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https://www.themarysue.com/eric-kripke-on-superheroes-and-fascism/
If you’re a television fan and a consummate nerd, chances are you’ve watched at least one of Eric Kripke’s shows. The creator of beloved genre series like Supernatural, Timeless, and Revolution is currently showrunning Amazon’s The Boys, a wildly profane and violent take on superheroes gone bad and the regular Joes trying to rein them in.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kripke discusses the development of Stormfront (Aya Cash) as an antagonist, and how our current political landscape plays into tired superhero tropes.
Kripke touches on how the fascist superheroes of The Boys coincide with the rise of fascism in our country saying, “We write a lot about what frankly frustrates us. We’re living in the world’s dumbest dystopia — and we happen to have lucked into a show that is the perfect metaphor for this exact moment.”
Kripke elaborates, explaining that iconic American superheroes like Superman (and The Boys stand-in Homelander) prop up white supremacy, saying:
The myth of superheroes themselves — though often created by young Jewish writers in the ’30s and ’40s — doesn’t really apply as cleanly today, because there’s these undeniable fascist underpinnings to it. They’re there to protect white, patriotic America. That’s what they were designed to do, that’s what they do. They’re protecting the status quo. When the status quo is problematic, suddenly they become adversarial — not your hero. And I think it was written by a lot of people who at that time were trying their level best to fit in and vanish within white, American society.
Kripke continues,
“But we just don’t live in that time anymore. So the myth of the superhero taken straight, that’s where it starts to become fascist. Because they’re protecting a world that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. Superheroes are inherently MAGA. In terms of Stormfront, there was nothing specifically personal behind it. It was just, I hate Nazis. I hate alt-right white nationalism. I hate racism in all of its forms.”
Kripke makes a strong point, one that is often glossed over in mainstream superhero content. After all, “truth, justice, and the American way” is about as pro-establishment a slogan as one can get. And what happens when the people in charge, the ones tasked with leading us, are deceitful, unjust, and beholden to foreign powers?
Marvel has touched on this theme in the MCU, most notably in Captain America: Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. But the franchise is unwilling to villainize or tear down their own heroes. After all, these are family films, and the point is to make palatable entertainment for the masses.
Kripke is a fan of the MCU, but questions the relentless superhero-fication of pop culture, saying:
“I sort of believe it’s dangerous, not to overstate it or be overdramatic, but it’s a little dangerous to train an entire generation to wait for someone strong to come in and save you. That’s I think how you end up with people like Trump and populists who say, ‘I’m the only one who can come in, it’s going to be me.’ And I think in the way that pop-culture conditions people subtly, I think it’s conditioning them the wrong way — because there’s just too much of it. So I think it’s nice to have a corrective, at least a small one in us, to say, ‘They’re not coming to save you. Hold your family together and save yourselves.’”
He also pokes fun at the MCU’s all-female hero moment in Avengers: Endgame with the in-show “Girls Get It Done” ad campaign promoting the female heroines of Vought. It was a moment that was celebrated by some, but criticized for excessive pandering by others.
Kripke said, “As for ‘girls get it done,’ a lot of that came from our executive producer, Rebecca Sonneshine, who came in after the weekend Endgame opened. She was just furious. I saw it, too, and I was like, ‘That was the dumbest, most contrived—’ And she’s like, ‘Don’t get me started.’ She found it condescending and I agreed. So that just created for us a target, a satirical target. When there’s something really ridiculous in either superhero or celebrity or Hollywood culture, we’ll immediately go after it. It’s an easy shot.”
The Boys is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
(via The Hollywood Reporter, featured image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Amazon Studios)
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—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
If you’re a television fan and a consummate nerd, chances are you’ve watched at least one of Eric Kripke’s shows. The creator of beloved genre series like Supernatural, Timeless, and Revolution is currently showrunning Amazon’s The Boys, a wildly profane and violent take on superheroes gone bad and the regular Joes trying to rein them in.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kripke discusses the development of Stormfront (Aya Cash) as an antagonist, and how our current political landscape plays into tired superhero tropes.
Kripke touches on how the fascist superheroes of The Boys coincide with the rise of fascism in our country saying, “We write a lot about what frankly frustrates us. We’re living in the world’s dumbest dystopia — and we happen to have lucked into a show that is the perfect metaphor for this exact moment.”
Kripke elaborates, explaining that iconic American superheroes like Superman (and The Boys stand-in Homelander) prop up white supremacy, saying:
The myth of superheroes themselves — though often created by young Jewish writers in the ’30s and ’40s — doesn’t really apply as cleanly today, because there’s these undeniable fascist underpinnings to it. They’re there to protect white, patriotic America. That’s what they were designed to do, that’s what they do. They’re protecting the status quo. When the status quo is problematic, suddenly they become adversarial — not your hero. And I think it was written by a lot of people who at that time were trying their level best to fit in and vanish within white, American society.
Kripke continues,
“But we just don’t live in that time anymore. So the myth of the superhero taken straight, that’s where it starts to become fascist. Because they’re protecting a world that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. Superheroes are inherently MAGA. In terms of Stormfront, there was nothing specifically personal behind it. It was just, I hate Nazis. I hate alt-right white nationalism. I hate racism in all of its forms.”
Kripke makes a strong point, one that is often glossed over in mainstream superhero content. After all, “truth, justice, and the American way” is about as pro-establishment a slogan as one can get. And what happens when the people in charge, the ones tasked with leading us, are deceitful, unjust, and beholden to foreign powers?
Marvel has touched on this theme in the MCU, most notably in Captain America: Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. But the franchise is unwilling to villainize or tear down their own heroes. After all, these are family films, and the point is to make palatable entertainment for the masses.
Kripke is a fan of the MCU, but questions the relentless superhero-fication of pop culture, saying:
“I sort of believe it’s dangerous, not to overstate it or be overdramatic, but it’s a little dangerous to train an entire generation to wait for someone strong to come in and save you. That’s I think how you end up with people like Trump and populists who say, ‘I’m the only one who can come in, it’s going to be me.’ And I think in the way that pop-culture conditions people subtly, I think it’s conditioning them the wrong way — because there’s just too much of it. So I think it’s nice to have a corrective, at least a small one in us, to say, ‘They’re not coming to save you. Hold your family together and save yourselves.'”
He also pokes fun at the MCU’s all-female hero moment in Avengers: Endgame with the in-show “Girls Get It Done” ad campaign promoting the female heroines of Vought. It was a moment that was celebrated by some, but criticized for excessive pandering by others.
Kripke said, “As for ‘girls get it done,’ a lot of that came from our executive producer, Rebecca Sonneshine, who came in after the weekend Endgame opened. She was just furious. I saw it, too, and I was like, ‘That was the dumbest, most contrived—’ And she’s like, ‘Don’t get me started.’ She found it condescending and I agreed. So that just created for us a target, a satirical target. When there’s something really ridiculous in either superhero or celebrity or Hollywood culture, we’ll immediately go after it. It’s an easy shot.”
The Boys is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
(via The Hollywood Reporter, featured image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Amazon Studios)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
We’re only a scant 10 weeks out from the end of 2020, but this interminable year still has some bonkers surprises in store. Like this bizarre story about a man who released two large bags of live eels into Prospect Park Lake in Brooklyn, New York. The unnamed man dragged the bags to the shoreline of the lake, telling bystanders, “I just want to save lives.”
Releasing non-native wildlife is illegal, and can have drastic effects on the local ecosystem. These particular eels eat everything from plants to insects to frogs to fish, which could damage the local wildlife of the lake. Jason Munshi-South, an urban ecologist at Fordham University said, “People like animals and they sometimes think they’re doing a good thing by letting them go, … Most will die. Some will become a problem, and then there’s no going back.”
It is not known where the eels came from, although similar eels can be bought at a live fish market. Experts have identified them as swamp eels originating in Southeast Asia, but we still don’t know who the man was and why he decided to bag up the eels and release them in a local fishing lake.
Imagine, if you will, a man out for a jog. He runs through Prospect Park, a brief respite of greenery amidst the bustling city. He looks out upon the shimmering lake, only to watch as a black mass of tangled eels squirm about on the shoreline. If that happened to me, I would never run again. I may never even leave my apartment again. Truly, what the actual f-ck.
And while the swamp eels wouldn’t normally survive a New York winter, global warming may make the lake a more hospitable home for them. “Hooray!”, said the eels and no one else.
This bizarre news story is peak 2020: it’s strange, it’s kind of gross, and it’s utterly WTF. Garbage Bags of Eels 2020, I guess.
(via HuffPost, featured image: BORIS HORVAT/AFP via Getty Images)
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- We love the Patinkins!
SOUND UP 🐾💕 pic.twitter.com/9O43bfCyJO
— Jay Arnold 🎬 (@jadedcreative) October 16, 2020
Today is #TheBigSend where across the US we mail off our 15 MILLION!!! voter turnout letters. We wrote 250 letters. Now we switch to phone banking with https://t.co/HznikhE69I Volunteering is most effective in this final push. Keep in this fight! #GOTV #vote #TheLastWeekends pic.twitter.com/NpUpkyi47H
— Mandy Patinkin (@PatinkinMandy) October 17, 2020
Hope you’re having a safe and stress-free Saturday, Mary Suevians!
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We're back folks! Sorry for the preemption but it just gives us more to talk about! Listen to a new episode of Afronerd Radio's The Grindhouse show airing this Sunday at 6pm eastern. Your persistent AFROnerdist broadcasters will unpack the following issues: thoughts about Netflix's new urban horror comedy film, Vampires vs The Bronx; Is it the spiritual successor to John Boyega's Attack the Block?; 80s rock legend and guitar virtuoso, Eddie Van Halen, succumbs to throat cancer at 65; legendary graphic novelist, Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta) in a recent Deadline interview stated that superhero movies have "blighted culture" and that these selfsame films were "infantilizing the population"; actor, Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) in a recent Twitter post, gave righteous rage toward a casting agency looking for a certain Asian phenotype; NYCC (@Home like July's San Diego virtual convention is afoot;
Cinemax' second season of the Bruce Lee inspired Warrior series has started; it is up for speculation if there will be more seasons to follow, although it is supposed to be moving to the HBO Max streaming platform; more proposals/options for the future of the Black Panther franchise are hitting the cyberwebs post Chadwick Boseman's death; Hollywood films (like The Batman) continue to be postponed for later (hopefully post COVID-19) dates; ATL's finest, hip hop artist/entrepreneur, Killer Mike launches his own digital banking platform, Greenwood Bank; a teaser trailer of Robert Kirkman's Invincible-the comic to Amazon animated translation made it to the internets this weekend;
why are players leaving the new Marvel's Avengers video game after only a month of it's initial release?; it seems Disney plus has conceded to fan requests to organize Marvel movies in accordance to their commensurate phases and timelines....interesting; Also, non-MCU movies are being rebranded as Marvel Legacy Movies; in yet more Marvel news, Peter Parker gets yet another goateed mentor in Doctor Strange for Spiderman 3; Variety is reporting that Marvel and DC will be flooding theaters with product in '21 and '22....hopefully; And lastly, legendary director, Spike Lee in a recent Variety piece had some thoughts about Chadwick Boseman, President Trump and POC "saving" NYC in a COVID world. Call in LIVE at 508-645-0100.
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