Super Privilege?

There's a very good chance that when I first got the computer I'm writing this on that it was some bollocks, possibly about comics. I've used this PC for 11 years and it has felt longer. It's never been anything special, but it has been a faithful old thing and I'm amazed it's been working so... well, since I condemned it last week. The next blog I write will probably be on the new machine - once I get that sorted out.

In many ways, what I've had rattling around the ideas section of my brain for the last few weeks could easily be posted in my politics blog, but only if I really wanted to make a big socio-political statement about something that was invented as a source of pleasure and if there was some hidden agendas in comics then I didn't see it probably because I wasn't taking men in tights too seriously or my keen mind breezed over the stark messages in search of the fantastic. Who can say?

The thing is, I saw a quote once about the Inhumans TV series which made me do one of those penny drop moments but not so much of the bleedin' obvious, more of a key to open a door to a path of looking at something in a different way. The quote was something like, 'how can you feel sympathy for a pampered royal family when the people against them are living in filth?'

Marvel's first generation of superheroes; the ones all in films and TV now, were pretty much all from privilege or were in an environment that was always better than the reality of the time 'origin' stories were set. Even Peter Parker had an upbringing bordering on middle class. The underbelly of society was always from the dregs of society; the other side of the tracks. The world of early Marvel comics was pretty much black and white and in full colour.

There's a list coming:
The Fantastic Four - Marvel's first family - I can't recall where their wealth came from. Or who paid for the rocket experiment that transformed them into superheroes. Flashbacks showed them at top universities; they were clever people, even if Ben Grimm was portrayed as having been from the wrong side but came good. Who paid for all those fantastic toys, research equipment. The FF were privileged.
Iron Man - Tony Stark. Billionaire; inherited a lot of his wealth, very clever. 'Billionaire Playboy'. He is so privileged someone wipes his arse for him.
Thor - a god. A member of the Asgardian royal family. Original human identity was Donald Blake - a doctor. Thor is privileged. And Loki - might be a frost giant elf thing but he's still royalty.
Captain America wasn't a creation of the 1960s; he does have a sense of being from a good family; not poor, but definitely not rich. As a modern superhero I've always wondered how he earned money. Oh and he was chosen to become a superhuman and his life was changed completely, most probably for the better.
Spider-Man. Okay, yeah he's an orphan, but his parents were clearly middle class. Aunt May lived in a house. They never went without. She was originally as old as Methuselah, I think pensions were involved. Parker had a good education; was a 'talented' photographer - at a time when good cameras were expensive. He might not have been privileged but he wasn't the product of poverty.
Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner - I'll give you a clue. It's in his name: Prince. Privileged.
Ant-Man and the Wasp - originally he was rich and she was an heiress. Privileged.
The Hulk - Bruce Banner worked on top secret government bomb experiments dealing with gamma radiation; he had his own private army; just because he chose to live like a hermit in the early comics doesn't mean he didn't have a bulging bank balance. Privileged.
Nick Fury - the comic version was head of a multi-government organisation and a war hero. Nuff said. Privileged.
Doctor Strange - he was a world renowned surgeon; that's got to come with a huge salary. Privileged.
The X-Men - original crew were all loaded. They were being sent to a private school funded by a bald guy who wasn't in the slightest bit creepy in a big mansion that didn't appear to have any staff, at all. Privileged.
The aforementioned Inhumans - a royal family in hiding wanting their throne back from a max brother who has returned it to the oppressed people doesn't sound like much more than an anti-communist, pro-elitist message to me. Privileged as fuck.
And don't get me started on Black Panther. Prince T'Challa? Heir to the throne of Wakanda, a super-advanced African country that chooses to hide itself from the rest of the world. A massive isolationist country that has ignored the famine, poverty and war that raged across their continent, preferring to fuck about in superhero costumes and travel to America. The privilege is dripping off these like they've walked out of the sea - the only positive thing is that they're black Africans, I suppose. Ultra-privileged black Africans...
Is it any wonder why Daredevil wasn't the most engaging superhero? I mean, in real terms he had a shitty upbringing. Orphaned, dumped in an orphanage, blind and with a mop of red hair... The thing is people will point at Ol' Hornhead and say, he wasn't privileged and to that I say, oh yes he was. He managed to become a lawyer, FFS!
Others that popped up in those early days had ambiguous pasts to suit their unknown natures - Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Silver Surfer all acted privileged when they hit the big time.
Even major supervillains were privileged. Your bog standard ones were easy to deal with, but your Doc Dooms (monarch of a European country) of the Marvel Universe were often as ambiguous in their wealth as the heroes. The evil geniuses often had money for their evil schemes; no one wondered who was financing them.
How come we never saw scenes where villains were out at nightclubs like what they do in James Bond films? Originally, Groot said considerably more than just 'I am Groot!' and he wanted to destroy the earth... How is that not an expression of privilege?

Marvel was based on money; despite the origins of the powers, to be a superhero usually meant a wealth of money, even in the 1960s when a Fantastic Quinjet-car could be knocked up for less than it costs for a mobile phone today.

DC wasn't exempt. Bruce Wayne - privileged beyond your wildest dreams.
Superman/Clark Kent - d'oh Superman.
They had scientists, explorers, test pilots, Martian royalty, princesses, industrialists, more billionaires - fuck me, the DC Universe is just as rich as Marvel's with original superheroes that haven't really changed, even today. Origins can be toyed with but Tony Stark has always been one of the richest men in the world; Peter Parker has never known what's it's like to go hungry because he's got no money. There might have been newer heroes, ones that came along from the wrong side of those tracks, but the building blocks that placed us here were all based on privilege, wealth and connections.

How come none of the modern day heroes are as iconic as these rich or privileged ones? I suppose, deep down, to have power is a privilege, so whenever someone, from whatever background they're from becomes powerful, they inherit privilege?

I also know that the Comics Code of Authority prohibited publishers from doing much at all that pushed the envelope, but the bottom line was the superhero of the 1960s - the most diverse of decades for popular culture - must have all been working for the man. Off shot, there were business executives doing multi-billion dollar deals with the government (or maybe even governments) to finance their 'adventures'. How else could you explain not only the mind tom come up with a portal to the Negative Zone, let alone the machinery and skill required to build one. "Reed, you need to come up with a machine that will send this alternative reality Spider-Man back to his own universe and change their history so that coffee becomes the beverage of choice." "Oh okay. It's going to cost about 8 trillion dollars and about 9 months to build. Have you checked the bank account, Sue?" It never happened, did it?

In the films, Stark Industries was, by and large, a massive corporation with directors and executives, all drawing large salaries making money selling Stark's wares to anyone but the military, because Tony was off building an army of different Iron Man costumes, robots, AI supervillains and being a renowned international playboy... Did the man never sleep? The thing is they must have been generating a tremendous profit over and above overheads and he was spaffing it on making toys with more power than small European countries, so he could defend the world from cosmic threats and wankers. What did shareholders think? "I only got a $200 bonus. Stark built a machine that can wank him off while he dreams up new ways of being wanked off..."

I remember the more sophisticated comics fan lauding the 'realism' being introduced into comics - social issues; world issues all being covered in comics and I suppose it was better than it had felt. The thing is superheroes exist in a world with superheroes - it is accepted that because super people exist in this fictional reality, everyone accepts it. The fact we don't actually have superheroes in the real world is easily explained by two things - superpowers don't exist and even in this world of celebrity culture, you'd have to be some special kind of cockwomble to dress up and fight crime.

Pop Culture is Dead to Me, Part 219½

Television and film is coming thick and fast at the moment, so much so that we're freely giving up on things as quickly as possible so not to waste what's left of our life on pointless bollocks. This is a practice that hasn't paid dividends so far... Let me explain:

Star Trek: Black Female Jesus Saves the Universe Again and Again

Or Disco Very as we (well 'I') call it. This is fucking awful. I mean I don't even feel bad about saying it's fucking awful because it's fucking awful. It has steadily gone down a wormhole that has done nothing but accentuate how idiotic and stupid the people behind this fucking awful piece of shit must have been and still are. There are a couple of mildly interesting characters - the ugly horse alien and former captain with the wiggly ear glands; the fat sweary girl who's been canned and the gay, slightly-autistic chief engineer, who has stopped being interesting - outside of that, it's just fucking awful. Gene Roddenberry's ghost should be haunting whatever fucker is responsible for this fucking awful heap of shit.

Chapelwaite

A sort of prequel to Salem's Lot and (loosely) based on the short story Jerusalem's Lot by Stephen King. It stars Adrien Brody - you know the Oscar-winning serious thesp. My personal jury is still out on this; it was relentlessly grim, full of nasty characters and was genuinely creepy until episode four when... ah but that would spoil it. So, here's a kind of metaphor: the first SK book I read was Salem's Lot. I knew nothing about it when I bought it and for the first 200 pages it creeped me out. Then the fact the book was about vampires sort of diminished it and while it was a cracking vampire novel I felt it lost something being about something tired and old. This series also starts off very creepy and weird and quickly descends into 'campire' nonsense, with laughable villains and an almost paint by numbers plot. The only genuinely odd thing about it was the ending. My advice is it's much better than Midnight Mass but that doesn't set the bar particularly high.

Midnight Mass

Everybody was raving about this overlong, wordy and ultimately fucking awful vampire series. The pandemic has meant a raft of TV shows and one can only hope that when this is all over all these people will have died so they don't ever make another TV show ever again...

The Wheel of Time

Or Boring Boring Fantasy Boring. How do people make TV series like this and keep a straight face when they're delivering their lines? Does Rosamund Pike really need the work? She's an executive producer on this and one wonders if that was to tempt her in or if she's really a fantasy geek? Either way, she should have known better. As fantasy series go, apart from being dreadfully dull it's also fucking awful.

Hawkeye

This is fucking awful...

Aha, fooled you. This is actually the best thing I've seen on TV this year* and plays out like a slightly overlong feature film. I'm looking forward to clumping them all together and watching it as a film in a few months. It feels like an Avengers movie without most of the Avengers in it and also is another link to Marvel series from the past. It isn't over yet, it concludes next week, but I do think we're going to see a cameo from Daredevil. The Steinfeld girl is both really annoying and incredibly lovely and I was very impressed with the reveal, very early on, that Clint is almost as deaf as a post. Cracking TV.

*It's not, but it might be the best Marvel series so far

Superman & Lois

Anyone who knows me knows that around 1986 I kind of discovered Superman. Don't get me wrong, he'd been around for quite some time, but I always found him to be a bit... DC. Therefore a huge thanks to a bunch of creators who changed my perception of Superman, because by the late 1990s it was one of the few comics I was still reading (despite having deteriorated in quality from a high point in the mid 1990s). As a result, I have a weird soft spot in my heart for the big blue and this TV series was nowhere near that soft spot. I have struggled with DC's TV adaptations and pretty much avoided this when it first came out mainly because Tyler Hoechlin is the least super Superman I've ever seen.

However, watching it on BBC1 - harking back to the nostalgic days of Lois & Clark - it has proved to be slightly better than I thought. I like the idea, even if Lois looks a bit like a cross between a dead Margot Kidder and the ugly horse alien from ST:BFJSTUAAA. The kids are almost believable too and did anyone notice that Dylan Walsh plays Lois's dad - he was the straight (as in not crooked) guy from Nip/Tuck.

Doom Patrol

Do you remember last time? When I was just about ready to kick this series into touch? We were about a third of the way through the third series and I couldn't understand where it was going or why it was going in the direction it was. Then it all started to fall into place. Yes, some of the characters just seemed to be flopping about, treading water and there didn't seem to be any direction any more; just a group of weird characters knocking round a big mansion and the introduction of Michelle Gomez seemed like a stupid idea rather than an act of genius; then after that seeming nadir episode where I wanted to stop watching it suddenly started to make sense and in the end it was a dazzling example of how to write a superhero story without any heroics, no real villains and keep it fresh and weird.

I have no idea where this series is going to go now that Cliff is a 50 foot tall robot, Larry has a new passenger, Vic is no longer a cyborg and Rita is a proper no-holds-barred superhero. Frankly, I have no interest in what they do to Jane because I think they fucked up her character in season two and have struggled with her ever since; we need to see more of her superpowered alter egos not less of them.

Dexter: New Blood

It's great, except... is it? Yes, it's much better than the last couple of Dexter series but I always feel the word 'contrived' applies to this character. It's good to have him back and his dark passenger, but... did I say contrived?

The Walking Dead franchise

Let's just say that Fear the Walking Dead almost became essential viewing for a couple of years; Lennie James introduction and the Mad Max feel to it made it almost light relief from the main feature. However, the last couple of years have been poor, culminating in a nuclear disaster that has you scratching your head at times. 

The World Beyond - the series looking at life 10+ years after the apocalypse and featuring New Age Nazis the Civic Republic started badly and deteriorated beyond the 'fucking awful' stage and well into the 'who the fuck gave this the green light?' If the ultimate aim of the two series was to reintroduce us to Jaden (sp) the dumpster lady who saved Rick Grimes as a wannabe Nazi storm trooper then it succeeded. It offered us a clue to Rick's fate and introduced us to a new generation of utterly shite actors. I really don't want to upset overweight people, but one of the lead characters in this spent 9 months on the road, in a world that has little in the way of provisions and she was arguably a more rotund young lady at the end than she was at the beginning. It's like Tilly in ST:BFJSTUAAA surely a thousand years in the future if you had body size issues you'd just hop into a transporter and get them to lop a few kilos off? It was a fucking awful two-series fart and the sooner they finish this entire franchise off the better.

Dr Who: Flux

Is something I rather enjoyed even if it often made little or no sense and I couldn't quite fathom the significance of many of the characters because the writer didn't bother to explain. Chibnall's run on the good DW has been woeful; Jodie Whitaker just a little too in-yer-face and the supporting cast have struggled (although Mandip Gill has been excellent and hopefully will remain for a while). There are three more specials before RTD comes back. I think any casual viewer will just hope that this means stories that make some sense and have some fun and wonder about them. It all got a bit too PC and earnest...

We finally got around to watching season one of Fargo and I recommend anyone who hasn't seen it to watch it. We're going into seasons 2-4 in the New Year. We also dipped into a number of things and quickly dipped out. Foundation being an excellent example; we gave it three episodes before we started to lose the will to live. 

Moving onto films...

Dune

Very enjoyable in a not a lot happens kind of way. It looks fantastic and I expect the next two parts will cement it into cinematic history or something...

Shang Chi and the Legends of the Ten Rings

I expected more and less at the same time. It was an okay fun film but... I think we're seeing Marvel struggling with films featuring second rate heroes and also getting too clever with themselves. I always felt when Kevin Feige confirmed that the trailer did indeed have Wong fighting the Abomination that this was a red herring and so it proved to be. In fact, Trevor Slattery aside, this felt like an attempt to shoehorn in as much of the MCU past as it could. I expect I will enjoy it better in a couple of years when I watch it again, but ultimately it felt empty, pointless and a bit unnecessary. 

Free Guy

Was fucking awful, but also a bit of fun, but on the whole it was fucking awful and Jodie Comer was wasted (metaphorically, not literally... or is that the other way around?)

The Green Knight

Was The Guardian's #2 film of the year. I'll go along with the #2 bit. It was as boring a piece of shit as I can remember. It looked very nice, but it was unbelievably dull and left me thinking that people who liked this film probably also like modern art or will spend £50 on a shin of beef or mac and cheese at a Michelin starred restaurant... I like Dev Patel, but he's lost and a little wasted in this pretentious load of old wank (literally, but don't watch it just for that or like a warm bland wank you will be disappointed).

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Really? I mean REALLY? This was worse than fucking awful and seems to exist entirely for the post credit scene where Eddie and Venom are transported into the actual MCU proper as opposed to the Sony pocket universe. FFS, even the special effects are crap. This is a film that was so weak and flimsy it struggled to make it to the 90 minute mark including aeons of credits. Sony needs to look at Fox's Marvel output and decide whether they want the future ridicule...

I haven't seen Eternals yet, I expect that will be available the second week of the New Year. Like Shang Chi, I had no real investment in these Marvel characters in the 1970s either and the reviews ranging from 'Watches like a Powerpoint explainer presentation' to 'Very dull and boring' don't augur well for a fun night in. With the latest Spider-Man film hitting cinemas about now, I expect that will be a spring thing for the Hall house and I expect by the end of it the Marvel MCU will probably be missing a Spider-Man.

If there was more and forgot it then ask yourself why I forgot it and don't bother...

Hah Bumhug - Phil's Christmas Message

"Christmas is something that should be held like the Olympics. Every four years, in some other fuckers country" is probably my most creative description of my general disdain for Christmas. It's largely down to three things - age, time and no children and therefore no grandchildren. For many years Christmas represented that midwinter break where we did fuck all and felt zero guilt or remorse. When I used to lie in, it was a group of days where I could simply lounge, but in the grand scheme of things I've usually viewed the day itself as like a Sunday but very quiet, with nearly all the shops shut.

It's also a period where we have to suffer looking back over the previous year as the media and communications industry slaps itself on the back (backs?). Remembering everyone who's died. Christmas specials. Whamageddon. Fucking cheerful people. Well, bad syntax, but you know what I mean. The Festive Season brings an entire train of anything you can shoehorn into the Holiday banner. Do you know, someone said to me the other day that Elf was a Christmas Classic Film© and I've never, ever, seen it and NO. I have no intention of seeing it. It's on my not to see list along with Titanic, Moulin Rouge and any Fast & Furious film. But, A Christmas Classic? If it makes someone happy and it's not starting a war, but... you know... Elf? 

It's all part of the getting-into-the-spirit thing that apparently is infectious - a bit like COVID - and before you know it we have a pandemic of happiness all around, shining through the dark nights and making us all lovely human beings again - for one night only - before we return to our Grinch-like hovels waiting for the moment we can take it all down because you'll be finding pine needles in your knickers in August. 

The thing is, I get it. It's why there are 60 odd midwinter festivals throughout the world and its numerous cultures and religions. They all started long before we invented God; midwinter represented a turning point but also a very low point - the three weeks either side of the solstice are often the grimmest and despite the worst months of winter usually still to come, the sun gets higher in the sky and subconsciously we start to think of spring and not just the relentless dullness of existence...

The idea of festivals was around long before fairy tales and the idea of festivals was to bring a little lightness, some relief, some thanks that for the sun coming back and it won't be long before we can go back to another year of relentless grind and misery to do it all again next year. It's human existence, ennit?

I believe I marvelled at Christmas in my earliest years because it was in Canada, it was always snowy and the streets looked like hundreds of Santa's grottos one after the other. Christmas on Canadian streets in the late 1960s was ignorant of the concept of light pollution and it was magical. It's probably why I have soft spots for Charlie Brown's Christmas, Burl Ives and White Christmas because I associate them with a time when I saw it through a child's eyes. I think people who embrace Christmas in ludicrous extremes are just capable of recreating or continuously attempting to recreate a time when their lives were so much simpler. If the worst thing that happened each year was the family row at Christmas, then invite as many living family members as possible.

The thing is there are a few things that are easily excusable about not enjoying Christmas. People who have lost loved ones. Those in abusive relationships. The people who are alone and have no one to share a small part of their lives with. People of different religions and cultures. It's why the term 'Happy Holidays' is used, despite it actually being invented by a Jewish card manufacturer, who got fed up with Christmas being seen as more important that Hanukkah or any of the other festivals different people celebrate and created the term so it was seen as ALL INCLUSIVE rather than an attempt to ban Christmas. Only idiots, xenophobes and cunts think that.

The concluding week or so of December should be spent as close to the things we love as humanly possible or whatever the most appropriate alternative is because I can't believe there are people out there who wouldn't want to see every person, good or bad, black or white have a moment of joy and peace sharing with someone else? I mean, we're entering, if not in, the sixth extinction event and by the time it's finished there'll only be about 5% of humanity left and today's disgruntled present receivers will be grateful for simply finding a 30-year-old tin of prunes in 31 years time...