Loose Canon: Captain America

So I'm here on Patreon after watching this video of yours - I enjoyed it so much that I had to become a backer :) I found your Nostalgia Chick Titanic video first and then that led me to your other videos. Really enjoy listening to your opinions, you express yourself so well!

Sarah

That was great stuff. I was little annoyed at the "Hydra did everything" reveal, but I liked the fact that they were corrupting SHIELD - it really went with the theme about the obsession with secrecy and unaccountable power being fundamentally bad things.

Brett

Another great episode! Thanks do much for these Lindsay. Gave me a lot of laughs as well as some things to think about. Keep up the great work.

Dean Madden

Woot--awesome rundown, though I will respectfully disagree about Earth's Mightiest Heroes, which was an awesome series (the first season especially), IMO. Also, nice touch with the hair--assuming it was supposed to evoke comparison to Agent Carter's...;)

Ed

Loved this! Thanks so much. Obviously Captain America is my favorite thing of all things, so this was just great. I disagree with a FEW things (mostly the Hydra reveal being lame - the long and the short of being that just because Hydra heavily influenced foreign policy, etc, it doesn't mean EVERYTHING was a direct result of their influence, but they help stoke the flames, etc) and the fact that not everyone was a racist, even a casual one, in the 1940s. But as you brought up - different universe perhaps, so different rules. One of my favorite panels from Brubaker's run was where Steve's being treated by a black doctor and he just -assumes- she's a nurse (since she's black) and when she gets offended and tells him she's a doctor, he's like legitimately happy and proud of her. Its one of the best Steve scenes in the entire canon. Anyway, this was great. You looked great, too, by the way. I can't wait for the next one! Out of curiosity - what is your (or any commenters) views on the idea that Steve Rogers may be/could be/should be bisexual? It's a big conversation topic on Tumblr and Twitter, and just curious what you think. And well, I'll go ahead and plug this here (<a href="http://foxyfussings.tumblr.com/post/115050080011/the-case-for-a-bisexual-captain-america-or-how)," rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://foxyfussings.tumblr.com/post/115050080011/the-case-for-a-bisexual-captain-america-or-how),</a> as it outlines my thoughts on the matter. :)

Kamiki Kitsune

Yaay, Mark Millar is a tool! *feeling validated* Also, great vid and love this series

NeroIML

I guess the question isn't "Will it be a Transformer?" so as "Which Transformer?"

De

The ChezApocalypse link for Loose Canon 5 doesn't seem to be working. I thought it might become active when the video goes up later, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

[When the video goes up on Chez Apocalypse I'll probably repost this there - and for those not inclined to read my ridiculous wall of text, here's a tl;dr: Used to hate Captain America due to background in international relations, read about him, don't hate him any more, this video was fantastic, and I have uncontrollable face-eating hair that can never be tamed.] - - - - - - - - - - I have to confess that when Captain America won the poll, I'd never really bothered to look too deeply into his character iterations, nor his backstory; and even knowing barely anything about him, I must admit I pretty much hated him from the outset, and it was largely out of seeking further things to loathe about the character (looking back, a completely bizarre mindset to have) that I started a little cursory research of my own into the history of Captain America - something which I probably would have wound up doing had I continued on the career path I wanted in my teenage years. Though I've since focused my energies on the considerably less depressing fields of computer animation and computer modeling (which somehow lead me to spend the last year or so pretending to be a talking robotic ball), I previously was interested in pursuing a career in international relations - in fact, "interested" might be a little bit of an understatement, though, given that my bookshelves are still filled with reading matter on the subject - everything from historical texts on the development of the Manhattan project and the opening shots of the Cold War, to the annotated memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev and many other political figures from both sides of the Iron Curtain; to books on modern-day power politics in an increasingly multipolar world where, arguably, America's political, economic, and military might are beginning to wane somewhat. Many of the topics I covered during the course of my reading were analysis of American foreign policy, from pre-World War isolationism to the hawkish interventionism of the Cold War and beyond. It goes without saying that being a 13-year-old (at the time) boy with a heavy interest in political academia pretty much guaranteed that I'd spend my school days largely alone and seen as the 'weird kid' - a perfect recipe (along with being closeted trans and bisexual) for a string of vicious abuse all through secondary school, which I won't go into here. Those events are a decade in the past now and I'd rather not revisit them, plus I imagine I have digressed enough. At any rate, I spent the remaining five years in secondary school pretty much exclusively interested in politics, and reading many extremely grim texts on the, shall we say, "excesses" of U.S. foreign policy. I won't go into the details, but one of the books, though arguably somewhat biased, I found particularly absorbing in spite of its weight was William Blum's "Rogue State" - essentially a dossier of the dark side of US foreign policy between 1960 and the mid-2000s. It's largely because I have this context that I found Captain America's mere existence to be distasteful, despite, as you point out, the later interpretations of the character (in the 2011 "First Avenger" film particularly, and with the exception of the "Civil War" arc) being considerably more nuanced, intelligent, and compassionate than the Hitler-punching propaganda figure he was conceived as. The fact that the DoD took enough umbrage with this later iteration to refuse funding shows the evolution of the character over time, though arguably his core intent has remained the same; an idealised embodiment of 'American ideals' that all are able to aspire to - unless he's being written by Millar, of course. I get the feeling that there's a whole video's worth of rants that could be extracted from that man's jingoistic writing, but I'm camera shy and this video's pretty much covered the awfulness of his work already, so I think any further research into him is moot and will only serve to drive up my blood pressure. I think, though, having read more of the works in which Captain America has appeared, my initial assessment of him as being exclusively jingoistic, nationalistic, and otherwise awful was hasty and, frankly, unfair. Sure, he still carries something of an undercurrent of American exceptionalism, but in the grand scheme he is relatively benign, and I'm frankly rather embarrassed about how worked up I got over him. The superhero genre (if such a loose term can be considered a genre) isn't exactly my cup of tea, largely on account of the rather inherent tendency towards deus ex machina and moral simplicity - personally, I find myself more interested in historical figures in the various science and engineering disciplines, especially women like Ada Lovelace, who invented, arguably, the first ever computer programme and laid the foundations for the modern computing revolution, yet was roundly ignored and remains little known - but I have to admit there are exceptions to my general lassitude towards superheroes. Generally this is when my expectations are subverted - as with The Incredibles (Oi. Pixar. Why did bloody Cars get a sequel and two spin-offs but not this? COME ON) - or when it's approached from an interesting direction; "The First Avenger" which despite my preconceptions I legitimately enjoyed, especially given it lampshaded some of the sillier elements of the Captain; Megamind, despite its flaws and unfortunately cliché ending; and even the first half of Hancock, which was a fascinating look at a morally grey superhero until half way through when the plot exploded and the film turned completely batshit insane. This comment is probably going on for far too long, so I'd just like to round off my silly tirade of blather by saying that this was a finely crafted video and I enjoyed it immensely - I certainly look forward to future Loose Canon episodes, and if I can afford it I am definitely upping my pledge amount. Also, glad to see you got your hair to behave eventually. I saw the pictures on Twitter and I am fairly sure if I ever attempted anything similar my hair would eat my face. Anyway, thank you once more for posting, and I look forward to your future videos!

Lindsay B.