Sunday, January 11, 2015

Marvel's Agent Mary Sue

In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it is said that drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is similar in effect to having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.

Watching Marvel's Agent Carter was like having your brains smashed in by a large gold brick inscribed with the words "PATRIARCHAL OPPRESSION! WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE!"

I really wish it were different. I really wanted this series to be good. But alas and alack.

My first warning was upon reading the series synopsis: "It’s 1946, and peace has dealt Peggy Carter a serious blow as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad."

Uh-oh. "Marginalized" is a leftist buzzword, I thought. But perhaps it's just a quirk of word choice, I thought. Or perhaps that will be a minor point in character development. Hopefully, it won't be that bad.

It was not that bad. It was a hundred times worse.

The marginalization was not just a character development point. It was not even a theme. Instead, Marxist-feminist gender theory was the premise, point, and purpose of the entire show. It was not a comic book TV show about secret agents fighting bad guys. It was actually thinly-veiled agitprop about the evils of The Patriarchy™. In this way, the show violates the cardinal rule of the storyteller: art serves the muse, not the agenda.

Perhaps you think I'm exaggerating. I really wish I was. But upon reflection and discussion, I become more and more convinced that the show creators did not just include Marxist-feminist themes because it was their world view, but they deliberately and specifically made numerous plot, story, character, and dialog choices to browbeat the audience into accepting the Marxist-feminist narrative, from the first scene of the first hour to the last scene of the second. Come along with me and I will explain all.

Definitions: Marxist-feminism
First, let us identify what exactly this Marxist-feminism is. For a background of Marxism, allow me to quote my favorite person on the internet, John C. Wright:
The Marxist paradigm is of two classes: (1) evil oppressors who control the laws and customs that are designed to be unfair, and benefit only the oppressors, and (2) angelic victims whose every misbehavior is the inevitable reaction to those unfair laws and customs. Now who fits into these two categories does not matter. It can be whites and minorities, men and women, Jews and Palestinians, moralists and perverts, no matter: facts do not matter. Only the paradigm matters. 
The paradigm does two things, both crucial to the Left: 
(1) The paradigm justifies any lie, any murder, any oppression, even the ten million murders done by Communism, and the endless lies from the press. The reason why any lie or murder is justified in this paradigm is that all evils in the world are laid at the feet of the oppressors, and all good attributed to the victims. 
The paradigm simply shuts off the conscience. This is why Leftist talk like sociopaths. 
(2) The paradigm provides an unearned sense of moral superiority, and flatters the ego. When the paradigm is assigned to moralists versus perverts, so that the moralists are ALWAYS wrong and the perverts are ALWAYS right, one actually gains more and ever more a sense of unearned moral superiority the more and ever more utterly lacking in moral conscience one is.
That the behaviors are self destructive and destructive of society is, for them, a feature, not a bug.
[...] 
This refusal to be happy is not just the tactic of a nagging and clinging harpy, harridan or termagant. It grows out of the paradigm. If one believes in the paradigm, all evil comes from the laws and customs and institutions imposed by the evil oppressor class upon the innocent victim class. Winning some concession, as the women’s right to vote, never changes the basic paradigm: the victim class can never be made equal to the oppressor class by definition. It is by definition impossible that the victims stop being victims nor that the oppressor stop being oppressors. 
Only the revolution that creates the New Jerusalem, the paradise of People’s State of Utopia can do that. The mere fact that normal civilized mechanisms for creating the change, voting and debate and so on, were used (according to the paradigm, at least) proves that the basic power imbalance between oppressor and victim has not changed. Merely by being offered, the concession proves beyond doubt that it is worthless.
Marxism, when applied to relations between the sexes, sees the sexes not in a romance, as opposites who complete each other, but as opposing economic actors, who compete with each other. It reduces all sexual relationships (i.e., between the sexes, not necessarily "coital") to a power struggle between oppressor (men) and victim (women).

Men, regardless of their upbringing, background, current state of affairs, or individual ability or powers, are a part of the oppressor class. Any wrongs perpetrated against men by women are not really wrongs, but come-uppance, deserved for men's crimes against women. Hence, a homeless man on the street, who had his house and children taken from him and given to his wife in an ugly divorce, and hence has lost everything, is still an oppressor, experiencing "male privilege".

Women, regardless of their upbringing, background, current state of affairs, or individual ability or powers, are a part of the victim class. Any rights afforded women by men are not really rights, as they are simple patronizing concessions. So, the man's wife, who lives in his former house and takes a percent of whatever he is able to earn in alimony, is still a victim, and oppressed by the patriarchy.

This understanding of class dynamics enables us to understand why Marxist-feminists, like Anita Sarkeesian, can go on Twitter and write something that, to a sane and rational individual, looks like sheer idiotic lunacy, such as:

There's no such thing as sexism against men. That's because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society.

The sane, rational person says "of course women can treat men badly, or be prejudiced against them." Ignore, for the moment, that Miss Sarkeesian has here, in effect, marginalized prominent women, like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, and even herself by essentially saying none of those women have any power (if she has no power, than she would be unable to effect change through her speech or actions). Ignore that she is essentially saying that if a President Hillary Clinton and a Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Majority Leader Barbara Boxer were to pass a law, say, requiring all men to be castrated to curb "rape culture", then this would not be sexist. Once we understand the foundational definitions and premises of Marxist-feminism, her tweet makes sense as a logically-derived conclusion from deeply-held premises:

M. Victims cannot commit crimes against oppressors.
m. All men are oppressors and all women are victims.
C. Therefore, women cannot commit the crime of sexism against men.
Q.E.D.

So Marxist-feminism sees all relations between the sexes as interactions between oppressors and victims, and, as with all forms of Marxism, this inherent inequality can only be overturned by violent revolution. It cannot be won through democratic election, and the oppressor class can never willingly give up their oppressor status. It must be through the overturn of the old society, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat", in which all old customs, laws, and traditions are thrown out in favor of the new laws which will make all totally equal. 

In Marxist-feminism, this manifests itself by working to subvert and destroy all traditional institutions and customs that dictated the behavior of the sexes towards each other, such as chastity, marriage, courtship, and chivalry. These things are, because they exist under the current paradigm, therefore institutions created by the oppressor class to subjugate the victim class and maintain their power. The Marxist-feminists purpose is to destroy these things through any means, any lie, or any deed. Marxism is highly consequentialist: since the victim class cannot, by definition, commit a crime, anything they do to subvert their oppressors is ipso facto moral.

Creation Myth
Switching gears a bit, allow me to quote my second-favorite person on the internet, Michael Flynn:
HISTORY MUST BE CURVED, for there is a horizon in the affairs of mankind. Beyond this horizon, events pass out of historical consciousness and into myth. Accounts are shortened, complexities sloughed off, analogous figures fused, traditions “abraded into anecdotes.” Real people become culture heroes: archetypical beings performing iconic deeds. (Vansina 1985) 
In oral societies this horizon lies typically at eighty years; but historical consciousness endures longer in literate societies, and the horizon may fall as far back as three centuries. Arthur, a late 5th cent. war leader, had become by the time of Charlemagne the subject of an elaborate story cycle. Three centuries later, troubadours had done the same to Charlemagne himself. History had slipped over the horizon and become the stuff of legend.(*) 
This suggests that 17th century history has already become myth. Jamestown is reduced to “Pocahontas,” and Massachusetts boils down to “the First Thanksgiving.” And the story of how heliocentrism replaced geocentrism has become a Genesis Myth, in which a culture-hero performs iconic deeds that affirm the rightness of Our Modern World-view.
(*) In AD 778, a Basque war party ambushed the Carolingian rear guard (Annales regni francorum Ann. DCCLXXVIII). Forty years later, Einhard, a minister of Charlemagne, mentioned “Roland, prefect of the Breton Marches” among those killed (“Hruodlandus Brittannici limitis praefectus,” Vita karoli magni [#9]). But by 1098, Roland the “paladin” had become the central character, the Basques had become Saracens, and a magic horn and tale of treachery had been added (La chanson de Roland). Compare the parallel fate of a Hopi narrative regarding a Navajo ambush (Vansina, pp. 19-20). ["The Great Ptolemaic Smack-Down and Down-and-Dirty Mud-Wrassle"; Analog Science Fiction & Fact, January/February 2013]
Agent Carter
It was with John C. Wright's recent explanations about Marxism swirling in my mind that I was able to see through Marvel's Agent Carter to what it is: an agitprop creation myth about the feminist revolution, designed to instill in the viewer the Rightness of the Marxist-Feminist Worldview.

I wish I was joking. I wish I was just reading waaaaay too far into it, that the show's writers were just using common tropes and themes about piggish men and kick-ass dames to tell a fun story. But a theory can be judged based on its predictive power. How much of reality is accounted for by the theory? In statistical terms, what is the error factor: what is the difference between expected and actual values of the dependent variable?

When I kept in mind Wright's comments about Marxism, generally, I was able to note that seemingly disconnected elements of the show formed a pattern. All the dialog choices, scene goals, and character portrayals fit into a unified, coherent whole in a way that they would not have if the show was just taken as a piece of fluff entertainment. It just made sense. The Marxist-feminist themes were deliberate and planned.

Victims/Oppressors
In Marvel's Agent Carter, the creators go out of their way to portray all men as oppressors. They are, with three exceptions which I will cover later, all boorish, piggish, condescending, and abusive towards all the female characters. Annoyingly so. Unnecessarily so. The show creators went out of their way to make this point, adding disjointed and unconnected lines that do not make sense unless this was their goal in mind. Even the Murloc, by the end, was feeling uncomfortable with the great lengths the creators went to to make sure you understood that men of the 1940's were universally to be reviled. The flatness and consistency of this trope would be, if applied to women, called a "gender stereotype". But, as covered earlier, Marxism accepts no wrongs against oppressors. There is no hypocrisy or double-standard because, in Marxism, there are no universal standards that can be applied to both oppressor and victim. To use a phrase I recently coined, I've never encountered such an example of penis-shaming before, that is, to berate or belittle someone for the great and terrible crime of having a male-member. If you have penis, you are an evil oppressor and member of The Patriarchy™.

Conversely, all women in the show are angelic victims, who, with the exception of Peggy Carter, are incapable of defending themselves against their male oppressors. Throughout the two-hour premiere, no wrong is ever done by a female character, save one, who I will cover later. They are universally and solely depicted as (generally) helpless and hapless victims of male oppression.

Again, if I was wrong about the Marxist agitprop motivations of the show, some counter-examples would present themselves. Some of the men would be pig-headed, while others would be courteous. Some of the women would be polite and others would be bitchy and rude. But the universality with which the gender stereotypes are applied is damning.

The three men who do not fall into the evil oppressor category are:

Daniel Sousa, a co-worker of Miss Carter's, and the only one who treats her as equal in the workforce. He is a war vet who lost a leg to a war injury, thus weakening him and emasculating him (in Marxist-feminist theory) by making him less strong and powerful. This removes him from the oppressor class and he becomes a victim. His character is also completely ancillary to the events of the show, and his character is somewhat bland and forgettable, probably because he had maybe two minutes of screen time. I suspect he will be developed further as the show progresses.

Edwin Jarvis, (yes, that Jarvis), who is the token male. He generally plays second-fiddle to Carter, and exists mainly to show her prowess and awesomeness in a fight. His main way of contributing is to drive her getaway car, making him about as strong and interesting a character as the Lone Ranger's horse. I also have this sneaking suspicion that, by the end of the second season at the latest, he will come out as a homosexual, which would also make him a victim, rather than an oppressor. (My suspicions were based on certain cues, not least of all is that not since Corky St. Clair of Waiting for Guffman have I ever heard so many references to an unseen wife).

Howard Stark. This is the interesting one because....

Subversion of Traditional Institutions
The other necessary component of Marxism is to destroy the existing customs which are a product of the oppressors. In the case of Agent Carter, the three traditional customs that were specifically attacked were chivalry, chastity, and marriage.

Chivalry
The 1940's of Marvel's Agent Carter are very different from other depictions of the 1940's. When we watch movies of that era, we generally see chivalrous gentleman and elegant ladies. The customs of the time were so ingrained into the culture that it was second nature for a gentleman to tip his hat to a lady, for instance, or to hold a door for her. For example, in Miracle on 34th Street (1947; just one year after Agent Carter takes place) Alfred, a young man, instinctively tips his hat to Doris Walker, despite that he is dressed as Santa and doing so reveals his fake beard tied up on top of his head. It was a custom done without thinking, and this is used for humor in the movie. Audiences would have expected to see these social cues, and it would have jarred and stood out if they did not.

Chivalry is a set of customs for how the strong deal with the weak, to prevent abuse and exploitation of the latter by the former. Applied to the sexes, certain signs of respect are required of men, in order to remind them that they are supposed to support and uphold women, and not use their masculine strength to take advantage of them.

In Marxist-feminism, chivalry is an institution of the oppressor and therefore is wrong. In the 1940's of Marvel's Agent Carter, chivalry is all but absent. No courtesy or respect is shown to any female by any male. I can't even recall Jarvis performing one of the myriad acts of respect owed women by the chivalrous code, but I could be mistaken.

"Chivalry" makes exactly one appearance in the show, and it is to condescend to a woman, and imply that she is weak. Specifically, one of Agent Carter's co-workers is interrogating a suspect by beating the tar out of him. Another man suggests, with a sneer and contempt in his voice, that she ought to leave so as not to be a witness to such violence.

In real life, of course chivalry would require the man suggest the woman to leave. If I were to beat the snot out of some bozo for the purposes of getting information from him, I would by no means feel comfortable doing so in front of a lady. To do so would betray the pact that chivalry is supposed to uphold, that the strong (the agent) must treat the weak (in this case, the detained interogatee) with respect. To beat up a man in front of a lady like such would show that one does not uphold the code. It would make one untrustworthy in the eyes of the lady. If he beats up lesser men like such, how do I know he won't do the same to me? In this case, the man would ask the lady to leave, just to avoid the shame of outing himself to her as a brute, and letting her know his behavior is so poor. In Agent Carter the man asked her to leave because he thought her inferior, not because he thought so of himself.

Chastity
The one woman who commits a wrong in Marvel's Agent Carter does so because the show creators want to out her as a tool of The Patriarchy™. Specifically, she is a tool because she upholds another institution of The Patriarchy™: chastity.

Now, in real life, chastity is a virtue of utmost importance to women. It is designed to protect her from sexually abusive men; to prohibit her from being abandoned when she is vulnerable, such as when she is pregnant or rearing small children; and to guarantee that her children are raised by their father and mother and as such better prepare them to become productive members of society, capable of caring for her in her old age.

In Marxist-feminism, chastity is an institution of The Patriarchy™ and is used to control and oppress women. How a man refusing to enter into sexual relations with a woman, unless he be bound to her for the rest of their lives, is oppressive towards women is left as an exercise for the reader. Nevertheless, it is an oppressive institution and feminists encourage women to act against their better interests and give their bodies to men who will likely not even be there in the morning, let alone in a year, when she needs help with their baby.

In Marvel's Agent Carter, the domain of chastity appears twice. One of them appears at the very end of the two-hour pilot. Peggy Carter, seeking a place to live, goes to interview at a women's hotel, on the recommendation of one of her angelic-yet-victimized female friends.

At this point, the Murloc forced me to stop the show so she could ask: "Wait, that was a thing? They had housing just for women back then?" She seemed bedazzled and bewildered that such a brilliant and needed concept was not around today.

If you'll allow me to break from my rant to indulge another rant, can I just say how positively stupid feminists are for destroying all the institutions made for the protection of women, such as women's-only public housing? They are claiming we have a massive problem with #RapeCulture, and sexual assault running rampant on college campuses. Yet they opt for co-ed dorms and say anything less is demeaning towards women. Feminism: The Best Thing to Happen for Men™.

The whole thing reminds me of a recent incident. Friend Devin posted something on Facebook, encouraging the idea that women should be cautious of men. Rather than taking her to task and pointing out that her side has spent the last 50 years tearing down each and every societal custom and institution made to prevent men from preying on women, I opted to simply agree with her and add that, yes, I do think women should fear men, which is why I plan to teach my daughter to shoot a gun and aim for the crotch.

For which she accused me of supporting the "rape culture" and saying a woman only had value if she kept a firearm.

SMH. (/sub-rant)

Anyways, back to Agent Carter: Miss Carter goes to interview at The Best Housing Idea for Single Women Ever. The connection to chastity is made: the woman who runs the hotel makes sure Miss Carter knows that men aren't allowed past the first floor, and curfew is at ten. In real life, the curfew is for the woman's protection; if she stays out past then, it's an indication that a man has drugged and kidnapped her and may be raping her, or at least (if she's willingly with a man that late) that she may not be acting prudently in her best interest and may, without her realizing it, be on the road to being taken advantage of. And the reason for the restriction on where in the hotel men can go is so bleeding obvious I won't even bother explaining.

In the show, these are meant to seem oppressive tools of The Patriarchy™. A curfew, Marxist-feminism reckons, treats women as stupid and limits their freedom. And not allowing men into their rooms prevents them from being raped—I mean prevents them from expressing their true sexual nature or some stupid bullcrap which I won't bother trying to figure out.

To make sure you know that these are Bad Things™, the hotel mistress explains the rules with the same condescension shown previously only by the men. And to really drive the point about how bad these hotels are for women, she then asks Miss Carter how long she plans to live there.

"Oh, only until I get married and quit my job," Miss Carter (fakely) replies, to which the mistress nods approvingly.

Marriage
The subversion of marriage is related to the subversion of chastity. In Marvel's Agent Carter, only three times is marriage referenced, one being with Howard Stark, the other acceptable male.

Now, Stark is a capitalist, and entrepreneur, a big business owner, and a one-percenter. Marxists have every reason imaginable to hate him on economic grounds and group him with the oppressors. Yet they do not. Why?

Shut up, I'll tell you why: it is established that Stark is a womanizer. Several photographs are shown of him stealing away with between one and four beautiful young women, each time a different one. Of course, his character is married, and this is made known when his indiscretions are indicated. So not only is Stark subverting chastity, but he is also subverting marriage, and in Marxist-feminist gender theory, that is a Good Thing. Hence, while he should technically be the biggest oppressor of the show, he is—by virtue of subverting the institutions of the oppressor by, um, discarding those institutions when it serves him and victimizes women—an ally of the victim classes. Or something. But this is good.

This confirms one previously-known fact about Marxist-feminism: they hate chivalrous men and love cads. When the most powerful man in the United States used his authority to betray his wife and daughter, and take advantage of a young intern, the feminists ran with glee and giddy to his defense, upholding him as a great champion of wymyn. These are the same feminists who will cry "patriarchal oppression" should a man hold a door for a lady.

And now you know the why behind the seeming self-destructive behavior. For Marxism, self-destruction is a feature, not a bug.

At two other points in the show is marriage referenced: once already mentioned in the last scene at the hotel and the other in the first scene, wherein Miss Carter's roommate makes a reference to becoming a spinster. In each case, the audience is meant to take away that women were expected to get married, because marriage is an oppressive institution.

Fiction vs. Reality
Lastly, Marvel's Agent Carter is a creation myth for the modern Marxist-feminist narrative. It is meant to show the world from which we've come, cruelly oppressive towards women, and holds Peggy Carter as the archetypal hero who delivers us from that world. In virtually every scene, there is a reminder of how bad women had it. The first scene, her roommate laments losing jobs to returning GIs. Miss Carter's co-workers are nothing but callous oafs towards her, incapable of recognizing her abilities, and instead relegating her to answering phones and getting coffee (this after she worked with Captain America). An untoward cad tries to forcibly kiss her, in what I can only assume was the beginnings of a rape attempt. Her waitress friend must take perennial abuse from a male patron, who insults her, belittles her, and spanks her. Only Carter stands up to the oaf and tells him to leave. Not a single gentleman assists. Not a single gentleman (aside from perhaps Jarvis) even exists in the show. And throughout, there are frequent flashes to the "Captain America Radio Show" which features the most useless of useless damsels. Her cries of "Save me, Captain America," are interspersed with shots of Agent Carter beating up bad guys, to drive home the point of how poorly they thought of women back then, and how awesome they actually are.

The thing is, the 1940's are not some black vortex about which nothing can be known. A) They are still in living memory. There are people alive today who remember what day-to-day life was like back then, and could tell you about their experiences. B) If you can't find an octogenarian, you can always resort to the works produced during the time period. This will give an insight to the day-to-day life of the time.

All while watching Marvel's Agent Carter, I couldn't help but think to the movie Miracle on 34th Street. As mentioned before, the movie was released one year after the events of Agent Carter are supposed to have taken place. To refresh your memory, Miracle stars Maureen O'Hara as a single mother, divorcĂ©e, and executive of the Macy's company. She explicitly has the power to hire and fire at her job. And yet, at no point in the movie does any male character condescend towards her, treat her as inferior, expect her to get coffee, or married. The male characters generally are only respectful and proper towards her. The only implication of a man not doing right by her was her ex-husband, who we are left with the impression is a bad person. This movie was made in the 40's, marketed towards audiences of the 40's, and loved by people of the 40's. This is how people during the 1940's saw women in the workplace. Agent Carter merely shows the Marxist-feminist narrative of the same. One is reality. The other is a lie meant to subvert reality.

Another example came to mind: White Christmas. Again, two successful career women. No one expects them to get married, but for the women themselves, and even then, it is because the women think it will be good for them. And this attitude is reflected for the men as well! Danny Kaye's character wants to marry off Bing Crosby's character because he thinks it will improve his life! There was no double-standard for marriage displayed. No expectation that it's a must for women, but a take-it-or-leave-it for men. That is a lie told by Marxist-feminists as well.

And as for the trope that women were only ever portrayed as helpless victims, well, John C. Wright has done a pretty good fisking of that idea.

Agent Mary Sue
To justify the title of the article, I should mention that, because of the flatness of the male characters, Peggy Sue—I mean Peggy Carter comes across flat as well. There's no one to complement her. No one to make her appear stronger, aside from herself. It turns her into a Mary Sue that you'd find in some SJW's bad fanfic. You could write her character as "And then, Agent Carter, who is SO AMAZING, punches all the bad men, while her stupid male co-workers are lost and confused because she's SO MUCH smarter and better and stronger and nicer and prettier and tougher and faster than everyone and doesn't need any man because she's a strong, independent woman. Did I mention she's a strong, independent woman? Maybe I should have one of the characters mention she's a strong, independent woman, in case it's not totally, completely obvious that she's a strong, independent woman."

Gag.

But this is the reasoning behind the philosophy of complementarity: only through the relation to the other sex does each sex's strength really show through. Absent a strong male, there is nothing for Agent Carter to stand out upon.

And it's such a crying shame, too, because the Peggy Carter of Captain America was made all the more interesting and lovable by her relation to Steve Rogers. The movie Captain America showed male and female characters making each other stronger. The show Marvel's Agent Carter tries to make a strong female character by correspondingly weakening all other males, as if the struggle between the sexes was some zero-sum power game.

Conclusion
I really wanted this show to be good. I really thought I'd like it to. But it shows the damage of leftist thought in art. Not only do you pervert truth, you tell a bad story.

The thing is, the creators could very easily have had a glass ceiling/sexist element, without making it a club to beat the viewer. Think John Hammond from Jurassic Park. Despite being 60 years old and walking with a cane, he still offers to go turn on the power because a gentleman simply does not let a lady go out into the velociraptor-ridden jungle. They could have pulled the same overbearing or over-protective misplaced chivalry in Marvel's Agent Carter. Have her coworkers (slightly cluelessly) be uncomfortable with her working in the field because they don't want her to get hurt. They haven't seen her beat up bozos, and don't know she can handle herself.

The writers very easily could have done this, but consciously chose not to. A) the sexist pig attitude was intentionally shown in all men, not just those in her workplace (such as the man in the diner, and the fence at the nightclub), and B) the attitude of her co-workers was not misplaced concern, but sneering condescension. It wasn't that they didn't want to see her get hurt, but that they didn't think her capable of doing anything other than answering phones and fetching coffee. Even despite the fact that her reputation of having worked with Captain America in the field should, by any reasonable measure, precede her. They should already know her capable.

I really, really would like to give the show a few episodes' chance to turn it around, but I genuinely think that I'd be wasting my time. Why should I give the writers any more of my scant and precious time when they've already demonstrated they have nothing but contempt for me, and want to spend an hour a week preaching at me about patriarchy and privilege from their soapbox?

P.S.
While searching for lame Anita Sarkeesian quotes, I found this other doozy: 

Yes, that's right, Anita. It's cultural ideas of masculinity that makes men violent.

Propogatione, et non imitatione. Marxism is a denial of reality.

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Great column. There's an interesting review at Slate:

    http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2015/01/agent_carter_review_abc_superhero_show_is_boring_and_mostly_about_men.html

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  3. Slate and I agree on something? The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

    Except I actually liked the comic-book parts of the show. The fights were exciting and the convoluted plot about highly explosive phlebotinum is everything we nerds dream about. I only had issues following the complex motivations of the different bad guys (I can't even remember how many of them there were, or really tell them apart) because my brain was actively trying to shut itself down to avoid any more pollution from the show's Marxist-feminist cooties.

    "The only good guys on the show are Jarvis—an effete, albeit married, butler—and Gjokaj’s Daniel Sousa, who lost a leg in the war, which says a lot more about the show’s vision of masculinity—only palatable when reduced—than it does about femininity."

    This was my take-away from the entire show. It was so obvious that even craven lunatic leftists could identify it.

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  4. Brilliantly done. Thank you for articulating the Marxist-feminist connection -- I had always been bugged by unspoken radical feminist assumptions in some hazy way, but could never articulate what was wrong myself. Because, you know, my brain is mush due to the fact that since I graduated I've done nothing but waste my BA by staying home, barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, a pitiable slave to the patriarchy.

    You know, I get the feeling that radical feminists, or at least the writers for this show, actually have no respect for women. Do they truly believe our grandmothers' generation would really have put up with that kind of b.s.?

    Also, one of your first points (about removing the romance between the sexes) reminds me of something one of my friends said: once you reduce the relationship between the sexes to a power struggle, women ALWAYS lose. Men are physically stronger, and capable of overpowering women. DUH. However, their strength serves a good purpose -- they also have a tremendous instinct to protect their own. Women should only fear the kind of man who has allowed all his best instincts to be crushed out of him.

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  5. Joe, that's a brilliant analysis of the Marxist-Feminist thing. You could get that published somewhere. I too was sad that Marvel was going downhill - I like their stuff. Hopefully this program will be an enormous flop.
    - Dad

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  6. Enjoyable read even the second time I've read this in the last 4 weeks. Well done, Joe. I have thankfully not wasted any of my time on that nonsense.

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