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  1. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    This, pretty much. The guy sounds like he has no independent comic experience at all.

    No one reads comics to pretend they are the damsel in distress.
    Though I think Ennis and Kripke would pretend they are the supervillains of the story. Again, I don't really see The Boys as being primarily a superhero story as being about the idea of heroes and celebrities treated as if they are somehow better than human. Even looking at the story of The Boys in the show, most of the heroes are piss-poor fascists. They are essentially a master race, but they are about as well-organized as an 80's hair metal band.

  2. #32

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    Not every single one of them is, not every superhero is a moralist or values the state/law more than people.

    Vigilantism is closer to Anarchy or anti-establishment. They're basically telling the incomic government "you're not good enough so let me do my own thing outside the law".
    december 21st has passed where are my superpowers?

  3. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ptrvc View Post
    See I'm not so concerned with Fascism that I'm willing to live under other forms of tyranny because they aren't fascism.

    Either you're free or you're not. I'm not gonna be happy just because the boot smashing my teeth in has a hammer and sickle instead of a swastika.
    The headache here is when the idea of freedom is pretty restricted. I mean, if you want to have a place to live, clothe yourself and eat, you gotta restrict your freedom. You could live on the street, but the freedom to starve is not what most people think of as a "free country." The average loyal North Korean or Chinese citizen thinks they are just as free (or more free) than any American. Whenever we pointed out all the various examples of a totalitarian state during the Cold War, the Soviets brought up segregation and a numerous examples of racist policies in the United States. Was living under British Rule in India any more free than living in Moscow under Khrushchev? Same with the Chinese today. We criticize their concentration camps and executions and they point to our own growing prison population, capital punishment cases and ICE detention centers.

    In America, almost everyone has to make a dollar to live or have any control over their lives except for those who control the dollars or those who've completely lost any real control. That's a qualified sort of freedom.

  4. #34
    Loony Scott Taylor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by A Small Talent For War View Post
    The headache here is when the idea of freedom is pretty restricted. I mean, if you want to have a place to live, clothe yourself and eat, you gotta restrict your freedom. You could live on the street, but the freedom to starve is not what most people think of as a "free country." The average loyal North Korean or Chinese citizen thinks they are just as free (or more free) than any American. Whenever we pointed out all the various examples of a totalitarian state during the Cold War, the Soviets brought up segregation and a numerous examples of racist policies in the United States. Was living under British Rule in India any more free than living in Moscow under Khrushchev? Same with the Chinese today. We criticize their concentration camps and executions and they point to our own growing prison population, capital punishment cases and ICE detention centers.

    In America, almost everyone has to make a dollar to live or have any control over their lives except for those who control the dollars or those who've completely lost any real control. That's a qualified sort of freedom.
    All freedom is qualified due to the desire for security. How free do people want to be, really? We in the U.S don't have dictators, but we do have big business and advertising.

    China feels free to the Chinese because the communists were better for them than the previous system. They are, in essence, more free than they have ever been. Right? But to us, visiting there, we see things there that seem more restrictive than what we are used to seeing here in the states. And of course there are stories ....
    Last edited by Scott Taylor; 10-19-2020 at 03:25 PM.
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  5. #35
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    It seems Larry Hama would agree with Kripke's take.

    JBL: In issue #1, like much of the Marvel series, the Joes come across as believable realistic people as opposed to over-the-top superheroes. The characters, in spite of the situations, have always been portrayed as “human”. Do you think this is a factor in enduring appeal of the cast of GIJoe?

    LH: I would think so. I believe there is something inherently fascist about super-heroes. After all, they are better than the rest of us and putting themselves above the law to do something about it. A soldier is bound by a code of conduct, international law, and hopefully, honor.
    http://www.joebattlelines.com/interviews/larryhama1.htm

    I think what doesn't help this view is how often the idea of a non-vigilante metahuman police or military force is often treated as a plot by a villain or how the idea of reigning in superheroes is viewed as a bad thing (The Incredibles, Civil War, JLU's Cadmus arc and Marvel's Outlawed come to mind).
    Last edited by Agent Z; 10-19-2020 at 06:43 PM.

  6. #36
    Amazing Member Adam Allen's Avatar
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    I'm not really sure how to make a post pointing at a different post on CBR, and further will hope this poster would not mind me pointing out something they said in a different thread, but I really just felt like it's so on topic:

    https://community.cbr.com/showthread...02#post5194502

    Depends on your line of work. I wouldn't be advertising in my industry (supply chain) that I read comic books. I am not ashamed of it by any stretch of the imagination. I started reading/collecting them mostly for the story telling. But as time went on, I found I drew inspiration from them, and read them because they had qualities I admired in men and women. Mostly discipline, humility/gentleness, perseverance, sacrifice and service to others. I also find that the stories/lesson hit home far deeper and quicker than some dry self help book. SH comics often encourage me to be my best self.
    OMG! Superheroes are so fascist! Promoting gentleness, sacrifice and service! So evil and fascist!
    Be kind to me, or treat me mean
    I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine

  7. #37
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ptrvc View Post
    See I'm not so concerned with Fascism that I'm willing to live under other forms of tyranny because they aren't fascism.

    Either you're free or you're not. I'm not gonna be happy just because the boot smashing my teeth in has a hammer and sickle instead of a swastika.
    Even if you accept the premise that Western democracies are free societies, which is highly questionable in the present circumstances, our freedom is completely built on the backs of the oppression of poorer nations, who have no choice but to destroy their own environment to sell us cheap oil and minerals, or to work in sweatshops for peanuts making useless trinkets for us. And all the while we've collectively deluded ourselves into believing that impoverished third world nations are the real terrorists and extremists, and that we must naturally be the good guys because we supposedly stand for a set of values that nobody actually believes we live up to.

    Ultimately fascism isn't really defined by a lack of freedom, nor is the best way to oppose fascism to simply promote personal freedoms and hope that people will make the right choices. In Nazi Germany life was actually pretty good if you happened to be an Aryan who was fully on board with the ideology, which the vast majority of Germans were, the Nazi's heavy handed policies hardly affected them at all and in fact most of them would probably have felt significantly more empowered than they had in some time, given that all of the "undesirables" had been dealt with and all of their substantial assets were now up for grabs. Reducing fascism to simply the absence of freedom really misses the point of why it is such an attractive ideology to begin with, and why seemingly innocuous media like superhero comics could have a role in promoting it.

  8. #38

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    Quote Originally Posted by OopsIdiditagain View Post
    Not every single one of them is, not every superhero is a moralist or values the state/law more than people.

    Vigilantism is closer to Anarchy or anti-establishment. They're basically telling the incomic government "you're not good enough so let me do my own thing outside the law".
    Slavoj Zizek did once say that Marvel's AVENGERS - in the movie, anyway - was somehow a model for good communism. I couldn't really figure it out, but it is a pretty good example that no genre or story really has a definite interpretation. Even if a fascist writer actually wrote a fascist superhero - maybe somthing along the lines of Steve Ditko's Mr A - any reader could easily project exactly the opposite interpretation onto it. Except possibly in the most inane propaganda piece, it's really impossible to reliably deliver any specific "message" or ideology through fiction. People bring their own points of view to stories and no author can really account for that.

  9. #39
    Amazing Member Adam Allen's Avatar
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    It's ironic because The Boys is very much not a superhero story, so the showrunner commenting on the genre is kind of ... well, weird. Anyway, point being that superheroes are at heart about defending the weak and helpless against the abuse of power. It's simple farm folk Ma and Pa Kent, who don't die because they were kind and loving to a helpless infant, who happened to be the only being capable of defending against some supernatural or otherworldly evil. It's perfectly gentle and kind Aunt May not being killed by a crazy industrialist or an alien parasite, because the child she and her husband raised as their own chose to be selfish once, and the repercussion of that ensured he would never think selfishness could ever be justified again.

    I'm saying here, as a teenager I was momentarily enchanted by the reasoning of Ayn Rand, which indeed leads to a fascist mindset. Some American civilians and politicians both uphold Howard Roark as an admirable example, but ... yikes yeah, Objectivism is for real how the theoretical idea of independence and power can be perverted into a fascist state. But, don't get it twisted ... Clark Kent, Peter Parker, and yeah, I think even Bruce Wayne and in any decent portrayal Frank Motherforsaking Castle would all recognize Roark as a self-indulgent asshat, while all of them go about actually doing everything they can to make the world a better place for as many other people as possible. Without ever saying the suffering of some is just necessary.

    Superheroes find a way. It's not practical or realistic. It's people who defy science and physics and wear silly costumes. But for eff's sake, it's not fascist.
    Be kind to me, or treat me mean
    I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine

  10. #40
    Amazing Member Adam Allen's Avatar
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    And because I've already been on a rant, what's probably the most iconic line in all of comics? "With great power comes great responsibility." Right?

    That's inherently fascist? How?
    Be kind to me, or treat me mean
    I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine

  11. #41
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott Taylor View Post
    All freedom is qualified due to the desire for security. How free do people want to be, really? We in the U.S don't have dictators, but we do have big business and advertising.

    China feels free to the Chinese because the communists were better for them than the previous system. They are, in essence, more free than they have ever been. Right? But to us, visiting there, we see things there that seem more restrictive than what we are used to seeing here in the states. And of course there are stories ....
    The current China political regime, communist? In name only, then… rather State capitalism.

    It’s true that the lack of freedom and invasion of privacy is rather well accepted. So maybe they feel free.
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  12. #42
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Allen View Post
    And because I've already been on a rant, what's probably the most iconic line in all of comics? "With great power comes great responsibility." Right?

    That's inherently fascist? How?
    I don’t think the super-heroes are inherently fascist. Someone has the means and the will to save someone and arrest criminals and they do it? How could it reprehensible? What would we say of them if they don’t?

    It doesnt mean they cannot be politically instrumentalized: Trump wanted to appear with a Superman costume after all after he “defeated the Covid”…
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  13. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelena View Post
    I don’t think the super-heroes are inherently fascist. Someone has the means and the will to save someone and arrest criminals and they do it? How could it reprehensible? What would we say of them if they don’t?

    It doesnt mean they cannot be politically instrumentalized: Trump wanted to appear with a Superman costume after all after he “defeated the Covid”…
    Awful people misappropriate symbols, it's kind of why they're awful. They deliberately ignore what the symbol is so they can twist it in their own image. If it wasn't super-heroes it'd be something else.

  14. #44
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelena View Post
    The current China political regime, communist? In name only, then… rather State capitalism.

    It’s true that the lack of freedom and invasion of privacy is rather well accepted. So maybe they feel free.
    Remember that for the vast majority of people on the planet, individual liberties don't really mean much in practice because they are too worried about where their next meal is coming from to worry all that much about whether they can **** talk the government on Twitter, and a regime that can deliver prosperity and stability is infinitely preferable to one that promises freedom and equality yet is too weak and incompetent to deliver on any of those things. Most dictators out there enjoy far more popular support than we could ever conceive for these exact reasons, especially when the alternative is invariably some foreign educated bourgeois diaspora class that is all too willing to sell out the country to Western business interests. Part of the reason the invasion of Iraq failed so miserably is because we couldn't find a single pro-American leader to install who enjoyed any kind of broad public support, just about anyone with any kind of influence was either a Saddam loyalist or backed by Iran.
    Last edited by PwrdOn; 10-20-2020 at 05:03 AM.

  15. #45
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PwrdOn View Post
    Remember that for the vast majority of people on the planet, individual liberties don't really mean much in practice because they are too worried about where their next meal is coming from to worry all that much about whether they can **** talk the government on Twitter, and a regime that can deliver prosperity and stability is infinitely preferable to one that promises freedom and equality yet is too weak and incompetent to deliver on any of those things. Most dictators out there enjoy far more popular support than we could ever conceive for these exact reasons, especially when the alternative is invariably some foreign educated bourgeois diaspora class that is all too willing to sell out the country to Western business interests. Part of the reason the invasion of Iraq failed so miserably is because we couldn't find a single pro-American leader to install who enjoyed any kind of broad public support, just about anyone with any kind of influence was either a Saddam loyalist or backed by Iran.
    People accept a lot of things rather a adventurous process to an hypothetical better situation.

    But a strong leadership doesn’t mean the situation is that stable. Chinese leaders have to face regularly rebellions.
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

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