What would surprise Captain America?

[lolaraincoat]

I've been reading a lot of Avengers fics - there's been a lot to read - and I've been liking many of these fics quite a lot. Except that there's this one thing that's driving me crazy, so crazy that I keep having to back-button out of perfectly good fics before Nick Fury and the Hulk can even begin to get their freak on, which is kind of tragic.

Comments

[amanuensis1]

Ooh, this was WONDERFUL. Because I've had this same perception that writers are naïve-ing Steve on the wrong things, but I lack enough social history understanding to know what would be the big things. The thing about the middle class--I did not realize that!

[lolaraincoat]

Thank you! I'm glad you're reading and hope this was helpful.

[iibnf]

What about if someone hid behind a door and jumped out and yelled boo when he walked through? That'd surprise him.

[lolaraincoat]

Hee! Good point. That WOULD surprise him!

[heidi8]

This is absolutely fantastic and a good view backwards and forwards of history. Thank you for writing it

Status: It's Complicated

[executrix]

A complicating factor in depicting The Good Old Days in movies is that a lot of literal-minded viewers believe that any depiction is an uncomplicated endorsement by the filmmaker. So period-realistic racism is likely to be treated as the filmmaker's own attitude.

OTOH the filmmaker might have *chosen* to make a period film precisely to wallow in a time when everybody not resembling the fillmaker Knew Their Place...

I'm 59, and from Brooklyn, and there weren't any black kids in the public schools I went to either--not because of de jure segregation but because of housing segregation.

Re: Status: It's Complicated

[lolaraincoat]

Yes to all this. And we've seen that kind of criticism of TV which does attempt to reproduce historical racial realities - think of the people who complain that Mad Men is racist because it shows so many white characters happily and unconsciously benefiting from the racial hierarchy of their society, and no character ever really grasps that they're doing this, much less thinks it's wrong. (At least as far as season four - I haven't seen S5 yet.) I say that Mad Men is historically accurate in depicting racism; others see that same thing as wallowing in racism.

Mad Men may be a tiny bit more invested in, let's say, realism than the Marvel movie-verse is, though.

Re: Status: It's Complicated

[executrix]

There's a certain Expressionist quality to MadMen, and I don't think anybody would be particularly surprised if, say, Don pushed a swivel chair containing a client through a plate-glass window like Angel did in AtS 101, or a Kraken came up out of the elevator in the series finale.

I suspect Roger Sterling may be aware--and grateful--of the extent to which he benefits by racism. I bet he'd echo Spike's comment in "Pangs" that yeah, we conquered them and took their stuff, and who's gonna stop us?

[snegurochka_lee]

*tips historical hat* Fantastic post! This isn't my fandom, but I love all your points and clarifications for people writing in this fandom. It's funny how the general cultural view of history, without further training or study, is to assume chronological "progress" -- as though the '40s had to have been more prudish than the '50s, because they came first. :/

♥

[lolaraincoat]

Yes exactly! It's like there's two stages of historical ignorance: first, there are people who think that nothing changes at all except the specific thing that interests them; second (and slightly less annoyingly to me) there are people who get that stuff changes, but assume that all change moves in a single direction.

I sometimes tell my students that my mother, born in 1937, has had a much more serially-monogamous and sexually unadventurous life than her mother, born in 1915.