I dunno - I don't think things have to be a 1:1 allegory to work artistically Wanda's shtick FEELS very resonant to me even if the moral links are all hazy and fudgedhttps://twitter.com/nberlat/status/1380993534300459010 …
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Like here's the hot take -- it's a common metaphor for the American postwar experience that the whole 1950s culture of "safety" and "stability" was a PTSD response A reaction to the trauma of the Great Depression followed by the existential crisis of World War II
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An oversimplification, surely, but a resonant one -- the overwhelming message of postwar politics and media was "bringing the GIs back home", creating an idyllic utopia to justify everything people had endured during the war
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An echo of Warren Harding's "return to normalcy" after the Great War and the flu pandemic in the 1920s Everything people dunk on quiet suburbs for as cringey and conformist now was an explicit selling point back then -- comforting rows of houses, all the same
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And, like, I've mentioned in threads before the immigrant side of this narrative -- the advertisers and propagandists sold this really hard to American citizens at home but they sold it EXTRA hard to people abroad whose skills they wanted to exploit
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People who were in a really shitty situation in the place where they grew up who were sold this tantalizing vision of The Good Life through American TV and music and movies And some of them actually got it
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The dude from Passion Pit (Michael Angelakos, who is Greek-American) said his viral hit song "Take a Walk" (the dance-pop version of Death of a Salesman's critique of the capitalist American Dream) was very much about the immigrant experience
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That especially if you hung out with the older men in his family -- a lot of them very culturally Greek, still speaking with accents, still rolling their eyes at a lot of garbage about American politics and culture, very socially liberal and anti-xenophobia and so on
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But they were all capitalist *as fuck* It was the one part of their politics that was unshakable It was the whole damn reason they were here They never stopped believing in *that part* of the American Dream -- anyone can get rich if they work hard, if they deserve it
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Beyond "Greek culture" or "American culture", beneath everything else, this was a core value that their whole identity revolved around they would not let go of until they fucking died Fuck the socialists, fuck the taxmen, fuck the regulators, I'm still waiting for my come up
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(This is... *extremely* resonant with my experience with older Asian-American guys Like eerily so)
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(It's also very reminiscent of Walter Lee's arc in A Raisin in the Sun, a play that revolves around the desperate struggle of one family to move out to the suburbs and everything the suburbs represent)
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It's the theme of one of my favorite plays I've ever read in my entire life that I've never actually seen in performance (and am afraid to in case it ruins my memory of reading it), Chay Yew's Wonderland Seek it out if you can, it's a gut punch
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To me that's like the core thing WandaVision is about Knowing that the American Dream is a bullshit dream that hurts people It's never really paid out what it advertised Those white picket fences hide a whole legacy of repression and abuse and suffering and pain
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The rich families who Had It All back in the Good Old Days had tons of alcoholism and drug addiction and kids running away from home and couples eventually messily divorcing and people hitting midlife crises and writing long screeds about how Everything Is Bullshit
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People hated the '50s IN THE '50s, the whole "beatnik" movement was about people who hated the whole "stable house and job and family" thing so much they sold all their possessions and drove around the country doing nothing but fucking around and getting high
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And yet holy shit Even when you know it's a poison, that drug gives a powerful high People resent it and dunk on it and hate it so much because it's got its hooks so damn deep in their soul Under the skin of most cynics beats the heart of a wounded believer
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Especially those of us who *can't* have it, and never will A lot of this Boomer vs. Millennial Discourse is classic Freudian reaction-formation sour grapes shit "You will never, ever be able to buy a house" Fine, houses are bullshit anyway, only drones live in houses
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I *like* my tiny apartment, I *like* eating out all the time and never being able to save money because I've never had the energy to cook My life is *so cool*, I'm not *boring* like my parents (I know I'm owning myself here and yet)
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Houses are bullshit, lawns are ridiculous social signaling garbage, office jobs were always filled with ass-kissing and bullshitting time-wasting bilge, the nuclear family was filled with dysfunction and abuse And yet, and yet, and yet
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Every day some Millennial who can recite at will the litany of why all the Boomers who lived this life helped destroy the world with car culture and climate change and sucked the life out of American cities and turned into a smug stupid piece of shit Lies awake and wonders
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After a day of the petty humiliations of modern gig work even at the upper echelons of the modern service economy In a lonely apartment filled with screens Thinking about mowing the lawn and the smell of fresh-cut grass as the sun sets through the trees
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The nice job with the comfy office you've worked at for the past ten years and will continue to work at for the next twenty The boss clapping you on the shoulder over drinks, "You're an asset to the company, son" The pretty wife and the adorable kids, the big friendly dog
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The feeling of being safe, of being content, of *knowing where you're supposed to be* at all times Being a stupid dumb complacent shithead, but *having no reason not to be* one Being happy in your ignorance
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That smug Boomer confidence that the "OK Boomer" meme is about How many wins do you have to rack up, again and again, every goddamn day, to feel *that good about yourself* Sleeping soundly on a warm bed of accumulated handshakes and smiles and pats on the back and promotions
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Would it be so fucking bad? Is it so fucking bad to just *want* that? To want a *taste* of it? They drank deeply of that well their whole damn lives and I can't even have a *drop*
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Is it really a blessing to see the world more clearly, with fewer illusions? Is it "moral luck"? To have to live like this every damn day? The world with the focus and contrast turned up so you can see every goddamn wrinkle, crack and stain?
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I dunno man One thing that hits hard about this show is that it's very, very much a retcon Nobody when they were creating MCU Wanda Maximoff thought "Oh she's a throwback fan-of-the-past tradwife type, she dreams of being June Cleaver"
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Like they designed her to be the total opposite of that She rocks the lowkey punk look, she's a cool alternative radicalized anti-American Euro-teen Red leather jacket over a black dress with black fingerless gloves and whatnot Joined HYDRA
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But that's why the reveal works so well, I think It's the repressed, achingly earnest little-girl version of herself that she's been trying to hide and built a wall around for years since the bombs fell Something she never showed anyone, not even her brother, until Vision
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Like I absolutely headcanon that from the age of ten until the age of thirty Wanda would've angrily denied it if you accused her of ever having been a fan of black-and-white cheesy US dom-coms
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