Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Captain America and Superhero Worldviews, Part 2

http://reflectionsbyken.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/captain-america-and-superhero-worldviews-part-2/

5 comments:

  1. I have a couple tickets to AMC Theatres, and two free small popcorns, and was thinking of taking the wife to see Captain America. Not much good at the Theatres these days. And I wasn't sure about this film. But seems to be good.
    Thanks for posting this.

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  2. Positives:

    No cussing (that I recall).

    No sexual innuendo. There were a couple of kisses. One kiss is shown as a negative because it is not within the exclusive developing relationship of Captain America and his not-yet-girlfriend, Peggy. Exclusive relationships and delayed gratification are shown to be a good thing. There is one innocent (in the movie) reference where Captain America misconstrues "going for fondue" for something else that is shown to be undesirable in their not-yet-relationship.

    As such: Good is good and bad is bad. It's bad to bully other people for any reason. It's bad to put other people down for no good reason. It's good to stick up for what's right in the face of overwhelming odds. It's good to defend others against evil. It's wrong to go outside the bounds of a relationship that isn't even started yet.

    The difference between someone who is good and someone who is bad is a key element in the movie. Even people on the right side can be bad and even people who do mostly good things do bad things sometimes.

    Dubious elements:

    Some violence (it is a war, after all), but not the gory fare Hollywood typically portrays these days.

    Negatives:

    Social alcohol consumption is shown as a good thing among the good guys.

    Overall, it's much tamer than Lord of the Rings.

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  3. There was cussing but I think the reason we don't tend to remember it comes down to two reasons: 1) for a movie with a war-time setting and so many military characters the amount of cussing seemed so low as to be non-existent 2) what cussing there was is rare and culturally lined out. Agent Carter uses "bloody" once, which is considered a rough word in some circles, but most of the swearing was still in a PG-13 range.

    Social alcohol consumption didn't involve anyone getting drunk and a doctor offered alcohol to Rogers and then realized he shouldn't have because Rogers was about to be subject to a major body-modifying experiment. When Rogers tries to get drunk he discovers he can't and is forced to deal with the grief of a lost friend knowing he can't resort to a bottle. I'd say even the social alcohol consumption part can't really be counted as a negative overall.

    There's some sexual innuendo but the guy who uses sexual innuendo on agent Carter gets so swiftly and directly punished for it by Carter and her commanding officer that it's not shown as something people should imitate. There's actually a lot of flirtatious talk but compared to a lot of other PG-13 films it's low-key enough that if we grade on a curve it seems to be absent.

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  4. BTW, Kids-in-Mind is a helpful website to read about what's in a film before watching it.

    Focus on the Family's Plugged In too.

    Similarly Movie Guide.

    Screen It used to be helpful as well but I think people have to pay for a subscription to their site now (?).

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  5. Wenatchee,

    You're right. I forgot about the comment the one guy made, after which Peggy rightly decked him. And I wasn't counting "bloody" as a curse.

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