Tag: ca:tws

puck39:

puck39:

You know, as much as I think Sebastian’s reactions are hilarious, the mainstream entertainment media’s unified insistence that Bucky is the villain fucking scares me. Not only is it grade A+ unquestioning victim-blaming, they’re also doing exactly what Hydra wanted them to do….

“The part that scares me even more about this is – I wonder how much of this is conscious? Because if they don’t even recognize what they are
doing, and I’m betting most of them don’t, that is terrifying to the
next level.”- jamie-sf

That’s kinda what I was thinking about when I made the post tbh.  When I said deliberate I didn’t mean the heads of media corporations sit around like Bond villains petting cats, twirling their mustaches and deciding to make a big conspiracy over Bucky being the villain, although some people took it that way. 

I meant more that I have never seen any media outlet correctly identify Pierce as the villain, even though that’s exactly what the movie is about, and the fact that all of them do it trumps coincidence.  Why they all do it could be a variety of things, from them honestly not having seen the movie and relying on other people’s reports, to them not thinking about the content they’re watching and not questioning ingrained societal values, to assuming that because Steve directly fights Bucky that makes him the villain.  (As an aside, there’s something really interesting about Steve and Pierce being the main characters, being foils, and yet their final conflict is not with each other but with secondary characters. I might meta that later) It could be a mix of reasons. 

I just get concerned about it because by all of them taking this stance, it reinforces the idea that Bucky is the villain is the “correct” interpretation, and people who don’t really think about what they watch will absorb that message and not question it, and they will not realize that Pierce is the real villain of the movie and that Bucky is innocent.

It gets even more dangerous in America, because it teaches not to question white rich government-based power, instead to blame the innocent in the crossfire, and considering we’ve seen the direct, blatant misuse of government power not only in the last couple months but within the last half a decade or so, this is a very, very, very dangerous thing to be teaching people, intentionally or not. 

While I don’t think the individual reporters themselves are necessarily doing something wrong on purpose, seen within the greater context of media influence (and the media does have influence, a huge amount of influence on what we know and how we think) this becomes a huge problem.   

Okay -responding to a couple of different points since I do agree with you but I also didn’t respond in much detail at all.

I suspect it is mostly unconscious/subconscious. The Winter Soldier is the villain. His name is in the title. He’s dressed in black. He shoots (and temporarily kills some) of the good guys. He’s literally coded as the bad guy of the piece by the simplistic code of superhero movies/comics. [Batman aside.] [And after I wrote this I see you said the same above….]

But there is also the deliberate level of it too. The Fox News aspect, if you will. The deliberate misleading of the public to see the older white well dressed male in power as simply doing as he sees best. I have no doubt there are people who walked out of that film angry that Pierce got killed. He was leader and he was trying to protect people. It is a great twist on the early American 70s political thrillers that the Russos and the writers were inspired by. I do wonder if the mass media machine deliberately is encouraging that impression, which is also terrifying.

There is also the coded power of the military here (and echoes of the Cold War with the Soviet slugs [side note: that is really archaic language to be using around military hardware. They simply wouldn’t call it that in the real world.] by having the person in power doing questionable things with it. From the STRIKE teams on the ship, to chasing down Steve, to the Winter Soldier’s support: this is all mercenary or intelligence agencies, mostly in uniform. And they are doing the bidding of the power structure. It’s a parallel to the ‘goodness’ of the military in First Avenger too.

Steve – Pierce

I do wonder if there is an echo here of what Steve might have been if he’d lived the same life and time periods that Pierce did. There have been a lot of metas about how they look alike ( a young Redford has more than a few similarities to C. Evans) but their dedication to their idealogies is not dissimilar. They are incredibly stubborn and idealistic men. They are both charismatic. They are both driven by fear but with very different outcomes.

Sebastian Stan

Finally, I was bemused and then pleased when he was asked at Sundance if kids were afraid of him. His response was (approximately) that they patted him on the arm and felt sorry for him. So children do see the truth of the story.

actualmenacebuckybarnes:

biochip:

#possibly the worst photoset in existence 

man, all you gotta do is to imagine steve doing all of these post-cap2:

1. pressed shoulder to shoulder with bucky on the couch, watching their old war tapes, ha you looked like such a weiner with your hair like that

2. getting calls from natasha!! all hours of the night and day. steve’ll be jogging or something and his cell will buzz and it’ll be from an unlisted number, hey what is your opinion on [deep philosophical/moral/political issue] and also rhodey wants your rsvp for the batchelor party, he knows you’ve been avoiding him and wants you to know that despite what tony says there’s NOT going to be strippers.

she also gives him rides to and from visiting peggy. on the drives back she plays harry james and lets steve be silent and nostalgic, looking out the window

3. sam loves open-air cafes, loves any excuse to eat outside. every sunday, he and steve will pick a new one to brunch in, obstinately to round out steve’s 21st century culinary education, but mostly so that sam can update his not-so-secret foodie blog. as they sip their coffee after the meal, steve brings out a small sketchpad and draws buildings, people, and a lot of sam’s face as he hunches over his laptop, muttering about the consistency of chocolate mousse.

4. bucky’s crammed into that seat by the window, leaning into steve’s space as he hotly debates the artistic merits of inception versus early hitchcock films with natasha, who’s sitting in the perpendicular seat. it’s dissolved into russian and steve’s worried that they’re either conspiring to kill someone or go halfsies on a wedding present for tony & pepper without cutting steve in like they promised. sam’s hanging onto the rail by steve’s shoulder, scrolling through imgur on this phone. occasionally he’ll shove it in steve’s face and 9/10 times it’ll be a picture of some kid dressed up like captain america. or falcon. steve can’t help but smile, soft and ridiculous, every single time.

(they’re going out drinking, they’re going home to crash, they’re going to kill a man. doesn’t matter. they’re young-ish adults in the city that never sleeps. they’ll figure it out.)

peggylives:

actuallyclintbarton:

sergeantjerkbarnes:

#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.

Much has been made of the fact that Bucky Barnes is one of the few people to recognize the greatness in Steve Rogers before his transformation into Captain America. Much has also been made of the fact that, in The First Avenger, Bucky demonstrably feels conflicted about that transformation. Less noted, however, is how Bucky’s sense of conflict and resentment—and the way he dealt with those feelings—reveals the kind of person he truly is. The narrative motif of the man who can recognize greatness in another but not attain it himself, and who is therefore corrupted by his resentment, is a classic trope. It appears in such literary masterpieces as Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, Melville’s Billy Budd, and Schaefer’s Amadeus. However, the story of Bucky Barnes is one of a man who recognizes a greatness he cannot himself achieve and is not corrupted by that recognition. Unlike the villains of the above-mentioned tales, Bucky Barnes comes to terms with the situation, choosing friendship over envy—and heroism over villainy—something that suggests a greatness within Bucky Barnes that Bucky himself is not aware of. But Steve Rogers, of course, is. Just as Bucky is one of the few people to recognize Steve’s greatness; Steve is one of the few people to recognize Bucky’s. Both of them know each other better than they know themselves, and it is that parallel knowledge that ultimately saves them both.

Sara Reads: Pain, Personhood, and Parity: The Depiction of Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe  (via gravitonium)

roane72:

sabacc:

Veni, vidi, vici

#leeeeeeeeets talk about open vs closed#let’s talk about light vs shadow#let’s talk about how he’s set up as a figure in the cracks and alleys#and then his first act in the film is to stand in the light#and slowly we’re made to understand that none of this is his choice or his will#but think about how expendable he is once insight is live#think about what happens to ghosts in daylight#I need you to do it one more time#is finite#we all know who was supposed to throw himself down in the line of duty without question#oh man I have so many feelings#don’t look at me#death would be kinder (via febricant)

Oh my GOD, I never thought about the significance of “I need you to do it one more time”. Pierce you fucker I’m glad you’re dead.

wertherealones:

cassandrexx:

Someone else already talked about the iv drip in Bucky’s arm in this scene, but can we talk about the medical readouts? Sadly, I couldn’t find a single really clear screenshot – if anyone with the BluRay has better quality pics, I’d love to see them.

Overall, the displays are fairly cryptic, missing a bunch of what I’d consider important medical information, like clear displays for blood pressure and oxygen saturation. I think the big number in the lower left of the screen might be pulse rate – it ticks up fairly rapidly to 130 when the electrodes come down and Bucky panics. God knows why you’d want to display pulse rate to one decimal place, though, so it might be something else entirely. I don’t know what the other big number next to it is supposed to be, either – that one holds mostly steady somewhere around 60.

The screen to the right scrolls through a CAT scan of Bucky’s brain. Unfortunately I can’t get good enough resolution to tell you whether there’s visible brain damage there.

I’m most interested in the labeled markers on the diagram of Bucky’s body in the third pic, though, the ones I circled in red – because WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT, and what do you want to bet it’s implants? We see Bucky with his shirt off, so we already know there’s no injury there (well, there might be broken ribs, I suppose), and he doesn’t have visible electrodes attached, either. So. Implants. Trackers. Chemical reservoirs. Remotely triggered self-destruct mechanisms.

Because the goddamn metal arm just wasn’t enough of a violation of Bucky’s bodily integrity.

Holy fuck I’ve been waiting for someone to comment on this for an eternity