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• X-Men is about civil rights. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get X-Men.
• Black Panther is about colonization. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Black Panther.
• Captain America literally fought nazis. He is the embodiment of fighting the alt-right. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Captain America.
• The Empire in Star Wars is fascist. The Rebel alliance are Anti-Fascist. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Star Wars.
• Doctor Who was about an alien fighting for all of humanity in spite of totalitarian regimes. If you don't get that, you don't get Doctor Who.
• The Punisher isn’t meant to be a role model for police or armed forces. So much so that the writers of The Punisher made him actively speak out against it in a comic. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get The Punisher.
• Deadpool is queer. He’s pansexual. Fact. If you didn’t get that you didn’t get Deadpool.
• Star Trek is about equality for all genders, races and sexualities. As early as the mid-60s it was taking a pro-choice stance and defending women’s right to choose. One of its clearest themes is accepting different cultures and appearances and working together for peace. (It’s also anti-capitalist and pro-vegan). If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Star Trek.
• Superman and Wonder Woman (and a whole host of other superheroes) are immigrants. The stance of those comics is pro-immigration and pro-equality and acceptance. If you didn’t get that, you didn’t get Superman or Wonder Woman.
• Stan Lee said, “Racism and bigotry are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.” If you’re bigoted or racist, you didn’t get any of the characters Stan Lee created.
• The stories we grew up with all taught us to value other people and cultures and to treasure the differences between us. Only villains were xenophobic, or sexist, or racist, or totalitarian. I can’t understand how anyone can have missed that.
• If you’re upset that there’s a black Spider-Man, or a black Captain America, or a female Thor, or that Ms. Marvel is Muslim, or that Captain Marvel was pro-feminism or any of the other things right-wing “fans” say is “stealing their childhood” - you never got it in the first place. The things you claim are now “pandering to the lefties” were never on your side, to begin with.
If you consider yourself a fan of these things, but you still think the LGBTQ+ community is too “in your face”, or have a problem with Black Lives Matter, or want to “take the country back from immigrants”, then you’re not really a fan at all.
Geek culture isn’t suddenly left-wing... it always was. You just grew up to be intolerant. You became the villain in the stories you used to love.

Toonman 6 Feb 11
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5 comments

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2

Would it be OK with you if I watched them all as sheer entertainment? They are escapism for me.

Ryo1 Level 8 Feb 11, 2022

Whether it's okay with me is beside the point.

But I doubt you want to be entertained. Entertainment means engaging with the material. If you wish to engage it on nothing more than the most surface level, go for it.

But recognizing themes and subtext is, in my estimation, better entertainment.

The best art is made with intent. Sometimes the intent is to talk about the world we live in.

If doing so gives you the thinky-hurts, and if discussing the outside world doesn't interest you, then what the fuck are you doing on this thread?

@Toonman I have moments when I feel I could do without politicizing anything. Watching si-fi/action/superhero films is one of those moments.

@Ryo1

Who cares what you could do without? It's there. The people who made it said so.

And even if they didn't say so, it's still there. It isn't subtext. It's text.

If you wish not to see it, then ignore it and enjoy all the spandex and explodey bits.

The rest of us find it entertaining because it's there.

And since it's there, we'll be discussing it here.

And if that bothers you, too bad.

You can take your whiny ass someplace else.

@Ryo1

I get the feeling you're just another one of those guys who views his own concerns as "normal". If the issues affect people other than you, that's when they become "political".

You're just another crewman on the Battlestar Pathetica.

Captain America Civil War revolves around unilaterality versus consensus. A political issue, and literally the conflict that moves the story.

Avengers Infinity War and Endgame revolve around eugenics and genocide. These are also political issues and literally the engines that drive the plot.

X-men is about a marginalized group being "othered" by a government. A political issue and literally the conflict that moves the story.

I could go on, but Bruce Davison is about to turn all blobby....

Dont want it political? Good luck avoiding it.

0

I never watched X-Men, not even once, so I didn’t get that they were about civil rights. A fast scan of the rest of the post showed me a lot ot absolutes so I ‘ll stop with this.

All you have to do is read some of the comics, or rewatch the stuff you have seen.

It's not subtext. It's text.

Or you could read interviews with the creators of the media in question. They state in no uncertain terms what the work is about.

If the absolutes are there in the work, it's because those who did it did so by design.

One of these days you're going to say something intelligent in spite of yourself.

1

I read that Magneto and Xavier were actually based on Malcolm X and MLK respectively. If that were true I suspect that Magneto would have been Zionist.

0

Perhaps the very earliest, Superman, started out fighting the Nazis during the war, and the joke was of course that he was supposed to also be an ironic stab at the Nazi ideal of the racial superman and master race. So that an alien master race was set against a false master race. That enabled quite a nice set of ironic twisted jokes to be hidden in the subtext, so the the stories could be read at several different levels by people of different understandings. Quite clever in lots of ways.

Nothing to do with your point, but just a little facto I thought you would like.

Superman was created by two Jewish cats, and was initially understood to be Semitic.
It wasn't until Shuster and Seigel left the strip that he became the white Savior.
He was a blatant defender of the underclass and the marginalized, fighting crooked landlords, dirty cops, and protecting those who had been hurt by the Great Depression.

On the Superman radio show, he fought the Ku Klux Klan.

He was what MAGA turd-munchers today would call an SJW.

Superman isn't a fantasy of having power. He's a fantasy about what power would be like if the person with the power was good.

@Toonman SJW ?

@Fernapple Social Justice Warrior

As many people know the concept of the Superman originated with Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The Nazi misappropriated the concept to justify genocide.

It is my understanding that Nietzsche's notion of a Superman did not reside in evolution in a genetic sense of the word, more of a transcendence of man, as in striving for a state of excellence. It seems to me that Nietzsche and Darwin had different notions with regard to the evolution of man.

As far as I know Nietzsche never denied Darwin's claims of change and adaptations. I could be wrong but it seems to me that Nietzsche was advocating going beyond the notions of a dualistic metaphysics and there is no reference in his works to suggest that his views were based in the Darwinian Theory of Evolution.

@ASTRALMAX

Seigel and Shuster didn't give a damn about Nieztche.

@Toonman Who knows? Ironically, in real life they were financially screwed by the type of characters that their fictional creation would have fought against.

@ASTRALMAX

Who knows? Seigel and Shuster knew. They themselves said their Superman was not an allusion the the Ubermensch.

They should know.

The rest of your comment is just one giant letter from Planet Duh.

@Toonman So you say and do you have any link or article to validate your statement ?

@ASTRALMAX

I do.

Anybody who has read both Nieztche an Superman comics knows that Nieztche's Ubermensch and the comic book Superman have nothing in common.

This Wikipedia article mentions Nieztche nowhere in the section about the character's creation, but does mention several other very specific influences. If Nieztche was one of them, it would be in the article.

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

1

I can agree with you on most of this. I'm also aware that some people never get it. In my life journey I have went from right to left. It is strange to me that some today are claiming the left is "against the Constitution" and make claims that it never changes and we were meant to be a Republic. We should ask them to explain all of those Amendments. Many making all these claims could not vote or even hold office without them. This is all just more proof that many do not think. People ask me how we are going to pay for all these things the left wants. Immediately I ask them if they ever buy anything. Food, cars, property, -- anything at all. This produces a taxation that pays for things people need.

Most of the left isn't even left. They're centrists.

It's just that a lot of the right are such assholes they think anybody to the left of them is a communist.

A lot of them reside on this very platform.

@Toonman There are certainly a few trolls and idiots on here. They should just be ignored at all costs. When you constantly go back and forth with them you are giving them what they want. One called @Beachslim comes to mind. Just ignore him.

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