hey wisecrack michael here to talk about
the falcon and the winter soldier the
show is interesting to say the least in
how it explores the moral gray areas
within the marvel universe and
plenty has been written about john
walker isaiah bradley and sam's quest to
claim the shield while the show seems to
be first and foremost
asking questions about captain america's
legacy we thought something more was
going on here
that something is an exploration of how
the law works
specifically what happens in the grey
area between
inside and outside the law and what that
means for superheroes and refugees alike
we'll explain in this philosophy of the
falcon and the winter soldier
and spoilers ahead for the mcu now this
show is about a lot of things
american militarism trauma and racism
but perhaps
no theme can help illuminate the series
as a whole more than one
refugees the grc they're doing the best
they can to get things up and running
smoothly post blep
citizenship social security health care
basically just managing resources for
the refugees who are displaced by the
retirement that is
we can figure out how psycho captain
america isaiah bradley and all this very
deliberate talk of borders heads up
you're about to fly into libyan airspace
and i assume they have a problem with
that
all come together in the figure of one
refugee named carly morgenthau
how many times do we have to pay with
our lives just to be citizens of this
goddamn planet
carly and the flag smashers are refugees
displaced in the aftermath of the blip
though they share much in common with
millions of refugees in the world today
it might be illustrative to compare
their plight to a specific historical
moment after the first world war
for that we have to turn to philosopher
hannah arendt who
argued that the definition of a refugee
changed dramatically during and between
the two world wars
in her essay we refugees about her own
exile as a german jew
she writes a refugee used to be a person
driven to seek refuge because of some
act
committed or some political opinion held
well it is
true we have had to seek refuge when we
committed no acts
and most of us never dreamt of having
any radical political opinion
compare that to this moment we're not
refugees
for we have nothing to seek refuge from
we're internationally displaced persons
while carly and co
might be on the run for actual acts of
terrorism we learn that their original
displacement had
nothing to do with any action on their
part but rather the reappearance of
billions of people the grc care more
about the people who came back than the
ones who never left
they're not unlike the millions of
refugees during and after world war one
including belgians armenians russians
and jews
this refugee crisis had a profound
political effect across the european
continent but
not exactly for the reasons you'd think
millions found themselves stripped of
the legal protection of their old homes
while also being denied protections in
their new homes in fact
as a rent notes some were literally
better off by committing crimes
since even criminals were guaranteed
certain rights while a stateless person
was not what all this had proved for a
rent was just how inadequate europe
celebrated human rights were
the plights of carly and her fellow
refugees evokes the french migrants in
the early 1900s who the government
relied on in times of economic need
many of those migrants would be expelled
after they were no longer needed and
mixed with waves of refugees after 1935
for rent notes and
well it's pretty spot on for five years
people have been welcomed into countries
that have kept them out using barbed
wire
there were houses and jobs folks were
happy to have people around to help them
rebuild
it wasn't just one community coming
together it was the entire world
coming together and then boom just like
that
it goes right back to the way it used to
be of course in falcon and the winter
soldier the solution is to repatriate
people to
move them back where they came from it's
even in the name global repatriation
council but like europe after world war
one
repatriation isn't so easy orent notes
how in trying to return the stateless to
their country of origin
many were simply undeportable these were
people who could not claim the right to
reside in any other country
they simply weren't welcome anywhere
like armenians stripped of rights and
expelled from the ottoman empire and of
course
a few years later the nazis would force
jews out of germany even toying with the
idea of
forcibly relocating them to madagascar
in the penultimate episode the
disruption of the patch act a law to
restore traditional border regulations
is the cliffhanger
wherein one delegate objects to how
exactly repatriation will go
we're not rounding them up like cattle
the cattle comment gets at the core of
the issue at stake with europe's refugee
crisis
as orent argues it was this crisis that
for a time
gave police the authority to rule
directly over people the de facto
solution for the stateless was the
internment camp and the concentration
camp
places that exist outside the normal
sphere of law
and this ambiguous legal state would go
on to define the world we live in
whether or not we're refugees
this point was later taken up by
philosopher giorgio agambe who argued
that
the camp had become the hidden law of
the land
that might sound weird and confusing but
consider this agaben was
less interested in the way that
governments acted in the normal legal
system and more in realms where such a
system was suspended entirely
there is no better example of this
according to a gambin than the
internment camps where people with
little or no legal standing were
forcibly placed but if we're looking for
how the law is suspended in the marvel
universe
we need to look no further than well
most of the cast of our show
it's fitting that falcon in the winter
soldier begins by teasing the classic
action trope the rules and regulations
will get in the way of catching the bad
guys
in this case a falcon needs to catch
some criminals before they cross a
national border and create an
international incident damn we gotta
fall
back we gotta call it off we gotta find
another way
but sam ever the patriot saves the day
while respecting international law
so the law prevails right and what i
have to imagine is
incredibly deliberate however the rest
of the show really wants us to question
what it means for americans to be
running around as world police two weeks
ago we're prepping the team for a
special ops mission in chile are they
acting within legal boundaries who knows
so i don't know how jurisdiction works
here but i don't have to place you under
arrest
this for agamon is the point of modern
sovereignty
the ability to suspend the law to create
a state of exception
while this is clear in the sovereign's
ability to construct internment camps
i.e spaces of exception
the idea of policing is another
illustrative example
the marketing of the gulf war as a
police operation he writes
cannot be dismissed as cynical marketing
from politicians but a
clue about how sovereignty works and at
least in falcon in the winter soldier
most of what happens is not portrayed as
war even if the literal military is
doing it but rather
an act of policing even though sam notes
the cap is shackled by
all kinds of regulations but you guys
have rules of engagement and all kind of
authorizations you have to get
it becomes very clear that he gets to
make the rules like spying on american
citizens we attract
youth uh through regularly you hack my
test sorry it's not exactly
hacking it's government property
kind of the government or unilaterally
deciding that bucky doesn't need court
mandated therapy
bucky's not gonna be following a strict
schedule any longer we haven't finished
our work who authorizes
but when things aren't working out so
well cap is more than happy to appeal to
the law
the dorm milage i don't have
jurisdiction here that state of
exception might be found in the forest
repatriation of refugees or the
extrajudicial killing of a civilian but
the point is
they're all related the show even makes
the connection between refugee camps and
police operations pretty explicit
the grc was first presented as a
humanitarian organization but by episode
5 is conducting police operations grc
accused them of harboring and abetting
international fugitives so they
raided the place and shut it down now
the show is pretty clear about its
central premise
john walker is no captain america
because he lacks the moral compass of
steve rogers but for a gambin this in
itself
is exactly the problem with the state of
exception whether or not you get
murdered should not be dependent on how
much
lincoln someone has read that particular
day mercy
bears richer fruit than strict justice
also the people in that scene are
getting sent to avengers gitmo
confirming that prisoners have cleared
final process we are transporting them
to the raft
whether or not atrocities are committed
in a camp is not up to the law
but the civility and ethical sense of
those running it the same can be said
for the avengers who police the globe on
behalf of
well themselves the difference between
good captain america and
evil captain america i am
captain america is totally dependent on
the ethics of the person who holds the
shield the serum never corrupted steve
touche but there has never been another
steve rogers has there
but either way they operate by creating
the exception and as a gambit and a rent
note it was this logic which defined
nazi totalitarianism
where law has been fully suspended
anything
is possible now you might be saying well
actually
john walker was sanctioned for his
actions rule of law maintained
and in a sense that's true but walker's
defense is that he's no different than
the larger organization that trained him
i only ever did
what you asked of me what you told me to
be
and trained me to do and i did it
and i did it well it's worth asking did
walker lose his title because he broke
some rule
or law or because it became a pr
nightmare i don't know about you guys
but
i really don't think the connection
between the avengers refugees and nazism
is accidental
not that the showrunner's necessarily
been reading a rant but the series seems
keenly self-aware prominent scenes take
place in front of stained glass
resembling stars of david one of the
flag smashers brings up his nazi
resisting roots my grandfather lucas he
was a world war ii resistance fighter
and zemo explicitly links not to
eugenics to the avengers
she's a supremacist the very concept of
a super soldier will always trouble
people
it's that warped aspiration that led to
nazis to ultron to the avengers
in light of a gunman we might consider
how this vaguely defined supremacist
ideology is the creation of a being
built to lord over other beings to
enforce the law or suspend it based on
their own judgment
it of course seems very related to a
character we haven't explored yet
isaiah the super soldier is a black
american stripped of his rights and
subjected to medical experimentation
reminiscent of the tuskegee syphilis
experiments
he too comes to learn what violence
outside the law means in the figure of
the clan
the famous 332 fight for this country
only to come home if i had crosses
burned on their lawn
and when he becomes a problem for the
government they simply erase his story
you won't believe
jail was my fault because you got that
white man's shield
they were worried my story might get out
so they erased me
my history but they've been doing that
for 500 years
by the end of the season things appear
to change however
sam has fully asserted himself as
captain america
i'm sorry wait who are you captain
america and tries to distance himself
from some of the symbols troubled
history
you have all people bought into that
book i'm trying something different
maybe you should do the same
sam even speaks up on behalf of refugees
you have to stop calling them terrorists
what else would we call them your
peacekeeping troops carrying weapons are
forcing millions of people into
settlements around the world right what
do you think those people are going to
call you
obviously the show would like to tell us
things are different
sam is a more compassionate cap who
knows we have to do better
every time i pick this thing up i know
there are millions of people out there
who are going to hate me for it
yet i'm still here no super serum
no blonde hair or blue eyes
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the only power i have is that i believe
we can do better but it's worth asking
if this
isn't about doing better it's the very
system as a gamba would note
where the exception has become the rule
where anything is possible
outside the law and that doesn't seem to
have changed
but what do you guys think is this a
step in the right direction or
is marvel pulling their punches before
you go
you might not know this but we've made a
bunch of videos on
mcu properties so you can check out our
look into the philosophical paradox of
wand division or
look into thor ragnarok's take on
history or
if you want to binge at all we made a
special playlist just for you
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[Applause]
later
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