#steve’s wardrobe is the very first evidence of bad characterisation vs good characterisation (x)
ok but no. steve in the first gif is trying to feel comfortable in a strange world., still wearing things that are familiar. pleated pants and plaid shirts tucked in and belts.
steve in the second gif has had time in the world. he has learned to be comfortable in tshirts and blue jeans. These are two different characters, for all that they’re both steve rogers, and both of them are accurate and correct.
I both agree and disagree with everything said above. I disagree that it’s as simple as bad characterization vs good characterization – first of all, in the first gif, those are clothes Steve picked out for himself, presumably. In the second? He’s incognito. He’s on the run. Given his druthers, he’d much rather be in a white t-shirt, jeans, and a leather jacket. His taste in clothes between the two movies hasn’t changed one bit. You see him on his bike during his Sadness Errands, or at the end in the graveyard?
Simple, durable, utilitarian. Everything that a button-up shirt and pleated pants would have been in the 40s. His “style”, such as it exists, is exactly the same. The only time he wears something different is when he’s on the run with Natasha and trying not to look like himself.
In Avengers I do agree he’s trying to hold on to something with his clothing choices, where and how he works out, and the way his apartment is furnished. The look of his apartment, in fact, doesn’t change all that much between films – even though it’s been two years and they’re in two different cities. He still prefers a turntable, still keeps his furnishings modest and his colors muted. But honestly? How much of that was Joss Whedon’s characterization and how much was the stylist and set designer, I don’t know.
I hate 80% of the way Whedon writes Steve. He doesn’t get him. I hate that Whedon doesn’t have him engaging far more personally with Bruce Banner, the one person who probably could reach Steve himself other than Natasha. Banner is in his situation in part because of Steve, or at least that’s how it’s presented, and that would be something that Captain America takes personally. He of all people would see Bruce as human first, risk factor second. He would see Tony as a bully, not as as someone “putting the ship at risk.”
And for god’s sake, when has Steve ever been one to follow orders? When has he ever counseled others to do so? When has he ever been satisfied with just knowing and doing what he’s being told? Oh, I’m not supposed to try and enlist in the army multiple times or falsify my enlistment papers? Too bad, I’m gonna anyway. Oh, you say the prisoners are behind the lines and that Bucky is probably dead? Well, let’s prove it. Let’s see. He’s a commander. A good man. Not a good soldier. Winter Soldier gets that about him. Never for a moment does he go in not questioning authority. Never for a moment does he look at his superior officers and say “Okay, we’re good, I trust you.”
There’s also the fact that he has two different “faces”. His institutional persona and his personal one. When he’s Captain America, he’s solid, he’s implacable, he doesn’t share his feelings and he doesn’t voluntarily leave himself open to ridicule or derision. Whedon writes Steve as broadcasting his insecurities in an institutionalized space (“I understood that reference”) as though he would joke when he’s representing the shield and the people who helped him obtain it. He might ask what a reference means, but to interrupt with the fact that oh hey for a moment he actually understands what’s going on? No. (Can you tell I hate that line I really hate that line.)
He’s an icon in those moments. He’s not just Steve Rogers. He can’t be. He needs to be better than he is, and Joss Whedon never writes him as though he understands the distinction. He doesn’t get the division between the selves that Steve has – his institutional persona and his personal internal life.
It’s different when Steve’s in one-on-one emergency battle mode with Tony (“It seems to run on some kind of electricity.”) There, it fits. There, it’s Steve being Steve. When he jokes with Erskine during project rebirth, or tells Peggy that girls don’t want to dance with someone they might step on – it’s all one-on-one, with people he respects and to some degree trusts or admires. Erskine is a friend and a person who gave him the chance of a lifetime. Peggy is someone who is never shown looking down on him before that point, only reacting positively when Steve is… well, himself.
Steve as Captain America does not show weakness in the face of the institution. If he makes a joke, it’s to mock power, not expose himself to critique from it. He’s never insecure, always ready. It’s only in his personal life where his shyness, his self-depreciation, his social anxiety come out. The spaces where he’s not sure of the rules, of whether there’s an absolute Right or Wrong placed there by his moral code and his belief in what a soldier and a hero should be.
Steve is not as simple as clothing choices, no, but he’s also not the man that Whedon writes, and I really really dislike that about Avengers.
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