Thursday, July 02, 2020

"Defund Superheros!" Time Magazine, real article.

Comic book nerds will recall that in the original Incredibles, all the superheros had to go into witness protection because the public turned against them.

Time Magazine has felt the need to pursue that notion in the Real World

We're Re-examining How We Portray Cops Onscreen. Now It's Time to Talk About Superheroes

In the past several weeks, as calls to defund the police have gone mainstream, pop culture critics and fans have been reconsidering how Hollywood heroizes cops. Legal procedurals and shoot-em-up action movies have long presented a skewed perception of the justice system in America, in which the police are almost always positioned as the good guys. These "good cop" narratives are rarely balanced out with stories of systemic racism in the criminal justice system. The "bad guys" they pursue are often people of color, their characters undeveloped beyond their criminality.
In this period of reckoning, the long-running show Cops and the widely-watched Live PD have been canceled. Actors and writers who contributed to police procedurals are criticizing their own work and donating money to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Parents are protesting benevolent portrayals of canine cops in the children's television show Paw Patrol. And Ava DuVernay's film collective ARRAY is launching the Law Enforcement Accountability Project (LEAP) to highlight stories of police brutality and counteract a biased narrative.
But as we engage in this long overdue conversation about law enforcement, it's high time we also talk about the most popular characters in film, the ones who decide the parameters of justice and often enact them with violence: superheroes.

This is a loooong article, but the gist of the conversation is police = bad, therefore superheroes are bad and must be destroyed. So let's talk about that a little bit.

Let's start with these "protests" and the "demonstrators" currently in the news. I observe that everything was fun and games in Seattle CHAZ until the "demonstrators" vandalized the mayor's house. Guys were getting beat up, shot, killed, and nobody cared. Millions of dollars in damage to the businesses and buildings, all okay. But then some mutant (a white kid, if I remember correctly) spraypainted #BLM next to the mayor's front door on her nice wood siding, and that was it. Game over. Cops kicked all the "demonstrators" out, moved the barricades, and today the poor bastards who own all those stores are out there trying to fix everything that got broken and clean up.

That's what cops are actually for. Not to hand out speeding tickets or reduce crime. Their job is to protect the apparatus of government and put down insurrections. That's why uniformed police exist. Tickets and trouble calls are what they fill their time with between episodes of insurrection.

And let's be very clear, the only reason downtown Seattle got turned into The CHAZ by a bunch of insurrectionists in the first place is because the mayor told the cops to let them do it. A political ploy by a not-very-smart politician to use the situation to her advantage.

The same farce is being enacted in Toronto right now. Nathan Phillips Square is being "occupied" by "protesters" who have a bunch of political demands. The mayor is using the police force to PROTECT the demonstrators from the news media. In due time, when the politicians are ready to stop pretending Corona is a reason not to go do their jobs, the cops will round up all the "demonstrators" and everything will go back to normal.

It's theater.

It's a show put on by one political faction to make it look like they really care about all the things that we are supposed to care about these days. The cops are part of the theater, they are letting the fires get set and the stores get burned to the ground because they were ordered to do so. And everybody with half a brain knows it.

Example of anti-racism 2020 style. You can thank the mayor.
Oh and by the way, the cops put their knees on people's necks during arrests because they were ordered to do that too. Just so we're all clear why people do things, okay? The knee-on-the-neck thing is part of the show.

This article in Time Magazine is part of the theater. The author is Eliana Dockterman, some basic white woman who lives in New York City. Her complaint in this piece is that superheros as a concept don't forward her political narrative.

Superheroes have dominated popular culture for the last decade—they are fixtures of the highest-grossing movies and icons to more than just our children. They are beacons of inspiration: protesters dressed as Spider-Man and Batman have turned up at recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations. And yet what are superheroes except cops with capes who enact justice with their powers?

Nice try with the strawman. The defining trait of classic superheroes is that they are INCORRUPTIBLE. The police, the politicians, the courts, the Army, all these things can be bought. Captain America, he's the guy you can't buy. Superman, he's the guy that will do the right thing no matter what.

The defining nature of a superhero's use of violence is that they interrupt crimes -in progress-. Spiderman finds the super villain in the middle of trying to nuke NYC and punches him in the face to make him stop. Batman fights the Joker to stop him murdering a theater full of people.

What Dockterman wants to pretend is that this idea of incorruptibility and use of violence in pursuit of justice is Whiteness, and therefore bad. Sorry, white kids, no Captain America for you. There is no Justice, capital J, only racism and hate.

For Dockterman, The Watchmen is the best kind of superhero story, because it's all about corrupt people doing corrupt things to each other and fighting racism because that's the most terrible thing ever.

But the superhero property that most directly engages with corruption in policing is Watchmen. In Alan Moore's 1986 graphic novel, vigilantes who believe they have the right to fight and live by their own moral codes often prove themselves despicable bigots or megalomaniacs. One particular image of so-called heroes confronting a riot looks an awful lot like the recent videos we've seen of police officers shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters.

All the SJWs love The Watchmen because it's the Anti-superhero superhero story. "Nobody is incorruptible, you stupid kids! EVERYBODY DOES IT!!! Get with the program! Run outside and burn something!"

All part of the theater.

I'm against it, myself. To my mind burning down stores and homes as part of a political theater, that's the kind of thing that superheroes are a reaction to. If Ms. Dockterman wants to know why superhero movies are the only thing consistently making money at the movies the last 10 years, she should go look in the mirror.

6 comments:

WiFi Lunchbox Guy said...

Meanwhile, people are starting to flee the Democrat controlled cities, which should cause the reductions of police budgets these activists claim to want.

OvergrownHobbit said...

It's why Alt-Hero is so much fun.

The Phantom said...

People have been fleeing DemocRat controlled cities for years. But I guess all the druggies passed out on the sidewalk plus Corona was too much for the young and mobile crowd.

Looking forward to seeing Minneapolis and Seattle turn into Detroit by the way. Not racially, but physically. If you're not going to protect people and their businesses from insurrectionists and arson, then those people will pack up their business and move somewhere safe.

Taking their tax dollars with them.

Zsuzsa said...

If you're not going to protect people and their businesses from insurrectionists and arson, then those people will pack up their business and move somewhere safe.

Taking their tax dollars with them.


The problem is that they also tend to take their politics with them. It rarely seems to occur to these folks, "Gee, all the Democrats we voted for back at the previous address turned the place into a cesspit. Maybe we should try voting for a different party..."

Jay Harper said...

Super heroes are vigilantes. If you defund the Police then Vigilante justice is all that's left. They want to be the only justice in town. They're just covering all the bases (I hope It's not racist or some shit to use a baseball Metaphor).

The Phantom said...

Hi Jay and Zsuzsa, Hobbit.

These people we're talking about are Leftists. They -believe- in the "power of the collective" to right the wrongs of history. They really believe all this #BLM horseshit.

Coming at this since 1990 as a grown man in the gun control "debate" I've learned over the years that these people are Moonies. They are deaf to anything outside their orthodoxy. You can't talk to them, they literally can't hear you.

The reason is that if they did hear you, if you managed to somehow demonstrate to them that guns are just tools, their whole lives would be over. They'd be excommunicated from their friend group and possibly their family. The personal cost would be huge. It would be like getting fired and divorced the same day.

But, as the virtue spiral tightens they're starting to get ejected from the train. Either they get knocked off by circumstance, they loose faith and let go, or they get thrown off because they didn't signal their virtue enough. You can tell by the number of first-time buyers showing up to gun shops in blue states that the liberals are panicking. They'll risk excommunication because they're afraid of Corona Chan and mobs of zombies burning shit. I can't be the only one that watched Uncle Hugo's burn and felt a chill.

This defunding the police thing in Seattle is the biggest liberal sorting hat ever. If they go through with it the property values in Seattle are going to plummet as people sell and get out. Businesses are already leaving I'm sure. All you needed to do was walk around the city hall area in the formerly cute shopping and bistro district for five minutes to get the message. The True Believers will stay and be destroyed, the rest will flee.