Geek
Culture has triumphed and overcome the condescension and pretentious curiosity
of pop culture once and for all. For
decades, comic books were looked down upon with a snobby look by rich capitalists,
while self-proclaimed Geeks continued to buy tons of merchandise like comic
books, posters and action figures, all the while making fun of the dominant pop
culture. With The Avengers we see the biggest victory by geek culture as it
enters into pop culture and becomes a horrendously giant money-making machine. Even so, this (somewhat, I guess) subversive
culture we call Geek retains some of its dangerous elements while it makes
billions for mostly rich white America.
Avengers
basks in all its masculinist glory, yet retains a feminine hope in the Black
Widow played by Scarlett Johansson. I
was delighted to find that she was presented as a seriously dangerous action
hero. Keeping in mind she is dressed in
skin tight leather (bringing to mind S&M – and dominatrix clothing), her
sexuality is not crammed down our collective throats. She also seems to have the most character
development in the movie. So, what I am
getting at is Avengers presents a
female superhero that really kicks ass (which is what superheroes are supposed
to do, right?). While this doesn’t seem
all that subversive, if compared to other action flicks, we definitely see a
more complex female character in Avengers;
Johansson is certainly not in this movie to play the mindless and malleable sex
object. We will see in The Dark Knight Rises if Nolan and Hathaway accomplish the same
with their Catwomen.
Captain America is Gay! My proof?
Cap. America and the SHIELD agent (the one who dies) are obviously
having a sexy affair off camera. The
relationship is started by the agent, who has had a healthy obsession with the
superhero since his childhood. Cap.
America does not spurn any of this obsessive admiration, and actually seems to
indulge it. We can only imagine the
dirty and pleasurable things happening off screen. I definitely enjoyed the gay Cap. America
more than the super boy scout act he had going in the beginning of the film.
The more general theme of the movie is
quite subversive and runs contrary to the individualism of other comic book
movies. The Marvel superheroes had to
work collectively in order to save the world.
It wasn’t collective action like some orgiastic military commercial (most
action blockbusters are, i.e. Transformers
1,2, and 3, Battleship, etc.) where robotic killing machines perform their
duties like cogs in the machine, (in fact the US military refused to work with
the production of Avengers because of
the ambiguous authority of SHIELD.) Each
hero has drastically different qualities, some with contradictory perspectives,
which they have to overcome in order to benefit the collective. And this is the main conflict of the film
(not the alien invasion which is dramatically anti-climactic and boring),
seeing each hero deal with their strong individual egos and attempt to work
together. Does this message reverberate with
audiences embedded within a political climate where the Occupy Movement and
revolutions around the world are calling for collective democratic action? There are billions of reasons to say yes.
So while keeping in mind that 1)
this made billions of dollars for people whom are mostly already rich in a
decidedly not democratic movie production system, 2) the cinematography was
bland and overproduced, and 3) most people probably saw it because of the
action, we can still hold out hope that people at least were exposed to these
subversive elements and that maybe the political climate actually helped propel
this not-so-great movie into film history.
-Eric Virzi
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