1269
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Kanda@reddthat.com 20 points 4 months ago

It kinda does start off with a member of the Seven killing the main characters girlfriend, so good/bad should be well established for anyone who's awake

[-] el_bhm@lemm.ee 5 points 4 months ago

Starlight's main function in season 1

  1. Is a contrast to how evil every single member of the 7 and Vought are.
  2. Vehicle for of women problems. Ya know, like rape, objectification, position in male dominated environment.
  3. Love interest for Hughie. Where down the line they form a relationship of a powerful woman and a bit lost and freaked out boy becoming a man way too late.

This is all, oh so thinly veiled and conveyed that I am sure it went over most peoples heads.

Oh, by season 3 Homelander fucks a nazi that is a member of the 7. For people that still do not get it. If you align with a nazi state, like say russia, it makes you a nazi.

Like how the fuck do you need a talk of concentration camps to finally catch on?

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

It kinda does start off with a member of the Seven killing the main characters girlfriend

This is pitched as tragic, but it isn't reactionary. A-Train is a pro-athlete-turned-media-celebrity who goes out of his way to stay out of politics and simply collect a paycheck. And the fact that he's a poc, a drug user, and a Hollyweird Celebrity all scratch certain itches in the conservative brain pan. Rush Limbaugh would have all the same vile shit to say about A-Train as he had to say about Donavan McNabb.

good/bad should be well established for anyone who’s awake

Jack Quaid's character arc - particularly in that first season - is in his struggle over the best response to the loss of his girlfriend. What makes him "good" is his ability to move beyond the petty impulse for immediate vengeance, stay clear of the knee-jerk anti-Super bigotry that Butcher falls into, and work towards a revolutionary struggle that challenges the underlying social system. That's what makes him "left coded" in the end, and its not quite so heavy handed inside those first two seasons. Its also easy to lose track of that arc when you're wading through fountains of blood and rivers of poop-jokes.

The show really feels itself in Season 3, as you get into a larger cast of characters with more complex relationships to the Supers and to one another. But it falls off in Season 4 and 5 as everything becomes excessively black-and-white, in an effort to discourage misreadings of the material by piling on cheap fetishistic tropes. Its not enough for Homelander to be a guy who commits massacres of civilians on a whim. He's got to be a creep and a pervert. All the bad guys have to carry out some kind of sexual fetish, while the good guys need to be in these normal-ish largely cis-het relationships.

As the showrunners increasingly lean on sexuality to code for good/evil, the moral statement of the show stops being about peaceful coexistence or egalitarian economic reform or de-militarization and ends up asserting the need for good guys to have vanilla sex lives.

this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
1269 points (97.4% liked)

Political Memes

5433 readers
2906 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS