MCU meta: Hail HYDRA
Got caught posting substantive entries on Tumblr again, so reposting here: a pair of comment(arie)s on HYDRA and why it's not full of villains and it's not that easy to get rid of, although Marvel will probably make it easier than it could be. Relevant to Agents of SHIELD as well as the MCU:
1) Evolution of HYDRA
I had a couple of prompt requests that had to do with explaining HYDRA’s transformation from essentially the military wing of the Ahnenerbe to a global organization that had more or less completely divorced itself from its origins. Or, why and how certain people we might have otherwise been fans of from prior movies or Agents of SHIELD could be working for the enemy and nobody remembered that these guys used to be Nazis.
And my short answer to that is that I kind of already wrote that story and don’t really want to retread that ground.
My longer answer is thus: The people who are working for HYDRA’s goals aren’t modern-day Nazis looking to bring about a Thousand Year Reich for the Aryan people; they don’t see themselves as doing anything shameful or wrong or divergent from common cultural aspirations - world peace through the safety and security of people and the betterment of all that will result. They differ with respect to methodology, not desired end state. Their sense of superiority, if they have one, comes not through the pureness of their blood, but instead that they are committed enough to shed it in sacrifice. The problem is that they are willing to shed many others’ blood besides their own.
In Freezer Burn, HYDRA takes advantage of distress, both the existential kind - by setting up in failed states and providing safety and sustenance to those who otherwise have none - and the more modern tristesse that led young people to join foreign revolutions or start their own. It seduces the intellectual classes through its progressive ideals - universal education, peace through mutual respect, etc - while hiding the true steel blades that back up its commitment to get things done at any cost. Folks could participate and not realize that they were also signing on for the murder of millions. The Twentieth Century is chock full of places and situations where this worked; HYDRA had their examples.
It was, in short, an alternative presented to everyone who looked around them and said “this isn’t right” or “I can’t live like this,” offering both literal and spiritual/intellectual nourishment to those who thirsted for it. In many places, they were the strong horse where that matters; in other places, they were simply not the same old BS that hadn’t worked before.
2) Hail HYDRA (the apocalypse now remix)
Depending on how you want to play it, the post-CA:TWS environment isn’t a political thriller or a spy drama or the tragedy of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes played out on the world stage.
It’s a horror movie. It’s a horror movie where the the infection/invasion can’t be stopped without killing every single carrier, can’t be identified before it’s too late, can’t be cured by some convenient MacGuffin like closing a portal or uploading a virus or sending an aerosolized cure into the clouds. It won’t just bring about the end of the world by the time it runs its course, it will poison everything that comes after it. It’s the apocalypse and there’s nowhere to hide from it, no protection against it, no happy ending.
There is no possible way HYDRA’s infestation stopped at SHIELD’s borders. They weren’t just at SHIELD, they weren’t just in the US, they weren’t just anywhere and thus not somewhere else. Yes, if you want to launch yourself into global domination, you work hardest within the global hyperpower, but you don’t stop there because suborning the US is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. HYDRA’s in every nation, every state, every polity, every leadership group down to the PTA and tribal councils. But they’re also outside of leadership positions because HYDRA isn’t just an organization - it’s an ideology and history has shown that there is absolutely no way to find and destroy everyone who is carrying a particular set of beliefs in their hearts.
HYDRA has had seventy years to reinvent themselves as something other than what they were and spread their new gospel. And they did it extremely well because even if Austria was willing to be led by Nazis by the 1980s, it’s a hard sell as a more global concept. HYDRA has completely transformed themselves into something that’s almost the opposite of what had once been the strong arm of the Ahnenerbe, something so different in purpose and agency that the name is almost coincidental. They are offering purification of a different kind, not racial but moral, a cleaner world without the corrupting influences and dangers that we are increasingly unable to protect ourselves from. (Hunger, terrorism, Heartbleed, the Chitauri, threats to traditions, threats to safety, etc.) Destruction is not a broad-spectrum recruiting pitch; creation is. HYDRA is promising to create a safer world and that’s how you draw them in.
HYDRA has been drawing them in for a while. They didn’t hold recruiting drives in the lobby or the park last year - they’ve been working on this for generations. Which means that they are in the state security services, they’re in the utility providers, they’re in the schools, they’re in cubicle farms of boring office parks, they’re behind the register at McDonald’s, they’re in the markets and temples, they are everywhere. They are providing passive indoctrination and more active subtle maneuvering within the systems of society, either gently by example or not-so-gently by force. They are a fifth column everywhere and there is no way to weed them all out.
Which doesn’t mean that there won’t be attempts to try. Salem Witch Trials, HUAC, Spanish Inquisition, whatever historical example you want to run with, this will dwarf that. Every single pillar upon which every single social group stands upon will be put in doubt. Is the President/Prime Minister/Queen/Councilman HYDRA? Is the army? Is the police? How do you verify their denials because certainly not everyone - not anyone - is going to confess if they’re not irrefutably outed? The generals/policemen/senators/agents may have sworn loyalty oaths/oaths of enlistment/oaths of office once upon a time, but what does that even mean anymore? Clearly they’re not holding themselves to them. How do you put someone in a position to launch a missile or manage a town’s power plant or teach your kid when you don’t know whether you can trust them not to kill you for some version of a greater good you don’t believe in? And how do you trust that your neighboring polity - or, worse, your enemy - isn’t suborned all the way to the top? You think India and Pakistan are just going to nod and smile and believe each other when they say that they’re clean and not about to do something with their nuke supplies to bring about a new world order? You think anyone is going to take Iran’s word, or North Korea’s, or China’s? You think anyone is going to take the US Government’s word that the infection was cauterized with the death of Alexander Pierce? What happens to something like NATO or the UN when nobody can trust anyone else’s governments? When they can’t trust their own?
The possibilities for societal breakdown are endless.
… Now, clearly, the MCU can’t go all the way with this, even if they are borrowing the title of a pretty dismal apocalyptic story arc for their next big movie. (How dismal is Age of Ultron? Steve Rogers is a catatonic mess a few pages in before he rouses himself to launch a mass suicide mission, Natasha turns into Rick Grimes and is about as stable, and Wolverine, the ultimate survivor, says “screw this, kill me permanently because I can’t unsee what I saw.” I’m sure the movie version will be more light banter and sexy robot voices, but good lord, they have nowhere to go but up.) Well, I guess they could, but they’d have to undo it at the end, the same way they do in the comics every time they end the world - something that used to really annoy me until DC started rebooting their universe after every apocalypse, each time more badly imagined than what had come before. There’s no way you plan out twenty years of movies otherwise.
But the possibilities are there to go quite dark if anyone is so inclined.
Also posted at DW.
1) Evolution of HYDRA
I had a couple of prompt requests that had to do with explaining HYDRA’s transformation from essentially the military wing of the Ahnenerbe to a global organization that had more or less completely divorced itself from its origins. Or, why and how certain people we might have otherwise been fans of from prior movies or Agents of SHIELD could be working for the enemy and nobody remembered that these guys used to be Nazis.
And my short answer to that is that I kind of already wrote that story and don’t really want to retread that ground.
My longer answer is thus: The people who are working for HYDRA’s goals aren’t modern-day Nazis looking to bring about a Thousand Year Reich for the Aryan people; they don’t see themselves as doing anything shameful or wrong or divergent from common cultural aspirations - world peace through the safety and security of people and the betterment of all that will result. They differ with respect to methodology, not desired end state. Their sense of superiority, if they have one, comes not through the pureness of their blood, but instead that they are committed enough to shed it in sacrifice. The problem is that they are willing to shed many others’ blood besides their own.
In Freezer Burn, HYDRA takes advantage of distress, both the existential kind - by setting up in failed states and providing safety and sustenance to those who otherwise have none - and the more modern tristesse that led young people to join foreign revolutions or start their own. It seduces the intellectual classes through its progressive ideals - universal education, peace through mutual respect, etc - while hiding the true steel blades that back up its commitment to get things done at any cost. Folks could participate and not realize that they were also signing on for the murder of millions. The Twentieth Century is chock full of places and situations where this worked; HYDRA had their examples.
It was, in short, an alternative presented to everyone who looked around them and said “this isn’t right” or “I can’t live like this,” offering both literal and spiritual/intellectual nourishment to those who thirsted for it. In many places, they were the strong horse where that matters; in other places, they were simply not the same old BS that hadn’t worked before.
2) Hail HYDRA (the apocalypse now remix)
Depending on how you want to play it, the post-CA:TWS environment isn’t a political thriller or a spy drama or the tragedy of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes played out on the world stage.
It’s a horror movie. It’s a horror movie where the the infection/invasion can’t be stopped without killing every single carrier, can’t be identified before it’s too late, can’t be cured by some convenient MacGuffin like closing a portal or uploading a virus or sending an aerosolized cure into the clouds. It won’t just bring about the end of the world by the time it runs its course, it will poison everything that comes after it. It’s the apocalypse and there’s nowhere to hide from it, no protection against it, no happy ending.
There is no possible way HYDRA’s infestation stopped at SHIELD’s borders. They weren’t just at SHIELD, they weren’t just in the US, they weren’t just anywhere and thus not somewhere else. Yes, if you want to launch yourself into global domination, you work hardest within the global hyperpower, but you don’t stop there because suborning the US is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. HYDRA’s in every nation, every state, every polity, every leadership group down to the PTA and tribal councils. But they’re also outside of leadership positions because HYDRA isn’t just an organization - it’s an ideology and history has shown that there is absolutely no way to find and destroy everyone who is carrying a particular set of beliefs in their hearts.
HYDRA has had seventy years to reinvent themselves as something other than what they were and spread their new gospel. And they did it extremely well because even if Austria was willing to be led by Nazis by the 1980s, it’s a hard sell as a more global concept. HYDRA has completely transformed themselves into something that’s almost the opposite of what had once been the strong arm of the Ahnenerbe, something so different in purpose and agency that the name is almost coincidental. They are offering purification of a different kind, not racial but moral, a cleaner world without the corrupting influences and dangers that we are increasingly unable to protect ourselves from. (Hunger, terrorism, Heartbleed, the Chitauri, threats to traditions, threats to safety, etc.) Destruction is not a broad-spectrum recruiting pitch; creation is. HYDRA is promising to create a safer world and that’s how you draw them in.
HYDRA has been drawing them in for a while. They didn’t hold recruiting drives in the lobby or the park last year - they’ve been working on this for generations. Which means that they are in the state security services, they’re in the utility providers, they’re in the schools, they’re in cubicle farms of boring office parks, they’re behind the register at McDonald’s, they’re in the markets and temples, they are everywhere. They are providing passive indoctrination and more active subtle maneuvering within the systems of society, either gently by example or not-so-gently by force. They are a fifth column everywhere and there is no way to weed them all out.
Which doesn’t mean that there won’t be attempts to try. Salem Witch Trials, HUAC, Spanish Inquisition, whatever historical example you want to run with, this will dwarf that. Every single pillar upon which every single social group stands upon will be put in doubt. Is the President/Prime Minister/Queen/Councilman HYDRA? Is the army? Is the police? How do you verify their denials because certainly not everyone - not anyone - is going to confess if they’re not irrefutably outed? The generals/policemen/senators/agents may have sworn loyalty oaths/oaths of enlistment/oaths of office once upon a time, but what does that even mean anymore? Clearly they’re not holding themselves to them. How do you put someone in a position to launch a missile or manage a town’s power plant or teach your kid when you don’t know whether you can trust them not to kill you for some version of a greater good you don’t believe in? And how do you trust that your neighboring polity - or, worse, your enemy - isn’t suborned all the way to the top? You think India and Pakistan are just going to nod and smile and believe each other when they say that they’re clean and not about to do something with their nuke supplies to bring about a new world order? You think anyone is going to take Iran’s word, or North Korea’s, or China’s? You think anyone is going to take the US Government’s word that the infection was cauterized with the death of Alexander Pierce? What happens to something like NATO or the UN when nobody can trust anyone else’s governments? When they can’t trust their own?
The possibilities for societal breakdown are endless.
… Now, clearly, the MCU can’t go all the way with this, even if they are borrowing the title of a pretty dismal apocalyptic story arc for their next big movie. (How dismal is Age of Ultron? Steve Rogers is a catatonic mess a few pages in before he rouses himself to launch a mass suicide mission, Natasha turns into Rick Grimes and is about as stable, and Wolverine, the ultimate survivor, says “screw this, kill me permanently because I can’t unsee what I saw.” I’m sure the movie version will be more light banter and sexy robot voices, but good lord, they have nowhere to go but up.) Well, I guess they could, but they’d have to undo it at the end, the same way they do in the comics every time they end the world - something that used to really annoy me until DC started rebooting their universe after every apocalypse, each time more badly imagined than what had come before. There’s no way you plan out twenty years of movies otherwise.
But the possibilities are there to go quite dark if anyone is so inclined.
Also posted at DW.