by Paul Kersey
The United States of America is no longer the nation that is depicted in the film Captain America: The First Avenger. One of the most beloved characters in all of comics, and arguably just as iconic as Superman himself, Captain America has always been considered a “Man of our Time,” as in all the contemporary telling of the story (this latest movie included), he is presumed “killed-in-action” during World War II, only to be found in a state of suspended animation, frozen in a block of ice during our time.
Most people know the origin of
Captain America: the story of the 4-F Steve Rogers volunteering for a
super-soldier serum (yikes, eugenics!), which eventually turns him into the
Sentinel of Liberty so he can go and fight Nazis and make the world safe for
democracy.
The film, starring Chris Evans, will
be no different. With a much bigger budget then Marvel’s failed 1990 attempt to
bring the character to the big screen, this Captain America story is a period
piece that sets the stage for the 2012 Avengers film,
which will combine the Iron Man, Thor, Incredible
Hulk, and Captain America movies.
The question we must ask ourselves
is how does a blond haired, blue-eyed, genetically engineered super solider
like Steve Rogers call himself “Captain America” in 2011, a nation where the
majority of the births—for the first time ever—are to non-whites mothers? How
does a character who exudes so much whiteness—at a time when major academic conferences are held to combat the identity and “when treason to whiteness is known as loyalty to
humanity?”—dare claim to represent U.S.?
Coming from a time and place when
Whites were 90 percent of the American population; the United States military
was segregated; and the Civil Rights Revolution had yet to achieve total, if
any, victory—one wonders what Steve Rogers hopes to accomplish as Captain
America.
Since Captain America went into his
Rip Van Winkle sleep in 1944, the United States has witnessed the collapse of
formerly great cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, Birmingham; watched as its
industrial might, once the envy of the world, was dismantled and shipped
overseas, replaced by $8-per-hour service industry; welcomed millions of immigrants—largely
illegal from Mexico; and witnessed such events as Martin Luther King’s I
have a Dream speech, which ushered in an era of Black empowerment of
which the Haitians of 1802 would be envious.
Captain America: The First
Avenger won’t address the situation faced by Steve Rogers when he
encounters the world 2011, but two recent comics have tried to do just that,
Mark Millar’s Ultimate
Avengers and Mark Waid’s Man Out of Time.
In Millar’s Ultimate
Avengers story—on which the Marvel movies have been loosely
based—Captain America is basically portrayed as neocon. In his book Captain
America and the Struggle of the Superhero, Jackson Sutliff describes
Millar’s Rogers as “The Ultimate American”:
Ultimate Captain America is less of
an inspiration than an action hero; instead of John Adams, he’s Sylvester
Stallone. He’s here to wear the American flag and kick ass, all in the heavily
marketed name of Nick Fury’s supergroup. Teammate Henry Pym comments that it’s
like playing with his old G.I. Joe’s again. Whereas the Cap of the traditional
Marvel Universe is known for his stirring orations, this version of Steve
Rogers isn’t one for speeches. Snappy one-liners are more this style.
The best example of the divide one
can look to is also one of the most famous. There’s a well known page from the
blockbuster miniseries: Captain America, enraged at the suggestion of
surrender, goes ballistic and bellows, “You think this letter on my head stands
for France?” (Millar The Ultimates 12 Vol. 1 22)…
This version of Steve Rogers is
something terrifying, charming and deserving of pity all rolled into one. If
Captain America represents the American dream, then his Ultimate counterpart is
its obituary.
It’s worth noting that Millar’s
Ultimate Avengers stories have been the influence behind the Iron Man movies,
so one is left wondering what type of hero Captain America will be portrayed in
the 2012 Avengers film. Millar wrote this story in the early
2000s, at a time when deriding France during the buildup to the United States
“War on Terror” was highly fashionable among those in self-styled conservative
circles.
If the Captain America we find in
the Avengers is like the one in Man Out of Time, we could find
ourselves watching the first Southern Poverty Law Center approved superhero on
screen.
In Waid’s Man Out of
Time story (henceforth MOT), Steve Rogers is unfrozen in a
world similar to 2011 America and brought back to his native New York City by
the Avengers. There, he successfully breaks up a mugging of a blond-haired,
blue-eyed White girl—by three Black guys –only to be shot by the White girl in
the process. The muggings are, of course, consistent with urban racial crime
patterns, but the shooting of Captain America by the thankless White girl makes
little sense, save in the world of comics.
Waking up in a hospital to be
treated by a Black female doctor—in a hilarious panel, Rogers mistakenly calls
her a “nurse”—Captain America walks into the waiting room to the shocking sight
of absolutely no European-Americans. The drawing of Captain America, upon
viewing this scene, is priceless, as the artist does a close-up of his blue
eyes staring out into a room of Africans, Muslims, Asians, Mexicans, and
Blacks, all speaking different languages and looking absolutely miserable.
Leaving the hospital, Captain
America glances back with a melancholy look on his face as an Asian
family—speaking in Chinese—take their grandmother into the makeshift United
Nations that doubles as a waiting room.
Quite the departure from the Irish,
WASPS, Italians, Germans, and any other White ethnics that comprised the New
York City of Rogers's youth.
Later in the story, Captain America
relocates with the Avengers, who run tests on him to confirm his true identity,
the long-lost Steve Rogers from World War II. The billionaire Tony Stark—Iron
Man for those comically challenged—updates Rogers on all that has changed since
he went into his state of suspended animation:
Stark doesn’t tell Rogers anything
about the massive racial transformation of America, nor how all of the diseases
cured and advances in medical technology came from that racial group which is
being dispossessed. The one scene from the hospital waiting room is the only
time the truth of America’s racial transformation is discussed in MOT.
Following this quick update on
America’s scientific marvels, Stark takes Roger’s to the Smithsonian National
Air and Space Museum (which is basically a monument to White people’s advances
in aviation) and discusses the moon landing, space shuttle missions, and the
building of the space station (and other things the U.S. government is no
longer capable of pursuing). Captain America sees a picture of the Challenger
crew and notices a Black face among the astronauts, leading to this exchange of
dialogue:
The next scene of MOT shows Stark
and Rogers watching a clip of Martin Luther King's 1963 “I have a Dream”
speech, with Rogers completely spellbound in his oration:
Is the “around the corner” line from
Stark a reference to the momentous day when Anglo-Saxons will be just another
minority in the land that Captain America still remembers like it was yesterday
(and for him, it was yesterday)?
Incidentally, MOT fails
to mention how that ideal of racial brotherhood never came true, that the
primary achievement from Black people in the 20th century was the fostering of
White guilt among Americans for past transgressions and the lowering of every
conceivable standard imaginable so that Blacks wouldn’t be left behind.
Though Tony Stark paints a powerful
picture of an idealized version of what America has become, it’s when Steve
Rogers visits the only person alive that he knew from the 1940s—a now
90-year-old General Jacob Simon—that MOT becomes incredibly
confusing.
After the initial shock of seeing an
un-aged Rogers, Simon (who lives in a nursing home) proceeds to tell Captain
America about all the unsavory changes in America:
Simon (gesturing
towards a baseball game on television)--They’re
all on drugs these days. That garbage is everywhere now. It’s in the schools.
It’s in the streets. Can you believe that?
On another visit, Simon is being
checked by a nurse, but has time to state:
Simon: Oklahoma City. One hundred
sixty-eight lives lost to a terrorist attack on American soil. This country’s
lousy with militias and hate groups. It’s disgusting.
One wonders if the Southern Poverty
Law Center wrote the script for this comic, as if Marvel and Teaching
Tolerance combined to create the
ultimate Captain America story. No mention of the fact that the majority of
those selling drugs and arrested for drug possession and drug-related violence
are non-Whites from General Simon, who seems more intent on placing the blame
for America’s degeneration on “hate groups.”
It’s here that the conversation
between Simon and Rogers takes a strange turn that serves as a painful reminder
that, though we presumably achieved racial brotherhood, America is royally
screwed:
Simon: (coughing
and nearing death) …used to make things in this country. You’d have the
service. Get education with the G.I. Bill, then settle down to a good union
job. No more steelwork. Pittsburgh’s collapsed and Detroit’ll be a ghost town
soon enough.
No mention of how the unions helped
ruin the manufacturing capacity in these cities, or how Black riots in 1967—and
subsequent white flight—helped turn Detroit into the laughing stock of the
entire world. This idealized version of America that General Simon waxes
whimsically about is clearly that which preceded the 1965 Immigration Act and America's
various forays into globalism and “free-trade.”
General Simon's best quotes are
saved for last:
Rogers: Bucky [Captain America’s World
War II partner]… Bucky once asked me what I wanted to do after the war. I
didn’t have an answer for him. Sixty years later, I still don’t.
In the next panel, Simon and Rogers
watch television and a commercial for a sex hotline is playing.
So wait…wasn’t the world of equality
that Captain America was so impressed with when he was speaking to Tony Stark
so wonderful? These scenes with General Simon seem to invalidate that glorious
world he thought existed. American history seems to stop with “I Have a Dream,”
as few people dare point out what a nightmare the country is turning into.
And what of the so-called 18th-place
educational system? Steve Sailer has shown that when you remove the Hispanic
and Black test scores from the mix, America’s educational system is doing quite
well, thank you (based on the
international PISA test results):
·
White Americans students
outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white
countries tested, except Finland (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, an immigration restrictionist nation where whites make up about 99 percent of the population).
·
Hispanic Americans beat all eight
Latin American countries. African Americans would likely have outscored
any sub-Saharan country, if any had bothered to compete. The closest thing to a
black country out of PISA’s 65 participants is the fairly prosperous oil-refining
Caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago,
which is roughly evenly divided between blacks and South Asians. African
Americans outscored Trinidadians by 25 points.
It is because of that massive
immigration (and Black test scores) that America has such a lowly rated,
“18th-place education system.” General Simon. Why don’t you tell this to Steve
Rogers?
The most revealing section of
the MOT comes after General Simon has passed away and his
caretaker, a Hispanic, tells Steve Rogers she’ll have to go home soon:
MOT doesn’t tell us that a disproportionate percentage of immigrants are on welfare and EBT/food stamps in America, all paid for by the United States taxpayer. Yes they scrub our toilets, but they have arrived in such massive numbers to turn America into what Victor Davis Hanson called Two California’s.
What in the world does a gringo Captain
America mean to Mexicans who cheered on their national soccer team in Los
Angeles Memorial Coliseum over the U.S. squad? All that Captain America
means—when espousing virtues such as tolerance, freedom, and justice—is that
nothing will be done to curb the rising tide of color that threatens to make
Steve Rogers a minority in his own land.
What is obvious from MOT is
that Captain America is incredibly malleable and can be made to fit the
Zeitgeist.
If we are in an age where Communism
and the Red Menace is the enemy, turn Captain America into a hero espousing McCarthyism (but
be sure to change the story when McCarthy falls out of favor with the America,
as Marvel did in Captain America 153-156, back in 1972). In
our time period, have Steve Rogers espousing egalitarianism and discuss
abstractions like freedom, justice and tolerance, and you have the perfect
embodiment of 2011 America, certified fresh by the SPLC.
Salon.com ran a historical piece in
2010 (updated on July 20, 2011) that deserves to be quoted at length:
After the July 22 release of the
summer blockbuster "Captain America: the First Avenger," we'll
probably see even more Captain Americas waving placards at protests for all
parts of the political spectrum. The Red, White and Blue Avenger is and always
has been a potent political image, but whose side would Captain America be on?
Would he be a New Deal Democrat slinging his mighty shield for new public works
programs or would he be rallying with the Tea Party to lower taxes on
billionaires and gut Medicare? Whose Captain America is he anyway?
"He's not just a guy in a flag
suit," former "Captain America" writer Steve
Englehart says as he takes a break from
signing copies of his latest fantasy-action novel, at the Big Wow ComicFest in San Jose, Calif.
"The problem comes from, I
think, when people do say, 'Well, he's a guy in a flag suit,'" Englehart
adds. "But he sort of transcends. He stands for America as an ideal, not
America as it's practiced."
Englehart, a conscientious objector
who was honorably discharged from the Army, took over the writing of
"Captain American and the Falcon" in 1972 in the midst of the Vietnam
War. To make the comic's star-spangled superhero appeal to an antiwar youth
audience, Englehart took on the duality and contradictions not only of the
comic book superhero, but of America itself. During his first four issues
(Nos. 153-156),
the original Captain America, who was frozen in a block of ice at the end of
the Roosevelt years and then thawed during the Johnson administration, battles
a raging McCarthyite Cap from the paranoid 1950s. The ideological struggle
between these alternate versions of the hero isn't all that different from what
might happen if the Rally to Restore Sanity and the Tea Party Caps came to
actual blows with their plastic shields.
With the Watergate hearings
underway, Englehart had Steve Rogers hang up his Captain America persona
altogether in "Captain America and the Falcon" No. 176, a comic book
dated August 1974—the same month that Nixon resigned from the White House.
"He had thought that the ideal
and the reality were the same thing, and finding out that it wasn't threw him
off and that was the basis for the whole story," Englehart says,
explaining the story line where Rogers took off the red, white and blue and
became a darkly clad hero called Nomad for several issues, ending with No. 183 in
1975.
"He stood for something,"
Englehart continues. "When what he stood for seemed not to exist or seemed
to have been damaged, he couldn't go out and stand for that anymore. Again, in
my story, he eventually decided that having a Captain America was better than
not having a Captain America, whatever was going on with America per se."
Looking at the very first issue of "Captain
America," it's easy to dismiss it as a
piece of jingoistic wartime propaganda. After all, the cover has our hero
leaping into a war room and punching out Hitler while Nazi goons fire their
Lugers and machine guns at him. However, "Captain America" No. 1 hit
stands in December 1940, a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor drew the
United States into World War II. While Captain America fit perfectly into the
mood of the war effort once it got underway, co-creators Jack Kirby and Joe
Simon originally forged the character as a protest vehicle to stir a stubbornly
isolationist America to action.
"To me, the times were
screaming war," Jack Kirby recalled during a 1989 or 1990 radio interview
on "Hour 25" that can now be found at Kirbymuseum.org. "To me the enemy was Hitler. The enemy was growing
and growing, and I didn't know where it was going to end, but every day
something new would happen, and it was really scary. This was the kind of event
that I felt was ruling our times and I felt it inside of me and it had to come
out in some way."
When Eisner Award-winning writer Ed
Brubaker depicted a Tea Party protest in a slightly negative light in
"Captain America" No. 602 in 2010, the right-wing blogosphere and Fox
News cranked up their outrage machine, griping that Marvel was "making patriotic
Americans" into "its newest super villains." With a $140 million
"Captain America" movie only a year away, Marvel had more to lose
than back when it was just selling magazines. The company promised to remove
the material that wounded the Tea Party's sensibilities from future reprints of
the series.
Joe Simon may have put it best when
he said, "Things are far more complex than they were in the days when
Captain America could punch Hitler in the jaw," but the broad appeal of
Captain America appears undiminished by recent controversies. In between
Captain America's appearances at the rallies to restore sanity and shut down
the government, Mexican American pro-wrestler Rey Mysterio wore
a Captain America costume during his match at WrestleMania XXVII in Atlanta.
Mysterio's outfit had a Mayan motif in place of the star on Cap's chest, making
the character more Meso-American than merely Norte Americano. It seems that
Captain America may be the only thing that can bring this fractured country
together, if we could only agree on who he is.
Rey Mysterio modified the Captain
America costume to ensure a distinctly Mexican flavor to the ensemble, a
harbinger of things to come in the United States when Steve Rogers alter-ego
only stands for the defense of the country as a proposition nation.
It’s wise to recall the words from
the late Samuel Francis, who understood the dilemma at the heart of America, a
ciountry defined by a people and culture, but which began to represent
everyone, and thus no one:
The civilization that we as whites
created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic
endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the
civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people. If the
people or race who created and sustained the civilization of the West should
die, then the civilization also will die. A merely cultural consciousness,
then, that emphasizes only social and cultural factors as the roots of our
civilization is not enough, because a merely cultural consciousness will not by
itself conserve the race and people that were necessary for the creation of the
culture and who remain necessary for its survival. We need not only to
understand the role of race in creating our civilization but also to
incorporate that understanding in our defense of our civilization. Until we do
so, we can expect only to keep on losing the war we are in…
As long as whites continue to avoid
and deny their own racial identity, at a time when almost every other racial
and ethnic category is rediscovering and asserting its own, whites will have no
chance to resist their dispossession and their eventual possible physical
destruction. Before we can seriously discuss any concrete proposals for
preserving our culture and its biological and demographic foundations, we have
to address and correct the problem we inflict on ourselves, our own lack of a
racial consciousness and the absence of a common will to act in accordance with
it.
A trip to Los Angeles, Atlanta, or
Detroit would reveal, once the people who look like Captain America leave,
those left behind in positions of power quickly erect a civilization that is
completely different from the one that was bequeathed to them.
The Captain America that will debut
in theaters today will be living in a world where the ignorant, unwashed masses
had yet to be baptized in the racial holy water of Martin Luther King’s oratory
and reborn into a world universal brotherhood. The Captain America that will
debut in theaters today will be living in a world where military segregation
existed. The Captain America that will debut in theaters today will be living
in a nation that was essentially 90 percent White. Steve Rogers, that 4-F
reject, still volunteered to become a Captain America in that world, defending
that America.
In the 21st century, “The First
Avenger,” is truly a man out of time.
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