I’ve been thinking about Marvel Cinematic Universe a lot lately (‘No!’, I hear you cry, ‘We never would have guessed!’) and because my BA in English will otherwise just gather dust, I’ve decided to do a series of essays on the films. Because goodness knows I don’t write enough as it is.
The first film I will look at is Iron Man, and the representation of villainy as portrayed in the film.
Iron Man was released in 2008, by which point the USA had already been involved for several years in the second Gulf War in as many decades. Words like terrorist, weapons of mass destruction, and insurgent are now part of the American vocabulary in a way they weren’t before 2001. The Middle East has been front and centre of news reports on and off since then.
In the opening scenes of Iron Man, we are dropped into a scenario which we are expected to recognise and understand: an unnamed middle eastern country (you can tell because of the desert landscape and the random peasant with a goat by the roadside) with US military operations ongoing and armoured vehicles. And we do. This is the place where the terrorists come from, according to all the news reports, and this is where the war on terror is being fought.
So far, so clean-cut.
Tag: trope subversion
some people say there’s a red string that connects fated lovers
psa don’t look at the notes bc there are so many people completely missing the point that these are non-romantic strings of fate and making jokes about where the red string “must be” and it’s making me really angry bc we can’t even have a good artistic representation of aromanticism without people desperately grasping for a romantic interpretation somehow
like the artist has specifically requested that people stop making this about their fandoms and romance bc it’s a personal piece about aromanticism
its great i loVE IT??? we need more aromantic… anything rlly and this is really beautiful!
Masculinity in the MCU is coded like, well, like Nick Fury. Being a masculine guy means that you have the power to stop the bad guys, whether with a gun like Coulson or with your smarts like Tony or by way of gamma radiation like Bruce Banner. It’s rare in most any media to have a male character like Fitz, who’s unapologetic about his love for Simmons, his apparent fear of guns, his lack of field knowledge. A character like Fitz would normally be the butt of a joke, not the acclaimed hero, and yet S.H.I.E.L.D. goes out of its way to prove that the Wards of the world don’t always have to be the ideal when it comes to masculinity. With Ward and Fitz, S.H.I.E.L.D. asks us to consider what a weak man truly acts like, and concludes that physical strength and mental stoicism are not always the mark of a strong man. Strength is compassion, and compassion is badass.
Sexualized Saturdays: Ward, Fitz, and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Ideal of Masculinity (source)
Fitz isn’t the only subversive take on masculinity in the MCU, either. Think about it: almost all the male heroes have some sort of vulnerability, some moment of “weakness”, that goes against the stereotype of what it is to be a tough, strong man, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t heroes. Think about it:
– Tony Stark has a drinking problem and PTSD severe enough that it nearly wrecks his relationship with Pepper.
– Steve Rogers is chosen as Captain America for his compassion and intelligence.
– Phil Coulson is a dweeby little bureaucrat in a tailored gray suit.
– Thor loves his brother so dearly that he pleads with him to come home even after Loki invades Earth.
– Bruce Banner despises the violence in his heart that allows him to become the Hulk, and becomes a freelance healer to compensate.
– Sam Wilson is a mental health counselor whose military service was in the pararescue corps, motto: ”So others may live.”
– Nick Fury’s three chief lieutenants are two women (Natasha Romanoff, whom he treats almost as a daughter, and Maria Hill, whom he depends on to fake his death) and one man (Phil Coulson, whom he tasks with rebuilding SHIELD from the ground up).
Almost all of these characters are seen crying or close to tears (especially Cap, who is on the verge of tears during the final combat in CA:TWS), all fight in ways that don’t have buckets of blood thrown at the screen, and all value and respect the women they love and fight beside. The most notable exception is James Rhodes, an Air Force officer, but even he is shown taking care of Tony Stark, his best friend, more often than he’s shown firing a weapon.
I think this may be why the MCU is so popular among women: the men AREN’T the stereotypical strong, silent American hero. They bleed, they cry, they let their guards down, and they treat their friends, regardless of gender, color, race, or religion, as equals. This could not be more different from the blood-soaked ideals of masculinity that have dominated the screen over the last few decades (remember Rambo?), and it’s very, very good to see.
(via ellidfics)
Basically, these characters behave like actual human men; maybe the best of men, but still much more like the regular decent guys you may know in real life than fictional “Alpha Males”.
Which is probably why a certain section of men prefers gritty, grimdark anti-heroes: if Fitz and that SHIELD guy who refuses to launch Project Insight can stand up and do the right thing even when they’re terrified to the point of shaking and crying, if Antoine Triplett (in many ways, Ward’s counterpart) can be both a more “traditional” aggressive operative and quietly geeky, if Nick Fury – the ultimate pragmatist – can draw a line he’s not willing to cross, these men have no excuses left for their behaviour.
Because if these flawed characters can be decent human beings and heroes, then all men have the potential for being decent human beings and heroes. Even if not all men choose to follow that example.
(Additionally: their masculinity doesn’t depend on their ability to get a date, and the relationships are depicted as… complex. It’s almost as if these heroes saw their potential romantic partners as actual human beings with lives of their own – shocking, I know.)
(via iokheaira)
I just saw your Avengers bad fic bingo game and omfg you’ve read fics with Clint living in the vents of Avengers tower?! I’ve never come across that but it sounds hilarious!
oh my god that trope it’s the single most RIDICULOUS trope and i’m not sure where it even originated? because it makes ZERO sense for his character. <.< why the hell would an archer be in the vents all the time? ?? (i’ve probably even written it myself once)
but yes. i’ve seen it more in phil/clint fics and tony/steve fics where phil/clint might be background, than in any other fics, but i don’t know man. i’ve also got no sense for how prevalent it is today, as we made the bingo card about 1½ year ago, and i’ve stopped reading tony/steve since then, and i haven’t read much clint/phil either, i guess maybe a handful? so i don’t know. i’m in no way up to date on the current tropes in the mcu fandom…
CLINT IN THE VENTS! Started as a legitimate character quirk in a fic that I read very shortly after Avengers came out that I can no longer remember. The logic, in the fic, is that that’s where he goes when he’s super stressed or upset or freaked out, because (taking from the backstory in comics) he had an abusive home life, and then a pretty-borderline-abusive/neglectful life in foster care/group homes, and he would hide as a kid in small spaces to feel safe, and he learned from a young age that people don’t often look UP when they’re searching for a kid, and so hiding in the air vents was the perfect mix of those two coping mechanisms, and he still fell back on them sometimes. It wasn’t his NORMAL mode of behavior, and it actually indicated that he was REALLY NOT DOING WELL in some way, and it made sense.
But then OTHER fics started using “Clint in the vents” without giving it as much context, and then they started using it as a casual thing, and then it became this huge fandom trope entirely divorced from the original “kind of shitty bad-mental-place coping mechanism from his abusive childhood” context that was the only reason it had made sense AT ALL.
And that is where the “Clint in the vents” trope came from.
That’s so interesting! I mean I could understand it from a crack fic perspective but as a realistic action for his character it didn’t make sense until you explained it, Mat. If you ever find it again, please send me the link! I’d be really interested in reading it.
Yeah, it’s pretty cool! And I doubt I will ever come across it again, but if I do I will be sure to link you! ^_^
I am about 95% certain that what you’re thinking of is snack_size’s Adaptations series, which according to the notes was written for a kink meme prompt. Also noteworthy, though written some months later, is BobbiMorsed’s do the math, expect the trouble series, which has Clint doing the same thing when just recruited for SHIELD. Both are well worth your time, and both have Clint doing it because he’s fucked-up in some way, grief, hyper-vigilance, history of abuse, etc.
Shadow is amazing with the fic linkage, and Adaptations is indeed the fic I was thinking of! No idea if it’s as good as I remember it, but the context at least makes SENSE, which is all I ask for a ductwork fic at this point.
I hope that it’s as good as you remember! I knew it pretty much immediately, because though it’s been a while since I read it (and though it does have echoes of former Phil/Clint) it’s essentially a Clint/Bruce story, and there is so very little Bruce, let alone with Clint. The other, I haven’t read in AGES, but from memory it’s got a solid big cast and Clint is deftly drawn.
I’m gonna fess up now and confess that I have written Clint-in-the-vents into a story, but he wasn’t living there, he was hiding there so he could snipe new recruits with Nerf darts because he was bored.
I just saw your Avengers bad fic bingo game and omfg you’ve read fics with Clint living in the vents of Avengers tower?! I’ve never come across that but it sounds hilarious!
oh my god that trope it’s the single most RIDICULOUS trope and i’m not sure where it even originated? because it makes ZERO sense for his character. <.< why the hell would an archer be in the vents all the time? ?? (i’ve probably even written it myself once)
but yes. i’ve seen it more in phil/clint fics and tony/steve fics where phil/clint might be background, than in any other fics, but i don’t know man. i’ve also got no sense for how prevalent it is today, as we made the bingo card about 1½ year ago, and i’ve stopped reading tony/steve since then, and i haven’t read much clint/phil either, i guess maybe a handful? so i don’t know. i’m in no way up to date on the current tropes in the mcu fandom…
CLINT IN THE VENTS! Started as a legitimate character quirk in a fic that I read very shortly after Avengers came out that I can no longer remember. The logic, in the fic, is that that’s where he goes when he’s super stressed or upset or freaked out, because (taking from the backstory in comics) he had an abusive home life, and then a pretty-borderline-abusive/neglectful life in foster care/group homes, and he would hide as a kid in small spaces to feel safe, and he learned from a young age that people don’t often look UP when they’re searching for a kid, and so hiding in the air vents was the perfect mix of those two coping mechanisms, and he still fell back on them sometimes. It wasn’t his NORMAL mode of behavior, and it actually indicated that he was REALLY NOT DOING WELL in some way, and it made sense.
But then OTHER fics started using “Clint in the vents” without giving it as much context, and then they started using it as a casual thing, and then it became this huge fandom trope entirely divorced from the original “kind of shitty bad-mental-place coping mechanism from his abusive childhood” context that was the only reason it had made sense AT ALL.
And that is where the “Clint in the vents” trope came from.
That’s so interesting! I mean I could understand it from a crack fic perspective but as a realistic action for his character it didn’t make sense until you explained it, Mat. If you ever find it again, please send me the link! I’d be really interested in reading it.
Yeah, it’s pretty cool! And I doubt I will ever come across it again, but if I do I will be sure to link you! ^_^
I am about 95% certain that what you’re thinking of is snack_size’s Adaptations series, which according to the notes was written for a kink meme prompt. Also noteworthy, though written some months later, is BobbiMorsed’s do the math, expect the trouble series, which has Clint doing the same thing when just recruited for SHIELD. Both are well worth your time, and both have Clint doing it because he’s fucked-up in some way, grief, hyper-vigilance, history of abuse, etc.
knitting in the dark 