Thor: Not Very Deep Thoughts

Before I really think about Thor Ragnarok, I just wanted to jot down what was really obvious throughout the movie. Most people reading this will have seen the same thing, but I guess it's helpful for those who haven't.

In current progressive politics, you have the Red Queen Race of always needing to be more woke than thou, just to stay in the same place. So what was comfortable as the ideologically dominant position five years ago - identity politics over Marxist analysis - has given way to a need to be radical if you still want to be socially secure.

The MCU movies were from the beginning firmly aligned with the culture of progressive politics. The leftist criticism of this, from Iron Man through Avengers 2, is that their vision is sorely incomplete.

In particular, Stark Industries and Asgard both stand in for the utopian ideal. We get all this awesome tech from them, renewable energy, female CEO, pleasantly multi-cultural, etc. We don't see the work or industry necessary to uphold these shining cities, they just are good.

I can provide evidence if you don't see it, but hopefully anyone reading this blog is familiar with this running theme. It reaches it's most blatant imagery when "Vision", the messiahnic robot who embodies good, is brought to life with Stark science and Thor's lightning. Thor, Stark, and Vision then simultaneously use their three "beams" to drive off Ultron, the champion of totalitarian revolution.



And yet, Ultron comes from Stark. Baddies just happen to pour out of these pure institutions. As SMG repeats over and over "Stark is Hydra."

So you can be a smug leftist (hi) and dismiss the stories of the MCU because they are about superficial attempts at fighting for progress, while ignoring the fundamental problems that make the main characters rich.

Red Queen's Race though... and Thor: Ragnarok submits to that criticism, and gives the left everything it wanted there. (So why do we still dislike the MCU?)

Ragnarok says that for all the peaceful harmony of Asgard, Asgard was built on a campaign of violent war by Odin. Odin tried to repress it, but Asgard could never be fully cleansed or redeemed. Hela effortlessly defeats any forces of Asgard because Hela is Asgard. She is the bloody truth of its origin, which can only be repressed but not defeated.

The answer, obviously from half an hour in, is to destroy Asgard and make a new world without that original sin. Which they do.

(There's an obvious Trump parable here. America was built on violence and white supremacy. That was a long time ago, and the liberal era tried to redeem America into a paradise for all its people. But once the unifying element that kept society pacified was gone, that original anger rose up again, and showed it can overwhelm any bindings you put on racism, slavery, and war. This isn't the best reading, but it's a fairly transparent one.)

So, why is this unsatisfying? Hell, in Captain America 2 they did roughly the same thing: Shield had to be destroyed in its entirety, not just weeded of a few bad apples.

It reads very much as hip culture's attempt to assimilate every buzzword without understanding the truth beneath it. "Destroy the foundations, check." But Shield is back in the next movie, looking so similar you didn't even need to see Winter Soldier to know why it changed. It's radicalism as a cargo cult.

Yeah, all of Stark Industries will probably be destroyed in Avengers: Infinity War: Part 2. Hell I expect one of the main problems will come from a weapon from the bad old days when they primarily sold weapons. (Agent Carter tie in maybe.) But why did it take fifteen movies to get to the same point Man of Steel did in its very first act?

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Back and forth with redantsunderneath:

redantsunderneath

I had similar thoughts from a different angle.  The primary mode I saw working was a “shedding” of things (like Ishtar) in return for seeing the world more clearly - loss of the father, the comrades, the hammer, the eye, and the homeland.  The movie was about getting past false consciousness through loosing your crutches.  It is easy to see the crumbling dome revealing the real story beneath as a reflection of how Sakaar is what Asgaard is “really like.” I know you’ll do the “Alderaan/Death Sta(a)r” take on this, but the image of the Neo-liberal utopia covering up the violence and oppression with its gleaming facade being “replaced” as a setting by the less fortunate fighting to the death for the entertainment of the elite seems, like, right up front.

I think you are underestimating the mid-period-on Marvel movies’ engagement with liberal self critique (2nd phase on) - Ant Man was about alienation/emasculation in the neo-liberal economy, Age of Ultron was about societal engineers working for our own good creating an anti-life force (whoops), and Spider-Man Homecoming was explicitly about rejecting the call to join the global elite.  

bambamramfan

So on the more nuanced levels, you are probably right. I need to think about the movie more to relate the actual imagery and more complicated choices.

I only brought up this because it was the one they were hitting us over the head with. ASGARD HAS TO GO BECAUSE OF THE SINS OF THE PAST, and I wanted to set it up as the agreed upon context before delving into the more interesting questions.

I should have also included the garbage planet. Thor has to fall from the top of royalty to absolute garbage (beneath the Devil’s Anus) to begin his redemptive arc. And there we get both the face of true exploitation that Asgard relies upon, and some funny characterization of the two-facedness of a capitalist order that disavows its violence.

“The slaves have gotten into the mainframe” “I hate that word” “mainframe” “No… the s-one” “Oh. The prisoners with jobs have gotten into the mainframe”

And yeah, 2nd phase across the board has definitely moved into this liberal self-critique. I brought it up with CA2, but CA3, GOTG2, and your examples fall into this. Black Panther certainly will. Avengers 2 on the face of it is the apogee of “liberalism and new-age mysticism triumphs over proletariat totalitarianism”, but if you read it as at all satirical, Ultron raises some valid points.

The question is why all of these, especially with the on-the-nose examples in Ragnarok, just feel so empty and hollow, compared to even the ending of fucking Agent Carter Season 1.