on some level people understand that this is the thing we want to be talking about, but then nobody can really bear to face the inevitable conclusions, like "you yourself are implicated in systems of power and have probably exercised it badly, consider sharing"
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
instead there's the last minute retreat into comforting moralism, "oh it's okay, we're the GOOD guys, we use our power for GOOD, we're the HEROES, not like those [insert epithet here] Bad Guys"
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
and especially there's a retreat into the psychological--into the logic of trauma and recovery, rather than structure and power--because, well, that's easier to deal with, that's easier to fit into a familiar narrative
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
e.g. WATCHMEN becomes a story about the tremendous difficulty of two damaged people loving each other, and not a story about how one of them is a war criminal on the run from the people he committed war crimes against
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
GAME OF THRONES becomes a story about how women are naturally crazy and the best ruler is the least emotional, not a story about how the peccadilloes of the powerful redound to the misery of the powerless
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
THOR: RAGNAROK becomes a story about thor finally not living in the shadow of his great name, not a story about a society finally reckoning with the blood it was built on
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
I always felt like Ragnarok gets too much credit for a message it doesn't do enough to explore and kept undercutting by refusing to ever stop making jokes. Maybe it's just me but I just couldn't get invested in it and got the impression that it didn't really want for me to.
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Replying to @chibikonatsu @arthur_affect
i don't think it's the jokes that undercut it! it is a fun movie that i love watching! but the movie *very explicitly* begins with a moving emotional exchange about what "the meaning of asgard" is, presents a series of deep challenges to that question.... then just avoids thempic.twitter.com/idPOFbrXja
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
Yeah, definitely. I've heard people talking about it in terms of confronting the legacy of colonialism or the like but... does it really? It certainly gestures in that direction, but not in any substantive way.
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Replying to @chibikonatsu @arthur_affect
i dunno, i think when you make your big bad the literal embodiment of the sins of empire, it might be cool if you went and did something interesting with that like they don't need to cut out the jokes! the jokes are good! i just wanted it to live up to its best potential!
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Thor Ragnarok did go further than any MCU movie has with subversion, with the initiation of Ragnarok, the summoning of Surtr and the destruction of (most of) Asgard the outright victorious climax of the film
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It didn't LEAN on it the way a more serious, less quippy movie would've but the ending wasn't all that ambiguous "The Empire must fall, it cannot be saved, the chickens will come home to roost" It's a binary choice between Surtr or Hela, revolution or tyranny
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