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

"Although me and Ambar once spitballed in this thread (or its previous version, I don't remember) how it'd be interesting to have a "what if" version of an African-American Punisher dealing with the KKK, to explore racial politics and gun rights.

"

Granted a little bit issue is that version was much sympathic by virtue of being black, which why good it can feel weird consider that the punisher by is on, is very fuck up

" I've said that if you take Punisher's main appeal (gun-based revenge fantasy involving crime) and inject its veins with fantasy to remove it from reality you basically get John Wick, which is far less problematic."

I will said wick is far less problematic in part because we never see him as bad guy, just him as regular guy with his dog...have we seen in his day as hitman for the russian...that would be different.

Charles: the idea is more "to what point the imperium is guilty and to what point is not?" I feel is a intersting idea.

I take the view of the Imperium as a group that is pretty much the absolute worst of humanity brought together. The God Emperor of Mankind is a Stalinist monster who tried to wipe out all conflicting beliefs and "unite" humanity under his militant authoritarian state. He's since been deified by people who have none of his attitudes but still remember his genocidal authoritarian credos. Its' a dying anti-science superstition-filled society (the irony being that it's probably still marginally less awful than the materialist eugenics society it was created from) where mankind has degenerated to a Feudal Future that is still overpopulated, populated, and hellish.

Its not just a dystopia, it is EVERY dystopia.

And worst of all, its too incompetant to be able to defeat the evils that it faces. The Orks, the Tyranids, Chaos, and so on will eventually win. I think that's something that should be implicit in the story. It's nothing to be shied away from—humanity will not inherit the universe. It is dying slowly and will take probably another 10K to be wiped out but it will die.

I think that makes a fascinating existentialist story. How does one cope with hopelessness and the fact your race probably has it coming? It was one of the things I *LIKED* about BSG before it utterly derailed itself. The idea that humanity had to earn its survival.

Mind you, I write HP Lovecraft fiction set in a Post Apocalypse world where humanity is dying out so this is very much my wheelhouse.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/CthulhuArmageddon

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 16th 2020 at 7:55:39 AM

Honestly, I never got the feeling that the Imperium as a whole was supposed to be seen as sympathetic.

There are sympathetic people inside it, but the Imperium as a whole is pretty much a garbage pile that only keeps on trucking because people are stuck with it.

And as somebody brought up the Tau - they were actually not well-received when they were first introduced because they felt too "clean" for the setting.

If everyone's an arsehole, adding an unquestionably good(ish) faction would seem like it's Completely Missing The Point.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jan 16th 2020 at 5:17:34 PM

Which is precisely why I'm not much of a fan of the 8th Edition fluff. The Loyalist Primarchs returning was much better as a will they/won't they piece of superstition that people cling to in order to make it through the day. They're classic King in the Mountain figures, where half the point is you don't know if they can wake up in the greatest hour of need or not.

And then they just healed Big Bobby G and let that particular genie out of the bottle. Now, I'm still pretty ok with what they did with him once he was out - being disgusted at what the Imperium had become, writing a civic version of the Codex Astartes, the uneasy truce with the Ecclesiarchy, even his own drift towards some kind of faith. But I think the setting lost something when the Primarch come out from under the mountain, and tbh when we parted the mists of time and took a better look at them in the HH books.

I mean, they are literally meant to be the worst organisations humanity ever created squished into one    GRIMDARK    dystopic regime. Most books however need a somewhat relatable protagonist for you to enjoy the story, so a lot of 40k stories - i.e. some of the main ways some fans experience the settings - are based around heroic (to varying degrees) figures that stand in noted contrast to the awful world they live in. Conflict between character and setting always makes things juicier. But this has the side-effect of making most actors of this horrible dystopic regime that the fans would be most intimately familiar with to be "good" people.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Jan 16th 2020 at 4:20:24 PM

In regards to the Punisher, I think who writes him often defines the character. Someone like Chuck Dixon, who is so right-wing he is writing alt-right comics, that he would write Punisher as a right-wing power fantasy, Garth Ennis who is more left-wing, writes Punisher as a deranged, broken man who is a product of the military-industrial complex. With Ennis, Punisher threatened George W. Bush and had a government agent trying to recruit Frank to fight in Afghanistan and said government agent was shipping drugs in the coffins of American soldiers. Ennis had Frank blow up a yacht to kill some corporate criminals (guys clearly based on Enron), so I think Punisher can be written in different ways.

One problem I am noticing, is members of the alt-right seem to be complaining about social commentary in fiction period. They are mad about the new Picard show dealing with topics like Brexit or Trumpism, claiming that it is ''woke'' now and thus ruined, but Star Trek was always about social commentary, the original show made several allusions the Vietnam War and the evils of bigotry. It makes me think these alt-right ''fans'' either ignorant or acting in bad faith. Next, they will claim there is too much politics in say X-Men. I think their complaints are without merit and I wonder if they understand what makes for a compelling story, as seen with their complaints about the new Twilight Zone show being '' too woke'', despite being about social commentary from the start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xTXqg41t5g

I really dont know of any truly influential right wing writer that is hold in complete good regard nowadays.

John Milinus is awesome.

Utterly batshit but awesome.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 16th 2020 at 10:54:56 AM

It really is absurd...if Rod Serling was still alive, he'd be tackling social issues still. The guy was a card-carrying "Angry Young Man" of Hollywood who was unabashedly political. The Twilight Zone is shamelessly humanist, anti-war, pro-diversity and made some waves by being shameless in how it depicted Nazi atrocities. One episode got hate mail for Hitler's ghost as the villain.

Star Trek put on the first interracial kiss on television.

Rod said it was one of his saddest days that HE LIVES got the most hate mail of anything he's ever done.

You'd think that would have been an Acceptable Target but the fact it wasn't, sadly, meant there was always a bubbling sympathy for Nazis in America.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 16th 2020 at 10:56:05 AM

@kazuya: Sorry for leaving you out of that brainstorming section on African-American Punisher. Faulty memory! KKK redneck Barracuda would be fun, though I still think the best idea to come out of that was Ambar imagining Jigsaw as a mixed-race gangster trying to be accepted in the white criminal outfits whose disfigurement would make that acceptance finally impossible. That is a concept far more interesting than the character ever had.

@unknowing: The idea wasn't for him to be wholly sympathetic, of course. The idea was to explore the dichotomies of gun violence and race.

I think if the alt-right fanboys had their way, Star Trek at best would be explosions and green-skinned babes and not have a single brain cell in it and at worst it would promote the racism and sexism that movement is known for.

Edited by Overlord on Jan 16th 2020 at 1:40:03 AM

As far Anti-heros akin to the Punisher are concerned, the only ones that I have come to really find to be more then just boring 90s Anti-Heroes are the Likes of Spawn, Hellboy, The Darkness, and Witchblade.

I'd barely call Hellboy an anti-hero honestly. All things considered he's a pretty nice guy.

The impression I get is that Hellboy is a Noble Demon that at times comes close to being an anti hero due to him being a demon

The worst you could say about Hellboy is that he's a bit gruff (and in the Del Toro adaptations he can be a bit self-centered). Other than that though he's nowhere near on the level of someone like the Punisher in terms of morally questionable actions or personal demeanor. He's just a regular guy, despite being a demon. It's part of his appeal.

If "sarcastic and sometimes mildly dickish" qualifies you for anti-hero status...then almost every protagonist count these days.

Hellboy is actually remarkably merciful all in all. He almost always tries to reason with whichever eldritch terror he's been sent to kill. He's less patient in the films but in those they always strike first, too.

In fact, Golden Army makes it a point that Hellboy would really prefer not to kill them. He hesitates in offing a forest elemental when the main villain says it's the last of its kind and feels genuine sorrow when he decides to do so because he empathizes with it, due to it being a "fantastical" creature like himself.

As far as humans are concerned I don't think he has a body count.

Hellboy is the Anti Anti Christ. His villainy is mostly nominal.

Maybe it was more shocking when he was first introduced to have a literal demon as a hero, but I've never even thought about him being intended to be a villain. I just figured he was exactly the kind of gruff, shotgun-and-cigar antihero he looks like in the movies.

Yeah, he's a Working-Class Hero not an antihero like:

• Morbius
• Blade
• The Punisher
• John Constantine
• Deadpool
• Harley Quinn
• The Suicide Squad

Funnily enough Hellboy was introduced in the Noughties, the same era where a lot of these anti-hero characters were getting popular. But despite that Hellboy (the character himself and the comic) was totally different from them in every way.

Charles: think is, context matter, for all the monstrous aspect mankind is living in hell on earth, facing demons, aliens, cults and each other, is kinda a awkard aspect because the emperor also end rescuing and uniting many world that needed to be for chaos and xenos and he seen to actually want better of mankind(is intersting that he deny is own divinity, when he very well declared god emperor and nobody would contest that).

"If everyone's an arsehole, adding an unquestionably good(ish) faction would seem like it's Completely Missing the Point. "

Because the tau and always expansive, note how in almost every setting, goodish faction all already already settle like the republic in star wars: is already there, it tell people to join and is atack, instant sympathy, the tau annex world after world which is why it can be read as "what if the republic was the empire without knowing".

"and tbh when we parted the mists of time and took a better look at them in the HH books."

I will said it was time since the setting have almost 30 years, they are some mystery that dosent need to be reveal but another are and the heresy is, also for all the idea og GW making the imperium good, the heresy shatter the notion they imperium was good to being with and it make very clear the heresy happen by the flaw of the imperium itself.

Gaon and Kazuya: I think the african punisher was made ether here or in the topic this one replace, in case anyone want to see it.

"If "sarcastic and sometimes mildly dickish" qualifies you for anti-hero status...then almost every protagonist count these days. "

It pretty much is, I call it "mainstraim anti heroish" in which you can make jokes and be sarcastic but other than that is pretty tame.

Sometimes I admit I dont like harley because she become DC deadpool.

According to the Classical Anti-Hero page, the term "antihero" meant something different when it came out from what it is now.

I haven't read any Hellboy comics but judging from his depiction in the first two movies he's closer to Dante from Devil May Cry than Kratos from God of War.

Edit: A video by Overly Sarcastic Productions on the complex spectrum of antiheroes.

The author also brings up how antiheroes tend to be more often from marginalized groups (12:50).

Edited by windleopard on Jan 17th 2020 at 7:13:51 AM

Yeah, I also don't think comics!Hellboy (or even the del Toro movies Hellboy) counts as much of an antihero.