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jesuswasbatmanFollowing the great Strikethrough Incident there have been some arguments about "responsibility" in fanfiction about, mostly, the writing of porn allegedly trivialising or condoning such controversial or morally-indefensible activities as rape, incest or underage characters having sex with other underage characters or adults.
And this made me wonder about "responsibility" in other ideological senses, the difference between fanfic and canon, and what seems to me to be a Disturbing Trend if two instances in a couple of years constitutes a Trend.
First in Firefly and its film spin-off Serenity Joss Whedon creates a universe with overt references to the US Civil War in which the eventually-defeated separatists are just libertarian localist types who want to be left alone by the central government and the central government really is rather evil, authoritarian, and practices slavery (see, especially, The Train Job). It's not clear if any of the groups making up the Independents practiced slavery but Mal Reynolds certainly seems to personally oppose it.
Now in Marvel superhero comics we have a US Civil War among the superhero community in which the rebels just want to be left alone to live their lives without state interference and the side associated with the central government are rather evil, authoritarian, practice slavery (under the Registration Act people with powers can be forcibly conscripted by the government at whim) (highlight to read recent spoiler) and may all be evil shape-changing aliens (end spoiler).
So, two Civil War analogues lately produced by professedly left-wing creators (I'm talking about Millar here, don't know about other contributors to Marvel) which not only ignore the fact that the Confederates were primarily motivated by the desire to continue to own other people but place that fault on their equivalents of the Union? I suspect that it's down to the creators wanting to produce uncomplicated "Let's let it all hang out and stick it to the MAN!!!" stories, but surely it's a bit questionable given that there really are people who want to paint the Confederates as primarily principled abstract anti-authoritarians and localists, some of them because they believe it but some of them because they really are white supremacists?
And this made me wonder about "responsibility" in other ideological senses, the difference between fanfic and canon, and what seems to me to be a Disturbing Trend if two instances in a couple of years constitutes a Trend.
First in Firefly and its film spin-off Serenity Joss Whedon creates a universe with overt references to the US Civil War in which the eventually-defeated separatists are just libertarian localist types who want to be left alone by the central government and the central government really is rather evil, authoritarian, and practices slavery (see, especially, The Train Job). It's not clear if any of the groups making up the Independents practiced slavery but Mal Reynolds certainly seems to personally oppose it.
Now in Marvel superhero comics we have a US Civil War among the superhero community in which the rebels just want to be left alone to live their lives without state interference and the side associated with the central government are rather evil, authoritarian, practice slavery (under the Registration Act people with powers can be forcibly conscripted by the government at whim) (highlight to read recent spoiler) and may all be evil shape-changing aliens (end spoiler).
So, two Civil War analogues lately produced by professedly left-wing creators (I'm talking about Millar here, don't know about other contributors to Marvel) which not only ignore the fact that the Confederates were primarily motivated by the desire to continue to own other people but place that fault on their equivalents of the Union? I suspect that it's down to the creators wanting to produce uncomplicated "Let's let it all hang out and stick it to the MAN!!!" stories, but surely it's a bit questionable given that there really are people who want to paint the Confederates as primarily principled abstract anti-authoritarians and localists, some of them because they believe it but some of them because they really are white supremacists?
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Date: 2007-06-22 12:25 pm (UTC)As for the slavery issue: I've been reading through a lot of the Marvel Civil War stuff recently, and I'll confess I haven't gotten to the part where people with powers are forcibly conscripted whether they want to be heroes or not. As I understand it, that particular title is written by She-Hulk writer Dan Slott, so I expect there's going to be a heavy dose of satire involved. I just wish I could say the same about the Slayer Army in Joss Whedon's Buffy comics...
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Date: 2007-06-22 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:49 pm (UTC)As per the above, I think the strongest arguments for and against registration are actually laid out in an exchange between Captain America and the martinet director of SHIELD in the first issue of Millar's main CW miniseries.
Cap sez: "Superheroes need to stay above that stuff or Washington starts telling us who the supervillains are."
SHIELD director: "I thought supervillains were guys in masks who refused to obey the law."
And you know, they both have a point.
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Date: 2007-06-22 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 12:31 pm (UTC)I'm prepared to give Whedon a pass because I think he's most interested in the question of what the losing side does after losing rather than rehashing the US Civil War in full; it just so happens that the US Civil War is the version of that narrative native to his culture. And it's not as though this is the first time he's been a bit blind to the wider implications of his Cool Ideas.
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Date: 2007-06-22 12:53 pm (UTC)I don't think they are commenting on the American Civil War as much as the modern civil wars going on around the world currently. Granted Whedon's Firefly was *inspired* by The Killer Angels - a novel about the Confederates during the Civil War. BUT - I think what fascinated him was the desire to rebel against a unifying force.
At the time Whedon wrote it - he was working in a huge corporation - Fox and had his shows on channels owned by two other huge corporate entities: Viacom's UPN, and Time Warner's WB. And...Time Warner was going through a big shake-up.
Add to this - the Bush Administration which is pro-corporate and about as far as the Republican Party can get from Libertarian.
(An interesting historical footnote - the state of Kansas is mostly Libertarian and has been Republican since Abraham Lincoln who was Republican. The Republican Party in the US is usually Libertarian, until recently - it which it has become progressively Facist and right-wing. While the Democratic Party traditionally was more socialist. The economic system in the old South at the time of the Civil War was in some regards a bit more socialistic and paternalistic, while the North was far more libertarian. It could be - partly due to the Industrial Revolution.)
What you are seeing in the art from the US right now - is a response to the "corporate" and "government" paternalistic attitude. We are living in interesting and chaotic times - on the one hand it's anything goes - captialism gone insane and on the other it's the moralistic parent cracking a rod against our knuckles and keeping us in place. A lot of artists are rebelling against the feeling and fear that a corporate entity or interest is telling them how to behave. That some marketing group is telling them what to write. If you *do* this or *behave* in this way - you are okay.
I think the stories aren't about what happened in the distant past (to be honest I think they seldom are - because we don't know what it was like back then and it lies outside our experience) as about what is happening now, today. Look around the world - there are numerous Civil Wars going on.
Two that the US is knee deep in - Afganistan and Irag. Two increasingly complicated moral conflicts that few can wrap their minds around. The Marvel Civil War and Firefly really are more about that than something that happened in our distant past.
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Date: 2007-06-22 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 01:37 pm (UTC)The circumstances of the fighting look similar to the Civil War, but the 'leave us alone' issues harken back to the American Revolution. Merging the two was definitely a mistake considering traditional Southern feelings about that subject. I can't deny that Joss played out the Civil War analogy to the point that in the long run it would have become very uncomfortable for him had the show continued.
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Date: 2007-06-22 02:17 pm (UTC)I got the sense that while people could be evil, the Alliance was simply as cold, indifferent, and dangerous as giant governments can be. Simon and River's parents were good Alliance people; they couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to take part in the rewards and pleasure that it gave them, and they were both uncaring and afraid of what happens to everyone else. If you're not part of the system it's very easy to get run over by it.
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Date: 2007-06-22 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-06-22 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 03:19 pm (UTC)There you have the problem of multi authorship: is Dan Slott's version any more or less true than Brian Bendis' version, though they couldn't be more different?
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Date: 2007-06-22 05:01 pm (UTC)Also, can you see now why I'm not a Sue Storm fan?
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Date: 2007-06-22 05:43 pm (UTC)I do like the Knauf titles so far, which makes me somewhat torn, because I still have a grudge towards Daniel Knauf for the second season of Carnivale! And now I'm enriching him again!
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Date: 2007-06-22 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-22 07:50 pm (UTC)And, wow. I was totally unaware of that aspect of the YA/Runaways series; suffice it to say it's not typical of what's portrayed elsewhere.
And I think you're right; we don't see atrocities on the anti-reg side. The closest thing to the pro-reg T'Bolts is the anti-reg Punisher -- who is pretty much the same that he's always been, a psychopath vigilante; and Cap kicks his ass, showing that the 'mainstream' anti-reg-ers don't approve. I'd honestly have a lot more respect for the series if bad behavior was shown on both sides. . .because really has there ever been a 'war' where that wasn't the case?
Anyway, this whole discussion illuminates what
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Date: 2007-06-22 08:06 pm (UTC)So have the underdogs committed similar sins? Nope. Their hands are pretty much unsullied, and their consciences clear as the driven snow. The worst they can really be accused of is ideological rigidity, and Iron Man's accusation that their resistance is only making things worse is a bit dubious given how quickly the shadier elements of the pro-reg side take the gloves off. Still, I think the "core" Civil War titles - Millar's miniseries, the Front Line anthology, the Iron Man stories, and so forth - do a more balanced job of arguing both sides. If the writers think the pro-reg side is in the right, they're doing a pretty good job of hiding it, and my impression is that the soundness of their basic argument is hopelessly undermined by the compromises they've made in implementing their agenda.
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Date: 2007-06-23 04:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-06-22 04:58 pm (UTC)1) If you have superpowers, you have to register with the government.
2) If you actually want to use your superpowers in a crime-fighting kind of way, you have to apply for a license with the government.
3) Once you've applied for a license, you can only use it as part of an officially sanctioned superhero team.
Apparently, Slott is interpreting (3) as involving a kind of draft -- ie, it's like the military and once you've signed, they own you. I don't recall evidence in any other titles that this was actually the intended interpretation. Whoever is in charge of continuity for these books. . .well, probably doesn't exist.
That said -- I think the Civil War analogy is just a question of a catchy title. (Also, it was apparently invented by Mark Millar -- who liked the name Civil War -- for a completely different concept). Millar is not American, and -- quite frankly -- doesn't seem to know a thing about history (apparently he thinks Karl Marx was Russian, and got the year of Stalin's death and/or the Sputnik launch wrong in a book about Soviet Russia). So, honestly, God knows if he was even thinking of the American Civil War when he came up with that title. The only writer I can recall who actually made explicit ACW parallels was Straczynski and. . . that's probably just his Lincoln thing.
The Firefly/Serenity thing is possibly more problematic and I suspect Whedon would have been a little more cautious about the way he approached the themes if he'd ever lived in the South. I don't know that the Killer Angels itself is particularly a pro-Southern whitewash, but it's a text that has often been used by a culture that wants to invoke the rhetoric of the War Between the States while ignoring the thornier racial issues involved. (I take the chance to recommend Tony Horwitz's amazing Confederates in the Attic for a look at the current -- as of the late 90s, anyway -- state of the Civil War remembrance industry in the US). That said, I don't feel like Whedon ever explicitly evokes American history in the text. It's more the aesthetic feel of the Western that ties it to that.
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Date: 2007-06-22 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 03:16 am (UTC)I agree. And I only grew up in a border state...
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Date: 2007-06-23 04:54 am (UTC)have you read the Horwitz book? I think he's from DC, actually.
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Date: 2007-06-23 08:26 am (UTC)As hinted in some of the other Civil War tie-ins, becoming an official licensed hero pretty much puts you at the government's disposal, and it's pretty clear that this is going to end badly for all concerned. But everybody in this situation is technically a volunteer; registration itself doesn't automatically mean conscription, so the slavery analogy doesn't really apply.
On the whole, I don't think we need to worry about a sudden upsurge in Confederate nostalgia, Firefly notwithstanding. But I think londonkds's original point about creative responsibility is a good one, even if these aren't necessarily the best targets. For example, it's a little disturbing to see a Supreme Court justice citing Jack Bauer's adventures on 24 as a reason for loosening restrictions on torture.
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