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I'm not sure "the Middle East exists solely as a stage for Western power struggles to take place upon" is particularly leftist or - more importantly - accurate
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Dec 14, 2020 18:20
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They should just have Ed Asner voice The Thing.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:21
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Tbh I'm skeptical of the notion you can derive any coherent political message about the American 00s invasions of the middle east from im1. It's just a place setting more current than Vietnam
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Dec 14, 2020 18:34
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site posted:Tbh I'm skeptical of the notion you can derive any coherent political message about the American 00s invasions of the middle east from im1. It's just a place setting more current than Vietnam I certainly agree that Favreau's film is vaguely more self-aware in having American businessman Obadiah Stane be the mastermind behind the[se specific] terrorists, but they're still terrorists. They still, by the film's logic, need to be fought against by Iron Man and the US. Nothing about the storyline suggests that being at war with the Middle East, in and of itself, is particularly suspicious or unwarranted. In that light though, it might be fairer to say that these sorts of comics and films don't as much construct political messages as much as they more reproduce, or mirror, the political messages that were already floating around.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:58
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someone just needs to go over to the Middle East capital city, find all the bad Muslims, and shoot them but in a way where you don't also shoot any good ones by mistake. you can tell the bad ones because they're the minions for the actual bad guy, who is American and a real person like us
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Dec 14, 2020 19:07
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Tbh I don't even know how you get that from a movie where Tony's only interaction with the ten rings are during his kidnapping and when he hears the town name of gulmira on the news, which directly affected him because it was the name of yensins village, and then proceeded to never care about the middle east again
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Dec 14, 2020 19:13
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site posted:Tbh I don't even know how you get that from a movie where Tony's only interaction with the ten rings are during his kidnapping and when he hears the town name of gulmira on the news, which directly affected him because it was the name of yensins village, and then proceeded to never care about the middle east again It’s also worth noting that they were specifically using his company’s weapons to attack Gulmira. That’s the main reason he goes there.
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Dec 14, 2020 19:17
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site posted:and then proceeded to never care about the middle east again that's just even worse so the basic charge here is Orientalism: the East is not an actual place with its own peoples and politics and conflicts and cultures, but a useful exotic backdrop for Western stories. Afghanistan isn't a country with its own history and struggles, it's a vaguely relevant war setting for Tony to have a near-death experience in. Islamist movements aren't political groups with individual goals, strategies, origins, but jabbering hordes of disposable bad guys who work for the actual villain, a Westerner. a conflict in the town of Gulmira (not a place) is resolved by Tony executing generic terrorists in a badass display of technological superiority, rather than addressing any actual causes for the conflict (because there aren't any). once Tony is done with his origin story, Afghanistan can be safely ignored, because its only purpose was to get Tony from A to B I mean it's not an exceptional sin, like it's hardly unique compared to the rest of Hollywood's output. but it's certainly not enlightened or progressive. it's incoherent because it's detached from reality, which is perhaps the point - it's a fantasy of Afghanistan/Iraq done right, as opposed to maybe never happening at all
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Dec 14, 2020 19:30
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I mean, there's no denying that the film does a good job at establishing Stark's motives and giving everything personal stakes. I will absolutely hold up Iron Man as a great example of how to correctly build a character and to have everything in your plot matter to the character. But the fact that the fictional character is driven by personal stakes instead of political ones doesn't actually make his actions or this storyline apolitical given the fact that...y'know, literally everything that happens here has political correlations! Like, the Gulmira sequence outright depicts cool good American superhero Iron Man flying into the Middle East to kill bad terrorists as a cool good thing. There's really no painting over that, given the actual reality of the Iraqi War being just...literally something we had business conducting, over made up reasons. The film creates a reason why this is justified, why our hero would want to do this, why it is a good thing that he wants to do this. It gives us a reason to cheer for this. That is absolutely a political message.
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Dec 14, 2020 19:52
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Lt. Danger posted:I mean it's not an exceptional sin, like it's hardly unique compared to the rest of Hollywood's output. but it's certainly not enlightened or progressive. it's incoherent because it's detached from reality, which is perhaps the point - it's a fantasy of Afghanistan/Iraq done right, as opposed to maybe never happening at all Again, though, this interpretation depends on focusing on the Gulmira scene divorced from its context within the movie. Gulmira isn’t “Afghanistan done right” at all. It’s shown to be impulsive, thoughtless, ineffective, and disastrous. It’s only satisfying as myopic, instant gratification.
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Dec 14, 2020 19:57
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I'm gonna be honest and say I don't remember any negative consequences from that scene or any indication that it's somehow ineffective or disastrous.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:02
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I am deeply fascinated* by this idea that if a film uses a particular place as a setting, if it does not explicitly provide a critique of [arbitrary requirements] then it de facto is expressly saying [geopolitical commentary] *I am in fact not deeply fascinated and throwing a bunch of words out entirely based on the premise of "well it didn't specifically critique this, therefore" is type of reaching my eyes just glaze over and reads like the kind of pseudo intellectual bullshit cripped from a retweet of a retweet of some rose twitter dude
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Dec 14, 2020 20:04
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BrianWilly posted:I'm gonna be honest and say I don't remember any negative consequences from that scene or any indication that it's somehow ineffective or disastrous. He immediately gets confronted by American jet planes, causes an accident that nearly kills someone, and nearly causes an international incident. Then it’s almost immediately revealed that the real villain is the guy closest to Tony, anyways, and that his efforts have been entirely misdirected. That scene isn’t supposed to be Tony’s big triumphant moment. It’s showing him having his heart in the right place but still being impetuous, ignorant, and impatient. It’s the beginning of his character growth, not the end.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:08
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I mean it all works out for Tony in the end (of that one movie) so I get why you might push back on "disastrous". But yeah, I think its shown to be a short sighted and petty action that only exacerbates issues. But I also agree that the whole story is told from Tony's personal concerns and any broader political reading is almost incidental. Which I can certainly see how you can read that as the US industrialist weapons maker exercising his personal will and executing brown people as political in and of itself. But I also thing there's another 10 years of Tony Stark making a mess of his conflicting trauma, guilt, arrogance, and selfihness and tons of people like Cap and Spidey pushing back on him.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:14
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site posted:I am deeply fascinated* by this idea that if a film uses a particular place as a setting, if it does not explicitly provide a critique of [arbitrary requirements] then it de facto is expressly saying [geopolitical commentary] I guess it's not the cool trendy thing to be woke about nowadays but once upon a time, hundreds and hundreds of days ago, debate about the war in Iraq, along with the jingoism and rampant Islamophobia that resulted from it, was a pretty loving big deal. The idea that there are somehow no political ramifications that the very first MCU film used Middle Eastern terrorists and Middle Eastern conflicts as backdrops and action setpieces for its military-affiliated superhero is...certainly a take. Phylodox posted:He immediately gets confronted by American jet planes, causes an accident that nearly kills someone, and nearly causes an international incident. Then it’s almost immediately revealed that the real villain is the guy closest to Tony, anyways, and that his efforts have been entirely misdirected. There's no international incident. It just flat out doesn't happen. Rhodey assures the press that the US wasn't behind the attack in Gulmira and that's the end of the situation. Moreover, these are logistical concerns, not ethical ones. It's that scene where a huffed up police captain gets on the hotshot detective's rear end for not playing by the rules. The film makes sure our sympathies remain with Stark in his newfound mission.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:25
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BrianWilly posted:Maybe you should get the glaze in your eyes checked out then, because no one is reaching for anything. Lt Danger certainly is quote:I guess it's not the cool trendy thing to be woke Lol but I don't mind a cogent take but again when your argument boils down to "if your story takes place [here] and doesn't take time to critique [thing] then it must be saying [this]" that's facile and you're just pulling stuff out of your rear end to makes yourself sound smart smg style site fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Dec 14, 2020 20:34
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BrianWilly posted:The Americans attack Tony out of ignorance, not because Tony was in the wrong. Not one single person says a single word about how he shouldn't have gone to do what he did. (Okay, Pepper does, but she's worried about his life and not about his ethics) There's no real lasting ramifications because people more level-headed than Tony step in and haul his rear end out of the fire. Yes, Rhodey cleans up Tony's mess, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a mess to clean up. And I think the film does a pretty good job of showing us that, although our sympathies may remain with Tony, he was wrong-headed and misguided in doing what he did. The movie doesn't, like, grab you by the ears and shout it in your face, but should it have to?
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Dec 14, 2020 20:35
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I mean, you can reason that that incident is the first in a string of incidents that ultimately leads to Rhodey taking the War Machine suit for the military and them making a deal with HAMMER. And that all of this ties into SHIELD's involvement and the Sokovia Accords. But that's the complication of Iron Man vs the MCU. And again, those events and Tony's role in them also are motivated thematically by his personal stakes in them less than a broader geo political philosophy. I think Tony Stark is very much a symbol of post 9/11 US military and industry ideas and throughout Iron Man and his subsequent 8 or so films you see a lot of back and forth as he very clumsily wrestles with that and newfound revelations of right and wrong. What "the MCU" itself is trying to say I think is much more complicated, incoherent across directors, and interpretive.
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Dec 14, 2020 20:40
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My new superhero film is about a cop who has a justified personal drive to fight antifa protesters in the midwest But don't worry it's not political or anythingPhylodox posted:There's no real lasting ramifications because people more level-headed than Tony step in and haul his rear end out of the fire. Yes, Rhodey cleans up Tony's mess, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a mess to clean up. And I think the film does a pretty good job of showing us that, although our sympathies may remain with Tony, he was wrong-headed and misguided in doing what he did. The movie doesn't, like, grab you by the ears and shout it in your face, but should it have to? I promise you that no one was thinking about political escalation (that doesn't actually end up happening) and how misguided Tony is when Iron Man, in full red armored glory for the first time, bursts into a war zone with lasers blazing, defeating bad guys with awesome technology, while the children he saves literally stare up at him in thankful wonder to the backdrop of a soaring heroic rock orchestra. Remember that, at this point of the story, Obadiah is the one who is telling Tony to sit on his laurels and to just let things play out. The film repeatedly places obstacles before Tony for him to overcome. His complacency and culpability -- which Obadiah encourages -- is one of those obstacles, which is shattered when Tony displays the rightful agency to become Iron Man and proactively save lives. The fighter jets' intervention, Rhodey having to pull strings, Pepper's disapproval; they're all part and parcel of the same obstacle, and Tony has to overcome these things to do what the character now realizes has to be done. It does not, in any meaningful way, suggest that Tony shouldn't have flown to Gulmira to do just that. In fact, the idea that we should somehow feel bad about what Tony does here is so at odds with the cinematic tools being employed that I would go as far as to call it an outright misreading.
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Dec 14, 2020 21:02
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BrianWilly posted:I feel like we're venturing really close to "But the Spartans in 300 are clearly supposed to be the bad guys!" territory here. I feel like you're ignoring the film using some tonal dissonance, here. Which is fine, if you don't think the movie is clever enough to warrant that reading, that's valid. But personally, I read that sequence of scenes as very clearly showing us Tony being all heroic and getting our blood pumping, and then throwing cold water in our faces by reminding us that this is another example of Tony being a gently caress-up who needs his friends to course-correct for him. Like, it's an improvement over him not caring and actively perpetuating the arms race, but it's still very clearly a stumbling block for him. It's akin to the scene at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy where Star Lord's whimsical dance number is pretty starkly contrasted against him abusing the local fauna amidst a dead, destroyed world.
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Dec 14, 2020 21:08
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:They should just have Ed Asner voice The Thing. "Hey Matchstick. Wanna go for snowcones." "DO I?!?"
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Dec 14, 2020 21:19
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site posted:Lt Danger certainly is rip Edward Said e: if you need a *sigh* more positive example you can compare Wakanda in Black Panther Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Dec 14, 2020 21:19
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maybe the second act of Iron Man 1 is questionable from a sociopolitical standpoint, but the third act just plain stinks and is boring, which is why Iron Man 3 is the best one
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Dec 14, 2020 21:31
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Phylodox posted:I feel like you're ignoring the film using some tonal dissonance, here. Which is fine, if you don't think the movie is clever enough to warrant that reading, that's valid. But personally, I read that sequence of scenes as very clearly showing us Tony being all heroic and getting our blood pumping, and then throwing cold water in our faces by reminding us that this is another example of Tony being a gently caress-up who needs his friends to course-correct for him. Like, it's an improvement over him not caring and actively perpetuating the arms race, but it's still very clearly a stumbling block for him. It's akin to the scene at the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy where Star Lord's whimsical dance number is pretty starkly contrasted against him abusing the local fauna amidst a dead, destroyed world. In fact, nothing you've mentioned has been mutually exclusive with that. That there is momentary, superficial blowback from Tony's actions -- not even from his specific actions which are framed as unmistakably heroic, but from the fact that he was caught doing it without authorization -- doesn't mean the action itself was meaningfully criticized. I reiterate once again that Rhodey and Pepper don't object to him killing brown terrorists, but to the fact that him killing brown terrorists this way is dangerous to Tony. You might as well say that we're meant to feel ambivalent about Peter Parker being Spider-Man because Aunt May worries about him or because Jameson will say bad things about him in the press. The fact that the hero's life is hard is not an indictment against that life. Beyond that, I also feel like you're projecting a lot of the Iron Man sequels' depiction of Tony's self-destructive impulses onto this first single film, where being Iron Man is by and large depicted as something restorative for Tony and not self-destructive. And even that might be blowing it out of proportion because, again, there's no actual meaningful ramifications of Tony going to Gulmira. It literally stops being an issue after that scene! No one even mentions it again!
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Dec 14, 2020 21:38
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The movie isn’t about Gulmira, though. It’s a scene that serves a purpose and, having served that purpose, moves on. It shows that Tony’s heart is in the right place, but his actions are impulsive and misdirected. It is partly heroic because it shows that Tony means well and wants to take responsibility for his company’s actions, but he ends up not really furthering any coherent goal or accomplishing anything beyond the instant gratification of retribution against his captors, and his friends are left cleaning up the mess he creates (which, again, is a potential international incident, I feel like that’s being downplayed a bit). I don’t feel like it’s a point that needs labouring beyond that.
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Dec 14, 2020 21:50
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The goal that was accomplished is that the innocent civilians have been saved and that the bad guys who kidnapped Tony, who are depicted as unambiguously bad and nothing else, have been defeated. You keep maintaining that the film wants us to feel ambivalent about this, somehow, but there is zero reason for that. Yinsen's village is saved, we never hear anything else about it, the international incident you keep saying is right around the corner literally does not happen; there's absolutely no reason to assume Tony's intervention was anything other than necessary and good, other than the fact that his friends are worried about him. Again, the film made up reasons to depict an American superhero unironically, heroically shooting rockets and missiles at Muslims in a titillating CGI action adventure at a time when the real American military was in fact shooting rockets and missiles at real Muslims for made up reasons.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:03
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I mean...military intervention in the Middle East maybe saves some people sometimes, too, but that’s entirely an unintended side effect, same as in Iron Man. Tony addresses some symptoms without actually doing anything about the root cause, and causes a big gently caress-up in doing so. And I don’t think the movie needs to hold your hand and tell you “No lasting change was effected by these actions” when you can pretty easily infer it.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:11
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"It is not permitted to devise explanations for the text."
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Dec 14, 2020 22:16
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:"Hey Matchstick. Wanna go for snowcones." "DO I?!?" Thanks for the laugh. In related news, I was really happy that the recent Freakazoid appearance on Teen Titans Go made time for a Cosgrove appearance.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:39
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It's funny in Iron Man how Obadiah Stane goes, "How Ironic, Tony, you tried to rid the world of weapons and gave it the best one yet" and subsequent movies only double down on the fact that he was completely right.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:03
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It's almost like the movie was trying to say that actually Tony is every bit the villain who others accused him before, and actually just a petty manchild who get it through his head that his actions have consequences until they literally blow him up- which is every Iron Man movie and ALSO Captain America Civil War, except Civil War makes the astonishing point of "Tony maybe you're actually the rear end in a top hat just trying to make a new thing to take out everyone inconvenient to your new worldview because you're a petty manchild who can't get over your own personal tragedies" but it's fine because he kills people worse than him and he's the only one with the skills and the smarts to do it, no matter what the cops or government- wait, have I mixed up my Punisher and Iron Man notes? No, no, let's see... Iron Monger, Whiplash, AIM Dude whose name I forget, Thanos- pretty much outside of Bucky and Zemo he's gotten everyone on his kill list deaded on top of every faceless mook imaginable. Of course, usually it's totally viewed by the camera as soaring, sweeping victory when he's not punching the person who is also a flag- but when it's Old Evil Corporate Overlord or Russian or New Hotness Corporate Overlord, Tony is considered the good guy because they essentially say you have to have an Iron Man to fight something like that and I'm sure there's no parallels to american political messages in the 21st century to that conclusion, that'd just be stupid and silly right, iron man go zoom I don't think it was exactly the best and most nuanced or intent on delivering that political message, but also Iron Man 2 is essentially a story about "So what if the two biggest movers and shakers in the military industry were Fictional Competent Elon Musk who is actually a person who wants to do good and Not Make Weapons For Other People™(?), and Still Fictionally Competent But Less So Elon Musk who's just some dude slapping together other tech with some of his own company's designs that often are boondoggles that barely work" and I don't feel like there's any takeaway from its conclusions that looks good in that regard KaosMachina fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 14, 2020 |
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Dec 14, 2020 23:09
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Tony is consistently shown to be an incredibly flawed person who just happens to be the smartest person in the room and knows that. He loses more and more throughout the films before ultimately dying in a last ditch act of heroism. He’s shown to be wrong way more often than anything.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:23
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The only time he became an actually non hosed up person is during the time skip in endgame, and even then his reaction to his friends asking him to help save the world was to selfishly be terrified it'd result in him losing the peace he'd finally found.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:28
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I've Like When The,, theSuper Hero punch the Guy... Guve My Love To Jesse And The Boys Slimgoodbody
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Dec 14, 2020 23:29
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Lurdiak posted:The only time he became an actually non hosed up person is during the time skip in endgame, and even then his reaction to his friends asking him to help save the world was to selfishly be terrified it'd result in him losing the peace he'd finally found.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:40
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That Tony Stark is a flawed character in not in question here, nor is it the point, and I refuse to be sidetracked by it any more. I don't even know why we're bringing up his arcs from the sequels and from other films in the Marvel franchise that were helmed by completely different writers and directors, considering it has no bearing on anything portrayed in the original film at the time it was released. The question is whether the first Iron Man film, in spite of all its seeming self-awareness, still managed to portray its Middle Eastern elements through problematic, jingoistic story beats and sequences at the height of the real life military invasion of Iraq that was fueled entirely through lies and xenophobia. The answer is yes. Sorry.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:41
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I love how this conversation turned into exactly the kind of thing the person who started it was complaining about.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:45
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BrianWilly posted:That Tony Stark is a flawed character in not in question here, nor is it the point, and I refuse to be sidetracked by it any more. I don't even know why we're bringing up his arcs from the sequels and from other films in the Marvel franchise that were helmed by completely different writers and directors, considering it has no bearing on anything portrayed in the original film at the time it was released. I have no issue with this reading of the film, and in fact agree with you. Where I take issue is the last line. This reading is not the only valid one, and bringing in the entire arc of the character is absolutely fine for providing context, even when specifically talking about the first film, depending on what angle you're coming at it from. What you're doing now is exactly why those original tweets are annoying, because of their insistence on there being one true reading of a subjective thing.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:56
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catlord posted:I love how this conversation turned into exactly the kind of thing the person who started it was complaining about. That tends to happen when BrianWilly is involved.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:01
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I'm sorry but "The first Iron Man film is kinda dated and problematic" has got to be one of the most lukewarm takes around and the fact that I have to poo poo out this much Internet Debate to get anyone to concede even that little tiny tepid ground should serve as good joke fodder any time anyone wants to imagine that comic fans don't retain some of the most biased, stubborn mindsets about their cool cartoons. It's okay to be critical of this poo poo, y'all.
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Dec 15, 2020 00:16
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