Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

I'm explicitly asking for Spain expies, so thanks!

I was counting historical fiction as fiction. Outside of that, evil Spaniards aren't too common.

Edit: I always thought of captain Hook from Peter Pan as a Spaniard, but this is in fact just a vague impression based on how he looks in most adaptations.

I think it is common in French comics set in real-life renaissance to have some Spanish villains. But at that time France and Spain were often enemies.

Edited by gropcbf on Apr 15th 2019 at 6:45:15 PM

Colonial Spain probably

Fascist Spain is probably less common but had notoriety through lauded works like Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls and del Toro’s Pan’s Labrynith

Several pages ago we discussed the possibility of new "Joker" movie glamorizing Joker and excusing his actions. Well Bob of BIG PICTURE from Escapist site tells his own interesting thoughts about the whole "glamorizing villians" subject:

The most interesting of which (aside from that fact that movies, that glamotize serial killers and mass murderers, like Rampage from Uwe Boll, are plenty already at this time) is that "The Killing Joke" (which supposedly started the whole "Joker is right" nonsense in the fandom) is actually sending opposite message, by subtly showing Joker as "edgy pathetic dweeb", who never had a point in the first place.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Apr 15th 2019 at 9:14:37 PM

Yeah what's weird about The Killing Joke is that it's basically the opposite of glamorizing the Joker. It does attempt to humanize him by showing a possible explanation for why he became an unhinged nihilist, but there's nothing particularly glamorous about his portrayal. If anything it just makes him pitiable.

The Joker is a heavy Depending on the Writer guy, issue is, eventually, at combining the.wildly different portrayals, the result is incoherent, he's a joke, he's pure evil, he's supossed to be legit funny in a Black Comedy way or just creepy? And what when he's being actually silly?.

Honestly. The new decision of revealing that there Three Jokers in the main DCU makes a lot of sense.

@Kazuya Prota I can't say Spain specifically, but it is worth noting that "Space Colonialists" are basically the oldest form of Scary Dogmatic Aliens...in fact, the Trope Codifier for alien invasion stories (War of the Worlds) was a criticism of Colonialism. It explicitly invokes Not So Different, in fact.

Though to be fair, when I originally read it (which was in elementary school-I was old enough to vaguely understand the political message, however), I interpreted that as Gray-and-Gray Morality. The aliens don't feel outright evil, more like Well Intentioned Extremists trying to save their species.

It was more of a criticism of Britain's colonization of Africa, though-that's why the aliens were killed off by disease. Britain curbstomped the native humans, but their forces often fell to African-diseases.

On the villainous Spain topic, this might be cheating a bit since it's a tabletop RPG where things are going to vary based on the gamemaster and players, but Dragons Conquer America can potentially have Spain be the villain if the majority of the players play as Anahuac people fighting against Spanish conquerors.

Of course, the tabletop RPG can just as easily have players in the role of the Spanish trying to conquer (or at least establish a foothold in) the New World, or have the people of the Old World and New World working together.

Is that Snyder or Morrison making weird shit again?

As for the Killing Joke, the two moments underscoring this message of pathetic patheticness the most were "why aren't you laughing" and "it's too late, far too late".

Both of which the animated movie screwed up.

Happened a lot more often than people think, and often not in a rosie way.

Edited by Oruka on Apr 15th 2019 at 1:33:46 AM

Part of it with the Joker is also that they tend to leave out Batman's Shut Up, Hannibal! of "I've already heard it, and it wasn't funny".

Though I think Return Of The Joker from Batman Beyond delivers a pretty good "The Reason You Suck" Speech to The Joker.

Actual Comedian Joker can be very funny in front of a Tough Room.

El Guasón,huh?

It was done by Geoff Johns.

I had a interesting talk on AlternateHistory.com.

Americans AH authors rarely write them.because the American political environment don't creates Stalins or Maos but rather Nixons, Rumsfelds and the religious right who can tweaked into Hitlers or Mussolinis to become worse and more damaging than in Our Time Line.

Left Wing totalitarian regimes and figures rarely appear in the anglosphere. Or if they appear, they're easily crused for their right wing enemies who are disliked in their own right.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 16th 2019 at 9:36:43 AM

Yeah. I can't really think of any American left wing figure who would make a plausible President Evil in an alternate history scenario. Like the first candidate who came to mind as an alt President was Eugene Debbs, and I figure he would have made a quite good President.

I guess maybe someone like Leon Cheglog. However you spell his name.

Don't forget Henry Wallace if you want a American president that "surrender" to the Soviets . Thought that's more "Weak" than "Evil"

I think everyone in the US already had forgotten Wallace. I had to look him up because I got confused with George Wallace and was wondering how on Earth he qualified as a leftist.

I had never heard of him. Guess my American history is spottier than I thought. Seems like a good guy if kind of "dopey" in some of his decision making. And his contrarianism and constant emphasis on American farmers reminded me of Bernie Sanders in both good and bad ways. And as far as his attitude toward the Soviet Union goes, he did have one of those awakenings later on, where he concluded that they were evil. And even wrote a book about it.

Oh! I've got some!

If you want a wanna-be Left-Wing dictator, look no further than Earl Browder, General Secretary of CPUSA during the 30s, and William Foster, another leader of CPUSA.

Both end up being used in popular alternate history for this purpose, such as The Falcon Cannot Hear, and the ever popular Hearts of Iron mod Kaiserreich.

Now, as Wallace walked back his pro-Soviet feelings as the Cold War developed, I don't think he would have surrendered. Being politically naive in foreign policy does not necesarily a bad leader make, after all. And I have a healthy amount of respect for Eugene Debs and don't personally think he'd overthrow Democracy or some such.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 16th 2019 at 12:20:10 PM

We're talking about Alternate History, using obscure figures is a given.

That's interesting that Browder is the grandfather of Ben Browder. Seems like a White Sheep kind of thing happened with his kids and grandkids. But yeah, doesn't sound like a great guy, as he's one of those American Communists who basically based his idea of what was right and wrong on whether Stalin favored at a given moment.

Foster seems pretty okay though, except that his entire career was an illustration of We ARE Struggling Together.

It does strike me though with these individuals is that while they might have been manipulated by evil, they weren't independently evil and ambitious for power in their own right. So it's hard to imagine an alternate scenario in which they'd be a bad leader, unless the premise was that they were a Puppet King.

I did just remember Hughy Long, who is a good fit for a left-wing alternate history dictator, since I believe that It Can't Happen Here is at least partly inspired by him.

Edited by Hodor2 on Apr 16th 2019 at 12:32:08 PM

It depends really on what your definition of Left is, I suppose.

But yes, Huey Long is a famous Populist Dictator candidate.

I think the fact that there’s been a long history of the right openly suppressing leftist groups from getting extreme (or even vocal) throughout the 20th century prevents a lot of leftist figures from gaining ground.

The Right vs. Left wasn't also the primary conflict of the post-WW 2 era anyway.

You'd do much better having a conflict on racial issues.

Is he? I can't find confirmation of that.

His actual confirmed grandson moved to Britain in order to dodge US taxes... I wouldn't call him a white sheep. On the other hand he's also been instrumental in exposing corruption in Russia.

@Charles- Yeah, I do agree with that. Like I couldn't believe I had forgotten Long, but he doesn't really seem like a perfect fit either for the Leftist part or the Fascist part. Like he wasn't in the same circles as people like Browder and conversely, as noted on the page, the fictionalized take on Long in It Can't Happen Here has a lot of Politically Incorrect Villain aspects that were absent from the historical Long.

Still, I'd put him on a list of "American politicians who would make for a plausible authoritarian strongman".