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Apr. 26th, 2021 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI watched the final episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier Friday morning before work. I may watch it again to digest.
It was better on the politics than I'd feared, which is not to say it was good. What the whole episode was, was unsettlingly grim. There were not a lot of good endings for characters, but more than that, there were not a lot of characters, even the ones who survived to ostensibly satisfying endings, who were able to get through the last episode without compromising themselves. Which probably is the right outcome, given the shitty political situation, but I don't think it's what the writers of the show were trying to do. It's better than what I think the writers were trying to do, honestly... sometimes the corner you've written yourself into forces you to an unexpected honesty: there's nothing all that heroic about Sam and Bucky, but the times don't always call for heroes, even when your franchise overlords are demanding you sell them.
I feel like Zemo's little coda is a great case in point. Zemo remains in the Raft, which is a less than ideal outcome for him but he seems relatively comfortable: Zemo is not a man who lives very much outside of himself, which is what made the dance scene in Madripoor so memeably funny. He manages to have the Flag Smasher super soldier killed and thereby help to uphold his political ideal of no stateless supersoldiers... But he doesn't go after John Walker, who allies with the Contessa, and who will surely find in Zemo's extracurricular bombing another raison d'etre of uncontrolled violence. So the serum and its deadly geopolitical consequences remains out there, perhaps bolstered by Zemo's efforts. And Zemo has blown his shot at future alliance with Sam or Bucky, so he will need to seek new champions if he is to continue his work. If there was something sympathetic about Zemo at the end of Civil War (and to some degree I think there was), it has been burnt out by now. Zemo is all ideology and tactics and no humanity.
At levels that require greater or less amounts of analysis to draw out, this kind of sacrifice of self is true of all of the characters. Karli Morgenthau gets some of the political outcomes she sought, at the cost of her life, but she doesn't get all of the political outcomes she sought, and also all of the people she loved are dead. Walker gets a new job but he had to admit he failed at his old one in order to earn it. Sam doesn't entirely stop a terrorist attack, and when he sides with the terrorists to publicly humiliate the GRC on television he becomes a Captain America who cannot truly be a symbol for all of America. He is forced to accept that in order to be Captain America on his own terms, he cannot be everything that Steve Rogers was.
And Sharon Carter? Surely there's something misogynistic about doing her reveal without telling her story. As the post-credits scene reminds us, she comes from a family that has long been dedicated to trying to protect others through government service. As the post-credits scene does not remind us, she has been working for evil security agencies ranging from SHIELD to the CIA her whole adult life. Is her current position as Power Broker the result of her Hydra/Civil War/Snap disillusionment with America, or is it a consequence of a deeper moral corruption that the MCU has simply never revealed? I don't know. Sharon Carter has appeared in multiple Marvel movies and TV shows, she's played the phenomenal Emily VanCamp, and we have never gotten the tiniest snippet of life story from her.
And once more, New York pays the price. Marvel Comics has long fought against its New York centered identity, launching storytelling projects like the West Coast Avengers or the Fifty States Initiative that implicitly acknowledge that by and large, the Avengers are a New York institution. Falcon and the Winter Soldier bounces all around the world, fighting battles in fake Singapore and fake Serbia, and in Tunisia and Lithuania and Latvia. There is some unserious pretense of oversight and national sovereignty- for unexplained reasons, Sam Wilson can chase the terrorists in Tunisia but cannot cross the border into Libya; for unexplained reasons, John Walker can prance around Eastern Europe punching trucks on the government dime, but if he kills a rogue super soldier he violates diplomatic protocols? In reality, for all the talk of global councils, both Sam and John Walker are unrestrained agents of American hard power. It is deeply unserious as musing on political theory, and deeply serious as a reflection of the way America has acted and continues to act as lone superpower. And then they return in the finale to New York City, this locus of Marvel's political energy that it seems to imagine as the Capital of the World. (sanguinity, if she's reading this, is by now snickering; I too sometimes imagine New York City as the Capital of the World)
In this fairy tale comic book New York, largely American? political leaders are gathered to make decisions that will largely affect the Third World. It's actually the sort of vision of America that shows like this should be arguing against. The problem isn't whether they cave to the terrorists and find a generous resolution to help those displaced by the post Blip political realignment, or continue on their hard line, punitive path. The problem is who is making the decision at all. Which is a question FATWS doesn't reach, although it comes way closer than I expected.
It is the paradox of The Flag Smashers, though. They claim to be arguing for a world without borders, because a world without borders will look out for the borderless. But they live in a world that for those with enough strength is already a borderless world, and what they really need are localities with the strength to assert their own sovereignties, and fight for the safety of their own natives, rather than paternalistic protectors from far away.
I haven't written much about Bucky because I don't have much to say. He, of all the characters in the show, got the least compromised ending, but that's because he was already compromised. Sebastian Stan gave a terrific but understated performance as a Bucky who is desperate to put himself back together but doesn't know how. At the end, he still doesn't know how, but he somehow managed a little bit of self-repair anyway. He will never not be the Winter Soldier, he will never not carry his sins with him wherever he goes. He can never entirely be a good guy, but this is a show where no one is entirely a good guy.
It was better on the politics than I'd feared, which is not to say it was good. What the whole episode was, was unsettlingly grim. There were not a lot of good endings for characters, but more than that, there were not a lot of characters, even the ones who survived to ostensibly satisfying endings, who were able to get through the last episode without compromising themselves. Which probably is the right outcome, given the shitty political situation, but I don't think it's what the writers of the show were trying to do. It's better than what I think the writers were trying to do, honestly... sometimes the corner you've written yourself into forces you to an unexpected honesty: there's nothing all that heroic about Sam and Bucky, but the times don't always call for heroes, even when your franchise overlords are demanding you sell them.
I feel like Zemo's little coda is a great case in point. Zemo remains in the Raft, which is a less than ideal outcome for him but he seems relatively comfortable: Zemo is not a man who lives very much outside of himself, which is what made the dance scene in Madripoor so memeably funny. He manages to have the Flag Smasher super soldier killed and thereby help to uphold his political ideal of no stateless supersoldiers... But he doesn't go after John Walker, who allies with the Contessa, and who will surely find in Zemo's extracurricular bombing another raison d'etre of uncontrolled violence. So the serum and its deadly geopolitical consequences remains out there, perhaps bolstered by Zemo's efforts. And Zemo has blown his shot at future alliance with Sam or Bucky, so he will need to seek new champions if he is to continue his work. If there was something sympathetic about Zemo at the end of Civil War (and to some degree I think there was), it has been burnt out by now. Zemo is all ideology and tactics and no humanity.
At levels that require greater or less amounts of analysis to draw out, this kind of sacrifice of self is true of all of the characters. Karli Morgenthau gets some of the political outcomes she sought, at the cost of her life, but she doesn't get all of the political outcomes she sought, and also all of the people she loved are dead. Walker gets a new job but he had to admit he failed at his old one in order to earn it. Sam doesn't entirely stop a terrorist attack, and when he sides with the terrorists to publicly humiliate the GRC on television he becomes a Captain America who cannot truly be a symbol for all of America. He is forced to accept that in order to be Captain America on his own terms, he cannot be everything that Steve Rogers was.
And Sharon Carter? Surely there's something misogynistic about doing her reveal without telling her story. As the post-credits scene reminds us, she comes from a family that has long been dedicated to trying to protect others through government service. As the post-credits scene does not remind us, she has been working for evil security agencies ranging from SHIELD to the CIA her whole adult life. Is her current position as Power Broker the result of her Hydra/Civil War/Snap disillusionment with America, or is it a consequence of a deeper moral corruption that the MCU has simply never revealed? I don't know. Sharon Carter has appeared in multiple Marvel movies and TV shows, she's played the phenomenal Emily VanCamp, and we have never gotten the tiniest snippet of life story from her.
And once more, New York pays the price. Marvel Comics has long fought against its New York centered identity, launching storytelling projects like the West Coast Avengers or the Fifty States Initiative that implicitly acknowledge that by and large, the Avengers are a New York institution. Falcon and the Winter Soldier bounces all around the world, fighting battles in fake Singapore and fake Serbia, and in Tunisia and Lithuania and Latvia. There is some unserious pretense of oversight and national sovereignty- for unexplained reasons, Sam Wilson can chase the terrorists in Tunisia but cannot cross the border into Libya; for unexplained reasons, John Walker can prance around Eastern Europe punching trucks on the government dime, but if he kills a rogue super soldier he violates diplomatic protocols? In reality, for all the talk of global councils, both Sam and John Walker are unrestrained agents of American hard power. It is deeply unserious as musing on political theory, and deeply serious as a reflection of the way America has acted and continues to act as lone superpower. And then they return in the finale to New York City, this locus of Marvel's political energy that it seems to imagine as the Capital of the World. (
sanguinity, if she's reading this, is by now snickering; I too sometimes imagine New York City as the Capital of the World)In this fairy tale comic book New York, largely American? political leaders are gathered to make decisions that will largely affect the Third World. It's actually the sort of vision of America that shows like this should be arguing against. The problem isn't whether they cave to the terrorists and find a generous resolution to help those displaced by the post Blip political realignment, or continue on their hard line, punitive path. The problem is who is making the decision at all. Which is a question FATWS doesn't reach, although it comes way closer than I expected.
It is the paradox of The Flag Smashers, though. They claim to be arguing for a world without borders, because a world without borders will look out for the borderless. But they live in a world that for those with enough strength is already a borderless world, and what they really need are localities with the strength to assert their own sovereignties, and fight for the safety of their own natives, rather than paternalistic protectors from far away.
I haven't written much about Bucky because I don't have much to say. He, of all the characters in the show, got the least compromised ending, but that's because he was already compromised. Sebastian Stan gave a terrific but understated performance as a Bucky who is desperate to put himself back together but doesn't know how. At the end, he still doesn't know how, but he somehow managed a little bit of self-repair anyway. He will never not be the Winter Soldier, he will never not carry his sins with him wherever he goes. He can never entirely be a good guy, but this is a show where no one is entirely a good guy.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-26 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-26 06:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-26 08:42 pm (UTC)I wouldn't really care too much about MCU Sharon Carter being different from 616 Sharon. You want to tell me a story about a devoted SHIELD agent gone rogue, go for it! But it does bother me because MCU Sharon Carter has had so little storytelling time devoted to who she is that you pretty much have no choice but to impute 616 canon to her if you want to understand her.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-04-27 12:13 pm (UTC)