this is a good video. it makes a lot of really great points about the mcu and i think you should watch it. but i want to nitpick about one thing.
at around 11:10, the channel's titular detective says of the mcu's villains that
"When we take a look through the pantheon of marvel's supervillains and evil masterminds, we immediately notice that nearly all of them strive to destroy or disrupt the status quo in some way. In short, they seek structural change. Now, granted, it's mostly bad, authoritarian change, but..."
i want to zero in on the use of the word "authoritarian" here. the argument of this video is that marvel superheroes exist only as reactionary forces who defend the status quo rather than try to transform the world as it exists, while the villains are the ones who DO want to change things but in such a violent way that their entire argument is conveniently nullified. i agree with this argument and i think the video does a good job justifying it.
but there's a missed opportunity here in this subtle deployment of "bad, authoritarian," what feels to me like a little slipup of ideology.
why is it that the villains seeking to impose a new order are "authoritarian," but the heroes seeking to maintain the current order aren't? "authoritarian" is a slippery word, we like to use it when talking about dictators saying "kill the minorities" or just, generally, to describe when politicians work against the will of the people. except when it's in america for some reason! american politicians aren't authoritarian because they are, erm, "elected." sure they do things against the will of the people, but they can't just get away with it, there's a whole series of checks and balances and democracy and and and
and yet they get away with it anyway. every single time. no one in san francisco wants the cops to have killer robots, but the city council gave them killer robots anyway. is that not authoritarian? oppressed people in cities across the nation begged for police to be defunded if not abolished, and now they're getting more money than ever. is that not authoritarian? rail workers are currently being forced by the government to accept a contract they don't want in order to avert a strike that could grind the US economy to a halt. is that not authoritarian? is that not the textbook definition of a politician enforcing strict obedience to authority?
this postulated nature of mcu villains to want "bad, authoritarian change" feels of a distant piece with liberals who desperately pearlclutch at the simple verbal utterance of the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat." but dictatorships are bad! that's when the authoritarians dictate their will and the people just have to do it!
unlike in america where we have to work despite being in the midst of a lethal pandemic. unlike in america where housing is unaffordable, health insurance is tied to employment, and public transportation basically doesn't exist. just because there isn't a single guy standing behind a podium explicitly saying "the cost of entry into american society is a car, a mortgage, and a job at lockheed martin" doesn't mean it's not an authoritarian order. just because no one in charge is out and out saying you have no other choice doesn't magically give you other choices. "freedom of choice" is moloch's favorite song because it sounds so sweet. but everyone i know who had to get off medicaid when they were forced economically incentivized to get a job they didn't want says their employer-provided insurance is worse. a friend who had top surgery scheduled has to start the process all over now!
we live in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. the ruling class owns the media, owns the means of media production, owns the insurance companies, owns the tech corporations, owns the politicians. our psychosphere is shaped by the messages they allow to spread. isn't it funny how after the george floyd uprisings of 2020 were crushed, mainstream news media all but stopped talking about them and then stopped covering protest at all? isn't it conspicuous that now it seems like all that energy we had has just vanished into thin air? it's almost like the ruling class circled the wagons and refused to acknowledge the widely popular demand for massive systemic change.
but to just cut this down to the final quick, i'm gonna go ahead and suggest that "authoritarian" is a functionally useless term. anyone in a position of power is an "authoritarian" whether they're a federal judge or a postal worker. to pose democracy as the opposite of "authoritarianism" is like saying that rain is the opposite of water. this attitude comes from a deeply entrenched liberal misconception that democracy is what happens when The People choose to make things happen. as opposed to communism, uh, where The People, um
you see what i mean? it's all just uninformed moralizing gobbledygook meant to deliberately obscure the material reality of oppressive systems. there is no conceivable human system which can ever hope to avoid the presence of individuals making choices on behalf of the masses. there will always be people wielding authority, and there will always be malcontents, always be victims, always be the dissatisfied.
this does not negate the simple fact that if we had a dictatorship of the proletariat in america, over a million human beings would be alive today who died of covid in the last two years. and that's to say nothing of the endless swathes of human beings who've been slaughtered on the altar of capitalism through the process of organized abandonment.
we must understand that the status quo is COERCIVELY ENFORCED. the villains of the mcu often come from a working class background, know many who were in the same position, who share common cause with oppressed people. the avengers are rich corporate gods who never even attempt to use their powers proactively to help people. why is it then that the villain's plot is more "authoritarian" than the hero's? this in itself reveals how useless "authoritarian" is as a word, because it dilutes all political conflict to just two guys wielding authority. it treats the entire spectrum of human political reality as if it is a duel between two gentlemen, one of whom is an honorless scoundrel destined to lose for his duplicity. funny how that works!
anyway the video does a good job of explaining why the mcu has no regard for mass movements and its use of "bad, authoritarian change" just happened to jump out at me because i've been reflecting a lot on "authoritarianism" recently and felt like this was a good vehicle for talking about it. anyway go watch that video it's good
i wrote this. gonna use vidrev to share any thoughts i have about the video essays i watch (i watch a lot of them). anyway here's some thoughts on "authoritarianism"