That is the level of respect he had for them.
He surely trusted others that joined the war efforts. Trusted Howard to make better equipment. Trusted Philips and the agents to provide proper Intel.
Biggest thing that keeps Steve Rogers going is the loyalty. He is loyal to those he trusts and he expects it in return.
That's why he loses it when he finds Fury and Nat kept Intel from him. But later he learns it was with good intentions.
So when he punches the computer it's not a silly act. He just learned that the people whom he used to trust hired and conspired with the very nazi Bucky died capturing. The establishment that those people worked harbors the brain of hydra.
Some people whom he trusted with his life, have supported the very organisation he died destroying.
They have been disloyal to him due to the hunger for power.
They knew who Zola was. You don't get into a high-level position in an organization like hydra without reason. And Zola was one of the if not the highest-ranking hydra scientists. They knew he had tortured Bucky and that Bucky had ‘died’ capturing him. Hiring and freeing Zola was a complete betrayal of Steve and Bucky, even if they both had actually died.
They trusted Zola with freedom and a bunch of resources. Zola used that to regrow hydra and to find Bucky and torture him into the winter soldier. Why would they trust Zola like that? What about Zola suggests that he was trustworthy in any way?! Howard was even friendly enough to be on a first-name basis with Zola. The man who had tortured one of his former coworkers and then said coworker had given his life capturing. How could anyone move past that and become friends?! It certainly makes Howard's death way less sad. It's just a shame that Bucky got more trauma from it.
Were they all beyond completely incompetent? Or were they, or at least some of them in on it? I mean, Howard recognizing Bucky like that was very suspicious.
Does Bucky know? It's not hard to imagine that Zola would taunt him with it before they started wiping his mind. Just the whole “you think they can help you, how do you think I got here” kind of thing.
Just what the hell were they thinking?!! And for some reason, they completely destroyed Steves character arc by having him go back to them. It's ridiculous!!
I keep thinking how personal this betrayal was. As OP said, firstly it’s the fact that the very person responsible for Bucky’s death, the very people that Steve almost died trying to bring down, were recruited by the people he thought were his allies and given VIP treatment for the long century that he had spent in the ice. And secondly, they had the audacity to name the organisation after him (SHIELD is a backronym) while harbouring the very people who had hurt him most personally.
Also there's a difference between a lot the humor in the MCU right now compared to the snarky humor that came before. There's that scene where Hawkeye says this all crazy and I have a bow and arrow, but what's really underneath why he's saying that is what's important. Clint trying to provide levity and comfort to a terrified young person.
Sometimes people make jokes during stressful times and are aware how crazy the situation is vs. Pointing out cliches and making fun of previous plot points and characters
Oh I love that you mention that line from Clint because one of the reasons I love it so much is that he's pointing out how silly it is for him to be fighting robots (which is crazy in and on itself) with a bunch of arrows but he's taking the mission, the fight and being an Avenger super seriously!
The way he says "Avenger" which such reverence, everyone takes the job seriously because what they do matters, they're saving people! And sure he has a bow and arrows and the others might be wearing silly suits.... but what they do is important and they care about it enough to take it seriously. It is a privilege and a burden to be a hero but they choose it every time to save innocent lives and they're all aware of it and accept the risk.
When Wanda goes out it's given the meaning it deserves, it's not treated as a joke, it's her choice to risk her life to save her people in Sokovia and she becomes one of them as she does that.
You can try to make the situation a little lighthearted while at the same time taking it seriously, that's what they used to do in the past...
They all had quite a few quips in AoU, not denying that, but they didn't inundate the entire movie AND the overall story was treated honestly. Being an Avenger and a hero mattered, it was important. The quips were never used to belittle the characters and the story.
Now however? It feels like they're undermining all this with the new movies and series. It's like a teenager who feels like mocking everything that came before him, they don't want anything serious (whatever you take to heart can and will be used as ammo against you to laugh at and mock you), the humour and jokes are constant which could be okay but most of them are talking down and bullying someone?
I just feel previous movies respected their characters and the audience (mostly, the previous phases weren't perfect either) but nowadays they don't respect anything.
You can use humour to ad levity, to show coping mechanisms, punctuate horror and so on. It is a magnificent tool in storytelling if you use it right. there's complaints to be had about AOU, but the humour was well used. Whedon, assmunch as he is, is very good at it.
But his statement on humour: "Put them through hell, their lowest point and then for the love of god, tell a joke" is solid advice if you understand humour as a tool. I feel gets so often misinterpreted to promote the use of humour we're seeing now in the MCU, everything's a joke, everything's flippant and it undermines the tension rather than punctuating it.
Humour is like a jumpscare in horror. It's a release valve for tension, and in the right places, it can add or accentuate tragedy and pain and horror, or it can undercut it.
Phil Coulson's "So that's what that does" in the Avengers is a perfect moment for that dry humour that characterises his character, and it hurts. It hurts because you know he's done for, this was a phyrric victory and he knows it too and he jokes. Because what else can he do?
That's what makes that quip so effective while so many others fail. It's that contrast, it's that character moment, and it's the impending doom.
But, too often in the MCU has humour undermined those serious moments and it's getting worse.
"...If you step out of that door, you are an Avenger," Nowadays would be followed up with a shrug and a quip, gutting the meaning of the phrase, the importance. "If you step out this door and act, you are rising above your fear, you are acting to save people, you're one of us and we're with you." <- That's the weight and meaning here, to a kid that started out in opposition to the Avengers.
And more, this was a moment of sincerity, Barton believes what he's saying here, he believes that being an Avenger means something, that it has weight.
But if that had been followed by a quip, the sincerity is crushed, it becomes insincere, flippant and loses the meaning.
Now, I'll be honest, this is tricky. Humour is so subjective and if you're not confident you can land it right, it's usually better to hold off. Let the sincere moments be sincere.
Now I have to yet again apologise to @valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn for dumping a mini essay on their post.
No need to apologize at all! I love your essays, especially when I agree with them 😜
I hadn't heard that quote from Whedon before but it's so good, damn. From what he says the characters should use humour as a coping mechanism to understand their situation and try to claw their way back to the surface, but now Marvel is using that humour to mock the characters and the situation they're in. It feels insincere, why should the audience care about the characters if the narrative won't take them seriously, if they will be mocked (sometimes even bullied) by other characters or the framing? 🤔
Quips and jokes, like all dialogue, has to be true to the character speaking them, first and foremost.
Its why Steve's "Why, getting sleepy?" And "You had to ask." Asides to Thor mid battle in AoU work. He's a smartarse and its the kind of shit you say mid battle to drive your comrades on or go 'wtf' or what have you. Its very fitting for Steve.
Simarly, Loki's little "Tadaaaa" when he lands the bitty ship in the Dark World? Its a very in character bit of fun at himself and the fact that he pulled their escape through cracks in the realms off. A touch grandiose and wry.
Its also why trying to jam Tony Stark's quick patter that walks the knife edge of insult, ego and charm doesn't work for anyone but Tony.
I think I've done this rant before on how humour should be unique to the character conveying it and Gunn does it so well, but it bears repeating: Humour is very subjective person to person, so it should be character to character.
But when it's not, when it reads more like the writer quipping on things cos the current "height of wit" is meta cynicism, it falls flat. You might get a laugh in the moment but it won't feel right.
And like you say, why take a character seriously if the narrative won't?
So I typed out this whole thing which was deleted by crappy internet.
@feralgoblintea makes great points, as usual. The problem is twofold. First, the humour should contribute to building the character and not breaking them down into cookie cutter quippers. This was fairly clear in the earlier movies. Tony had his sarcasm, because that works for his brain-running-at-hyper-speed but somewhat lacking in empathy and social skills humour. Thor was the fish out of water, where the humour comes from unexpected cultural differences. Steve was the serious-looking guy who surprises you with his shrewdness. Peter (Quill) is rough around the edges but good-naturedly takes knocking, and rarely directs nasty humour outwards. Scott has that self-effacing humour of a smart guy who’s been knocked back too much in his life. The humour was part of them, and they all came in different flavours.
The second thing is the role of humour. As Tea rightly pointed out, it needs to help build the narrative, the tone and the pace. When undercutting happens, it needs to do it for a good reason. When breaking the 4th wall happens, that also needs to happen in a way that contributes instead of detracts. You have to remember when you break the 4th wall you also break the suspension of disbelief, and when you break that, then you have also broken the sense of stakes. A story that doesn’t have stakes will be quickly forgotten by the viewers — it’s the stories that makes us invest in the characters or plot that will stick for a long time. So the humour must build on the stakes — like Peter dancing at the tensest part of their confrontation with Ronan, or Nat’s frequent quips about “this is not a bad way to die” when they’re about to die. It’s either a sharp juxtaposition that immediately switches to another tense scene, or it’s a humorous delivery of an announcement that shit is really going down.
But if your 4th wall breaking consists of winking at the audience and suggesting that it’s all stupid because it’s fiction…then no one will take anything in the series seriously.
knowing what we know about Steve, what do you think Sarah was like? what do you think their relationship was like?
Ooo juicy question!
I think of her as being like Steve, only worse.
She uses her words alone instead of fists to combat wrong-doers.
And, now, I don’t want to stereotype, but... this Irishwoman can Talk. I find the typical Saintly Mother characterisation bland af and frankly a bit sexist (y'know, the madonna of the house with the soft voice who never says anything harsh ever? Bor-ing! How could that woman marry a soldier, run a hospital ward like clockwork, and handle a son like Steve? She needs some guts to her!)
I hc that Steve's gift for public speaking is a sign of her influence.
Since his voice is, it seems, the only part of him that he never had trouble with pre-serum, I see her asking him to read aloud to her as she's going about her household tasks (especially while he's, eg. bedridden, and needs something to take his mind off it).
And from that, he would've learned how to read a speech compellingly, as well as become something of a bookworm, surprisingly well-read because he has so much sick time.
(If you think about it, it's odd for someone who has never been listened to before, to have developed that talent of public speaking unless there's a reason.)
I also picture her being more formal than Steve, more devout, less irreverent. Not necessarily by nature, but just because she's had a hard life and it's ground some of the joy out of her (my own grandmother lost a husband and had a sickly child, and I saw how this impacted her).
Maybe she was something of a free spirit in her youth, but not (entirely) by the time Steve knew her.
She’d be a feminist and a democratic socialist; always interested in unions, protests, refusing to discriminate against people because she’s a medical professional and it’s not the good Christian thing to do, in her opinion. (And she knows what it means to be down and out, to be looked down upon for being Irish). Being a snob, she would think, is a rich man’s thing. She didn’t come to live in New York just to have provincial values.
She’d be helped in this endeavour by being a tenacious contrarian; stumbling into far-sighted ideas just because her natural instinct is always to question and contradict the status quo. A firebrand, seeing nothing contradictory in questioning authority or arguing back about what the Bible means, as you might expect from a devout woman. (A wild-child in respectable catholic widow’s clothing?) This is not a woman you ever want to get into an argument with.
Like, I can just see the local priest, who maybe isn't as kind or generous as he should be by Rogers Standards, seeing her coming towards him with a militant glint in her eye, and muttering 'fuck' under his breath. (Cuz, y'know, here comes That Rogers Woman again. Cancel my one o’clock, Sister Mary.)
Also, CATFA is very clear that the good people are those who defend the weak from bullies. So IMO that means Sarah - before Bucky came along - was the one preventing kid!Steve from getting his clock punched.
Picture a bunch of kid bullies, swarmed around kid Steve, who is sitting on the bottom of his buildings stoop, innocently sketching.
And then... Mrs Rogers appears on the top step, like Chernabog coming out of the mountain in Fantasia, gives them A Look, and they all scatter. 😅
I also hc Steve's attitude to authority figures comes from her.
The way he expects them to uphold a certain moral standard, will absolutely undermine them if they don’t, and expects them to speak to him with respect, even if he is beneath them, and will only show them as much respect as they show him.
That, to me, screams 'my mother raised me as if we were two equals, a team, a duo, not an authority figure and a subject who is never allowed to question or answer back and just has to go along with whatever they say.'
Also, the way Steve is with Natasha?
The lack of any problems with a woman in authority making tactical calls, the nonverbal communications/requests for input, and automatic respect of her opinion, the insistence on interacting with her like a human being, not a flirty sex object. The way he's fine with her asking invasive questions about his private life but will snap Tony's head off for doing the same, has to be warmed up to Sam before he allows it, is cagey towards Erskine even tho there are literal military police outside Steven ffs.
Yeah.
Steve is very clearly most comfortable with being one half of a familial two-person duo with a highly intelligent woman. That's so Sarah.
I picture Steve being, around Sarah, a lot like he is around Nat.
Sarah grilling him with questions about what's going on with his life, has he been going to Mass, has he been eating properly, has he been taking his medicine, etc., and him stolidly sitting there, like a good-natured golden retriever being 'savaged' by the family cat. That's my mental image.
From an aesthetic POV: I see her as lanky but slight, extremely good-looking, fairer-haired than Steve but more tanned, more heart-shaped in the face, and, in a Barnes-Rogers shindig, most likely to be found curled up in a corner with a mug in her hands, gossiping melodramatically with Winnie.
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(Sidenote: Sarah and Bucky.
Bucky can do no wrong. Bucky is a saint, an angel come down to Earth, he has never done anything wrong in his life, ever, and anyone who says otherwise is a filthy rotten liar. Bucky would take years to stop being intimidated by her, and stop being rueful of her influence on Steve -- like, maybe if she was more laidback about Right and Wrong, Steve wouldn’t be getting his ass kicked so often?
But Adult Bucky would appreciate her more (appreciate the difficulty of keeping Steve alive and well. Or if not well then at least alive).
And he would occasionally horrify- simply horrify -Steve by flirting with Sarah, and she’d just chortle and smack him with a dish-towel. He would deliberately bring up subjects he knows will set her off just to grin and watch Steve groan and roll his eyes and smash his face into his hands as she starts in on him.
Bucky could burp out loud at the dinner table and she’d just say ‘well at least it shows he enjoys his food Steve you should take a leaf out of his book and eat more sure look at you love you’re wasting away-’ )
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(Also: the left boob grab. That’s a Sarahism. No notes.)
