“There’s a great scene in The Winter Soldier where Captain America knows he’s about to be attacked by 20 men in a moving elevator, and says, “Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?” Evans performs it convincingly with equal amounts of mild boyish glee, amused lightness, matter-of-fact resignation, chutzpah, and confident menace. It’s a wonderful moment, in no small part because you realize just how much fun it’s become to watch Chris Evans excel at playing (and growing with) this character. It’s one of many moments in a Marvel movie that makes you realize there really was greatness in Chris Evans.”
Excuse me while I get extremely emotional for a minute. Last night I was blown away how amazing The Doldrums was. Every single second was absolutely beautiful. But something that really astounded me, and has since his introduction in A. Malcolm, was how Yi Tien Cho’s character has been portrayed.
Representation matters. A lot. But what’s more important than simply having POC represented on in mainstream media is the production behind that understanding *why* it’s important. How it affects the people watching – both POC and non-POC alike. Because whether we like it or not, mainstream media – television in particular – shapes how people view the world and how they view cultures not their own. I was so moved by it I had to tweet this out to show my gratitude.
Maril + Caitriona liking this tweet is so much more than a simple like. It shows that the cast + crew alike understand that, yes there are people like me out there watching. People who were absolutely terrified that my culture was going to be reduced down to a caricature rendering of outdated stereotypical views. These likes were reassurance. These likes meant, “Yes, we see you. Yes, we understand. We see the value.” Simple statements that nearly moved me to tears.
This production not only understands these failings of an originally poorly and offensively drawn character, but they didn’t take the easy way out. Instead of taking out his character entirely, pushing him to the background with no lines or meaning to speak of, or whitewashing him to the point of unrecognizableness, they decide to go that extra mile. They gave his character depth, meaning, purpose – they gave him true life for the first time ever. And most importantly they gave him and all the viewers respect.
I will never not be grateful to the entire production for this change and never not applaud them for not caving to the pressures of a dominantly white Hollywood culture. All my praise and applause to you, Outlander. Thank you.
2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense – if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day – is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.
That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.
The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.
This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS.
“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”
Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera – information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application – and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.
And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”
This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea – a meme – can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”
“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”
I literally had a friend say this the other day while having dinner with him and his husband.
“Listen.” He said. “I served in the military. 10 years in the army, and had to keep my mouth shut and pretend. I had to pretend to everyone, until I just got sick of it and decided fuck you all. I haven’t been nice in years. Everyone saying I should shut up can kiss my ass.”
If people wanted nice gay people they should have been nicer to them.
IF PEOPLE WANTED NICE GAY PEOPLE THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN NICER TO THEM
Oh wow I forgot about this. I need to tell Ron he’s Tumblr famous now.
Ron says to tell all the pissed off cockroach motherfuckers that he and his husband Ryl are now your Angry Gay Dads.
Anthony Russo: Look at those character arms… Joe Russo: We were focusing so hard on his character there.
‘Captain America: Civil War’ Audio Commentary
I just want to point out the irony here—that as gratuitous as this scene is, it actually is character development. You can tell from the way Steve’s straining that he’s at his breaking point. He’s a super soldier, but there are limits to his strength and he’s teetering on the edge. Despite that, we one hundred percent believe Steve is willing to let himself get ripped in half here rather than let that helicopter go.
Why? When we all saw this scene in the first Civil War trailer, the Russos said Steve was fighting for a passionate reason. There’s only one person Steve would be fighting this hard for—Bucky. No one had any doubt. Seventy-some years ago, Steve failed to hold on to Bucky and it ruined them both. He’s not going to let him go again, and we see that internal struggle manifested here physically.
The interesting thing is—as heroically as this shot is framed—we can see this as valor or sheer, stubborn idiocy. After all, Steve is fighting a helicopter for Bucky and “Bucky,” brainwashed, just threw Steve down an elevator shaft and tried to kill most of his friends. The Bucky Steve is hanging on to here may or may not be the Bucky he actually wants to save. But Steve is taking a chance, risking it all on the belief that his friend is in there somewhere and if he can just hang on long enough, then they’ll both get through this.
It may be incidental, but the glowing lens flare here draws particular attention to Steve’s chest—assuming you’re not too entranced with his arms—and emphasizes where the core of the matter lies. Steve is being pulled in two directions and his heart is at the center of the conflict. If he’s smart and wants to save himself, it’s as easy as letting go (one hand or the other). But he’s Steve and this is Bucky and, no, he’s not going to let go.
For anyone getting their knickers in a twist over Steve’s AOU line about “language,” just remember:
Bucky Barnes
had the world’s
biggest
potty
mouth
…And Steve was the one calling him out on it half the time.
So even if Steve Rogers does occasionally curse (and I’m not saying he wouldn’t – he grew up in Brooklyn and he was a soldier, it stands to reason he knew how), as an officer he was responsible for keeping his men reasonably respectable, and likely got into the habit of playfully chiding Bucky about his foul language.
So when Steve says “it just slipped out” – he probably forgot for a moment, in the heat of battle in winter in Europe, that he wasn’t in occupied France with the commandos, and it wasn’t Bucky cussing on the radio.
This isn’t Steve with a stick up his ass. This is Steve right out of the comics, still ridden with PTSD and occasionally forgetting which theater of war he’s in, slipping into the comfort of teasing his best friend.
Oh boy. I’ve been saving this one because the sheer number of things Bucky has used to kill people overwhelmed me, tbh. It’s going to be … a ride. Here we go.
Yeah. So first of all, The Winter Soldier undoubtedly comes prepared to kick your ass. He’s not going to find himself without a weapon. The thing is, even if he does somehow blaze through the frankly astonishing amount of accoutrements he arrays on his person, he’s still not going to find himself without something that will kill you. Even if his arm is put out of service (or blown off, RIGHT TONY) he’s not going to be without something that will kill you.
Apparently the Winter Soldier’s arsenal is officially pornographic material…..but we knew that already didn’t we.
If any of my MCU nerd rages get taken down, I have them all on AO3. I’m going to update them now just to make sure any added or updated info is included. But. Yeah.
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