(no subject)
I don't really feel like doing an Iron Man reaction post. Maybe after I've seen it a second time, which was supposed to be last night, but the rain and PMS drove me back inside.
Instead I want to talk about Steve/America/Tony, the unspoken OT3 of the Steve/Tony ship. And by that I mean friendship, working relationship, romantic relationship - however you read them, my comments are (mostly) general enough to apply. However, I’m not sure how interesting they will be to people who aren’t me. Fair warning: extreme TL;DR.
Captain America and Iron Man, (and Steve and Tony), represent two different clusters of American ideals. Within the Marvel Universe, more than most heroes, they are representatives of America, and of the American military industrial complex. Captain America is the one they* chose. Iron Man is the one they earned. Neither has been exactly what they'd like - neither has been quite as good for business as hoped.
* 'They' being both the American people and the MIC. I'll distinguish between 'them' later.
Steve is a child of immigrants. A hard-done-by, honest, working class American. He's a soldier, an artist, a patriot and a hardcore liberal. He is the voice of the average American, and the underprivileged American given power. That power comes from the American military, but he uses it not as the government directs, but how his ideals demand. He is above all, an apple pie eating, righteous enemy of injustice everywhere, be it abroad or at home.
Captain America was designed to serve two pressing needs. 1) As the first of hopefully many super soldiers, Captain America would lead the fight against the Nazis. The super soldiers were supposed to enhance the effectiveness of the infantry and reduce casualties in a punishing war. But, as fate would have it, Steve was one of a kind, and the military had a new problem on its hands - what to do with one super soldier, ready, willing and able to die for his country? 2) Turn him into a symbol! Steve was christened Captain America and sent out to battle evil, all the while showcasing American gumption, strength and know-how.
Captain America was a strategic tool - a way to demonstrate American power. We can build super soldiers. We will fuck your shit up but good.
But Steve Rogers, it turns out, was not an ideal tool, because a) he had a mind of his own, and b) he was a stubborn, working class cuss/dreamer, who even before volunteering, had already seen the dark underbelly of American life. Steve already knew what it meant to be poor, a minority and different in America. He had already experienced power working on the powerless, so when the American military turned him into a super soldier, he knew that he had to use his abilities, and his position with care. Because fundamentally, Steve doesn't just want to help the little guy, Steve is the little guy.
There is something both conventional and radical in his character - he embodies the spirit of the American dream, and of justice, to the extent that he will not accept limitations to either, in the name of expediency. And that's what makes him dangerous.
The people of the MU, almost without exception, love Cap. American or otherwise, people respond to his character. However, he is most definitely a symbol of America. In some ways, he is the good face of America that all people can appreciate - he represents the idealism of the revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the constitution. At the same time, he takes his share of flak for contemporary American policy.
When I said that Cap is the one 'they' chose, I meant both the people and the MIC, but he hasn't been exactly what either wanted, and he's dangerous for both. He's dangerous for the MIC for obvious reasons - he doesn't take orders without question, and will not support oppression or exploitation of people anywhere. Steve is what they wanted, a symbol of America, (and of the version of America they wanted to represent) - but the radical aspect of his character, his willingness to throw down even with the system if necessary, makes him ultimately useless for their ends.
That Cap is the one the people chose is evident in their clear love for him. Be they old, young, male, female, white, black, brown or green Cap is their guy. Like a lot of symbols, Cap is not without ideological content. The media persona 'Captain America' has views, positions on issues, history - he's been in the public eye since he was created, and as an Avenger, has been interviewed many times. People have an idea of who he is, where he came from and what he represents. The problem with Cap is that he has too much ideological content - he isn't quite blank enough that people can rework him as they like. Make him girl!Cap, black!Cap, Marxist!Cap - he has too much character. And this in a sense, is how he lets people down - his realness, his fullness of character is a kind of betrayal. And particularly, that his 'real' existence is so fundamentally committed to an ideal of America, and so intensely radical - it's almost daunting. That he exists beyond the symbolic realm is more than what the mass of the American people want.
There is something about Cap that demands commitment, a return in kind of passion that is perhaps too much for some.
I think, though I haven't read the interviews with Millar et al, that this is what they were trying to hit on with Civil War. It's not that Cap was out of touch with the American people, pre se. It doesn't matter if Cap is on MySpace, or if he watches Nascar. (Dammit Sally Floyd, that's not the point!) The key is that the essence of Captain America is an ideological call to arms, which in the post-Stamford, ‘crisis’ environment, people failed to answer. They traded ideals for expediency, justice for security. And that is antithetical to what Steve Rogers-Captain America stood for. The imagined betrayal comes exactly when the people realize that Captain America was never exactly what they thought he was.
Civil War is the Big One, the story that's hanging over all of us, but I think the above comments hold up for other eras - every time Steve goes on a crusade that's not wholly popular with the American people, he betrays them. He let's down their fantasies about their favourite symbol, of their favourite version of America. And every time he calls for them to fight the system they're comfortable within, in the name of protecting the people it’s victimizing, he gets derision for his efforts. I mean, I can only pinpoint a handful of stories where people are actually down on Cap in-panel (more long term fans could probably find more), but let's enter into evidence the fact that he's never been able to effect long term change.
[I also want to say that there's a good meta reason for Steve not being 'political' - the challenge he presents isn't to party politics, it's to the system. And that's a challenge that's too big for the story at hand.]
Which brings us to Tony.
Tony is a child of privilege who learns late the importance of noblesse oblige, but learns it well. He's a brilliant inventor and business man, successful with the ladies, not so successful with the guys. Tony’s an exceptional guy, raised in an exceptional environment, and in that way he’s Steve’s opposite. Tony is the definitition of the man, and with his family and personal history combines old money and new money coding - you could say that in Tony Stark, Stan covered all his Annoying Rich People bases. Tony comes from old money - an ancestor was a railroad baron, and the family has long been on the membership list at the Hellfire Club. He’s also a self-made, proto-typical American industrial dynamo.
[As an aside, this is unusual in fiction, where you usually get either/or, and especially unusual in comic books, which are even more prone to fixating on archetypes, but not at all unusual in real life.]
What’s particularly important about Tony’s upbringing is the expectation of excellence and exception, imposed on him by his parents. From a young age they push him to live up to his potential. Not just his intellectual potential, but athletic, social, mechanical - they start early on to groom him for his future role as Howard’s successor at SI, and as part of the power brokering class. A role that Tony doesn’t ever quite reject. The thing that’s unusual about Tony’s upbringing is the expectation in addition to all of this, that he develop his creative potential as well. No one raises an eyebrow, when as a child, he wants to get in there with the help, and play with the company toys. Instead, his parents encourage his interest in the family business, which happens to be weapons development.
Stark Industries is a major DoD contractor, and Tony works for the family business cradle to the grave - it’s safe to say that in the eyes of the MU public, Tony is Stark Industries. By the time of Warren Ellis’ Extremis, surely many years after SI (and his other businesses - oh comics!) have stopped manufacturing arms, he’s still known primarily as an arms dealer, and in some circles a war criminal.
It’s also clear, from Disassembled and its aftermath, and Execute Program, that Tony, and Iron Man are just as much a symbols of America as Steve. Tony represents the epitome of American industrial, technological and military knowhow and dominance, and Iron Man the projection of the resulting power. Iron Man is the essence of Tony’s power - the potential reach of the MIC, of moneyed Americans, made physical.
Unlike Steve/Cap, neither Tony nor Iron Man are symbols that the MIC or the American people chose. In a way, Tony and Iron Man show too much, they’re too honest. They’re the bleeding edge of the system - proof of everything that’s gone wrong. The Tony who turns his back on military contracts, and Iron Man, owe their existence to his own terrible mistake - that mistake is nothing small, nothing specific. It’s never implied that if Tony had sold to country A, and not country B, everything would have been fine - the explosion that almost killed him was, in terms of the story, inevitable, because his real error was in being an arms dealer in the first place. Tony’s entire way of life is immediately indicted, and by extension, so is the system that produced and still needs him. Witness the numerous attempts that Nick Fury and others make to bring him back into the fold.
Tony’s symbolic value, like Steve’s, is mixed. The up side to Tony is that he’s the darling, boy genius of the MIC - the humanizing face of a group of people who make their very comfortable livings from thinking up new ways to kill poor people, and ripping off the government by selling it mostly useless weapons technology. It’s always interesting to note that Tony’s technology actually works as designed, and that out of the bunch, he’s the got to designer, the one that the politicos, spooks and soldiers all agree on.
I sometimes think that if we could see a list of the Vital National Interests of MU America, Tony Stark, Iron Man and Captain America would all be pretty high up there. :)
Aside from his profession, Tony has symbolic value as a playboy billionaire - he’s an aspirational icon of American maleness. He’s like, the guy that every guy wants to be. As Adam Warren put it “the model-bagging playboy billionaire genius moustache guy.” By dint of that alone, he’s earned some mixed feelings from the public. But it’s also clear that Tony isn’t capable of letting down the American people in quite the same way as Captain America is - because they just don’t put as much into him.
Iron Man, while a respected patriot and hero, and an important symbol of American power, doesn’t have the same value as Cap - because as much as Tony/Iron Man represent America, they aren’t the ones the people chose. They are aspirational heroes, rather than inspirational heroes. As remote as Tony is from most people, as impossible as becoming Iron Man is for most, Tony remains a ‘guy’. His existence doesn’t demand anything of people. He doesn’t have the same weight, the same moral authority that Steve does.
Now let’s talk Steve/America/Tony. As the meme goes, Civil War makes a lot more sense once you realize that the real story is the breakup of Cap and Iron Man. That formulation works whether you read that relationship as romantic or friendly, and is entirely true for the underlying personal drama, but you have to get America in there, in order for Civil War to make sense. CW is the breakup of the somewhat stable triad of Steve/America/Tony. It’s not the only time there’s been tension and repositioning in the relationship - to the extent that Cap and Iron Man represent parts of America, differing conceptions of America, there has always been movement in the relationship. Civil War is just the biggest rupture.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that CW resolves itself with the MU public choosing Iron Man over Cap, but I do think they chose what IM represents, in terms of his relationship to the government and the MIC, over what Cap does. Bendis’ The Confession is imo key to the whole story, it’s the moment where Tony realizes the import of his new responsibilities, and of the price everyone’s paid to achieve the short term security promised by the SHRA. Tony is fundamentally incapable of filling Steve’s shoes. But at the same time, he’s been elected to take up some of that symbolic responsibility. A lot of post CW stories try to reposition him as the kind of Real American Hero that Steve was, and in terms of the larger story, they’re bound to fail. He is bound to fail. Breaking down at Cap’s funeral, trying to find someone who can handle the shield - dude is lost without Cap, and so is the third party in the relationship.
Skrulls aside, that’s a mess that won’t be easily resolved.
Now going pre CW and looking at Steve/Tony, a ship that’s seen amazing growth since CW, I have to wonder - what do MU people think? What does America think about the relationship between Captain America and Iron Man, and what do the shadowy guys in the shadows think about? (Again, equally open to friendship or romantic relationship). I tend to think that a stable Cap/IM relationship would be immensely reassuring to the MU American people, and immensely horrifying to those in power. On the one hand, it’s evidence that all is right in the world - rich and poor, business and military, dreamer and engineer are working together in the magical world of make believe we call America. It’s evidence of the achievability of the American dream, and of everything right about the existing system, within which the middle class is pretty darn comfortable. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.
[A brief comment now, on a romantic Steve/Tony relationship, because that introduces another issue. Rather than being reassuring, I think it would freak a lot of people right the hell out, to find out that possibly the two biggest icons of American masculinity in the MU are romantically involved. Oh the hilarity!]
On the other hand, there’s all the evidence of Steve and Tony being willing to buck the system when they perceive a need to. Here are two heroes, carrying the adoration of the public, the moral authority of being (more or less) apolitical saviors of the downtrodden, who derive their power from the MIC, but do not see themselves as being beholden to it. From this perspective, a stable Steve/Tony relationship looks incredibly threatening, not even factoring in raw power of the IM armor, and all the friends they can bring to the table. From this perspective, the CW shake up looks pretty good. Not only do they get rid of Cap, but Tony is left crippled - alone he doesn’t have the moral authority that he had with Cap, and he carries some guilt for Cap’s death.
Net gain for the power brokers. Net loss for the American people.
And that's it for today. *g* But I totally need to come back to this subject another time.
Instead I want to talk about Steve/America/Tony, the unspoken OT3 of the Steve/Tony ship. And by that I mean friendship, working relationship, romantic relationship - however you read them, my comments are (mostly) general enough to apply. However, I’m not sure how interesting they will be to people who aren’t me. Fair warning: extreme TL;DR.
Captain America and Iron Man, (and Steve and Tony), represent two different clusters of American ideals. Within the Marvel Universe, more than most heroes, they are representatives of America, and of the American military industrial complex. Captain America is the one they* chose. Iron Man is the one they earned. Neither has been exactly what they'd like - neither has been quite as good for business as hoped.
* 'They' being both the American people and the MIC. I'll distinguish between 'them' later.
Steve is a child of immigrants. A hard-done-by, honest, working class American. He's a soldier, an artist, a patriot and a hardcore liberal. He is the voice of the average American, and the underprivileged American given power. That power comes from the American military, but he uses it not as the government directs, but how his ideals demand. He is above all, an apple pie eating, righteous enemy of injustice everywhere, be it abroad or at home.
Captain America was designed to serve two pressing needs. 1) As the first of hopefully many super soldiers, Captain America would lead the fight against the Nazis. The super soldiers were supposed to enhance the effectiveness of the infantry and reduce casualties in a punishing war. But, as fate would have it, Steve was one of a kind, and the military had a new problem on its hands - what to do with one super soldier, ready, willing and able to die for his country? 2) Turn him into a symbol! Steve was christened Captain America and sent out to battle evil, all the while showcasing American gumption, strength and know-how.
Captain America was a strategic tool - a way to demonstrate American power. We can build super soldiers. We will fuck your shit up but good.
But Steve Rogers, it turns out, was not an ideal tool, because a) he had a mind of his own, and b) he was a stubborn, working class cuss/dreamer, who even before volunteering, had already seen the dark underbelly of American life. Steve already knew what it meant to be poor, a minority and different in America. He had already experienced power working on the powerless, so when the American military turned him into a super soldier, he knew that he had to use his abilities, and his position with care. Because fundamentally, Steve doesn't just want to help the little guy, Steve is the little guy.
There is something both conventional and radical in his character - he embodies the spirit of the American dream, and of justice, to the extent that he will not accept limitations to either, in the name of expediency. And that's what makes him dangerous.
The people of the MU, almost without exception, love Cap. American or otherwise, people respond to his character. However, he is most definitely a symbol of America. In some ways, he is the good face of America that all people can appreciate - he represents the idealism of the revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the constitution. At the same time, he takes his share of flak for contemporary American policy.
When I said that Cap is the one 'they' chose, I meant both the people and the MIC, but he hasn't been exactly what either wanted, and he's dangerous for both. He's dangerous for the MIC for obvious reasons - he doesn't take orders without question, and will not support oppression or exploitation of people anywhere. Steve is what they wanted, a symbol of America, (and of the version of America they wanted to represent) - but the radical aspect of his character, his willingness to throw down even with the system if necessary, makes him ultimately useless for their ends.
That Cap is the one the people chose is evident in their clear love for him. Be they old, young, male, female, white, black, brown or green Cap is their guy. Like a lot of symbols, Cap is not without ideological content. The media persona 'Captain America' has views, positions on issues, history - he's been in the public eye since he was created, and as an Avenger, has been interviewed many times. People have an idea of who he is, where he came from and what he represents. The problem with Cap is that he has too much ideological content - he isn't quite blank enough that people can rework him as they like. Make him girl!Cap, black!Cap, Marxist!Cap - he has too much character. And this in a sense, is how he lets people down - his realness, his fullness of character is a kind of betrayal. And particularly, that his 'real' existence is so fundamentally committed to an ideal of America, and so intensely radical - it's almost daunting. That he exists beyond the symbolic realm is more than what the mass of the American people want.
There is something about Cap that demands commitment, a return in kind of passion that is perhaps too much for some.
I think, though I haven't read the interviews with Millar et al, that this is what they were trying to hit on with Civil War. It's not that Cap was out of touch with the American people, pre se. It doesn't matter if Cap is on MySpace, or if he watches Nascar. (Dammit Sally Floyd, that's not the point!) The key is that the essence of Captain America is an ideological call to arms, which in the post-Stamford, ‘crisis’ environment, people failed to answer. They traded ideals for expediency, justice for security. And that is antithetical to what Steve Rogers-Captain America stood for. The imagined betrayal comes exactly when the people realize that Captain America was never exactly what they thought he was.
Civil War is the Big One, the story that's hanging over all of us, but I think the above comments hold up for other eras - every time Steve goes on a crusade that's not wholly popular with the American people, he betrays them. He let's down their fantasies about their favourite symbol, of their favourite version of America. And every time he calls for them to fight the system they're comfortable within, in the name of protecting the people it’s victimizing, he gets derision for his efforts. I mean, I can only pinpoint a handful of stories where people are actually down on Cap in-panel (more long term fans could probably find more), but let's enter into evidence the fact that he's never been able to effect long term change.
[I also want to say that there's a good meta reason for Steve not being 'political' - the challenge he presents isn't to party politics, it's to the system. And that's a challenge that's too big for the story at hand.]
Which brings us to Tony.
Tony is a child of privilege who learns late the importance of noblesse oblige, but learns it well. He's a brilliant inventor and business man, successful with the ladies, not so successful with the guys. Tony’s an exceptional guy, raised in an exceptional environment, and in that way he’s Steve’s opposite. Tony is the definitition of the man, and with his family and personal history combines old money and new money coding - you could say that in Tony Stark, Stan covered all his Annoying Rich People bases. Tony comes from old money - an ancestor was a railroad baron, and the family has long been on the membership list at the Hellfire Club. He’s also a self-made, proto-typical American industrial dynamo.
[As an aside, this is unusual in fiction, where you usually get either/or, and especially unusual in comic books, which are even more prone to fixating on archetypes, but not at all unusual in real life.]
What’s particularly important about Tony’s upbringing is the expectation of excellence and exception, imposed on him by his parents. From a young age they push him to live up to his potential. Not just his intellectual potential, but athletic, social, mechanical - they start early on to groom him for his future role as Howard’s successor at SI, and as part of the power brokering class. A role that Tony doesn’t ever quite reject. The thing that’s unusual about Tony’s upbringing is the expectation in addition to all of this, that he develop his creative potential as well. No one raises an eyebrow, when as a child, he wants to get in there with the help, and play with the company toys. Instead, his parents encourage his interest in the family business, which happens to be weapons development.
Stark Industries is a major DoD contractor, and Tony works for the family business cradle to the grave - it’s safe to say that in the eyes of the MU public, Tony is Stark Industries. By the time of Warren Ellis’ Extremis, surely many years after SI (and his other businesses - oh comics!) have stopped manufacturing arms, he’s still known primarily as an arms dealer, and in some circles a war criminal.
It’s also clear, from Disassembled and its aftermath, and Execute Program, that Tony, and Iron Man are just as much a symbols of America as Steve. Tony represents the epitome of American industrial, technological and military knowhow and dominance, and Iron Man the projection of the resulting power. Iron Man is the essence of Tony’s power - the potential reach of the MIC, of moneyed Americans, made physical.
Unlike Steve/Cap, neither Tony nor Iron Man are symbols that the MIC or the American people chose. In a way, Tony and Iron Man show too much, they’re too honest. They’re the bleeding edge of the system - proof of everything that’s gone wrong. The Tony who turns his back on military contracts, and Iron Man, owe their existence to his own terrible mistake - that mistake is nothing small, nothing specific. It’s never implied that if Tony had sold to country A, and not country B, everything would have been fine - the explosion that almost killed him was, in terms of the story, inevitable, because his real error was in being an arms dealer in the first place. Tony’s entire way of life is immediately indicted, and by extension, so is the system that produced and still needs him. Witness the numerous attempts that Nick Fury and others make to bring him back into the fold.
Tony’s symbolic value, like Steve’s, is mixed. The up side to Tony is that he’s the darling, boy genius of the MIC - the humanizing face of a group of people who make their very comfortable livings from thinking up new ways to kill poor people, and ripping off the government by selling it mostly useless weapons technology. It’s always interesting to note that Tony’s technology actually works as designed, and that out of the bunch, he’s the got to designer, the one that the politicos, spooks and soldiers all agree on.
I sometimes think that if we could see a list of the Vital National Interests of MU America, Tony Stark, Iron Man and Captain America would all be pretty high up there. :)
Aside from his profession, Tony has symbolic value as a playboy billionaire - he’s an aspirational icon of American maleness. He’s like, the guy that every guy wants to be. As Adam Warren put it “the model-bagging playboy billionaire genius moustache guy.” By dint of that alone, he’s earned some mixed feelings from the public. But it’s also clear that Tony isn’t capable of letting down the American people in quite the same way as Captain America is - because they just don’t put as much into him.
Iron Man, while a respected patriot and hero, and an important symbol of American power, doesn’t have the same value as Cap - because as much as Tony/Iron Man represent America, they aren’t the ones the people chose. They are aspirational heroes, rather than inspirational heroes. As remote as Tony is from most people, as impossible as becoming Iron Man is for most, Tony remains a ‘guy’. His existence doesn’t demand anything of people. He doesn’t have the same weight, the same moral authority that Steve does.
Now let’s talk Steve/America/Tony. As the meme goes, Civil War makes a lot more sense once you realize that the real story is the breakup of Cap and Iron Man. That formulation works whether you read that relationship as romantic or friendly, and is entirely true for the underlying personal drama, but you have to get America in there, in order for Civil War to make sense. CW is the breakup of the somewhat stable triad of Steve/America/Tony. It’s not the only time there’s been tension and repositioning in the relationship - to the extent that Cap and Iron Man represent parts of America, differing conceptions of America, there has always been movement in the relationship. Civil War is just the biggest rupture.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that CW resolves itself with the MU public choosing Iron Man over Cap, but I do think they chose what IM represents, in terms of his relationship to the government and the MIC, over what Cap does. Bendis’ The Confession is imo key to the whole story, it’s the moment where Tony realizes the import of his new responsibilities, and of the price everyone’s paid to achieve the short term security promised by the SHRA. Tony is fundamentally incapable of filling Steve’s shoes. But at the same time, he’s been elected to take up some of that symbolic responsibility. A lot of post CW stories try to reposition him as the kind of Real American Hero that Steve was, and in terms of the larger story, they’re bound to fail. He is bound to fail. Breaking down at Cap’s funeral, trying to find someone who can handle the shield - dude is lost without Cap, and so is the third party in the relationship.
Skrulls aside, that’s a mess that won’t be easily resolved.
Now going pre CW and looking at Steve/Tony, a ship that’s seen amazing growth since CW, I have to wonder - what do MU people think? What does America think about the relationship between Captain America and Iron Man, and what do the shadowy guys in the shadows think about? (Again, equally open to friendship or romantic relationship). I tend to think that a stable Cap/IM relationship would be immensely reassuring to the MU American people, and immensely horrifying to those in power. On the one hand, it’s evidence that all is right in the world - rich and poor, business and military, dreamer and engineer are working together in the magical world of make believe we call America. It’s evidence of the achievability of the American dream, and of everything right about the existing system, within which the middle class is pretty darn comfortable. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.
[A brief comment now, on a romantic Steve/Tony relationship, because that introduces another issue. Rather than being reassuring, I think it would freak a lot of people right the hell out, to find out that possibly the two biggest icons of American masculinity in the MU are romantically involved. Oh the hilarity!]
On the other hand, there’s all the evidence of Steve and Tony being willing to buck the system when they perceive a need to. Here are two heroes, carrying the adoration of the public, the moral authority of being (more or less) apolitical saviors of the downtrodden, who derive their power from the MIC, but do not see themselves as being beholden to it. From this perspective, a stable Steve/Tony relationship looks incredibly threatening, not even factoring in raw power of the IM armor, and all the friends they can bring to the table. From this perspective, the CW shake up looks pretty good. Not only do they get rid of Cap, but Tony is left crippled - alone he doesn’t have the moral authority that he had with Cap, and he carries some guilt for Cap’s death.
Net gain for the power brokers. Net loss for the American people.
And that's it for today. *g* But I totally need to come back to this subject another time.