I don’t even mean a bad thing, necessarily. I mean a thing that is made to normalize the status quo, pave over inherent contradictions in late stage neoliberal capitalism, make even the idea of changing society somewhat seem evil or impossible, and have lots of performative gestures that hide the stench of affluent arrogance. :zizek-preference:
I know it came out well before 2020, but I finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 and I stopped at the instant Tony Stark said “I’ve successfully privatized world peace.” It was bad. Very bad. The original movie was entertaining even if it had some painful deliberate adjustments to the comic book character to make him more like :my-hero: but the sequel played out like Ayn Rand fanfiction, especially the big smart awesome genius giving a speech about how the evil government and the ungrateful moochers were taking the sweat from his brow and so on and so on. :zizek:
The flood of MCU movies wore me out to the point that I stopped watching them and because of that I have only seen maybe half of them by now. Maybe it was a mistake returning to try watching Iron Man 2 because I now have even less interest in seeing anything MCU ever again. :zizek-fuck:
V for Vendetta.
A government uses a false flag pandemic to consolidate power through provision of a vaccine. A single person in a Guy Fawkes mask wins the populace over with atrociously verbose wordplay and domestic terrorism. He also wins the girl over to his ideology by kidnapping and torturing her.
It’s less lib and more outright reactionary, but whatever.
also why do people think guy fawkes was a freedom fighter that’s just not true
i think people mostly arent aware of the whole catholic monarchist chud aspect
and its just easy for people to empathise with a dude who wants to blow up the british parliament, its relatable yknow
The writer of V for Vendetta Alan Moore is literally a communist space wizard which makes this quite a funny one. The point of that story is really supposed to be a superhero doing revolution against British fascism. Of course the whole 1 person thing is a problem but that’s always going to be a problem doing a superhero style graphic novel, but the overall premise beyond that is just revolution and not moralising about it.
Moore disowned the movie, saying it was Liberal performative whining about 2000s-era Neo-cons
The graphic novel presents V as way more ambiguous morally
Every reboot, remake and revival is part of a class project to ‘fix’ the cultural cannon into a liberal harmonious framework.
Case in point: the guy remaking cowboy bebop insisting that the original show wasn’t a dystopia.
perhaps an obvious one but im gonna say black panther, not just for killmonger being based and them having to make him kill his girlfriend for no reason to make him look like the bad guy, but for its portrayal of the international rules-based order
borrowing from an old comment, the thing that i found most interesting about that movie is that killmonger completely plays by all the countrys rules to come into power - he comes from the appropriate royal bloodline, he gets the backing of one of the major feudal lords, he comes in openly and challenges the sitting monarch who accepts the challenge without coercion (and as we saw earlier in the movie, challenge to personal combat is a normal and accepted means of transfer of power), and then he wins decisively and kills the sitting monarch (as far as anyone knows). all of this is ludicrous crusader kings shit and an absurd way to run an enlightened modern country, but he plays by the rules.
and the very second that somebody they dont like gets into power, what is the rules-based “liberal” response? pro-royalist military coup, openly backed by literally the cia. they only find out the black panther guy is alive later, so they still think hes dead when they throw it all into motion but that doesnt stop them. and the movie is written in a way that makes this seem like the obviously logical and honourable and correct thing to do, and that these are the good guys that you should support. and at the end stability is restored, and even though hes a hereditary monarch without even the figleaf of parliamentary oversight, hes pro-western and he says nice things in speeches so thats basically the same as democracy right?
like even in the most woke lib “pro-black” blockbuster movie, cia-backed coup is just seen as the obvious response to any thorny political questions.
but hey, they did open one (1) community centre at the end so the injustice faced by black people worldwide was pretty much solved :liberalism:
Black Panther is not anti Trump. It’s pro Trump. It’s literally propaganda that people didn’t even know they were eating up. The country is ethnically homogenous - the only people in Wakanda are Wakandans. There are a few different cults, and a few different dialects, but they all speak the same language. If you forget that Wakanda is supposed to be in East Africa, it starts to sound an awful lot like a Trumpian fantasy land. Here is an example, albeit fictional, where a walled-in nation is thriving, self-reliant, and completely unaccommodating of outsiders. Simply replace the geographic location, the race, and the language, and it really looks like the United States that President Trump fantasized about - if only coal had the power and value of Vibranium.
- Strict immigration
- Strong nationalism
- Border wall
- Traditionalist
- Pro-military
Ironically, I can imagine that sort of bullshit being far more likely under UK laws, with the bad guy couping the Queen and then using the old non-UK feudal holdings like the Duke of Normandy or some shit to end-run the UK government
he comes from the appropriate royal bloodline, he gets the backing of one of the major feudal lords, he comes in openly and challenges the sitting monarch who accepts the challenge without coercion
it’s also not talked about much but Black Panther as a depiction of African life is comparable to the film coming to America.
I was pretty liberal when it came out and even then found it kinda gross that in this allegedly super advanced utopian African country, the monarch (with absolute arbitrary ruling power) is determined by who is best at stick fighting. Like u can imagine them having laser guns and robot suits but their political structures still have to be a racist caricature of “tribal” societies.
The Legend of Korra
Coming from the last Airbender, what a disappointment
I love ATLA but it did have traces of the same cringe liberalism with how they treated the characters violently resisting a genocidal empire.
Lol yeah. Two of the heroes are cops, one is a girlboss CEO, the other is a war profiteering capitalist who incited a civil war so he could sell arms.
Meanwhile, the villains are all people who “meant well but were too extreme”. Like apparently wanting equality for people without magic can only manifest as Amon, who wants to take away everyone’s magic, and is actually magic himself. Caring for the environment can only manifest as Unalaq, who actually doesn’t care about the environment and wants to destroy the world. There are no alternatives - support the oppressive status quo or be a villain.
The portrayal of anarchism actually baffles me in Korra, because they pretty much had it correct with the air nomads. In ATLA, the air nomads were peaceful, freedom loving people with very little hierarchy and no bigotry. But in Korra, anarchism is when there’s no rules and no bedtimes and everything is chaos and it’s completely individualistic. Like, Zaheer kill the earth queen and literally tear down the walls separating the rich and the poor - and then they go off to commit genocide against the airbenders for some reason? That is a completely incoherent ideology, yet the show treats it as the only outcome of anarchism.
Also Kuvira is an actual fascist who puts people in concentration camps, but she’s the one villain who gets mercy. You want to dismantle unjust hierarchies and remove barriers between nations? We are going to fucking murder you. You want to ethnically cleanse your nation? No biggie, house arrest with your family. The last straw for the good guys is when Kuvira tries to retake land that was colonised for fucks sake
“Communists, environmentalists, anarchists and anti-colonial revolutionaries are all bad faith actors only pretending to have an ethos to whip up support among the masses. Also anti-colonial struggle is literally fascism.”
Man I just wanted more magical martial arts fights.
If you ignore all the bad politics Kora is fun, but with the writers of Disco Elysium it could’ve been grand. Still one of the few shows in which girls had cool actors with agency to identify with.
About the only thing semi good in Kora with current politics is that she needs help and collectives are stronger than individuals.
Anime
Most of anime
Especially Hetalia
Evangelion Reboots:
“akshualafsfdkasldfajsdflasdflly eva isnt about a life affirming struggle through relationships and meaning in a society that has gone down shit creek beset by the eldritch elite, its about shinji becoming pure and good through muh reincarnation to b th best most ubermenschen christian capitalist salaryman with a hot wife accessory teehee”
ubermenschen christian capitalist salaryman with a hot wife accessory
Literally yelled at the TV when this happened
yeah watching something beautiful get warped 180 degrees out of shape along all axes to fit the pithy platitudes of neoliberal patriarchy was utterly cringe inducing
