The Falcon and the Whiter Soldier- a second look

I’m interviewing for a writing job so I feel like I should be watching my mouth here. Luckily, race in America is no longer an issue, amirite?

Falcon and the Winter Soldier has entered the rotation of shows that play well in my background. It’s actiony sure, but the dialog through most of it is pretty solid too. So it’s a worthwhile watch even when you’re not watching. But because I’m that kind of weird, I keep looking at it through a polisci lens and as a continuation of the themes from the rest of the Cap branch of the MCU.

Most of that I’ve already gone into, the privilege of white mass killers surviving for redemption, good guys on both sides, etc. Bucky has to go through therapy as a condition of his ongoing freedom, but sure, he can keep the SIX TRILLION DOLLAR MURDER ARM like that’s no big deal. But the more I play through F&WS, the more is added to what I’m seeing. Some of that is through the addition of new context- the elements from Black Panther (and even Hawkeye) add direct racial balance to the very white-friendly Cap narrative, but nuance is added as well.

On the second run I was watching Zemo live to be incarcerated another day. Marvel does a workable job of deflection by having the Wakandans maintain jurisdiction over his sentence- it’s not the white guys keeping Zemo alive, it’s the Black guys- that’s gotta be like -3 privilege, right? But when you step back, you see Wakandan virtue up to the task of saving evil white men, but not up to the task of saving a Wakandan PRINCE contaminated by the evils of white men? If you want you can say that only validates the strength of Killmonger’s character (despite the dumb name), that he was willing to die for his convictions while his corollaries were content to chill. Or you can prioritize the practical reality that the white actor gets a contract while the Black actor gets a bag.

Because it’s not just Zemo now thanks to Black Panther, it’s the rest of the MCU too. How many people did Hawkeye kill in that dopey Ronin arc, for no other reason than because he was having a sad? Yet he gets a pass because he’s such a cool dad, yay!

All along, F&WS has presented a remarkably diverse cast. There’s a lot of brown skin in this show and it’s not all Sam’s. I hadn’t really thought much about it, I guess it struck me as an intentional strategy to blunt the argument of Cap’s being a white man’s world. To soften the contrast around Sam’s accepting the promotion. But on the third run I was struck by the percentage of the show’s white cast that were filling bad guy roles. And, aside from the shrink really, it’s ALL of them! Every white character on screen without a perm is bad!

Sharon- murdering power broker.
Walker- loose screws “r” us.
Batroc- tres mal aussi.
Entirely undemocratic senator with greater reach than anyone since Garry Shandling- Hydra much, bro?

And yeah, then there’s Bucky’s ass coiled tighter than a spring and kept behind a constant wall of control.

This is not a new thing in the Capverse; Robert Redford was the big manipulator and Hydra was notably master race in their talent acquisition. Aside from Sitwell, elevator guy that Cap pwns, and Red Skull, they’re a very pure operation.

And that reminds me. “I’ve seen the future, and there are no flags.” Also, sadly, no narrative connection between the obvious setup offered between the Red Skull and the Flagsmashers. Some fan site was speculating that What If? was setting up a CA4 with Zola as the big bad. Who the hell knows if that’s true, but casting the Flagsmashers as a false flag by an underground faction of Hydra originalists would be an excellent example of advancing a narrative in a credible way. So far though, crickets.

And. AND. That truck chase, what on Earth was that ending?? Consider- Battlestar (ugh another dumb name) is punched off the truck and exits stage down, surfing the shield down the middle of the highway. Seconds later, NuCap is punched off the truck and smashes into a following car’s windshield. I kinda want to hear the story of that driver, who DROVE PAST A BLACK MAN LYING IN THE ROAD to tailgate a pair of semis that were blocking the entire road and obviously up to something. That driver was making some questionable choices.

But anyway.

It’s promising, how the show mixes things up. When the eps were still rolling out, they were getting some heat for not solving the problems of race in America. But I like how ultimately they don’t even try. And despite Bucky karmically deserving to die for decades of brutal assassinations, at the moment he’s honestly one of the most relatable characters in the MCU. When he just growled at Sam during that truck sequence, I felt that. That was one of the best lines in the entire season.

Also I didn’t get the job, so F@%K.