"But Wanda's not an actual child rapist" Well no shit, you wouldn't keep watching the show if she were But she's painted as committing a profound violation as awful as they could make it without crossing the line from "metaphysical metaphor" into brutal real-life shit
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The show is walking this tightrope, it's showing us someone doing something objectively monstrous and yet portraying her in a light where we can say "Okay, but this is a desire a lot of people legitimately have, you can't just dismiss them as shitty people for *wanting* this"
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Zooming out to the big-picture political/social commentary about white-picket-fence suburban sitcoms it's saying, like Okay, yes, this view of the "good life" in America is hugely toxic and was powered by incredible suffering elsewhere in the world But it's natural to want it
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Especially the love-hate relationship white women have had with this fantasy That these shows were incredibly condescending to women and yet women, especially white women, were the primary audience demographic for them
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That women weren't stupid, they were aware that the Domestic Goddess role was a shitty bargain in so many ways and snuck subversive jokes about that into shows like this when they could But it was still a *better deal* than anything else the world was offering
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Better than the incredible vulnerability of being a woman *outside* this white-picket-fence world, on the streets with no protection, treated as completely disposable and a shameful stain on society The Madonna-vs-Whore/Witch dichotomy Agatha throws in Wanda's face
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(Now *that's* something that Jac Schaeffer was clearly aware of and could've gotten a lot deeper into with more time and if not having to keep things relatively light for the MCU A deep dive into Agatha's scorn at Wanda still craving approval/belonging from sexist normies)
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But anyway WandaVision would be stronger if it leaned into power-and-privilege harder, because to me that's the core of the show It's a dicey thing to ask for sympathy for the devil, for a man like Roman Polanski, but there are some harsh truths you have to look in the face
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Power DOES corrupt That fact doesn't excuse what the corrupt and powerful do, but it's still a fact, and it's one you MUST be aware of before letting people take power, especially yourself
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It corrupts everyone, the bored and sheltered and happy as well as the traumatized and broken, let's be clear (The headass, evil argument that "Those who've suffered can't be trusted with power" is a real argument historically made for aristocracy)
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But it corrupts *differently* depending on what kind of person you are -- and it's futile to talk about what kind of corruption is "worse" When the person making you suffer is doing so *because* they know what suffering rather than in spite of not knowing, it's cold comfort
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I mean one thing WandaVision is about is Karen Discourse -- like that's literally the role Wanda seeks to inhabit, the Classic Karen, to the point of freely and viciously abusing a Black woman who dares to challenge her view of herself as the only true victim in Westview
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And I don't think it's actually true, at all, that "Karens" are women who are so privileged they've never experienced sexism and therefore don't know what suffering is like Quite the opposite -- it's really really fucking obvious that a lot of "Karens" are traumatized af
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Someone who's been casually belittled and pushed around by her dad growing up and by her husband now, who's compromised herself in a million invisible, intimate little ways every day of her life And is now a total dick to you at the counter because she DESERVES this ONE THING
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It's a dynamic that replicates itself all over the fucking place -- people beaten and ground down by oppression in one arena of life so they grab on HARD to any power they have in another MRAsians who take out every microaggression white people ever gave them on Asian women
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The observation that, while it's not a universal rule, "rags-to-riches" millionaires can be way more callous and cruel to the poor than people born into wealth Sometimes it's a conscious "I made it, so can you" philosophy, but sometimes the FYGM is just automatic and thoughtless
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And, like The point Monica makes in the ending that if she had the immense power Wanda did, no one could've stopped her from doing something very similar is a GOOD POINT
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It doesn't get Wanda off the hook, it doesn't mean that the citizens of Westview have no right to want to protect themselves from her in the future But if the Mind Stone gave any individual one of them her powers, fuck, of course they'd also make a Hex
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They've all been through the Blip, they've all got shit going on, who the fuck wouldn't cast a magic spell to take it all away if they could Are you so confident your integrity is so great? How would you actually know?
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If you were Director Hayward and you were in charge of protecting Earth from evil magic purple dudes who can dust people with a fingersnap and whatnot would you just let a source of great power go if it were "the right thing to do"? You sure about that? Have you tested yourself?
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(Remember that when Monica first re-meets Hayward in Ep. 4 she considers him a friend, she trusts him implicitly, she outright tells him he was "the only choice" to replace her mom as Director He stayed during the Blip when everyone else quit, because he was the *strongest* one)
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I guess this is the thing people always find themselves surprised by with structural power People getting all surprised-Pikachu-face when someone they like becomes a millionaire and ends up having acting like all the other millionaires
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Wondering "Where did all the good cops go? Why don't the good cops stand up and do something about the bad cops? Is it just *bad luck* that everyone who signs up to be a cop has a complicit personality?" because they don't get how being a cop WORKS
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The webcomic Strong Female Protagonist goes into this early, with this really powerful and frightening rant from the titular SFP, who has Superman-style powers Having a talk with the supervillain in the prison where *she takes the initiative* to say they're Not So Different
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"All the people out there who think they have the right to judge make me SICK They think they're BETTER than us when they're just WEAKER They think they're MORAL when they're just SCARED They call themselves PACIFISTS when they're just AFRAID OF GOING TO JAIL"
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"How DARE YOU act like you're a good person because you've never killed someone You've never had the OPPORTUNITY to kill someone If you tried, it would be the hardest thing you ever did, and it would ruin your life afterwards"
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"I could kill a hundred thousand people right now, and it wouldn't even be hard, and they couldn't do a goddamn thing to stop or punish me I refuse to do it because I choose not to, because I ACTUALLY DO think it's wrong -- and it's SO. FUCKING. HARD"
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"EVERY DAY I don't fly through the country crushing the skull of every bigoted, selfish, abusive, bullying fuckface I see, they should give me a medal Every scumbag on this planet gets away with their petty little sins because they're NOT AFRAID OF ME, and THEY SHOULD BE"
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It's really harsh, but I mean, shit, it's true isn't it I saw a standup comedy bit along the same lines -- before the Louis CK revelations rocked the standup world, but honestly you didn't need to know about that to appreciate the topic
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"You know what? Yeah, I do think I deserve cookies for being good -- I do think that's something I should be rewarded for, because it's actually hard You have no idea, you read the tabloids and you make fun of celebrities for not being able to keep it in their pants"
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"Of course it's easy for you to be good, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE 'Oh, I've never cheated on my wife' -- cheated WITH WHO? Yeah I'm sure you're really beating 'em off with a stick as the assistant manager of Burger King"
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