Dispatches from the Comic Universe

Time for one of my infrequent forays into commentary on popular culture.  All such commentary naturally makes one immediately a great deal less popular...

The last couple of months have been the necessary dreary time 'twixt winter and spring.  And so we've done what modern folk do, watched stuff on Netflix.  Not binge watching I'll have you know, we have a two episode per sitting limit lest sitting become a bit too comfortable.

Of late we've been indulging in "Agents of Shield".  This is an honest to goodness network show (ABC) that has been on for six seasons and counting.  For us it made it past the Netflix threshold.  By which I mean, the pilot and first few episodes of almost anything are interesting.  They are designed and budgeted to be so.  But how quickly does the show slouch into lower production values and into standard, hackneyed plot patterns?

Agents of Shield holds up fairly well.  It is part of what is nerve-gratingly called "The Marvel Comic Universe".  I am dismayed by the degree to which comic book culture pervades modern society, but credit where it is due, comic books with their long story arcs and with their writers being considerably smarter than their audience, actually do know how to tell a story.

So we get characters that do surprising things.  Minor plot points that go in unexpected directions.  A few elements to the story that actually, shockingly, make you think.  We are now into season three.

But it has some odd elements, things I blame not on the writers or actors but on the Executive Producer, a certain Joss Whedon.

For instance.  The protagonist of the story is Agent Coulson.  He is a fun character, played well by Clark Gregg.  Coulson/Greg, and he plays it so well they are one and the same, is a pudgy guy in his mid 50's who is out there applying karate kicks and judo moves to bad guys half his age.  Yes, I know he supposedly has some weird Alien DNA thing going on, but honestly, isn't he just a mirror for the presumed target audience....pudgy middle aged guys who used to read comic books?

Also, lets compare Gregg and Whedon:

 

Pudgy, mid 50's, receding hairlines.....

Well fine.  You should not be too critical of a "comic book show" and if Mr. Whedon wants to indulge in fantasies of being able to defeat multiple trained killers in hand to hand combat, so be it.  But there are some other aspects to this Fantasy World that bother me.

Joss Whedon is famous for portraying "strong female characters".  This means he likes to have 95 pound svelte women in black leather cat suits be able to beat up legions of bad guys.  In the process of this they often get battered about severely, shot, thrown violently into brick walls, etc.  In the real world these "strong" women would have broken bones most episodes and likely significant brain and spinal cord injuries on a regular basis.  Indeed, a quick look around in real life shows that the two main female characters have had respectively, a major knee injury (ACL) and a stress fracture (forearm).  That of course is with stunt doubles doing most of the "strong" stuff.  The injury rate among them must be horrendous, but seems to be unreported.

Whedon claims to be a "feminist" and justifies his peculiar violent femme fetish in this fashion.  With recent allegations about sexual predation in Hollywood Joss has been the target of many accusations.  As the bulk of them come from his ex-wife I can't comment on their veracity.  But presumably this is a private failing, a betrayal of his family.  "Chicks dig feminist dudes" seems a feeble defense but not an unrealistic one. And the entertainment industry has long been rife with this sort of stuff.  How much of it is a consensual transaction between those wanting opportunities and those able to grant them...for a price?

But what really bothers me about Whedon is his hypocrisy regarding guns.  He is - no surprises here - a staunch advocate of gun control.  Whose creative work shows people using guns often, promiscuously, and unrealistically.

Its the usual nonsense.  "Bad Guys" are usually wearing black, storm trooper uniforms complete with dark glasses so you can really depersonalize them.  The body armor they are wearing is useless, a single pistol shot fired by one of the Shield Agents - probably while leaping through the air - sends the "Hydra Agent" to the floor in a neat crumpled, out of picture frame fall.  Nobody bleeds.  Nobody weeps for their mother. Nobody is wounded and left paralyzed or with grievous disability.

Yes, directors of all political stripe have played this ghoulish scam for a long time. In recent years, given the reliable Progressive bent of most moguls, it has been offered up by the likes of Whedon, Spielberg, Lucas....

If you wanted a real view of what happens when you shoot somebody I suggest that the somewhat Conservative Clint Eastwood* has the most accurate vision in his superb 1992 Best Picture winner  "Unforgiven".

As the man says...

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*Mr. Eastwood has gone on the record as being in favor of some gun control measures.