There's a dynamic that I'm sure you're aware of but you didn't quite capture in this essay. As Americans we used to have outgroups like the Soviet Union and the Germans. However, as we developed the largest economy and most powerful military in the history of the world, there was no other country or outside entity that made a compelling villain. Emerging to fill the void was the opposing political tribe. Democrats and Republicans are each other's outgroup.
However, there are a few things keeping us in line. First, the two groups are intertwined in the US economy so there's a practical necessity to tolerate each other. Second, many of us have family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc who are on the other side, and we might resent them but also probably wouldn't be willing to mow them down in the most brutal and violent way possible. Third, the two sides are fairly even in terms of political power so neither side has much of an opportunity to take down the other side.
Nonetheless, we do tell stories about how the other side is evil, our side is virtuous, and we need to run a scorched earth campaign and utterly destroy those fuckers. I could give plenty of examples but that might get into dangerous territory. I'm sure anyone reading this could at least think of ways their opponents do this.
I enjoy your perspective. You’re right about a lot, too much, actually, and that makes me a bit uncomfy. This is America, the land of rugged individualism. The biggest existential threat to our country isn’t the Mountain People or Orcs or some alien invasion (though wouldn’t it be nice if it were? We could finally bust out those $700 billion a year we spend on the military). No, our true “villain” is much closer…the guy down the street with the opposing yard sign, your cousin who won’t shut up about ivermectin at Thanksgiving dinner… We don’t need an “Other” to hate when we’ve got each other. Every holiday meal in this country is basically Civil War II, only instead of Avengers trading blows, it’s your uncle versus your niece arguing over who ruined the economy. And instead of vibranium shields, we’re armed with bad faith tweets and Facebook memes. But maybe that’s the story our culture is struggling to tell. If you squint through the CGI carnage of D&W, what you’re left with is a group of messy, broken people, squabbling over who gets to define the meaning of their existence. Sound familiar? America doesn’t lack a cause, we just can’t agree on which cause to believe in. Climate change should unite us all, but instead we’re over here splitting into factions like we’re on Survivor (or the Apprentice…). So, D&W, yes, it’s mind numbing and ridiculous, but there’s something reassuring in the way it shrugs at the chaos and keeps going. The nostalgic Green Day montage? It’s not an elegant cultural statement it’s an admission that this is all absurd. And sometimes, when you’re staring down the barrel of existential dread, absurdity is the only reasonable response. So yeah, I laughed at the dick jokes. I let my brain switch off for two hours and enjoyed watching Hugh Jackman beat the living hell out of an army of Deadpools (honestly I was in it for the Wolverine bod *drool). And maybe, just maybe, that’s what we need right now…a little gallows humor while we all sit around the campfire of our crumbling culture, roasting marshmallows over the ashes of the very franchises that brought us here. Fuck it. PS Love your work.
I'm not sure that much of anything you say here about Deadpool v. Wolverine couldn't also be said about Don Quixote. Both are very meta, both take a comedic approach to violence, and both require a fairly intimate knowledge of their genres (in Quixote's case, the romance) to get the in-jokes. A comparison to Quixote is instructive in that the book similarly undercuts stories about "heroism told around the campfire to motivate young people to go out and be heroes themselves." Also Quixote was written in 1605, so if your thesis is that the nature of D&W indicates a "chilling symbol of society's decline," then society has been chillingly declining for 400 years. Not sure of your intent, but that and your citation of a Jim Geraghty tweet suggests to me that you're making a conservative, William Bennett-ish argument here.
The Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, and since that time, the Spanish empire entered a period of collapse and decline. It’s not surprising that that is when Don Quixote was written.
Ooooh I love this, because Don Quixote DOES talk about IP management in the second part; addresses it DIRECTLY. So Don Quixote is relaased and becomes a huge hit. And suddenly unauthorized sequels appear (fanfic!) written by ransoms, but a guy name Pedro de Avellaneda stands out. Miguel de Cervantes, the original author, is furious and writes the second part. Early on there is a speech by Don Quixote the character angrily ranting about those shitty fanfics and how this is his REAL sequel. So, IP management! The meta has been with humanity way longer than you give it credit for
I mean no offense, but I'm new to Substack and I'm starting to realize lots of people here need to chill out and touch grass. You don't need to feel existential angst over Disney movies ending civilization or things beyond your control. You should get a dog and go to the dog park every day, meet new people and play with puppies for at least one hour a day. You'll feel better.
Also, the Madonna choral versions on D&W slaps hard.
I came out of Deadpool & Wolverine feeling vaguely uncomfortable - thanks for helping me understand why.
This also put a finger on another plot point of the movie that made me unconsciously squirm: that Wade's initial motivation to be a part of something that "matters" and contribute to society is actually a naive weakness to be exploited by a corrupt authority figure. What actually matters is his small social circle and continued ability to consume/reference pop culture. As you point out, the emotional payoff of the heores' willingness to sacrifice themselves must be undermined both during the scene via ridiculous framing of High Jackman's roided-out physique/choral rendition of a pop song and immediately afterwards with a joke. Because sincerity is cringe.
As an older millennial, I'm find myself generally distressed by the gleeful nihilism in pop culture and currentlu dominant political beliefs, as well as younger people's widespread insistence that work is inherently exploitative and unworthy of their full attention and commitment.
I guess that's how I know I'm getting older, since I'm complaining about Kids These Days.
As usual, this made me think and I almost agree with the premise except...Deadpool is 100% a comedy. This flick is closer to Monty Python or Airplane esthetically, and those films are not diminished by having questionable villians. Absurdist comedies generally have ridiculous or banal villians on purpose.
Unlike Wick, Braveheart, or even most Avengers movies - which aim for emotional gravitas via some moral high ground - D&W never for one second expects you to take it seriously, and so doesn't really suffer from its vapid premise any more than Naked Gun or any Mel Brooks film does. It's just trying to make you laugh.
Looking at the villains in the James Bond franchise backs up your thesis. Early films have traditional villains (Russia etc) but it becomes more nebulous over time with country of villainy either not specified or villains being terrorists without affiliation, acting for financial gain.
Not a disagreement, just an extension of your points about tribalism as operating system.
"Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn’t it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us.
In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists―why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones."
Yeah, I don't agree. Maybe on a meta-level, but I sincerely doubt this was the message people tried to convey when writing these scripts and filming these films. They want to pay their mortgages, and thus write stuff that sells.
But the point is that this is the kind of thing you have to tap into in order to pay your mortgage; you have to write a movie that’s in touch with the millions of people who go to see it. And that means your movie has to reflect cultural beliefs about the world, including ones you might just have yourself.
It doesn’t have to be a case of trying to explain these beliefs, or to challenge them. It doesn’t even have to be conscious; usually creating anything successful is a brutally Darwinian process. It’s just saying a successful thing will reflect something about a society in a similar way to a candle guiding moths towards it: the success is hacking into something, whether it intends to influence or not.
This is kind of what people mean when they say all art is political. I’m sure this movie didn’t set out to advance any particular policy in the real world. But it did set out to be successful, which means it must reflect something about the worldview of its audience. And that will mean it says something about the audience, just incidentally
Interesting point, and maybe why this Deadpool fell really flat with me, as I don't have a lot of sentimentality about cancelled superhero movies.
That said, the villains of Top Gun 2022 are obviously supposed to be Iranians. There's no other country that makes sense. And, of course, that's a country who we definitely haven't been fighting an on-off will they or won't they proxy war for the last decade-plus.
I have to say I've lived in an odd state of existence from the first time I watched empire strikes back and firmly believed the rebels to be the villains and got decimated for this concert by my 4th grade class. It's wild to finally come across some reasoning for the unified antagonist for the view defaulting to the POV no matter how destructive they are to a galaxy. Removing an empire that removed slavery and moderated all trade agreements with one politicians daughter and some rag tag space hillbillies with a hardon for destruction. Especially when it has millions of casualties.
You actually pointed out the assumption of heroics in this book is full of spiders. Basically only Amy needs to refute their role so deeply that it's awe inspiring. As though she needed her hero role like the religion lovers need their god. Like it's beyond a need for water. Allowing her to do as they do and ignore all glaringly logical fallacies seen or presented.
Actually another example of my brain being awkwardly out of step was after first reading the bible I thought the devil was the good guy. The serpent gave knowledge like Prometheus gave fire. He tried to give Jesus food and water in the desert. He pleaded with Abraham not to kill his son. God required a piece of your dick just to get him not to wreck you for no reason. He was a monster until apparently he decided to invite everyone to heaven after the murder of his son. Sounds like a trap to me.
Despite the notable perception flaws I still see where you're coming from with Deadpool & Wolverine, but very deeply I found myself disliking many pieces of it. Despite following a lot of the Deadpool formula it had such crazy amounts of Disney propagandized nonsense. Like good job Disney with the R rating but stop acting like blade isn't rebooted because of racism and no way to jam Disney into it enough.
And although our unified hatred has averted away from avenues for the continued influx of money it didn't dissipate at all. It just shifted from countries to demographics. 9/11 had unified hatred not to Iraq or al Qaeda but rather any person of Muslim faith or descending from the middle east. Trump has zealots in mass willing to blindly follow his every statement despite his IQ being estimated at under 80. It's because that asshole gave them the okay to unify their hate towards woman or immigrants or anything they feel like assaulting. They think they're heroes and everyone else is worse than any monster or alien seen before. 🤷🏻♂️ But alas this is my opinion which is formed via my very human brain that only grasps it's inaccurate memories built on 1% of processable environmental data so I'm probably wrong haha
There's a dynamic that I'm sure you're aware of but you didn't quite capture in this essay. As Americans we used to have outgroups like the Soviet Union and the Germans. However, as we developed the largest economy and most powerful military in the history of the world, there was no other country or outside entity that made a compelling villain. Emerging to fill the void was the opposing political tribe. Democrats and Republicans are each other's outgroup.
However, there are a few things keeping us in line. First, the two groups are intertwined in the US economy so there's a practical necessity to tolerate each other. Second, many of us have family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc who are on the other side, and we might resent them but also probably wouldn't be willing to mow them down in the most brutal and violent way possible. Third, the two sides are fairly even in terms of political power so neither side has much of an opportunity to take down the other side.
Nonetheless, we do tell stories about how the other side is evil, our side is virtuous, and we need to run a scorched earth campaign and utterly destroy those fuckers. I could give plenty of examples but that might get into dangerous territory. I'm sure anyone reading this could at least think of ways their opponents do this.
I enjoy your perspective. You’re right about a lot, too much, actually, and that makes me a bit uncomfy. This is America, the land of rugged individualism. The biggest existential threat to our country isn’t the Mountain People or Orcs or some alien invasion (though wouldn’t it be nice if it were? We could finally bust out those $700 billion a year we spend on the military). No, our true “villain” is much closer…the guy down the street with the opposing yard sign, your cousin who won’t shut up about ivermectin at Thanksgiving dinner… We don’t need an “Other” to hate when we’ve got each other. Every holiday meal in this country is basically Civil War II, only instead of Avengers trading blows, it’s your uncle versus your niece arguing over who ruined the economy. And instead of vibranium shields, we’re armed with bad faith tweets and Facebook memes. But maybe that’s the story our culture is struggling to tell. If you squint through the CGI carnage of D&W, what you’re left with is a group of messy, broken people, squabbling over who gets to define the meaning of their existence. Sound familiar? America doesn’t lack a cause, we just can’t agree on which cause to believe in. Climate change should unite us all, but instead we’re over here splitting into factions like we’re on Survivor (or the Apprentice…). So, D&W, yes, it’s mind numbing and ridiculous, but there’s something reassuring in the way it shrugs at the chaos and keeps going. The nostalgic Green Day montage? It’s not an elegant cultural statement it’s an admission that this is all absurd. And sometimes, when you’re staring down the barrel of existential dread, absurdity is the only reasonable response. So yeah, I laughed at the dick jokes. I let my brain switch off for two hours and enjoyed watching Hugh Jackman beat the living hell out of an army of Deadpools (honestly I was in it for the Wolverine bod *drool). And maybe, just maybe, that’s what we need right now…a little gallows humor while we all sit around the campfire of our crumbling culture, roasting marshmallows over the ashes of the very franchises that brought us here. Fuck it. PS Love your work.
I'm not sure that much of anything you say here about Deadpool v. Wolverine couldn't also be said about Don Quixote. Both are very meta, both take a comedic approach to violence, and both require a fairly intimate knowledge of their genres (in Quixote's case, the romance) to get the in-jokes. A comparison to Quixote is instructive in that the book similarly undercuts stories about "heroism told around the campfire to motivate young people to go out and be heroes themselves." Also Quixote was written in 1605, so if your thesis is that the nature of D&W indicates a "chilling symbol of society's decline," then society has been chillingly declining for 400 years. Not sure of your intent, but that and your citation of a Jim Geraghty tweet suggests to me that you're making a conservative, William Bennett-ish argument here.
The Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, and since that time, the Spanish empire entered a period of collapse and decline. It’s not surprising that that is when Don Quixote was written.
Lol, ok?
Yes, society has been declining for 400 years
Ooooh I love this, because Don Quixote DOES talk about IP management in the second part; addresses it DIRECTLY. So Don Quixote is relaased and becomes a huge hit. And suddenly unauthorized sequels appear (fanfic!) written by ransoms, but a guy name Pedro de Avellaneda stands out. Miguel de Cervantes, the original author, is furious and writes the second part. Early on there is a speech by Don Quixote the character angrily ranting about those shitty fanfics and how this is his REAL sequel. So, IP management! The meta has been with humanity way longer than you give it credit for
I mean no offense, but I'm new to Substack and I'm starting to realize lots of people here need to chill out and touch grass. You don't need to feel existential angst over Disney movies ending civilization or things beyond your control. You should get a dog and go to the dog park every day, meet new people and play with puppies for at least one hour a day. You'll feel better.
Also, the Madonna choral versions on D&W slaps hard.
lol what a dumb response
I came out of Deadpool & Wolverine feeling vaguely uncomfortable - thanks for helping me understand why.
This also put a finger on another plot point of the movie that made me unconsciously squirm: that Wade's initial motivation to be a part of something that "matters" and contribute to society is actually a naive weakness to be exploited by a corrupt authority figure. What actually matters is his small social circle and continued ability to consume/reference pop culture. As you point out, the emotional payoff of the heores' willingness to sacrifice themselves must be undermined both during the scene via ridiculous framing of High Jackman's roided-out physique/choral rendition of a pop song and immediately afterwards with a joke. Because sincerity is cringe.
As an older millennial, I'm find myself generally distressed by the gleeful nihilism in pop culture and currentlu dominant political beliefs, as well as younger people's widespread insistence that work is inherently exploitative and unworthy of their full attention and commitment.
I guess that's how I know I'm getting older, since I'm complaining about Kids These Days.
Big fan since Cracked Days!
As usual, this made me think and I almost agree with the premise except...Deadpool is 100% a comedy. This flick is closer to Monty Python or Airplane esthetically, and those films are not diminished by having questionable villians. Absurdist comedies generally have ridiculous or banal villians on purpose.
Unlike Wick, Braveheart, or even most Avengers movies - which aim for emotional gravitas via some moral high ground - D&W never for one second expects you to take it seriously, and so doesn't really suffer from its vapid premise any more than Naked Gun or any Mel Brooks film does. It's just trying to make you laugh.
4 reminds me of that quote, "Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil."
Looking at the villains in the James Bond franchise backs up your thesis. Early films have traditional villains (Russia etc) but it becomes more nebulous over time with country of villainy either not specified or villains being terrorists without affiliation, acting for financial gain.
Agree that our meta culture is infighting with no clearly identifiable threat. Maybe in twenty years?
Disagree that D&W is 4.5 out of 100. It was hilarious and knew what it was and played it’s own meta critique of superhero movies well.
Not a disagreement, just an extension of your points about tribalism as operating system.
"Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn’t it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma. Reason, they argue with a compelling mix of real-life and experimental evidence, is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us.
In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment. This interactionist interpretation explains why reason may have evolved and how it fits with other cognitive mechanisms. It makes sense of strengths and weaknesses that have long puzzled philosophers and psychologists―why reason is biased in favor of what we already believe, why it may lead to terrible ideas and yet is indispensable to spreading good ones."
https://sites.google.com/site/hugomercier/theargumentativetheoryofreasoning
I absolutely love your work. All of it.
Yeah, I don't agree. Maybe on a meta-level, but I sincerely doubt this was the message people tried to convey when writing these scripts and filming these films. They want to pay their mortgages, and thus write stuff that sells.
Everything really doesn't need to be navelgazed.
But the point is that this is the kind of thing you have to tap into in order to pay your mortgage; you have to write a movie that’s in touch with the millions of people who go to see it. And that means your movie has to reflect cultural beliefs about the world, including ones you might just have yourself.
It doesn’t have to be a case of trying to explain these beliefs, or to challenge them. It doesn’t even have to be conscious; usually creating anything successful is a brutally Darwinian process. It’s just saying a successful thing will reflect something about a society in a similar way to a candle guiding moths towards it: the success is hacking into something, whether it intends to influence or not.
This is kind of what people mean when they say all art is political. I’m sure this movie didn’t set out to advance any particular policy in the real world. But it did set out to be successful, which means it must reflect something about the worldview of its audience. And that will mean it says something about the audience, just incidentally
Interesting point, and maybe why this Deadpool fell really flat with me, as I don't have a lot of sentimentality about cancelled superhero movies.
That said, the villains of Top Gun 2022 are obviously supposed to be Iranians. There's no other country that makes sense. And, of course, that's a country who we definitely haven't been fighting an on-off will they or won't they proxy war for the last decade-plus.
I have to say I've lived in an odd state of existence from the first time I watched empire strikes back and firmly believed the rebels to be the villains and got decimated for this concert by my 4th grade class. It's wild to finally come across some reasoning for the unified antagonist for the view defaulting to the POV no matter how destructive they are to a galaxy. Removing an empire that removed slavery and moderated all trade agreements with one politicians daughter and some rag tag space hillbillies with a hardon for destruction. Especially when it has millions of casualties.
You actually pointed out the assumption of heroics in this book is full of spiders. Basically only Amy needs to refute their role so deeply that it's awe inspiring. As though she needed her hero role like the religion lovers need their god. Like it's beyond a need for water. Allowing her to do as they do and ignore all glaringly logical fallacies seen or presented.
Actually another example of my brain being awkwardly out of step was after first reading the bible I thought the devil was the good guy. The serpent gave knowledge like Prometheus gave fire. He tried to give Jesus food and water in the desert. He pleaded with Abraham not to kill his son. God required a piece of your dick just to get him not to wreck you for no reason. He was a monster until apparently he decided to invite everyone to heaven after the murder of his son. Sounds like a trap to me.
Despite the notable perception flaws I still see where you're coming from with Deadpool & Wolverine, but very deeply I found myself disliking many pieces of it. Despite following a lot of the Deadpool formula it had such crazy amounts of Disney propagandized nonsense. Like good job Disney with the R rating but stop acting like blade isn't rebooted because of racism and no way to jam Disney into it enough.
And although our unified hatred has averted away from avenues for the continued influx of money it didn't dissipate at all. It just shifted from countries to demographics. 9/11 had unified hatred not to Iraq or al Qaeda but rather any person of Muslim faith or descending from the middle east. Trump has zealots in mass willing to blindly follow his every statement despite his IQ being estimated at under 80. It's because that asshole gave them the okay to unify their hate towards woman or immigrants or anything they feel like assaulting. They think they're heroes and everyone else is worse than any monster or alien seen before. 🤷🏻♂️ But alas this is my opinion which is formed via my very human brain that only grasps it's inaccurate memories built on 1% of processable environmental data so I'm probably wrong haha
“Any movement devoid of hope will quickly be devoid of members” So good!!!
The movie sucks, but you only needed point 5 for your review.
So glad you have a Substack.......