But the real reason I had to chime in was that Steve Rogers is my favorite superhero. Why? Because unlike other patriotism-themed characters, Steve Rogers doesn’t represent a genericized America but rather a very specific time and place – 1930’s New York City. We know he was born July 4, 1920 (not kidding about the 4th of July) to a working-class family of Irish Catholic immigrants who lived in New York’s Lower East Side.[1] This biographical detail has political meaning: given the era he was born in and his class and religious/ethnic background, there is no way in hell Steve Rogers didn’t grow up as a Democrat, and a New Deal Democrat at that, complete with a picture of FDR on the wall.
Steve Rogers grew up poor in the Great Depression, the son of a single mother who insisted he stayed in school despite the trend of the time (his father died when he was a child; in some versions, his father is a brave WWI veteran, in others an alcoholic, either or both of which would be appropriate given what happened to WWI veterans in the Great Depression) and then orphaned in his late teens when his mother died of TB.[2] And he came of age in New York City at a time when the New Deal was in full swing, Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor, the American Labor Party was a major force in city politics, labor unions were on the move, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was organizing to fight fascism in Spain in the name of the Popular Front, and a militant anti-racist movement was growing that equated segregation at home with Nazism abroad that will eventually feed into the “Double V” campaign.
Then he became a fine arts student. To be an artist in New York City in the 1930s was to be surrounded by the “Cultural Front.” We’re talking the WPA Arts and Theater Projects, Diego Rivera painting socialist murals in Rockefeller Center, Orson Welles turning Julius Caesar into an anti-fascist play and running an all-black Macbeth and “The Cradle Will Rock,” Paul Robeson was a major star, and so on. You couldn’t really be an artist and have escaped left-wing politics. And if a poor kid like Steve Rogers was going to college as a fine arts student, odds are very good that he was going to the City College of New York at a time when an 80% Jewish student body is organizing student trade unions, anti-fascist rallies, and the “New York Intellectuals” were busily debating Trotskyism vs. Stalinism vs. Norman Thomas Socialism vs. the New Deal in the dining halls and study carrels.
on closer inspection, you can see that they used different takes for the individual scenes and the alternate take is somehow even more gut-wrenching
Okay but how amazing is this in terms of attention to detail? Because very, very few people have a photographic memory, and the Winter Soldier – whose brain is essentially electrified pudding at this point – most certainly wouldn’t have total recall, even of a single instant that very clearly shook him, to the point of destroying his conditioning and requiring a full reboot. This is the kind of detail that no one is going to notice who isn’t obsessively watching the movie over and over (aka, us), but they still did it – and maybe more painful still, the alternate take (Bucky’s memory) is quieter, somehow; it seems to be a take where Chris Evans is taking a quieter approach to the line. Bucky’s rewriting the memory in his head, trying to work out how he knows “the man on the bridge” – and it isn’t his own name, really, that’s causing his confusion. It’s Steve’s face, perhaps, but it’s the way he’s saying his name; the way he’s said it all their lives. And maybe, just maybe, that’s why Bucky’s reworked the memory in his head, shifted it, just a little – made it softer, made it a little more quiet. Because what has him in knots isn’t just this one, single moment; it’s the way that moment calls up echoes of his old self – the man who heard this voice a thousand times, who called him this, over and over…and, very likely, who said it a little more like in his memories: softer, more intimate. Bucky’s taken away some of the shock; he’s focused on the part that’s truly confused him, all soft lights and blurred camera and utter impossibility: he’s focused on affection.
the first one is disbelief/incredulity; the second one is just ANGUISH
Does anyone have the Stucky fic where Steve is a baker and Bucky is a wedding planner who is a total ass? And Steve doesn’t know cute guy he’s seeing is actually James the Jerk who tries to get him to make lots of cupcakes last minute?
knitting in the dark 