Here is a thought I had
Thomas Paine, from "The Crisis"
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
I've been seeing some discussion of why they titled the movie they way they did, since it's mostly about Steve & Co taking down SHIELD. So ... what if the Winter Soldier in the title doesn't just refer to Bucky?
Steve spends a lot of this movie doing the really really hard things, not just physically but the things that hurt him in his soul. He went to war because he believed America was on the right side of it, and when he wakes up, there's SHIELD to tell him that there's still a place he can do good things. And so he's willing to let them point him in the direction they choose so he can kill bad guys for them.
And then he finds out that maybe they're not who he thought they were. They have spy satellites that can kill anybody they target. Which is just not cool, and he says so ... and pretty soon everything he's done for SHIELD is at the very least ambiguous. I don't think he's really trusted them since he found the secret Phase II armory, and this is just more proof that if this is the side of the angels, the angels are really fucking dark.
So I ask you, what's the opposite of Paine's "summer soldier"? Steve is gearing up to kill his best friend, and watch him die AGAIN, in the service of freedom. And all those techs and admin people in the Triskelion building, who presumably have very little training or field experience, who are so ably embodied in that one nameless dude who says " ... no, I won't," -- now that is what a hero looks like. Gun to his head, literally, and he's like, "pull the trigger, motherfucker, I'm with Cap."
Paine doesn't name his heroes, I think because he was relying on his audience to make their own parallels.
And that's what I've been doing.
This entry was originally posted at http://starfish.dreamwidth.org/350044.html. There are
comments there. Comment there, if you'd like.
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
I've been seeing some discussion of why they titled the movie they way they did, since it's mostly about Steve & Co taking down SHIELD. So ... what if the Winter Soldier in the title doesn't just refer to Bucky?
Steve spends a lot of this movie doing the really really hard things, not just physically but the things that hurt him in his soul. He went to war because he believed America was on the right side of it, and when he wakes up, there's SHIELD to tell him that there's still a place he can do good things. And so he's willing to let them point him in the direction they choose so he can kill bad guys for them.
And then he finds out that maybe they're not who he thought they were. They have spy satellites that can kill anybody they target. Which is just not cool, and he says so ... and pretty soon everything he's done for SHIELD is at the very least ambiguous. I don't think he's really trusted them since he found the secret Phase II armory, and this is just more proof that if this is the side of the angels, the angels are really fucking dark.
So I ask you, what's the opposite of Paine's "summer soldier"? Steve is gearing up to kill his best friend, and watch him die AGAIN, in the service of freedom. And all those techs and admin people in the Triskelion building, who presumably have very little training or field experience, who are so ably embodied in that one nameless dude who says " ... no, I won't," -- now that is what a hero looks like. Gun to his head, literally, and he's like, "pull the trigger, motherfucker, I'm with Cap."
Paine doesn't name his heroes, I think because he was relying on his audience to make their own parallels.
And that's what I've been doing.
This entry was originally posted at http://starfish.dreamwidth.org/350044.html. There are
comments there. Comment there, if you'd like.