this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
766 points (94.4% liked)
Memes
46103 readers
2527 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Captain America is a weird one to include. Not denying it's propaganda, everything is, but throwing Cap in with copaganda is such a surface level take. He's propaganda for American exceptionalism sure, but also embodies it in an old school New Deal way. The character has been consistently anti-facist over the years.
Imo Iron Man is the much more harmful propaganda. You can pretty much draw a direct line between the characters rise in popularity thanks to the MCU and the rise of Elon Musk.
Any superhero movie is problematic. They all say that only a few special people can save the country and the world. The rest of the population just has to hold tight and let the important people do their thing. It's just a small step by replacing powers with wealth to give the rich carte blanche to do as they please.
Oh I agree completely. There is a fascist aspect inherent to Superheroes. Cap is just one lf the less egregious ones.
He's still playing world police.
I mean, I've definitely seen Cap used to represent the Ugly American in comics, especially during that period post-9/11.
He's definitely not fully anti-fascist coded, because he represents the US, and the US while ostensibly being democratic, is in many ways deeply fascist and always has been. Hitler was inspired by our Jim Crow laws.
There's some smart people who understand that America never actually stood for any of that stuff and they write Cap to be the same.
Is that Ultimate Cap or 616 Cap? Ultimate Cap was an asshole -- even that universe's Aunt May called him out on his BS after Peter died.
I'm not a big Marvel fan, I just know I've seen lots of examples. Makes sense that they would be alternate universe Caps, tho. That's a great way to be able to write the character and show the dark side of US politics without necessarily marring the original character himself. However, to outsiders, there's not really a difference between the two, because they're not deep in nerd lore.