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I think your question is answered word for word in the video, but tl;dr: yes, I think that a genre where those who wish to disrupt the social order are automatically cast as villains can only be constructed as progressive when the villain is literally Hitler. Obviously there’s a lot more nuance in the video, but that’s the gist of it.

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exocrinous@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Superman is an investigative journalist who exposes corporate corruption, and his nemesis was for a time the literal fucking POTUS. Superheroes don’t have to defend the status quo, it’s not a trait inherent to the genre.

More examples: Spider-Man is always in trouble with the media and the cops. Daredevil became a superhero because he thought the criminal justice system wasn’t effective enough. Ms Marvel protects the Pakistani community because the government won’t. All of Worm.

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- Mirshe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ll throw in Oliver Queen (Green Arrow), who literally threw his fortune and company down the drain because he couldn’t square being a good person and a billionaire. Oh, and he also went and fought drug dealers, corrupt landlords, and racists in the 80s with Green Lantern specifically because the government wasn’t doing anything substantial to stop those things.
  
  Writers are to blame for superheroes supporting the status quo, not the genre.
  
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- hex_m_hell@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, so this is all covered in that video. Spiderman is probably the closest to progressive listed. He’s working class, he has trouble with cops, his family is poor. He’s reactionary in the literal sense, because he takes action in response to super villains. He doesn’t ever do anything proactively to make the world more just, he just responds to people trying to make it worse. Imagine if he robbed a bank and gave it to the poor or broke in to an ICE vehicle depot and disabled all their vehicles so they couldn’t raid immigrants. By the standard construction of the genre, he’d automatically become a villain… And that’s the point.
  
  Again, this is all covered in the video. If you want to challenge your understanding of the world, great. If not, I’m not really going to keep paraphrasing a video that presents these ideas more effectively than I do.
  
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  - exocrinous@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    or broke in to an ICE vehicle depot and disabled all their vehicles so they couldn’t raid immigrants
    
    That’s what happens in Spider-Man PS4. The mayor brings in a mercenary group to restore order to the streets, and they’re harassing innocent people, so Spider-Man beats them up and smashes their APCs.
    
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