The Hollywood-blockbuster machine

Admittedly, the label of #WorstMovieEver is probably an excessive description of the recently released film, the Avengers. In fairness to the new flick, it should be noted that my concerns noted below might more accurately be directed at the Hollywood-blockbuster machine more than at any one film in particular.

However, that admission does not exonerate this film of its grievances. Here are a few of the things I found troubling:

1. The roles of women in the film. In a list of the film's 11 stars, there's only one woman, and she isn't even a real super hero. As a society, are we comfortable admitting that for every 10 important men, there's one important woman?

Moreover, what role does she play? She's eye-candy for the film's predominantly male viewership. I'm not sure I heard a single word of dialogue between two female characters in this film. The female characters' importance is only evident in their interactions/relationships with male characters, who are in every case in this film their superiors. 

While I'm grateful this film spared us the proverbial cheesy romance between the one female lead and any/all of the film's many male protagonists, and while I acknowledge some strides made in casting women in prominent positions in society ("Pepper" (Gwyneth Paltrow) heads Stark's empire, the woman XO on the flying super-carrier), Hollywood has a long way to go before it treats men's and women's roles fairly. 

2. The lack of minorities. Outside "Nick Fury" (Samuel L. Jackson), the 11-person leading cast contains no minorities. And while I'm glad to see him portrayed as the team's leader, a single minority star in a cast of 11 is not representative of American demographics, and particularly not of the demographics of the city where it takes place. (According to some rankings, New York City is the most-diverse city on Earth.) This cast only further promulgates a society of predominantly white, predominantly male role models and leaders.

While I realize this film is an adaptation of a series of comics from a bygone era where white male supremacy and chauvinism were the norm, given the artistic license already taken in the screenplay, what would it have hurt to re-imagine some of the characters as minorities?

3. The "us-vs.-them" rhetoric and shameless pro-America propaganda. Hollywood has this funny way of serially portraying the fate of the world as resting completely in the hands of a few benevolent Americans. Are we really so egocentric as to believe America alone is capable of saving the world from impending doom, or that it would be wise for us to attempt such a task without the cooperation and participation of the remaining 95.7% of the world’s population? Moreover, where are the mediation and negotiation? Is armed conflict the only means of problem resolution?

When the Avengers discover that Nick Fury is planning to harness the power of the Tesseract to create new weapons for the American arsenal, they’re incensed. This is particularly troubling for Stark/Ironman, given his mission of disarmament. Fury argues, however, that greater weapons are needed, just to be prepared in the case of foreign/alien invasion.

This arms-race foreign policy is something we’ve seen before. Did we learn nothing from the Cold War or post-WWI Germany about the perils of weapons proliferation? Moreover, Joseph F. Smith taught:

“One thing is certain, the doctrine of peace by armed force, held to so long and tenaciously by czars, kings, and emperors, is a failure, and should without question forever be abandoned. It has been wrong from the beginning. That we get what we prepare for is literally true in this case. For years it has been held that peace comes only by preparation for war; the present conflict [World War I] should prove that peace comes only by preparing for peace” (The Improvement Era, Vol. 17, p. 1074, 1914).

The message is clear: if we want peace, we have to prepare for it and live like we want it. Arming ourselves to the teeth is a backwards approach to the issue and will only require more complicated disarmament negotiations in the end.

(Coincidentally, these historical observations and prophetic counsel on weapons proliferation and making preparations for war also form a compelling argument against gun ownership and the current interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment, but that discussion is for another post.)

And I suppose it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Thor serendipitously landed somewhere in the United States  (1.9% of Earth’s surface area) instead of the 98.1% chance he’d land anywhere else. (Superman, I suppose, had the same luck?)

Disappointingly, this film's record-shattering box-office debut only confirms that as a society, Americans (and ostensibly, humans everywhere) not only accept these Hollywood-bestowed values as our culture, we’re willing to subsidize an industry that will continue to perpetuate all this egocentric backward American propaganda thinking. For as liberal as many actors and filmmakers are, the Hollywood-propaganda machine continues to do what it always has done best: give the people what they want.