These characters were probably a power fantasy of their Jewish creators (Siegel, Lee). The Holocaust was ever present in their minds, as the horrific event of incredibly evil industrial mass murdering. They dreamed of being able to fight against it.
Keep in mind Stan Lee would have to say "Jewish values" because if he'd made it clear he's actually Jewish it never would have sold due to antisemitism.
Black Panther wasn't excactly subtle about it's anti-racism-stance. Still, some people do everything they can in order to miss a point they don't like.
Star Wars is questionable... The Empire is indeed fascist but the Jedi Order represents liberalism at its core. The creeping fascism was balanced by those who were willing to work within the system and tolerate it until that was no longer an option, then the "extremists" (Rebellion) stepped in.
the entire premise of superheroes is political! the heroes generally believe "with great power comes great responsibility (to help others)" while the villains believe "great power means I can do what I want". that's the core of many left vs. right arguments
For plenty of kids that grew up in isolated or homogeneous environments or social structures comics may well have been their first exposure to "other groups"
It most definitely taught them empathy with people not like themselves, and how important having principles is.
I was reading Marvel since the 1980s & was 1st introduced to the character when Rob Liefeld brought him into The New Mutants & later X-Force. There was no hint he was other than heterosexual. I presume some later writer retconned him, which comes off forced & pandering.
Yes, I get it. Retconned. Note the insult behind it: Queerness as a symptom of insanity. Typical Marvel 2000s. Have you ever read Alpha Flight or heard about Northstar from that team? Now THAT'S coming out storytelling done right.
There is no insult - Wolverine helping the guy he's supposed to hate wear the uniform of (as i believe she was thought to be at the time-its been a few decades) dead unrequited love because they needed him.
That it was also amusing doesnt distract from his respecting his friends wishes....
Yeah, i got that the 4th time they asked me if i had ever read comics...Like, dude, i'm 40+ years old arguing about comics on the internet, of course i have,
Then my lunch arrived and i lost interest in their idiocy.
That's the problem. To the extent it's good for audiences to interpret stories in ways that appeal to them, it can be a great way to escape life's troubles, be inspired, etc. But when it crosses over into fan-fic that misappropriates the source material, it becomes harmful thereto.
B/c once hijacked by the fan-fic writer, the source material ceases to be for the wider audience & becomes exclusively the property of a narrow subset that goes out of the way to rub it in, in the process irrevocably altering source material into something unrecognizable.
1st, CBR isn't but an online tabloid. 2nd, Nicieza was giving a flip, dishonest dismissal of fans' speculation about the character's alleged sexuality. His answer boils down to saying it's whatever readers decide it is, which is a lazy cop-out, & also playing up the insanity aspect.
As is typical of bigots like Nicieza, he wrote Deadpool as insane & his supposedly all-over-the-place sexuality, which was forced in during the 2000s, was portrayed as a symptom of his insanity, lending undue credence to right-wing claims of Queerness being a mental illness.
Are you that desperate for whatever you think representation is ('cause it sure as hell ain't THIS) that you'll accept such insults to the intelligence, even when they depict Queer people in the most negative light possible?
My reading of the same article was that Deadpool's sexuality is fluid, and while usually for a person this is due to lived life experiences and maybe some genetic factors, in Deadpool's specific case it's because his brain is constantly being eaten and then regrown by the cancer.
He's been making comments about cable since i first read him appearing in x-force and it's explicit in cable and Deadpool (2004) where he's having fantasies about rubbing suncream in.
That's not retconning, that's new development of character. Retconning is changing an event in the past. Example: Gwen Stacy having had a sex with norman Osborne and getting pregnant to provide a motivation for him to kill her rather than 'target the girlfriend'.
Learn the difference.
I feel it's important to point out, the primary generation of people governing the US for the past ~ 3 or 4 decades grew up inspired by Doc Savage, a wealthy upstate aristocrat who kidnapped foes to his rural fortress, then tortured and brainwashed them into becoming his allies.
The rise of the alt-right over the last few years has been a source of confusion for me: did none of them watch Indiana Jones as a child? The Nazis were definitely the bad guys!
It's something that baffles me, living in Germany. The alt-right is getting stronger here as well, even though both our educational system and our pop culture leave very little doubt about who the bad guys were
Not that easy. Germany was and still is permeated by a culture created by Nazis to a large degree. Many old Nazis were at the heart of German society after the war and fostered values that can very easily lead to nazi sentiments. The alt right uses this (and in parts emerged from that culture).
Anyone with at least half a brain knows all of this. Most media was left wing because reality has a left leaning bias. Many far right people hate reality and only make up stuff that isn't happening to get mad at.
I agree with all of these points, but I will note that there were certainly instances of geek culture that were not left-wing (the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, for example, was right-wing in many ways).
Back Panther is so much about civil rights that a Grand Wizard’s son renounced racism, became a scifi writer, and later wrote Black Panther. (Jonathan Maberry)
Yeah this is why these people drive us all so nuts! People who spend years immersed in a fandom and seem to have completely failed to absorb even the surface level themes of stories that, though I enjoy them, are usually pretty simple and clear in message
Before Frank Miller ever got his grubby ‘feminists are the real fascists’ mitts on him, O’neal and Adams were writing a Batman who would lecture cops for wasting time going after pot dealers when there was real crime afoot, who would check in on petty ex-cons to make sure they were fed & housed.
He certainly has a problematic political philosophy, but in many depictions he fights against corrupt police. And as written for many years he is anti-gun.
Eh, it depends on the story and who wrote him. The Dark Knight Returns absolutely. The most remost recent Batman film though is center left without a doubt.
The point of the last Batman film was Batman learning he'd been Batmanning incorrectly and that just being a grim brooding avenger of the night wasn't the best way to go.
To Deadpool. Not really. He made a lot of light gay panic jokes and people took them seriously. He's never had had a relationship with a man that wasn't a gag.
To Punisher. Not true he worked with and heavily respected cops in the Dixon and Baron days.
Absolutely, I know and love all of that. I haven't actually read any Deadpool comics, just enjoyed the movies, so pointers to stories that back up that claim would be great. (Squirrel Girl is my preferred 4th wall breaking comic star, check out Doreen Green)
Captain Planet was very much a rich-white-guy kind of environmentalism, the kind that says the solution is electric cars and not infrastructure reform. It's aged very poorly.
Also I once had a Captain Planet action figure made out of plastic which...I donno, seems to be missing the point, I think.
The Deadpool stuff is a bit more recent (last 15-20 years vs. the rest). I think it was either Gail Simone or Fabian Nicieza (in Cable and Deadpool) that started to embrace Wade being pansexual. I don’t think it was as early as Joe Kelly, but I could be wrong. But it’s otherwise spot on.
Great list. One thing to add: Superman isn’t just an immigrant - he’s an undocumented immigrant, an illegal immigrant, an asylum seeker, and an anchor baby.
Back in the days when I was regularly reading X-Men, it was an absurdly obvious civil rights allegory.
FFS, Kitty Pride pretty much spelled it out at least a couple of times I can remember off-hand, and I'm sure most of the other characters did the same.
A good example, remember the stories revolving around Genosha? That was basically an apartheid state with Mutants enslaved? Hard to make it much more obvious.
See and that’s the thing. I’ll admit upfront I haven’t read or seen all things X-Men but if you actually want to criticize it other than ‘woke’, you can argue it’s reductionist view towards the allegory since MLK did use violence just not in the same way Malcom X invoked.
It was reductive but got more complicated and interesting the 80s when they had Xavier and Magneto join forces and each see the validity of each other’s visions.
By this point Magneto isn't even a villain and was one of the founders, alongside Professor X, of a new mutant nation, this status quo is being faded out at the moment (And Magneto is currently dead) but days of Magneto being a bad extremist minority are currently over.
It’s still comic books, so only so deep it can go. But yeah Chris Claremont created Magneto’s backstory as a Holocaust survivor, persecuted on multiple grounds, and his becoming a mutant separatist/supremacist. Other themes in the series have involved creating a mutant protecting nation.
Only time I saw her do that was a valid point. A black woman had just tried to minimize the harm caused by the phrase "mutie lover". Kitty was pointing out what those people would have been calling her 15 years before because of their friendship.
It makes me curious what it is that the detractors who claim everything they don't like is "woke" think that these entertainments were. What is it they thought was being said to them? Just comic book power fantasies and pew-pew space adventures?
Like people complaining about today's queer musicians, wishing the time of Queen, Culture Club, David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Erasure, etc. back.
It's they never consumed that media as children. It was never "their" childhood to begin with. That or they have actual brainrot and so their brains are substituting gaps in their memories with false memories that suit their current worldviews.
I wasn't even allowed to watch Trek as a kid because the humanists themes were that obvious. It wasn't until later when my parents had less control over my media consumption that I got to see it, and even then, it was still obvious.
I remember reading a scifi short story where the villain refers to the aliens as g**ks (that slur for Asians) and the publication date was in the 1950s
Even in the freaken 50s science fiction took social stances. And of course the Captain Nemo was from India which is the 19th century.
One disagreement with that list—the Federation in STAR TREK isn't all vegan. The Vulcans are vegetarians (likely vegans now), but I think Klingons are carnivorous, and like Humans most other races are presented as omnivores. W/Replicators people normally eat as they like b/c it's all "artificial".
Deadpool is a poor example. A character used to make homophobic jokes where the punchline is just the existence of queer people who is retroactively changed to be queer as times evolve isn't the same as the X-Men always having been about Civil Rights.
Quote Riker: "We no longer enslave animals for food purposes. [...] You've seen something as fresh and tasty as meat, but inorganically materialized, out of patterns used by our transporters." (Star Trek TNG S01E07 - Lonely Among Us)
Do you mean the Alt text? If so, you can. When you post an image on Bluesky there is a section that allows you to add alt text to describe the image for the benefit of those with no/low vision who use screen readers.
No lol. I meant the whole text itself. You see my problem? I can’t even Google for it because IDK what to call it. Talking about the list he somehow added, but how? I’ve seen this type of post before tho usually shorter. It’s like adding a pic, only it’s text instead of an image.
Star Trek isn't really pro-vegan. Vulcans are, but they actively discussed how it's a decision made by individuals, and there are numerous disagreements on Enterprise regarding that. Only thing I see here which isn't really that correct.
Banks loved the Culture universe - called it his idea of secular heaven. But it’s also a pretty blatant liberal nerd power fantasy.
Musk doesn’t get the basic unworkability of the premise; but nor do hordes of liberal nerds who - wilfully? - miss Banks own very clear ambivalence on the matter.
I love your let-me-lecture-you “if you’ve read the books” tone.
What I’m referring to is tech edgelords who see The Culture novels as a blueprint when, including for those very reasons you point out, Banks is illustrating a cautionary tale.
By “Blade runner” he presumably means the famously anti-woke South African with the cuberpunky mode of getting around, media darling of the aughts but with a currently abysmal public image
Whenever you bring up Miles Morales in a conversation about "race swapping" and 'woke" being in comics those same kinds of fucking morons always go "WELL HE'S NOT SPIDER-MAN HE'S MILES MORALES"
What’s absolutely bonkers is that there’s a group of people that enjoyed these things until some right wing extremist told them they shouldn’t. The natural response to say “fuck off” was abandoned for complicity.
Hey, apologies really quick, but you gotta be aware that some Alt-Right douches are reposting this and trying to twist into something it isn't. Had to deal with 2 of them just now.
Star Wars was propaganda to tell Americans who’d just lost in Vietnam that WE were the real victims of oppression and war was our vehicle to glory. The final scene was literally a redone Triumph Of The Will visual complete with the cathedral of lights. It’s fascist propaganda.
Comments
This is why art matters. Art can bypass intolerance, but only if folks engage with it critically.
You couldn't have Jewish heroes in comic books back then so the creators would drop little hints that were obvious to those who knew.
Spiderman the discussion is a bit more recent since the Jewish coding is being done again in recent animations so it was discussed less then.
https://jewishunpacked.com/is-spider-man-jewish-the-answer-for-him-and-his-creator-stan-lee-is-complicated/
But the Rebel Alliance only rose from the cold ashes after the Jedi Order's failure (due to refusal) to stop the rise of the Empire
the Jedi Order (and the Galactic 'Good Empire' Republic) wasn't in the original trilogy; just the prequel trilogy
For plenty of kids that grew up in isolated or homogeneous environments or social structures comics may well have been their first exposure to "other groups"
It most definitely taught them empathy with people not like themselves, and how important having principles is.
That it was also amusing doesnt distract from his respecting his friends wishes....
Then my lunch arrived and i lost interest in their idiocy.
Learn the difference.
Sorry.
I'll steal this one to share, so he gets all the credit he deserves
People often spread this tantrum recently.
Makes a lot of sense now--
https://www.pcgamer.com/games-workshop-fights-back-against-fascist-hate-symbols-in-the-warhammer-40k-community/
To Punisher. Not true he worked with and heavily respected cops in the Dixon and Baron days.
It was such a cheesy show but I liked it.
Also I once had a Captain Planet action figure made out of plastic which...I donno, seems to be missing the point, I think.
https://m.facebook.com/MCLOSTY/photos/a.10151816245500837/10158246315050837
FFS, Kitty Pride pretty much spelled it out at least a couple of times I can remember off-hand, and I'm sure most of the other characters did the same.
https://www.houseofx.org/blog/welcome-to-genosha
I hope you’re doing well!
Even in the freaken 50s science fiction took social stances. And of course the Captain Nemo was from India which is the 19th century.
Like, Dr Who or Stargate.
What they should rectify is that both Thor and Loke was married and had children.
Making Sif an ex-girlfriend and completely ignoring Sigyn - that is not the right thing to do.
get fucked
Get fucked, Steven
You *can* choose to not be an up-nosed little shit and I should know, because I often act like one.
Se faire baiser, Steven
Can someone please do Jesus?
🤝
Name a better duo
No, Ted Cruz, you don’t get to reference Douglas Adams.
Neil Young tunes at a Trump rally, Paul Ryan claiming he likes RATM, etc.
https://x.com/amendlocke/status/1008741008899702784?s=20
If you’ve read the books you’ll know that the issue is not Leave the Culture Alone, but Will the Culture Leave Us Alone?
Plus - every novel is protagonised by Special Circumstance, who are essentially an off-the-leash version of the Mossad/CIA.
Like I said - hmmmm…….
Musk doesn’t get the basic unworkability of the premise; but nor do hordes of liberal nerds who - wilfully? - miss Banks own very clear ambivalence on the matter.
What I’m referring to is tech edgelords who see The Culture novels as a blueprint when, including for those very reasons you point out, Banks is illustrating a cautionary tale.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkjlAG8uqXM
(Translation here: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/ein-sommer-nur-für-mich-summer-just-me.html)
The idea that she's a more mature Pennywise?
George Lucas modeled the Rebels after the Viet Cong. The Empire was the Americans.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxl3IoHKQ8c&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2F&feature=emb_title
I think it shouldn't be difficult to agree that the Star Wars universe is pretty childish in how it deals with its themes.
It's not childish, it's just varied. It depends on the writer and the story.