I’m watching The Batman and I’m at the part where after the main villain is caught for only murdering corrupt politicians the whole movie, and his master plan is revealed; floodthe city, causing mass civilian casualties while his followers are going to do a mass shooting in the one shelter spot.

Did Evil Homer make this video? Sheesh

This is such a Devil's Homer take.


"Heroes are reactionary"

Yes, in the same sense that first responders are "reactionary". Or Superman for that matter. Superman's WHOLE POINT is he limits himself to this role and doesn't try to rule over society as a despot. Preemptively stopping all societal ills is...the premise of every "Superman turns into an evil dictator" offshoot.


"Villains are the only bold ones trying to change the world"

Uhhh...sure, in the same way MAGA "boldly" tried to enact change on Jan 6. "Why is Thanos evil just for turning half of all sentient life to ash?" *fart* -EvilHomer


"Status quo warrior"

Darn those status quo warriors, wishing 9/11 could have been prevented!


"Superheroes monopolize power"

Superpowers != wealth


I can't imagine the blindness or dishonesty it would take to say the politics of Marvel movies are the same as Snyder and Goyer DC movies. Marvel flicks blow for infecting all of pop culture with a terminal case of Whedonitus, but to even suggest it's reactionary Ayn Rand shit?

By the end, he seems to backtrack on any kind of point other than to say "Real life socioeconomic problems are complex, and require complex, prolonged effort while Superhero movies are simplistic punching bad guys."

Well no fucking shit. A 20 minute video to say that? Someone actually thought they were insightful making this point? I feel like I just wasted time on an animated EvilHomer wall of text.

5 stars for naïvete. Oddly, I don't think anything on POE has made me this mad in a while. If Graeber is really this naïve too, that's upsetting. I'm hoping his essay is better than this.

As the film itself shows, through clips from Captain America, the Marvel flavor of superhero in particular is impossible to disentangle from WWII. And, at its worst, one could say that the Marvel superhero phenomenon is just completely wrapped up in the 20th century and can't move beyond it. But, you know, that's not actually terrible. The world has essentially never known a super hero. It's known heroes, like the ones displayed in the last few minutes, who have sought and successfully achieved social change through collective, peaceful action and resistance. Although there have never been super heroes, there have most definitely been super villains. And those super villains are precisely what the video says the Marvel super villains are: people who state (and believe) that they will change the world for the better, but will do that at any cost, and obey no laws but their own. Fundamentally, they don't recognize human rights. Those people are indeed always bad, and I salute Marvel for continuing to remind us (and especially young people) of that lesson. My conclusion is utterly the opposite of this video.

11:28: "Now granted, it's mostly bad authoritarian change." Yes, granted. But that's bad right?

15:33 "Having the villains methods always involve indiscriminate killing is a deliberate decision by the writers." It's an accurate reflection of only times in history that those advocating the radical tearing down of the status quo have behaved when empowered.

16:24 "Any attempt to fundamentally transform society is not only dangerous but evil". "Fundamentally" meaning tearing down all norms at any cost and so, yeah.

"the legal and political order must be defended because the alternative is so much worse". Uh, yes?

"Where the mere idea of challenging systems of power... makes you a villain". No. The mere idea of "tearing down the legal and political order" (literally: tearing it down) and "fundamentally" transforming society through violence and the disrespect of human rights. Yes, that makes you a villain!

Ugh.

Bilbo Baggins as a CIA drone operator in Wakanda never failed to crack me up.

All the Marvel hero movies are made for export to China these days.

I can think of one time a superhero decided to put an end to the status quo, and be a true hero to the world. It was called Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and it was bad. Ten Per Cent on Rotten Tomatoes, with a sixteen per cent audience score.

>>>Well considering that the popularity and omnipresence of simplistic super hero movies where all the problems are solved by a Strong Man (who is the only one able to fix the problems) punching problems to easily fix them happens to coincide with a quick rise in popularity of fascist politicians trying to be strongmen.

What you're describing is the Soviet Superheroes the dweeb on the video seems to be longing for. So when you use your power to impose your will on society, you become a villain? What about reallife heroes like Stalin, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch McConnell, and Elon Musk?

Of all the ways that popular entertainment is shaped by the requirements of narrative, and in turn shapes our perception, this is one of the most benign, compared to what rom coms teach people about relationships, what cop movies teach us about crime and law enforcement. Superheroes deal with moral questions that are complicated, but not real. Thanos, after all, may have been right. He may have offered humanity a far more just and humane future than what we're facing, than the staus quo future our heroes won us all back. All of this is suggested by the story. Thanos wants to painlessly kill half of everyone randomly, which sounds bad, but is preferable to what's probably going to happen, with the poor dying slowly and the rich kicking back in their home theaters to watch working class gladiators on ESPN. That's the truth, and Thanos says so. No one else has a good answer..

The heroes fight for the status quo, but we're permitted to see beyond the status quo. IN LOKI, we see a planet crashing into a moon, and ordinary people being left to die by their rulers. It's not that the status quo is wonderful. The heroes fight for the staus quo, because otherwise, you have Superman 4. The MCU villains often have a point. Killmonger, Thanos, Namore all have important things to say. On purpose.course sometimes heroes will subvert the status quo. Captain America and especially Black Widow, who testified to congress, took down Shield AND Hydra. Loki and Syvie just brought down EVERYTHING, by killing Krang.