- This video is brought to you by Keeps.
(somber music)
Hey Wisecrack, Michael here, and today,
we're talking about the best witch-centric program
since Charmed, that's right, WandaVision.
The show is definitely a deviation
from typical Marvel properties.
The majority of the show is a tricksy,
and sometimes downright trippy,
delve into one woman's grief
at the loss of her robo-boyfriend.
This show also parodies American sitcoms,
ranging from oldies, like I Dream of Jeannie,
all the way to Modern Family,
which had us wondering,
why is WandaVision set in the world of classic sitcoms?
- Fred and Linda are building a moat
and a fully functioning portcullis
and no one even knows why. (laugh track plays)
- [Michael] And what does that have to do
with Wanda's grief and trauma?
And most importantly, can the show tell us anything
about the future of the MCU?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack Edition on WandaVision:
how we cope with trauma.
Spoilers ahead for WandaVision (sirens blare)
and the MCU at large.
Before we tackle this gigantic franchise,
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Now back to the show.
WandaVision tells the story of Wanda Maximoff,
the MCUs most important character.
- I don't even know who you are.
- [Michael] Okay, so she's been a bit
of a side character up to this point.
The one who's been royally screwed over
throughout the Infinity Saga.
Her parents were killed by a Stark Industries bomb,
her brother was killed by Ultron,
then she had to kill her robot boyfriend
to save the world only for Thanos to turn back time
and kill him again, right in front of her.
Wanda had already been through a lot,
even before she tried to give Vision a proper burial
only to see him being disassembled
for parts by the government.
So maybe it's no surprise
that she decided she'd had enough of this world
and created a new one for herself.
I mean, who hasn't been there.
And this is what we find really interesting.
Because in creating a perfect, but still creepy reality
in, of all places, New Jersey,
the show bears a strong resemblance
to a very real kind of theater.
Now this show is clearly creepy,
but we don't actually know just how creepy,
at least at first.
While the first three episodes
crib the cheery aesthetic of classic sitcoms,
there's something very off.
(man chokes)
- Oh Arthur, stop it!
- And as the season progresses,
the residents of Westview start
to question the nature of their existence.
The details of their lives are muddy at best.
Their neighbors and coworkers
are more like caricatures than real people
and the laws of logic and physics don't seem to apply.
This arguably makes WandaVision
feel less like a typical episode of I Love Lucy
and more like a genre of theater
called "The Theater of the Absurd".
In the aftermath of World War II,
European playwrights, like Samuel Beckett,
Eugène Ionesco, and Arthur Adamov. started writing plays
that didn't really make sense,
but that was the whole point.
Theater critic Martin Esslin coined the term,
"Theater of the Absurd" to categorize these plays,
which he described as "a veritable barrage
of wildly irrational, often nonsensical goings-on
that seem to go counter
to all accepted standards of stage convention...
The laws of probability, as well
as those of physics are suspended."
- No, no, no! - There a minute
you young whippersnappers.
- [Michael] People in these plays
frequently seem like mere marionettes,
helpless puppets without any will have their own,
not unlike this.
(chainsaw grinds)
As Esslin puts it, "as a result,
it is often unclear whether the action
is meant to represent a dreamworld of nightmares
or real happenings."
This pretty accurately describes WandaVision.
And by that, we mean WandaVision show-within-a-show
which is enjoyed by a small audience
of federal agents inside of a tent.
The most famous absurdist play
is Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot,
in which two characters spend the whole play,
you guessed it, waiting for someone named Godot to show up.
We never learn who they are,
how they got there, who Godot is,
or why they're even waiting for him in the first place.
- In my opinion, we were here.
- You recognize the place?
- I didn't say that.
- Well?
- That makes no difference.
- [Michael] This sounds not unlike
two superheroes inexplicably wondering
why a calendar day's marked.
- Well, don't tell me you have forgotten this.
- Forgotten?
Oh Wanda, I'm incapable of forgetfulness.
I'll remember everything.
- [Michael] Or an audience wondering
why two Avengers are now living in a black and white sitcom.
- Who are those people?
- What are you wearing?
- Why are they here?
- What are you wearing?
- Well it's our anniversary. (laugh track plays)
- Although, to be fair,
they get to that later.
The abandonment of traditional characters
and plots in absurdist theater
is meant to highlight the ultimate futility
of mankind's existence.
As Esslin writes, "the spectators
of the theater of the absurd are thus confronted
with a grotesquely heightened picture of their own world:
a world without faith, meaning,
and genuine freedom of will."
- We moved from...
(laugh track plays)
- And we were married...
- Yes, yes, we were married in...
(laugh track plays)
- Well?
Moved from where?
Married when?
- [Michael] All that said, it's important to note the ways
in which WandaVision is not absurdist theater.
We eventually find out that Wanda is actively creating
and controlling the sitcom
and filling in the details as she goes,
which explains all of the nonsense.
But we think there's something deeper
about her attempt to create a sitcom,
a genre in which the world makes sense
and we're values are clear and consistently reinforced.
Using television to escape the messy absurd world
is after all something Wanda's been doing
since she was a kid.
It seems that even in Wanda's native Sokovia,
a fictional, vaguely Eastern European country,
this vision of the ideal family life allowed people
to escape their grim realities
for one in which problems easily resolved
at the end of an episode.
- Shenanigan is like problem,
but more silly than scary,
but can sometimes be a little scary.
- Yeah, like mischief.
- But a silly mischief that always becomes fine.
- [Michael] But despite Wanda's best efforts
to create an orderly world where everything makes sense,
she instead creates something closer
to an absurdist play where nothing makes sense
and meaning is hard to grasp if it exists at all.
- I only remember feeling completely alone.
(sad music)
Empty I...
Just endless nothingness.
- Nothing to be done.
- I'm beginning to come around to that opinion.
- Much like Wanda herself,
the European playwrights behind The Theater of the Absurd
experienced the effects of war firsthand.
So when they went to write plays that express their trauma,
they found that traditional theatrical conventions
didn't quite cut it.
As Esslin explained to the Time,
"the loss of a sense of control
over rational human development
in an age of totalitarianism and weapons of mass destruction
have all contributed to the erosion
of the basis for a dramatic convention."
Similarly, when Wanda tries to create a world
where meaning is clear and problems are easily resolved,
she instead creates one that's even more meaningless
than the one she left behind.
In the process, she finds that her problems
can't be solved by sit-com escapism.
- I have no answers. (laughs) (playful music)
Zip, zero, zilp, nada, niente.
I'm starting to believe that everything is meaningless.
- [Michael] In trying to become
a sit-com show runner-in-star,
Wanda inadvertently creates a piece
of televised absurdist theater
for an audience of, well, mostly just Darcy.
So is Marvel trying to show us the futility
of trying to make a neat and ordered world
amidst the chaos of the universe?
Maybe.
And if so, that's definitely a change
of pace for the studio.
For over a decade now, the MCU has sold us
on the idea that heroes are worthy of our faith,
even if they are flawed in their own ways.
The lines between right and wrong
and good and evil are always pretty clear in Marvel films.
And even when they do get blurry,
we can be sure a bad guy did the blurring.
- And the Avengers?
They went home.
I knew I couldn't kill them.
More powerful men than me have tried,
but if I could get them to kill each other.
- Now with its two biggest heroes
out of the picture, is Marvel trying
to explore a new worldviews?
Does this dabble into the absurd mean
we're gonna see an MCU that's less black and white?
That's what Theater of the Absurd did at least.
Esslin writes, "the theater of most previous epochs
reflected an accepted moral order...
to such audiences, right and wrong were never in doubt,
nor did they question
the then accepted goals of human endeavor."
That pretty accurately describes the MCU
prior to WandaVision.
Now, we haven't been through another World War
yet.
But the characters of the MCU have
and they're all dealing with that trauma in different ways.
Between the Marvel properties we've seen since Endgame,
It seems that the studio is actively choosing
to focus on that trauma and in doing so,
it has intentionally or otherwise,
invoked similar feelings of post-war depression.
Where the MCU used to be a world of clear moral dichotomies,
with one team of good guys and ones with the bad guys,
Phase Four so far has brought us a lot of heroes
that sometimes act like villains
and villains that make some pretty good points.
- Bravo!
- [Michael] Much like absurdist theater points out
the impossibility of a clear moral universe
that our naive child brains desperately long for,
it seems like the MCU is admitting
that things might not be as simple
as Captain good, Thanos bad.
And the fact that the studio
is willing to explore such a world view
and the fact that the show was such a success,
hopefully means there'll be willing to take more risks
on artists that want to genuinely question
the moral absolutism of the Avengers era.
And hopefully, we'll see a lot more
of up and coming actor, Ralph Bohner.
- Bohner. (laughs)
- But what do you guys think?
Is the MCU entering its own post-war period?
Or was WandaVision just a brief intermission
in an ongoing stream of costumed kick-assery?
Let us know in the comments.
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Later.
(upbeat music)