Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Spoiler-Free Review

I saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier  last night. Here's what I can say without spoiling it: All that relatively subtle poking of the post-9/11 security-theater world in Iron Man 3? "You have to forget about New York" and all that?

Yeah, they're not being remotely subtle anymore, and it's glorious. There's even a largely successful attempt to reclaim iconic 9/11 imagery as a symbol of resistance to the surveillance state. I'll talk more tomorrow when I get spoilery. As any good Captain America story should be, this is about the ghost of our grandparents looking at our world, and finding it insufficiently progressive.

Also cool action sequences, an update of one of the last Marvel heroes I was expecting to see in a movie, and a mostly predictable but still entertaining conspiracy-thriller plot. (Oddly, the thing I was surprised by was played as being not particularly revelatory, while I saw the Big Twist coming miles away.)

None of the warmth of the first Captain America, and that's most definitely intentional. This is an angry movie, and rightly so. One of the best entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date.

I saw Muppets Most Wanted as well. Amusing, also lacked the warmth of the previous movie, and suffered terribly for it. Probably worth a rent if you like the Muppets (which I very much do, rather predictably), but not worth the cost of a movie ticket.

That's future Spike's problem (Spike at Your Service)

Spike the Dragon. Messes made, feelings ignored.
Ask about our discount creepy clinging plan!

It's December 29, 2012. The top song is still Bruno Mars with "Locked Out of Heaven," and the top movie continues to be The Hobbit. In the news, Syrian warplanes kill hundreds of their own civilians in the Hama province; children's television producer Gerry Anderson, creator of such classics as Thunderbirds, dies; and the U.S. government begins flailing in an attempt to avoid crossing the so-called "fiscal cliff." (Spoilers: They fail.)

In ponies, we have "Spike at Your Service," with story by Dave Polsky, teleplay by Merriwether Williams, and direction by James Wootton, and normally at this point I'd start talking about how this is yet another episode where Spike is entirely self-centered, places his needs in front of everyone else's, depicts himself as a victim, and ultimately learns nothing. All of which is true, but boring.

Instead, consider this episode in light of the previous Spike-centric episode, "Dragon Quest." In that episode, Spike more or less rejected his draconic heritage. He still identifies as a dragon, but prefers associating with ponies, and wishes to continue with the pony lifestyle in which he was raised. Most importantly, he has rejected the values and culture of the dragons and embraced the values and culture of ponies, even while continuing to assert that he is a dragon. This necessarily involves some adaptation; Spike is a different species, and cannot live entirely like a pony. He will never get a cutie mark, for example, and while he clearly does have magic (being able to send messages by burning them, for instance), it fits into none of the normal pony categories. Spike must therefore adapt the pony lifestyle to suit himself, while also to some extent adapting himself to fit into the pony culture.

Thus the "Spike the Dragon Code," an attempt by Spike to construct a moral schema that can serve as a guide to his behavior as a dragon within pony society. This code bears no relation to the behavior of the dragons we see elsewhere in the series, because it is purely Spike's invention, and based on what he knows best, individual service.

Like "Owl's Well That Ends Well," this episode hovers on the edge of the uncomfortably problematic nature of Spike's relationship with Twilight Sparkle. While character ages are difficult to nail down in this series, Applejack's flashback in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" has Bic Mac and Granny Smith see her off, not her parents, implying they were already dead. If true, that in turn means that Spike must be younger than Apple Bloom. Both have chores assisting an older pony in their work, but Apple Bloom is frequently shown playing or attending school, while Spike almost never is. His life appears to consist near-entirely of serving as Twilight's assistant, which is particularly disturbing given that she appears to be the closest thing he has to a mother-figure.

Spike's default mode of relating to ponies, as well as his default method to express affection, is service. The show depicts this repeatedly in his crush on Rarity, we expresses by giving her gifts or assisting her in digging up gems. So it is not surprising that the moral code he creates, or at least the part we get to see, is constructed on concepts of debt and service. He owes Applejack his life after she rescues him; therefore he must give her that life in the form of service.

Where his code falls is in failing to recognize that Applejack doesn't want that service. She is uncomfortable with it from the start, but Spike ignores her concerns and blithely begins "helping." Applejack, by contrast, finds herself trapped because she doesn't want to hurt Spike's feelings by pointing out how counterproductive his attempts to help are or how uncomfortable she is with the whole idea of keeping what amounts to a slave. Her feelings are trampled on, in other words, because she refuses to trample on his. Spike, however, is overjoyed to work for her, since he is demonstrating that, despite being a dragon, he is still a moral being and a member of her society.

Spike has constructed a deontological ethic, which is to say one based on a list of a priori (a term in philosophy that means, roughly, "prejudice I don't want to examine") rules. This is in stark contrast to the show's usual depiction of correct behavior, which is generally mostly a virtue ethic (that is, based on cultivating certain virtues, such as honesty, loyalty, friendship, and harmony) with some admixture of consequentialism (that is, an ethic based on doing what produces good consequences, such as avoiding harm to others). His behavior is thus naturally found wanting by the show, as any rigid adherence to a single meta-ethical approach will inevitably result in behavior that violates the standards of the other approaches. In Spike's case, that means forcing Applejack to put up with the negative consequences of Spike's morals, because her own morals initially prevent her from stopping him. 

There is a tendency, particularly among proponents of deontology, but also just in the culture generally, to treat morality as a non-negotiable, a priori fact over which individuals have no control. "I have to do it," we say, "it would be wrong not to." Which is nonsense on two fronts: First, most people do things they believe are wrong all the time. Second, a moral schema is itself a choice. It may be an active choice--a deliberate decision to adopt a particular philosophy or religion, for instance, or even constructing one's own morality as Spike does--or a passive choice not to examine or modify the morals with which one was raised, but it remains a choice. It follows, therefore, that a person bears moral responsibility for their choice of moral schema, and "My morality told me to do it," is not an adequate response to criticism of one's actions.

This is an important point for the show to address, because the argument in favor of maintaining our culture's gender norms is usually couched as a moral position, that it is a priori wrong for people to behave in ways contrary to those norms. Such arguments (especially when they are couched in religious terms) tend to be treated with kid gloves, as if the people making such arguments are not responsible for the suffering they create by imposing their morality on others, because they are regarded as somehow not being responsible for their morality.

In the end, Spike stops trying to impose his code on Applejack. He recognizes that while it is fine to let his morality drive his behavior--hence resuming his role as Twilight's assistant at the end of the episode--he does not want to be the kind of person who imposes himself on others when he's not wanted. His deontology, in other words, has been tempered with consequentialist and especially virtue-ethical elements. Maybe there is hope for him after all.

...Or maybe two episodes from now he will abandon morality entirely and spend an entire episode acting out of pure selfishness.

Next week: Speaking of relationships with deeply uncomfortable subtext...

MLP Liveblog Chat Thingy: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

How to participate in the liveblog chat:

Option 1: Whenever you watch the episode, comment on this post as you watch with whatever responses you feel like posting!

Option 2: Go to http://webchat.freenode.net/. Enter a nickname, then for the Channels field enter ##rabbitcube, and finally fill in the Captcha and hit Connect! We'll be watching the episode and commenting there starting at 3:00 p.m. EST. And I'm actually going to be here for this one! Afterwards, I will update this post with the chatlog.

Speaking of which, I updated last week's liveblog last night.

This episode's log below the cut!

No Fiction Friday today, but I've been working on the book...

I think I have nailed down the final structure of the new book, so have a table of contents:

Dear Princess Celestia... (Introduction)
1.    Okey-dokey Loki (The Return of Harmony)
2.    A Brief History of Equestria
3.    All the ponies in this town are crazy! Do you know what time it is?! (Lesson Zero)
4.    Seeking Our Cutie Marks: Aspirational Fandom
5.    Hello everypony! Did I miss anything? (Luna Eclipsed)
6.    This isn't at all what I imagined. (Sisterhooves Social)
7.    You don't have any cutie marks *either*? I thought I was the only one! (The Cutie Pox)
8.    Not so much. The word "fierce" comes to mind. (May the Best Pet Win)
9.    I'm not talking about my performance, I'm talking about yours! That feeble cheering... (The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well)
10.    I simply cannot let such a crime against fabulosity go uncorrected. (Sweet and Elite)
11.    Elements of Harmony 1: Rarity Is Best Pony
12.    You are a natural! A natural disaster! (Secret of My Excess)
13.    And that's how Equestria was made (Family Appreciation Day/Hearth's Warming Eve)
14.    That's four "ever"s. That's like... forever! (Baby Cakes)
15.    I couldn't face the truth, so I started tellin' lies. Can you ever forgive me? (Hearth's Warming Eve/Family Appreciation Day)
16.    Sure I could tell you I learned something about how my friends are always there to help me... (The Last Roundup)
17.    The Elephant-Hued Pony in the Room
18.    Elements of Harmony 2: Applejack Is Best Pony
19.    I acted pretty awesomely heroic that day (Daring Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone)
20.    Give us all a lesson on your amazing loop-de-hooping! (Hearts and Hooves Day)
21.    I Only Watch It for the Plot: “Clop” and the Sexualization of Cartoon Horses
22.    But I was just... (A Friend in Deed)
23.    Elements of Harmony 3: Zecora Is Best Pony
24.    Please don't be mad at us. (Putting Your Hoof Down)
25.    The pony who holds my fate in her hooves (It's About Time)
26.    This isn't quite what I expected. (Dragon Quest)
27.    Don't worry, old Fluttershy's back for good. (Hurricane Fluttershy)
28.    Heheh. Who knows? (Ponyville Confidential)
29.    Bronies Behaving Badly: The Dark Side of Fandom
30.    Sometimes it's just really fun to be scared (MMMMystery on the Friendship Express)
31.    You’re going to LOVE me! (A Canterlot Wedding)
...Today I Learned...
Glossary and Dramatis Personae

Admittedly, with the first book I added two chapters after sending the book to the editor, so this is definitely not set in stone.

Sorry, no post today

I'm drowning in work, and I just plain forgot. Sorry. Fiction Friday is looking iffy, too.

Definitely not the same thing as optimism (I Won't Rely on Anyone Anymore)

Duh-duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh-duh
Oooooweeeeooooo
Weeeeooooo-ooooo

Let's start back at the beginning.

Among many other things, Madoka Magica is a critique of moe, the fandom within anime fandom that celebrates weak, usually feminine characters that evoke a feeling of protectiveness. As we saw in Sayaka's arc, this protectiveness is futile and dangerous, because to be protected is to be objectified, to be treated as other than a full human being possessed of free agency.

Just as magical girls are witches, to be a protector is to be a destroyer, and this is just as true of Homura as Sayaka. Note the precise nature of Homura's wish: to switch places with Madoka, to be the one to protect her instead of protected by her. By setting herself up as Madoka's protector, she inflicts the status of protected on Madoka, which (as we learn next episode) is the very reason Madoka has suffered so much--but that should not be a surprise, as over-protecting someone can very easily lead to them losing confidence.

This collapse of binaries is rooted equally in Madoka Magica's postmodern and Buddhist leanings. The latter in particular is notable here, since of course the Buddha is a teacher, not a savior; since all distinctions, including good-evil and self-other, are illusions, salvation is impossible because there is nothing to be saved from.

Homura first struggles to save Madoka from death because she sees it as different from life; then she struggles to save Madoka from becoming a witch because she sees it as different from being a magical girl; finally she struggles to save Madoka from becoming a magical girl because she sees it as different from being an ordinary human. But because she fundamentally does not understand what kind of a story she's in--and it is telling that she went to a Christian school before coming to Mitakihara Middle School--she cannot recognize that her actions will only ever make things worse.

In short, this isn't working.

Let's start back at the beginning.

Last week I discussed the magical girl genre's origins, and how the good girl/bad girl (or magical girl/witch, or Madonna/whore) dichotomy constrains the expression of feminine power into either channels non-threatening to masculine hegemony or into outsider figures, whether the witch deep in the woods or the magical girl who only ever fights monsters no one else can see.

Episode 10 uses multiple timelines to spread Homura's character out, and show her evolution from the non-threatening form to the outsider. In the first timeline, she is a powerless innocent, weak enough to become a witch's victim. As the timelines progress, she becomes more powerful and more of a transgressive figure. At the beginning of the second timeline, she is clearly the weakest and least skilled of the magical girls; her power to stop time is purely a support ability with no apparent offensive application, and her ability to physically harm witches is minimal. By the end of the timeline, however, she is capable of making and using homemade bombs in combination with her time stop to kill witches, and Madoka is delegated to the support role. In the third timeline, Homura becomes more powerful and more transgressive still, moving from making bombs at home to stealing guns from criminals, making her a match for Oktavia.

In the fourth timeline, Homura finally becomes the figure we know, coldly detached, her girlish pigtails and glasses--both signifiers of harmlessness--abandoned along with her uncertainty, as she robs the ultimate symbol of hegemonic masculinity, the military, to fight alone.

But these images of Homura are spread out, not from past to future, but across multiple timelines, meaning that in some sense all these Homuras exist simultaneously. The "outside" in which the outsider fights is a channel non-threatening to masculine hegemony. The apparent binary between them is just as illusory as that between magical girl and witch; Mami and Homura are two sides of the same coin.

Which means that Homura is not a rebuke of the magical girl genre or a challenge to the safe, non-challenging framework within which it resides. She is simply another manifestation of that framework, an alternate form of the magical girl with whom viewers are comfortable.

In short, this isn't working.

Let's start back at the beginning.

Early in this project, I posited that there are three arcs to Madoka Magica, each focused on a particular character or pair of characters and each emphasizing different themes. Episode 9 closed out the Sayaka/Kyouko arc, which was largely about exploring depression and closing the circle on the magical girl genre. Episode 10, thus, serves as an introduction to the final arc, which focuses primarily on Homura.

We thus get an episode dedicated entirely to her perspective, following her as she repeatedly travels back in time in an attempt to avert Madoka's fate. Throughout this, Homura appears largely immune to the despair that overwhelmed Sayaka in her arc; the only time Homura comes close to becoming a witch in this episode is in the third timeline, when she suggests that she and Madoka become monsters and wipe away the entire world and all its sadness, which foreshadows both Madoka's eventual wish and much of the plot of Rebellion.

What makes the third timeline special? In the first timeline, Homura only becomes a magical girl after Walpurgisnacht kills Madoka. In the second, Homura's lack of injury suggests that she had little or no part in the fight with Walpurgisnacht. In the fourth, Madoka only becomes a magical girl after Walpurgisnacht defeats Homura.

The timeline on which Homura comes closest to being a witch is the timeline on which she actually gets her wish, to defend Madoka during the battle with Walpurgisnacht. This is the balance of hope and despair which Sayaka spoke about; the heights lead directly to the depths.

Homura is usually immune to despair, because she does not hope in the usual sense. Instead of hope, she relies on her determination and her love for Madoka; since neither is an innately good feeling, neither brings despair to balance it. Put another way, she epitomizes the concept of hope as described by the Czech playwright, philosopher, revolutionary, and statesman Vaclav Havel: "[hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

As she says at the end of the episode, she can keep going no matter how long it takes, so long as it is for Madoka. But what then to make of her breakdown in Episode 8? Madoka seems determined to sacrifice herself in every timeline, and this is the single greatest threat to Homura's plan. Homura is functionally depressed, which is to say that while she is functional, she is also depressed, and all it takes is a slight push downward to make her collapse.

In short, this isn't working.

Let's start back at the beginning.

Episode 10 presents us with a series of alternate timelines, adjacent to the events of the show. As each timeline reaches the disaster of Walpurgisnacht, Homura resets herself to the day she left the hospital and tries again. However, it appears that she is not just traveling back in time, but also across timelines, as elements seem to change from timeline to timeline regardless of Homura's involvement--for example, in the first timeline Madoka becomes a magical girl before Homura leaves the hospital.

Throughout these four alternate timelines, there are echoes (or omens, depending on your point of view) of events in the series' main timeline, from the shot of Madoka's shoes as she turns to face Homura in the school hallway in the first timeline (an echo of a similar shot of Homura turning in the same scene in the first episode) to Kyouko's refusal to accept that Oktavia has completely replaced the Sayaka she knew.

But more interesting are the subtler echoes. Homura's repeated awakenings in the hospital, for instance, echo Charlotte's origin, strengthening the parallel between them as harbingers of the true series and Mami's nemeses. Madoka's pleading with Homura to prevent her from making the mistake of contracting with Kyubey places Homura in the position of making that mistake in Madoka's place, echoing Junko's advice in Episode 6. Even Homura's gradual loss of innocence and transformation into a darker, more mature, and more transgressive figure parallels Sayaka's entire arc.

These echoes serve not only to make clear how the timelines relate to one another; they also recontextualize the events they echo. From Homura's point of view, these are not echoes but prefigurations (as, indeed, some are for the viewer as well, such as Mami being the first to attack the other magical girls, foreshadowing Rebellion); all this has happened before, and likely will happen again.

Two episodes utterly transform the series. On a first viewing, these two episodes stand out as moments when what appeared to be a show about one thing suddenly becomes a different show entirely.  As in a mirror, they are at precisely opposite ends of the series, the third episode and the third-to-last. This is the second of these episodes.

If nothing else (and it is much else), Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a meticulously structured series. Every moment of it is carefully placed to advance a complex story with extensive character development in a surprisingly small space. One example of that meticulous structure is the symmetry throughout the series, the way in which moments large and small repeat at precisely the right time.

Next week: In short, this isn't working.

I hate April Fool's Day

The actually funny April Fool's Day jokes are the ones where no one is harmed and everyone recognizes it's a joke from the start. Google's pranks are a great example of this, though this year's is admittedly not up to their usual standards. But as publications like The Onion demonstrate, you don't actually need a special day for those sorts of pranks.

Whereas the other kind of prank consists of setting traps so you can laugh at people for being inconvenienced, mildly injured, or less knowledgeable and powerful than you. Like teasing, this kind of behavior can be fine between friends who are on an equal footing and know everyone involved can handle it... but like teasing, there's also immense pressure on everyone in such a group to pretend they can handle it. Outside such a circle, it's pure bullying, and the fact that we have a holiday to celebrate that behavior tells you everything you need to know about what's wrong with our culture.

And of course I'm going to be accused of being humorless or taking myself too seriously, because part of the "holiday" is that you're not allowed to opt out. Just like the friend who is genuinely hurt by "friendly teasing" but can't say so for fear of increased teasing or rejection, there is nothing you can do to say "Please don't prank me today, I'm not up for it" because any such signal will be taken as an invitation for the most aggressive and vicious sort of pranks.

Of course it would be a different matter if people punched up instead of kicking down. Employees pranking their boss? Random citizens pranking their over-militarized local cops? Pretty much anyone pranking a CEO or a Congresscritter? Children pranking their parents? Hilarious.

But that's not what happens today. Mostly it's tricking people so you can feel big laughing at them for trusting you, confusing people so you can feel big laughing at them for being confused, interfering with people's routines so you can feel big laughing at them for having routines. And people pull pranks on you, and maybe you laugh at them, and maybe you find them going to far--but you don't dare admit to the latter, meaning you have no idea which of the people you pranked think you went too far.

It's barbaric, cruel, and not funny. Let's have a day devoted to satire instead.