Lately I have been watching a friend play BioShock Infinite, something to which I paid little attention at the time of its release. At first the setting and the story were attracting me, as they pertain to my field of interest… but later in the story, after acquainting us with an archetypal capitalist, I noticed that the story was getting a little ‘darker’—in a familiar way—and it soon devolved into what I feared: another subplot about how much revolution sucks.
I’ve seen it already in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and Metro 2033, so I know how it goes: first the writers lure you in with a display of the prerevolutionary situation, and at first they portray the revolutionaries positively, but as the climax approaches the revolutionaries go around suddenly committing atrocities without any clear rhyme or reason, nothing can be done to prevent it, ordinary people hate it (so the revolutionaries abuse them too), and the lesson is that revolution is no better than the prerevolutionary situation.
Why do revolutionaries go through the trouble of making revolution? Not because the material conditions (whatever those are) made revolution inevitable, no. It’s because revolutionaries are stupid and unreasonable. Simple as that. That’s probably also why they commit atrocities, and also why they can’t figure out how to keep their supporters without resorting to coercion or violence.
The message, it seems, is an advertisement for conservatism: ‘Yes, we’ll admit that things may be awful now, but no matter how awful they may be, anything else would be worse, so just shut up and do nothing.’ They don’t state it outright—possibly because of how embarrassing it would look—but that is the only conclusion that I can draw. (Otherwise, the only alternatives are either that the writers wanted to subject innocent people to their angsty, immature whining, or they simply wanted to waste their time, both of which would be bafflingly unwise of them.)
Is there anything inaccurate about my observation? Because otherwise, I don’t know why these presumed professionals would suddenly subject us to this lazy and shallow writing.
The one I hate the most is the Falcon/Winter Soldier series. Halfway through the series a black man that was tortured and experimented on by the US government tells Falcon this about becoming the captain america:
"No self-respecting black man would ever wear these symbols"
And he is fucking right, but you know what is the resolution to his storyline?? Falcon inaugurates a statue with a 3 paragraph text explaining his story in a museum dedicated to the Oeiginal captain america. Literally a footnote on the history of the "great myth" of Captain America.
Its so ironic and infuriating bc that is exactly how Americans treat any of their past horrendous crimes. Its just a footnote on their history at best.
Native americans genocide? That was long time ago...
Slavery? Oh but the civil war...
Two fucking nukes on civilians? Not war crime because WWII or some shit
Concentration camps for japanese? Philippines genocide? Colonization on the Pacific? Apartheid? Imperialist agressions? Wiping out whole nations? Chemical weapons? Persecution of black movements? Radiation poisoning of native people on the pacific? Torture centers? Police brutallity? Keeping the whole world under surveillance?
That's bad, sure, but fuck China because Mao killed some feudal lords I guess 🥰#blm
Not to mention the main "villains" of the show. All they wanted was a dignified life for everyone, but fuck them I guess cause they got angry and killed a few cops. So much for human dignity, you didn't ask the billionaire overlords nicely so forget about it.
Also the intro of the new Avengers manager type character. There was probably lots wrong with Sam Jackson's Nick Fury but he seemed neutral enough as far as Marvel goes. Julia Louis Dreyfus' character on the other hand... Is she supposed to be Madeline Albright or Hillary Clinton or something?