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

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you may not have liked Batman's storyline, but you have to have liked his hat. best alternate Batman design ever

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Edited by Tremmor19 on Apr 19th 2024 at 8:23:51 AM

I love that pagetopper.

Im taking about the comedian and soldier boy, the former is very much vietnam cap with all that represent and the later is more a general cold war. specially the contras.

I think just how you alter superman by how he land, cap can be change depending on what war he define it. Maybe stark was right in how much cap is define by conflict

Marvel already has a "Vietnam" Cap. It has two of them: The Punisher and Nuke.

Frank's history was updated so that he's not a Vietnam War vet specifically, but back in the day he was.

Edited by M84 on Apr 19th 2024 at 6:02:54 PM

Well there was that one What If where Captain America fought in the historical civil war.

Not to threadjack, but the earlier discussion about Batman made me think, has Batman ever had a moment like this with his villains (the clip is from Justice League Unlimited and is Flash talking to Trickster)?

He has. Look up the Baby Doll episode.

I assume you mean moments when Batman treats rogues with sympathy.

Edited by M84 on Apr 19th 2024 at 9:01:00 PM

I know of at least one case where Batman "put in a good word" for a goon to get a security job at Wayne's.

Edited by Kayeka on Apr 19th 2024 at 3:00:38 PM

There's also the whole Ventriloquist redemption arc where Bruce Wayne makes it a point to give Arnold Wesker a job and look out for him in both identities.

This is a redemption that ACTUALLY sticks. It's great.

And also the last episode of the justice league where he comforts Ace of the royal flush gang as she is dying instead of using Walker's weapon.

There were different episodes in Batman: The Animated Series when Harley Quinn, Mr Freez and Poison Ivey tried to start a new leaf, and Bruce Wayne tried to help them.

...................

In season 2 episode "Harley's Holiday" the titular character was recently declared sane and released from Arkham, she try to live a normal life, and renounce her life of crime.

She still struggles with the "normal" part though, and so she thinks it is a good idea to walk with her two Hyenas in the streets,  and when people get scared, she assumes this must be because of her cloths.

So she go shopping at a clothing store where Bruce was on a date. Harley buys and pays for a dress, but a misunderstanding occurs, and a security guard thinks she stole the dress.

Her (not so) old habits come back, harley attack the guard, and go hiding in a room.

Bruce try to calm her and encourage her to explain the misunderstanding, but she respond with attacking him and kidnapping his date.

..........................

Batman intervenes and tries to convince Harley to surrender, and tell her he wants to help her, but she angrily says that she did her best, but people just won't give her a chance, and she may as well return to being insane.

Anyway, Batman arrests her and returns her to Arkham, but he encourage her not to lose hope, she asks him why does he care about helping her.

Batman answered that he knows what it is like to have a bad day when everything goes against you, and he also knows how hard it is to start a new life.

He finishes by given her back the dress she bought.

.............................

In short, both Batman and Bruce can be understanding and helpful to their enemies as long as they make a genuine effort to reform.

Edited by jawal on Apr 19th 2024 at 2:47:08 PM

Whenever one of Batman's rogue gallery attempts to turn a new leaf, he always gives them a chance. In every setting where Freeze, or Poison Ivy, or Harley (those who usually have understandable motives for how they turned into villains) tries to change, he gives them a chance and genuinely helps them reform.

Though sometimes depending on time and writer. In the Batman Beyond episode which is in continuity with the Batman animated series and DCAU, Mr. Freeze was brought back for a redemption story when he was seemingly cured of his affliction that made him an immortal disembodied head that needs the cold and he was actually genuine about turning over a new leaf, but Bruce was suspicious of his change of heart, with Terry defending him. But when his affliction returns and the scientists wanted to kill him and harvest his organs for further study, he came back on a rampage to kill everyone in the building. It ended with both Bruce and Terry coming to terms with each other's viewpoints, that Freeze was still dangerous, but his attempt to be a good man was genuine.

BB Bruce was basically the guy at his lowest point, a guy who really failed his mission, so him giving up on Fries is a sad reminder of his fall.

Depending on who you ask, Avengers vs. X-Men.

Yeah, this was my point.

There are competent therapists in the DCU but most of them aren't in Gotham for obvious reasons.

Edited by windleopard on Apr 19th 2024 at 3:37:56 PM

Killer Croc got some nice recent moments in the comics I think.

Eh. After years of dealing with Batman always automatically being the hero in Superman vs Batman stories, it was refreshing to see him be the bad guy. And I like Batman.

He's too busy being a (surprisingly good) WWE wrestling to be a supervillain, although he is a heel, so that's as close as you can get.

@J79

Almost every Two-Face episode, The Ventriloquist, and both Harley and Ivy.

About Batman, I'm pretty sure is was canon that the city is built on some cursed land or something so there's that. There was Batman or Superman comic taking place during the No Man's Land event(for those not in the know, an earthquake decimated Gotham and President Luthor had the area declared outside of US jurisdiction) where Supes DOES criticize Bats about his seeming lack of effort to help. Bats sighs and tells him he has a week to make his point. Supes finds a downtrodden engineer whom he gets assistance from to rebuild a working clean water infrastructure and everything is well, until more people start "getting in on the action". Two muscle guys start to help the engineer and the whole thing starts to spiral into a sort of protection racket where you have to pay homage and in supplies to the engineer guy for access to clean water. Superman realizes that the issue is ingrained and that he can't FORCE people into compliance. Batman sighs and says that he at least figured it out in a few days instead of taking years like he did. This is just the gist of it and I'll post the comic when I find it. If I recall, Orion had the same problem in Kingdom Come when he kills his father and assumes the throne. He tries to improve things as best as he can and setup systems of democratic rule and other programs, but they just don't stick.

Though it's harder to relate the politics in that story to any politics within the US, even disregarding that a writer can frame any message they want because they control the world. The thing about No Man's Land and saying anything about ingrained cultural issues is that the territory was effectively a failed state until the city was finally brought back into US territory. Part of the definition of being a failed state is the loss of a central government entity having a monopoly on the use of violence to enforce its will and when President Luthor made Gotham no longer part of the US, it lost all the stability that monopoly on violence provided, including the justice system, financial backing, and welfare programs. On top of that, a good chunk of the civilian population was evacuated before Gotham was locked down, leaving only those who couldn't be evacuated in time, those who stayed behind because they wanted to be helpful and the criminal population. So there is no centralized and recognized government body, a lot of the city's wealth was devastated or no longer recognized, the majority of its population is gone (along with the skill expertise surrounding it), there is no longer a consistent internal economy to speak of other than black market smuggling, and good chunk of who are left are violent criminals. It would be an awkward metaphor to use that as an example of the internal rot of Gotham when it's a part of the US, rather than an Americanized hypothetical version of Somalia, Afghanistan, or Yemen. Less a major crime wave, and more an active war zone.

Edited by HeyMikey on Apr 19th 2024 at 11:05:38 AM

Another thing about reform, second chances, and new leaves.

How many second chances can a person earn? If someone is given a chance to redemption, accept it, then go back to his old ways over and over. Well, at some point, people will declare him unsalvageable.

This can be seen with Magento in the X-Men Film Series or characters like Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, those types who are one scene contemplating redemption, the next scene they lapse and kill a bunch of people, then they regret it and contemplate redemption again.

..........................

To be fair, this is actually quite realistic, since abandoning old habits is a very difficult process, and people who recover from things like say  alcohol or gambling are easy to lapse again, so it make sense for the supervillain to do the same, especially in a world where muggles have nothing better to do than push their buttons.

And it can be a testimony to the Hero's moral strength if he continues to hold faith in the villain's ability to reform until this prodigal son is brought back to the light.

....................

But if a villain wasted 10 attempts of redemption before, then go "rejoice. for I decided to stop being a villain again, and this time I am actually serious".

It is also realistic to expect that this villain will not be met with open arms for the 11th time, and that people are going to be sceptical

.....................

Only family can be this patient and provide as many chances for the person to reform, and sometimes even they will have a limit.

Edited by jawal on Apr 19th 2024 at 10:00:32 AM

Okay, apropos of the earlier conversation on the Civil War film, I have now seen it. I don't know that I'd actually call it a war film? And it's definitely not a political film. I guess I'd call it a Post Apocalyptic Road Trip Journalism Movie (that last one isn't a trope, admittedly).

It does a little bit of talking about polarization and racism, but it's mostly a movie about its characters and journalism. It does say some fairly complicated (and I'm uncertain how true) stuff about journalism and reporters, especially war reporters. I'm not sure how much of that is deliberate and how much is accidental, but there's a lot of emphasis on the fact that reporters...report, rather than act. They provide information, in the hopes that others will act, as is directly stated in one of the earlier moments of the film where our cub reporter freezes entirely when asked by a local whether they should kill a pair of prisoners, or just beat them and let them go.

This is not exactly an Intrepid Reporter movie, though and I found myself repeatedly frustrated (I believe deliberately so) with the reporters getting in the way of people trying to do stuff and essentially never actually helping.

Where I'm less certain about deliberateness is that what I wrote above is only mostly true, each of our reporters is, in fact willing to act—but only to assist/defend another reporter, never anyone else. Which leaves an oddly hypocritical note for the film as a whole. That also may be deliberate, however.

Also, though I can't evaluate realism, it does a really good job of being consistent in the combat scenes, such that there's a moment where the audience, or at least I, could tell from what the soldiers were yelling to one another that a character had just made a major mistake which sets up the death of our protagonist. Which was extremely well done in my watching, because you could see how Lee knows that the cub reporter has just made a mistake that will get her killed, rather than it just being magical. Specifically, the soldiers have been really, really good about clearly communicating with each other when they're providing covering fire and when they are reloading and only moving when protected. So, when you hear the yell 'reloading' and see the cub reporter move, you know she's just fucked up.

Has essentially nothing to say about politics, but quite a bit to say, accurate or not about war, reporters/reporting, and people.

Edited by ECD on Apr 19th 2024 at 3:04:52 AM

"Gamers, Beauty and Capitalism".

Youtuber Anthony Gramuglia looks at the discourse regarding the upcoming video game Stellar Blade and whether there is actually an attempt within the gaming industry to remove sexy women. Spoiler alert: there isn't and the reality is much more complicated than certain gamers are willing to acknowledge. Video is 42 minutes and time stamped.

I wonder if there would be as much of a controversy if there were less sexy male characters in video games?

I do wish we could go back to those halcyon days where women in video games were sexy. Like Lara Croft in the original Tomb Raider; there's nothing more sexy than a few pixels vaguely shaped in the image of pointy breasts. Games nowadays don't have any good looking women, I mean, just look at the cows in Baldurs Gate 3. Because, who cares if a character is well written or fun to play as or interesting or well animated? Everyone clearly just plays videogames to wank. We promise we're not sexist, we just don't care about fictional women who aren't gorgeous.

Look, if you do play video games for the primary purpose of enjoying good looking characters, then that's fine, you do you. I certainly can't say I haven't played a game and enjoyed certain good looking characters. But please accept that other people might play games for additional reasons or even different reasons. Also, no offence if you do find original Lara Croft sexy, you do you.

I should also say that, while this is mostly an issue with female characters, most male characters are conventionally attractive (though are usually allowed to look more rough around the edges), it's just much less of a hot button issue if a male character isn't gorgeous. However, I don't want to pretend there aren't people who complain about that.

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with having good looking characters in games, but conversely, it's nice when there's less conventionally attractive characters in games with perhaps different body types are introduced. Especially since a lot of people (though certainly not all) want 'realism' in games, and the thing with real life is, not everyone is a supermodel.

I mean people are capable of caring about non-conventially attractive female characters. Hell, one of the most popular Mass Effect characters is a woman who spends the whole series in a hazmat suit with a big 'bucket'-esuqe helmet covering her face. And she was one of the most popular romances! And, when it was revealed that under the helmet she was conventially attractive, people got anygry!

Edited by king15 on Apr 20th 2024 at 9:53:56 AM

Why does being conventionally attractive need to be something to get angered at, though? I see no point in it.

Because that specific instance used a minimally-photoshopped stock model, and moreover it wasn't really reflective of any of the concept art, where her species looked significantly more alien. A rushed hackjob in a game that was full of them.

Edited by Chortleous on Apr 20th 2024 at 7:27:22 AM