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juushikaI have tried and failed to give even one shit about Marvel, and my social circle has said only good things re: Captain America and Hydra, so I’ve basically been able to put the whole thing aside as addressed, if not resolved
but then I read Tor.com article (which I won't link) about how this is one of many drastic character changes in comic history, and will be forgotten in time, and exists mostly as an clever, bold bid for attention and money, and that they the writer plan to give Marvel both.
This is the thing about a self-selecting social group! I forget there are other people out there saying harmful, false things with the reasonable tone of a tempered majority opinion!
I am the single most sensitive person to all discussions about and fictional representations of Nazism (which doesn’t even make sense, as a Russian Jew whose family has never directly involved in the Holocaust). I feel like nearl every depiction of it is harmful, from the dismissiveness of shooting Nazis in the face in the FPS genre to the emotional manipulation of Holocaust narratives in literature—even Nazi dystopias, which make the issue a thought-experiment rather than a lived experience; even stories about people who rescued victims during the Holocaust, which takes emphasis away from victim experience. (Yes, if you were wondering, my way to cope with all this is to avoid all Holocaust narratives; yes, I’m aware that’s in its own way a problem.) And so, yes, I lied: I haven’t been entirely pleased with my Tumblr dash’s coverage of Cap and Hydra, because I feel they’re leaning away from the issue. I don’t care about so-and-so’s baby cousin’s reaction to the character development. I don't care about the rage of gentiles. I don’t want gentiles piggybacking onto my experience, which is what it always comes down to. Nazism was targeted, and to focus on the experience of non-targets is not only to miss the point, but to contribute to the problem.
(Important aside: when I talk about Nazism, I speak from a Jewish perspective; I can’t speak to Roma, homosexual, or disabled experience, but I absolutely do not want to deny that experience. Forgive me my oversights as a vomit forth this rant.)
To compare linking Cap to Hydra with that time that some other comic character was dead is also to miss the point and be part of the problem. This development is not upsetting because it does unexpected things with a character; it's upsetting because it overthrows a valuable Jewish power fantasy by simultaneously overlooking, romanticizing, and monetizing Nazism—the problem isn't with a clickbait plot twist, but the fact that the clickbait is antisemetic, denying a Jewish voice, profiting from its harm and erasure; and that antisemitism is and was always a pretty big deal, not on par with a single character being maybe-dead or maybe-evil. It is the very essence of what every Nazi narrative seems to do, ignoring the experience of the victims in order to engage the outrage or titillation of a gentile audience.
(One should ask oneself, at a certain point, why one is reading Tor.com's blog—they have some great coverage by and of women, PoC, and other minority groups ... sometimes! But the default voice remains distinctly white male, from the way that every male giving book recommendations will list only books by men, to this egregiously unable-to-see-past-the-limits-of-my-privilege article ... which is written by someone whose podcast I love, goddamnit; nothing is safe, everyone is assholes, Juu needs to retreat into the cover of her bed for a week.)
but then I read Tor.com article (which I won't link) about how this is one of many drastic character changes in comic history, and will be forgotten in time, and exists mostly as an clever, bold bid for attention and money, and that they the writer plan to give Marvel both.
This is the thing about a self-selecting social group! I forget there are other people out there saying harmful, false things with the reasonable tone of a tempered majority opinion!
I am the single most sensitive person to all discussions about and fictional representations of Nazism (which doesn’t even make sense, as a Russian Jew whose family has never directly involved in the Holocaust). I feel like nearl every depiction of it is harmful, from the dismissiveness of shooting Nazis in the face in the FPS genre to the emotional manipulation of Holocaust narratives in literature—even Nazi dystopias, which make the issue a thought-experiment rather than a lived experience; even stories about people who rescued victims during the Holocaust, which takes emphasis away from victim experience. (Yes, if you were wondering, my way to cope with all this is to avoid all Holocaust narratives; yes, I’m aware that’s in its own way a problem.) And so, yes, I lied: I haven’t been entirely pleased with my Tumblr dash’s coverage of Cap and Hydra, because I feel they’re leaning away from the issue. I don’t care about so-and-so’s baby cousin’s reaction to the character development. I don't care about the rage of gentiles. I don’t want gentiles piggybacking onto my experience, which is what it always comes down to. Nazism was targeted, and to focus on the experience of non-targets is not only to miss the point, but to contribute to the problem.
(Important aside: when I talk about Nazism, I speak from a Jewish perspective; I can’t speak to Roma, homosexual, or disabled experience, but I absolutely do not want to deny that experience. Forgive me my oversights as a vomit forth this rant.)
To compare linking Cap to Hydra with that time that some other comic character was dead is also to miss the point and be part of the problem. This development is not upsetting because it does unexpected things with a character; it's upsetting because it overthrows a valuable Jewish power fantasy by simultaneously overlooking, romanticizing, and monetizing Nazism—the problem isn't with a clickbait plot twist, but the fact that the clickbait is antisemetic, denying a Jewish voice, profiting from its harm and erasure; and that antisemitism is and was always a pretty big deal, not on par with a single character being maybe-dead or maybe-evil. It is the very essence of what every Nazi narrative seems to do, ignoring the experience of the victims in order to engage the outrage or titillation of a gentile audience.
(One should ask oneself, at a certain point, why one is reading Tor.com's blog—they have some great coverage by and of women, PoC, and other minority groups ... sometimes! But the default voice remains distinctly white male, from the way that every male giving book recommendations will list only books by men, to this egregiously unable-to-see-past-the-limits-of-my-privilege article ... which is written by someone whose podcast I love, goddamnit; nothing is safe, everyone is assholes, Juu needs to retreat into the cover of her bed for a week.)
