WHAT IF . . . MARVEL MADE A MAGA AGENDA MOVIE?
ENTER THE ANTI-WOKE AND NEOCON PANDERVERSE
THE ANTI-WOKE PANDERVERSE
After seeing anti-woke obsessives rave about how Disney is inserting a left-wing agenda into Star Wars and Marvel films, I thought I would have a laugh at the ideas of What If . . . the opposite was happening -- right-wing Disney executives were pushing their agenda –- or at least reverting to a pre-woke past? I scrawled down some ideas, a couple more extreme than what made it onto the meme like Ant-Man hiding in a pregnant woman’s vagina so he could ambush abortion doctors, or Wolverine going berserker at drag queen story hour – but those ideas were too violent. And mentioning war could take reactions to the meme into unwanted territory so I saved that for the sequel.
It seems one of the main complaints of the anti-woke crowd is a push of the feminist agenda and an attempt to market what is a boy’s property to women; the result being they fail picking up a new female market while alienating the manboy market.
Personally, I have long been a fan of films with "strong female leads.” But the best films with female leads are not superhero or action films, they are films about woman dealing with issues that are unique to woman, films like (not a definitive list) The Night Nurse, 9 to 5, Sophie’s Choice, Terms of Endearment, Muriel’s Wedding, Sense and Sensibility (1996), Amelie, Mildred Pierce, and Golddiggers of 1933. These movies are not new because there are fewer and fewer great films with female leads in recent years. However I would recommend Emily the Criminal, with Aubrey Plaza which was a greatly underrated movie starring a strong woman in 2022.
There’s nothing wrong with making the political point that a woman can be just the same as a man when working the job of superhero, CIA agent or super assassin – but those films say nothing about the female experience. As the female-centric movies and race swaps are a big gripe with conservatives, a conservative movie should make the cast all white and male, going back to the "useless chick" trope where the woman just exists as an accessory to the male character.
BELOW: In the Disney+ show Echo, the main protagonist is a deaf amputee who has ultimate fighting powers that copy her opponents’ abilities. In a poorly choreographed trailer for the show a much larger Daredevil is kicking her around and it doesn’t seem fair. Is it anti-feminist to say a big man kicking a disabled woman is a bad look?
What is the obsession of most conservative memes these days? Trans, trans, trans. They tell the same trans jokes over and over ad nauseam, so any anti-woke movie would have to have almost exclusively anti-trans humor; and Deadpool is Marvel’s main jokester.
Conservative parody site The Babylon Bee has a lot of hilarious articles dunking on Democrats, so I checked out their YouTube channel. The videos are a lot less funny than the articles because they reveal the subtext and make it the text: they are levelheaded Christians fighting against a crazy Godless world. Liberals often forget that protecting Christian morality is a driving force behind the conservative movement. Anyway, wouldn't it be funny if Thor, as a Norse God and all, is converted to Christianity by Captain America? Many commentators thought this was the funniest panel.
I posted this in Mauler, which is a subreddit for one of the big anti-woke YouTubers and it got a lot of engagement with 626 likes and 385 comments. The reactions were mixed, some loving it, others thinking it was cringe. Many people commented that extreme right-wing agenda would ruin movies as much as a left-wing agenda does. Many of the fans want movies that aren't political at all – or so they think. They hold 80s action movies to be the gold standard of films that aim to entertain without pushing an ideology -- but don't realize these films have Reagan-era political messaging. It’s no coincidence that top action stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone are Republicans, and their performances as action stars are more convincing (then someone like Matt Damon) because they really believe the story of a good capitalist with a gun who stops a bad commie/terrorist with a gun.
This also did well in a silly subreddit called 19684 with 784 likes. And I got robbed of karma when someone copied it from the Mauler subreddit and posted it on moviecirclejerk, which is a sub I frequent. He titled it “this happened” as if some right- winger really went of the rails with this meme. It got over a thousand likes and hundreds of comments. The poster and most of the commenters actually didn’t get that it was parody. Astonishing. But they did think Thor becoming Christian was funny.
ENTER THE NEOCONVERSE
The neoconverse sequel is about something more important than the woke, anti-woke debate. When I posted this two months into the Israel’s war on Gaza there was some talk among neoconservative Democrats, “oh no, Israel are going to get all the arms? What about funding the war in Ukraine?” And the meme comments on this concern and how if Tony Stark were supplying these wars, he would be getting tired of Zelenskyy’s constant demand for new weapons, and excited for Bibi’s new war. Much of the arms supply America gives Ukraine is instantly gone as the corrupt leadership steals from shipments and sells them on the black market. A CBS report that came out about this early in the war was quickly censored after Ukrainian leadership objected, so accurate reporting on how much is being stolen has not been done. But even Zelenskyy himself has admitted in an interview “people are stealing like there’s no tomorrow,” and has had to fire leaders who stole too much for him to cover up.
Ukraine is not an easy subject to meme about. This meme got a good reaction in Marxism_ memes with 302 likes. The 80 comments debated how Ukraine is caught between the imperialist forces of the United States and Russia — and are being ruled by an oligarchy and right-wing elements ever sense the CIA coup of their government in 2014. But this subreddit does has a pro-Russian bias. My focus is not pro-Russian at all, I just want to call attention to the fact that blame for the war is about 50/50 Biden and Putin.
The reaction in Latestagecapitalism subreddit was more muted. They liked the second panel dunking on Netanyahu but had a problem with the first panel. Even though this is a good solidly left wing sub they still are buying the neoconservative narrative that Ukraine are freedom fighters standing up against an evil imperialist force. This is only true if you start history in February 2022, and ignore the fact that it is continued by America’s military industrial complex.
‘Nuff Said.