> "All he ever wants is to be the most powerful person he can be, even though he’s completely inadequate in his abilities to handle it. So it’s white male victimisation and unchecked ambition. And those issues just happened to reflect the guy who, it’s just still surreal to say it, was fucking president of the United States"
Curious to what "white male victimisation" meant in this context it's apparently this idea that white men cannot be victims, or that issues they are concerned with don't matter.
He's pretty f'd up. He's a villain for sure, but he has a host of issues himself. It's a more honest portrayal of what someone with near infinite strength and powers would become. You see it this season too after <spoiler> some of the boys take V and they all become terrible </spoiler>.
So it seems you missed the point. The world's strongest, deadliest, most powerful person, Homelander, feels like a victim because people aren't constantly praising every little thing he does.
He has literally no limits on what he is allowed to do. He can do whatever, rape whoever, kill whoever, etc., with impunity. And he does. And he still feels like he is the victim. (Note: Homelander is a more nuanced and sympathetic character in the TV show than he is in the comics, where he's more one-dimensional.)
And that's where the critique of the "white male victimization" comes in, especially with respect to Trump. Trump, like Homelander, was for 4 years the most powerful man in the world. He literally broke dozens of laws without consequence, not including all of the laws he broke without consequence before he became president. And he still felt like the victim because people weren't praising him as the next coming of Jesus.
You are unironically proving the point. It means painting yourself as a victim when you are the one with the power. And yes there are plenty of negative generalizations applied to other races.
Your power is making it all the way to adulthood, literate, apparently aware of the external world and at least some of its history, without ever noticing that you've been "[seeing] other races or genders described in that manner when a individual member of a group acts in a particular way" for your entire life.
Fairnuf. But why attribute this to white males only? Thats just stupid. Mao anyone? Winnie the pooh? Saddam Hussein? Plenty of nonwhite people suffering from the same symptoms.. I so would wish thsy americans would travel outside of the us once in a while.
That's a lot of words, but the only support I could find that "rightwing fanbase" is upset is this one tweet from someone with 65k followers from the article:
> And last week, writer Ryan Broderick posted some outraged screengrabs from Reddit. One read: “Was really liking Blue Hawk until the end of his speech’. Another read “There’s no need to apologize for helping eliminate criminals.” These fans, Broderick claimed, have been patiently waiting for Homelander’s redemption arc. Now that it seems as if it won’t be coming, they’re angry about being tricked into liking the villain.
I love the show but I think that scene was a little too cartoonish. Normally Boys is a noir where every character, with few exceptions, is neither good nor bad. Even the evil Homelander is nuanced enough to be interesting. This was just lazy writing.
> And Rick and Morty had a decent shot at the title a few years ago, when fans furious that their favourite show had the temerity to hire a female writer published her personal details online.
I have never heard about this. I feel like there's a whole sub-genre of articles that are reactions to anon twitter reactions. Where do they find this stuff? It's weird coming from a major newspaper.
I'm reminded of this HN comment by gwd, specifically:
In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.
I think the most pressing concept in The Boys is that power corrupts and the more powerful you are, the more disconnect you feel from the little guy.
<-- Potential Spoilers ahead -->
We are told that the ends justify the means, but it becomes increasingly obvious that the means are just an arms race between right cunts as Butcher puts it. And not one person in the show with superpowers hesitates for a microsecond to achieve a variety of selfish goals (usually involving revenge/violence), collateral damage be damned in the process, with the slight exception of Starlight.
I just find the whole thing funny. This season is simply outrageous and the more outrageous it gets the more often show runners have to publicly state where they stand politically and try to squeeze some weird messaging into the show
It reminds me the Watchmen. Alan Moore talked about how he despised the fans that identified with Rorschach :
Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, ‘I am Rorschach! That is my story!’ And I’ll be thinking, ‘Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?’”
A few years after this interview he wrote the TV show, where the main antagonists are the Seventh Kavalry, a white supremist group that follows Rorschach's teachings.
Alan Moore's not associated with HBO's Watchmen show. In fact, if you're seeing a version of his work on TV, in movies, or... any other format than his original comic you can be assured not only does he have nothing to do with it but he likely despises it.
I like this quote from Lindelof - the HBO Watchmen showrunner - on Quartz's piece for the show's debut[1], “There is no version of Watchmen I could make that would please him. Not only that, but there’s no version of Watchmen I could make that he would ever watch.”.
Moore's a genius and the HBO Watchmen show's amazing. I adore that both coexist.
Disclaimer: I don't watch The Boys, and I didn't read the article, but I have to ask, "who cares?" No one needs the support of people who deny others' rights to health, public safety, and love; and who push, explicitly or implicitly, for a theocracy. "Not all right-wingers" -- but enough of them to poison the group.
From what I've read about The Boys and one character's intentional parallels to Trump, it reminds of John Walker in Falcon & Winter Soldier. He was clearly meant to be an example of a terrible person and a murderer, despite the message he wanted to embody, and yet so many people cheered him on, agreed with him, and even praised his anger-fueled, brutal summary execution of someone who was, at worst, guilty by association of the crime he was being murdered for. Too many people in the real world are evil, thinking they are good, which is the worst kind of evil.
I haven't watched the current season (watched the first and lost interest) but this part caught my eye.
"He’s given an open platform on a rightwing news network. His popularity soars after he starts saying the worst things possible. He becomes the head of an over-reaching corporation and immediately finds himself out of his depth. He’s a self-destructive mixture of professional ambition and personal insecurity."
Doesn't that sound even more like Elon Musk? Either way it sounds like there's a lot that would cause a right-wing fan base to turn on them, but it still seems like an important difference.
27 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 68.2 ms ] threadCurious to what "white male victimisation" meant in this context it's apparently this idea that white men cannot be victims, or that issues they are concerned with don't matter.
So it seems you missed the point. The world's strongest, deadliest, most powerful person, Homelander, feels like a victim because people aren't constantly praising every little thing he does.
He has literally no limits on what he is allowed to do. He can do whatever, rape whoever, kill whoever, etc., with impunity. And he does. And he still feels like he is the victim. (Note: Homelander is a more nuanced and sympathetic character in the TV show than he is in the comics, where he's more one-dimensional.)
And that's where the critique of the "white male victimization" comes in, especially with respect to Trump. Trump, like Homelander, was for 4 years the most powerful man in the world. He literally broke dozens of laws without consequence, not including all of the laws he broke without consequence before he became president. And he still felt like the victim because people weren't praising him as the next coming of Jesus.
Well that's not entirely true, I see it when I study pre-WWII Germany in reference to things like "Jewish complaints".
> yes there are plenty of negative generalizations applied to other races.
Can you find another example of one from the guardian?
> And last week, writer Ryan Broderick posted some outraged screengrabs from Reddit. One read: “Was really liking Blue Hawk until the end of his speech’. Another read “There’s no need to apologize for helping eliminate criminals.” These fans, Broderick claimed, have been patiently waiting for Homelander’s redemption arc. Now that it seems as if it won’t be coming, they’re angry about being tricked into liking the villain.
I love the show but I think that scene was a little too cartoonish. Normally Boys is a noir where every character, with few exceptions, is neither good nor bad. Even the evil Homelander is nuanced enough to be interesting. This was just lazy writing.
> And Rick and Morty had a decent shot at the title a few years ago, when fans furious that their favourite show had the temerity to hire a female writer published her personal details online.
I have never heard about this. I feel like there's a whole sub-genre of articles that are reactions to anon twitter reactions. Where do they find this stuff? It's weird coming from a major newspaper.
In superhero comic books and movies, the real superpower is certainty. The good guys always know who the bad guys are; it's just a matter of defeating them. In the real world, we have plenty of power to defeat the bad guys; it's just not always clear who the bad guys are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26619006
It seems as if The Boys is playing with that concept and blowing minds.
Yeah, it's crazy. It's almost as if comic books and superhero media hadn't already been playing with that concept for decades.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
<-- Potential Spoilers ahead -->
We are told that the ends justify the means, but it becomes increasingly obvious that the means are just an arms race between right cunts as Butcher puts it. And not one person in the show with superpowers hesitates for a microsecond to achieve a variety of selfish goals (usually involving revenge/violence), collateral damage be damned in the process, with the slight exception of Starlight.
Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, ‘I am Rorschach! That is my story!’ And I’ll be thinking, ‘Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?’”
A few years after this interview he wrote the TV show, where the main antagonists are the Seventh Kavalry, a white supremist group that follows Rorschach's teachings.
I like this quote from Lindelof - the HBO Watchmen showrunner - on Quartz's piece for the show's debut[1], “There is no version of Watchmen I could make that would please him. Not only that, but there’s no version of Watchmen I could make that he would ever watch.”.
Moore's a genius and the HBO Watchmen show's amazing. I adore that both coexist.
1 - https://qz.com/quartzy/1732050/why-alan-moore-wants-nothing-...
From what I've read about The Boys and one character's intentional parallels to Trump, it reminds of John Walker in Falcon & Winter Soldier. He was clearly meant to be an example of a terrible person and a murderer, despite the message he wanted to embody, and yet so many people cheered him on, agreed with him, and even praised his anger-fueled, brutal summary execution of someone who was, at worst, guilty by association of the crime he was being murdered for. Too many people in the real world are evil, thinking they are good, which is the worst kind of evil.
"He’s given an open platform on a rightwing news network. His popularity soars after he starts saying the worst things possible. He becomes the head of an over-reaching corporation and immediately finds himself out of his depth. He’s a self-destructive mixture of professional ambition and personal insecurity."
Doesn't that sound even more like Elon Musk? Either way it sounds like there's a lot that would cause a right-wing fan base to turn on them, but it still seems like an important difference.