The reaction to the already-infamous Civil War: Frontline #11 has been echoing across the comics internet for the past twenty-four hours. That makes it old hat at this point, but I still feel the need to ask, “What the fuck, Marvel?”
In the unlikely event you haven’t yet heard the news, the Michelle Malkin-in-training (Boy, the Daily Bugle will hire anyone these days.) featured in the above panels takes Captain America to task because his quaint ideals – y’know, justice, freedom, and equality – don’t encompass the “real” America of MySpace, NASCAR and YouTube (her namedrops, not mine) and the diminished set of expectations passed off as the true face of our national beast.
As a commenter on Kevin Church’s site pointed out, it’s a bastardized version of an old Michael Moore spiel. Moore’s argument was that there is a huge pool of sympathy for classically liberal ideas among the “unwashed masses,” but the political elites need to leave their ivory towers and speak to – not “down to” – these people. It’s a valid idea, proved by the results of Howard Dean’s full court press strategy for the 2006 congressional elections, but it has a very specific context. It boils down to (in my words, not Moore’s): “We are not so different, you and I. Not nearly as different as those billionaire motherfuckers who exploit your religious convictions in order to push more tax cuts for themselves through congress.” (Yeah, yeah, the Democrats are no great shakes, either, but I’ll take “inept” over “evil” any day of the week.)
As presented in Frontline, the argument isn’t about the dangers of being out of touch, but as a false dichotomy between idealism and realism: “How dare you disrupt the shitty world I had grown comfortable with, when you can’t even name a single contestant on American Idol!” I can’t tell you how many times someone has told me that when I “grew up,” I’d evolve past my idealism and accept how “the world works.” I’m going to turn 35 in two weeks, and it hasn’t happened yet. If anything, my idealism has grown stronger over time. It’s has been tempered by empirical factors, but the underlying convictions remain rock solid. That pressure to accept the status quo strikes me as the evangelizing of the shoulder-shrugger, the whimper of a whipped dog attempting to justify why it wears a leash and collar.
I’m all for the common touch, but anyone who tries to define their “Americanism” by mass culture trends of the moment, and not by ideals is a fucking dipshit. Even as a counter-point in a work of disposable fiction, it’s beneath contempt. The only thing that could have made it more embarassing would have been to have a Greek chorus of 9/11 first responders echoing the sentiments in the background. Given Marvel's willingness to exploit or hamfistedly emote over (U DECIDE!) the events of that day, I'm surprised they didn't take that route.
Toxic Reasons – God Bless America (from Kill By Remote Control, 1984)
The Checkers – Seeing Spots (from Make a Move, 2003)
Thursday, March 01, 2007
sweet land of liberty, feels like a prison to me
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3 comments:
"It’s a valid idea, proved by the results of Howard Dean’s full court press strategy for the 2006 congressional elections" -- thats a very new England-centric sentiment, my blogger friend. Howard Dean made no headway in middle america if I remember correctly. Out here (in the red states) it is a lot harder to believe in "a huge pool of sympathy for classically liberal ideas". Middle-Americans dont like liberalism because they don't like the idea that anyone is getting a better deal than they are. I don't advocate this view in the slightest, but being surrounded by it...I can't deny it exists.
I say fuck the status quo but assuming that americans want classic liberalism is like assuming that Iraquis want jeffersonian democracy. 7 years of Bush have made it virtually impossible for me to hold on to my idealism.
Here and there they did, more due to scandals than anything else, I grant you. Most house seats are locked up by districting shenanigans, anyhow.
I think it depends on what you define as "liberalism". I'm not talking about culture war issues or entitlements (the polarizing distractions that are linked to the term in the public's mind), but things like fair wages, decent public schools, and trade regulations that don't lead to one's job getting outsourced.
In nearly all of the red states, the ballot percentages between the parties aren't that huge, at most a ten point difference.
It's why we're seeing odd alliances like the ones happening between evangelist sects and environmentalists (but it's anybody's guess whether they'll hold together long enough to matter).
Unfortunately its the "mass culture" trends of America that are exported to the wider world. But then, that isn't the American people's fault, I lay the blame for that particular trend at the feet of globalisation. Given that the West 'enjoys' (if that is the right word') a mass consumer lifestyle then large companies/corporations believe that if they can open up new markets then they can make even more money by fleecing the remainder of the worlds population. Advertising sells the idea of the West as this happy, all-consuming paradise of choice while ideal's fall by the wayside. The problem with any of this is, of course, that the Earth's resources are finite and that, perhaps, we actually need to regain and put into practice some of our ideals and stop being corporate whores.
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