Captain America: Terrorist Sympathizer
A good friend of mine sent me this link today: The Betrayal of Captain America, described on the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies" website as a "Whitepaper." I was unfamiliar with this term, so I consulted Wikipedia, which describes a whitepaper as "an authoritative report on a major issue, as by a team of experts."The "team of experts" on this whitepaper was comprised of Michael Medved, a conservative movie critic, and Michael Lackner, a lawyer who is apparently trying to make a career of attacking the politics of comic book superheroes (a year after proudly co-authoring the whitepaper on Captain America, he attacked the Punisher in FrontPage magazine).
The "major issue" at hand is the Captain America comic. The Michaels wrote about Marvel's betrayal of Cap way back in 2003, but somehow I only heard about it today. These experts were apparently incensed that, after September 11, 2001, Marvel Comics failed to do its patriotic duty and use the Captain America series for the purpose it was created: indoctrinating America's youth with jingoistic propaganda.
Indeed, why couldn't Marvel follow the fine example set forth by Fox News, instead of having the audacity to publish stories in which the U.S. government isn't infallible, and Captain America thinks for himself instead of simply being a good soldier? Why must the comics industry hate America?
You know, if Marvel's version of post-9/11 Captain America had Medved and Lackner up in arms, I wonder how they would have reacted to my Ultimate Nick Fury, Agent of SHAFT webcomics, in which the "Sentinel of Liberty" decides that to live up to his name he must become an anarchist and lead the resistance against the tyranny of the Bush Administration.
Actually, I scarely need to wonder, since I'm sure the reaction would have been similar to Medved's review of the film adaptation of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, which Medved described as "V for vile, vicious, vacuous, venal, verminous and vomitaceous." Damn, with coverage like that, you know the movie just has to be good.
posted by Unknown @ 9:52 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I think you need to write your own White Paper and pick some other more ridiculous topic and show how Richie Rich has betrayed America (do they even still publish Richie Rich?)
Way back when Michael Medved first started breaking away from being 'just' a movie critic, I agreed with a lot of his stuff. But over the past few years, he's gotten more and more crackpot conservative.
It's funny how his idea almost seems to be that because Captain America has "America" in his name that he must automatically reflect what stands for patriotism in society at the time.
That said, the points he makes are essentially all accurate, it's just that comic books and comic writers can write about whatever they want with whatever political slant they may have (which will inevitably be liberal).
But if he REALLY read comics, he'd know that whatever the current tone/slant of a comic is, all he'd have to do is wait six to nine months and it would be totally changed and/or rebooted. For all I know, Captain America might now be all gung-ho America. Who knows?
Post a Comment
<< Home