Captain America on France

[espanolbot]

Since it's the Fourth of July Weekend, I thought that I'd post this and give my commentary on it.

During the second Ultimates series, we got this... "iconic" moment.



Several pages later they had Nick Fury bringing up the line as if Mark Millar was patting himself on the back for coming up with such a snappy quip. Thing is though... even though Ultimate Cap was intended to be a more "accurate" depiction of a man out of time than regular universe Steve, both he and the entire Ultimates series was far more a reflection of the time the stories were written than the time Steve's from... if that makes sense.

Written in the early days of the War on Terror, there was a fair among of ludicrous anti-French feeling circling about in the US due to their opposition to the invasion of Iraq (resulting in such bizarre things as French Fries being renamed Freedom Fries in certain places... even though they're actually Belgian), so the idea of a gungho 'Merican action hero randomly slamming France would make a degree of sense... if he was from the early 2000s rather than the 1940s.

It seems a touch bizarre that Steve would insult the French resistance fighters, who he would probably have been working with only a few months before from his frame of reference. Admittedly a lot of modern stereotypes regarding the French did originate from the Second World War (the one about Americans thinking that French people smell was caused by the GIs being baffled by the notion that people in rural areas of a country occupied by the Nazis might not considering hygiene to be high on their list of priorities, particularly since there was a lack of hot and cold water in some areas), but it's still really weird.

A short while later in the regular universe Captain America title, Ed Brubaker had Cap explain his views of France which seem a lot more in-character than the Ultimate example.

Comments

[captainbellman]

I also adore how Warren Ellis decided to mock that line for its stupidity - obviously in "Nextwave" with Elsa's t-shirt, and quietly in "Ultimate Secret" by having Hawkeye sarcastically mention it to Natasha.

[lilacsigil]

I thought at the time that it was a meta-joke on Americans for their bizarre anti-French sentiment, but having read more Millar since, he seems to divide his work into "occasionally subtle" and "blatantly obvious and direct" and this seems to be the latter.

[thatnickguy]

I can't recall any time I would call his work "occasionally subtle."

[icon_uk]

His Superman The Animated Series run perhaps?

[mrstatham]

It doesn't help that a good bit of Millar's later work at Marvel was quite anti-American, to me; Civil War, for instance, has no interest at all in portraying the government based pro-registration side as being as good as their rogue counterparts. So this, to me, was always Millar tackily slamming America.

[onceaskrull]

I would argue that was anti-government sentiment but not necessarily "anti-American." There are many people in the US who loudly proclaim themselves to be the "real" Americans in the same breath that they denounce any movements by the government they don't agree with.

The fact that Cap, symbol of America, was on the anti-Registration side makes it hard for me to see Millar as taking a jab at America (the myth). American government, sure, or perhaps all governmental invasions of privacy. But I don't recall anything in Millar's work that suggests to me that he was taking a sideways jab at the myth of America as a dominant, superior, always-right force. But, admittedly, it's been quite a few years since I've willingly read anything by Millar.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

You really didn't have to wait until Civil War to see Millar slamming America. The next Ultimates arc had Iraq, Syria and a few others making their own super hero team, called the Liberators (with no sense of irony at all), attacking America to 'free' it.

[halloweenjack]

I'd divide it into "can write a decent story when he bothers to" and "just flat-out pandering to the lowest common denominator".

[beardedjellybean]

Hating on the French is definetly a more modern view, but I did have to agree with Ultimate Cap when he got weirded out by the pretty blatant incest in Ultimates 3 with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.

"No Wasp, I'm pretty sure that's not ok even these days. And Wolverine told us about how he perved on them having sex while Quicksilver heavily implies that he is seeing Wanda as his mother. And no, I don't think that that we should totally forgive your (much more in this universe) abusive piece of shit ex-husband."

As you can probably tell, I didn't like Ultimates 3.

[freezer]

I thought the mockery over Ultimates 3 was Wasp tsk-tsking Cap for his "40s brain" not being able to process incest. As I've seen it put in plenty of places, pretty sure they had incest in the 1940s.

[espanolbot]

The Americans' relationship with the French is... complicated. Allegedly they fell out over a number of things, including both thinking that their societies were the epitome of democratic ideal (post-French Revolution), but thinking that the Americans were wrong for being too religious, while the French were thought to be wrong for trying to introduce secularism.

[janegray]

Great post! ^_^

[punisher007]

Millar must have been in one of his "EXXTTREEMMMEE" moods that day. You know, the same kinds of moods that gave us KA 2, Nemesis, incest rapist Hulk, etc.

Oh and Millar has this noticeable habit of writing most of his characters as unlikeable/reprehensible jerks. So there's that as well.

[mrstatham]

Really interesting that two writers who came up around the same period - even having slightly similar career paths - could produce such a different quality of writing. Brubaker - a handful of stumbles aside - has always been leagues ahead of Millar, and I'm kind-of insulted none of his creator-owned stuff has had the 'instant movie' effect that some of Millar's has.

[espanolbot]

I think that it's primarily a marketing thing, as one of the criticisms that I've seen people in the industry have regarding Millar is that he makes comics AS film pitches rather than actual stories... Plus there's the thing where he's far more prolific with his creator owned stuff than Brubaker, who until relatively recently was doing primarily licensed stuff for DC and Marvel.

Though Brubaker's Punisher run is apparently part of the reading material being given to the guy playing the Punisher in Daredevil's second season, and his Captain America stuff heavily influenced both of the movies (and he had a cameo in the Winter Soldier as a result).

[aperturedreams]

I'd point out that Ultimate Captain America was always written as much more brazen and outspoken than his 616 counterpart. I suppose it's still a pretty strong insult, and it's unlikely Millar did too much research for what he probably wanted to be regarded as a gutsy joke.

[espanolbot]

Ehhh, Millar's politics could be a touch hard to pin down (Secret Service is anti-classist, for example, while Ultimates seemed to deliberately be tying into the post-9/11 amped up mililtary-industrial complex thing fueled by the likes of 24 and such). Whether it's pandering to the base or just a subject of its time is a matter for debate though.

Is 1610 Captain America really Steve Rogers?

[7dialsmystery]

I always assumed he was really William Burnside.

Re: Is 1610 Captain America really Steve Rogers?

[night4345]

He's Steve Rogers if Steve Rogers was a man from the 40's along with everything that entails instead of a man far ahead of his time as in the 616.

[reveen]

Even from just a historical perspective America thinking the French are cowards makes no sense.

France is historically one of most belligerent nations in post-Roman history. The Kingdom of France had been kicking people in the teeth for almost a thousand years, to say nothing of the first half of the 19th century. Sure, by World War 2 France lost to the Germans three times in a row. But that was partially due to be screwed over by the modernization of warfare and not because they're cowards.

While a pretty crude show one cool part of the cartoon Yvon of the Yukon is that while the title character is a gigantic stereotype of a Frenchman, he's a gigantic stereotype of a 17th century Frenchman, so the polar opposite of a coward.

[espanolbot]

It's a case of historical context most of the time with this kind of thing. Like the racist stereotype of Polish people being stupid (again, something that originated from this time period) was rooted in Americans thinking that the Polish army attacking the invading German army on horseback was due to them being, well, stupid.

Even though the story was a myth created by German and Italian journalists, at the Pomeranian village of Krojanty on the first day of the German invasion, 1 September 1939. The Polish lancers, who at that point hadn't been motorised, were forced to retreat under heavy machinegun fire from a Wehrmacht infantry battalion. The war correspondants appeared shortly after the panzer divisions had rolled in, and they decided to connect the dots: dead Polish soldiers with horses + German tanks = they must logically have charged tanks on horseback.

German and Soviet journalisted used this as propaganda to say that the Polish government didn't care about their troops, and were just willing to throw their people's lives away. This also had the side-effect of trivialising the Poles' contribution to the Allied war effort (despite, for example, a large number of pilots working for the RAF being Polish refugees or the Bletchley Park codebreakers who had fled to Britain), in addition to the entire country being interpreted as jokes by their American allies.

All because of Nazi propaganda and the fact that the Poles hadn't managed to update their military to the extent to the Nazis, who had been building up their armed forces ever since the Nazis were elected into office AND had practiced out the Blitzkrieg techniques used in the invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia, for example AND were making a marked effort to get the most advanced gear needed for the task of conquering Europe.

[jkcarrier]

Further proof that Brubaker's Cap is a nicer guy: He doesn't remind Sharon that one of the people he worked with in the French Resistance was her Aunt Peggy, and that's when they became lovers...

[philippos42]

Oddly, this version of Cap is more sympathetic than I expected from Millar. My introduction to Millar was his first arc on The Authority, where a blatant imitation Cap is the hateful right-wing anti-gay villain that Midnighter impales at the end.

I guess that was Millar's idea of how to appeal to Teh Gayz, but it was really just crazy offensive all around. (I sold all my Authority comics, even the Ellis/Hitch issues, after that. If Ellis approved of this guy, it colored my view of his judgement.)

So, it's kind of a relief that Cap is as nice a guy later in The Ultimates as he turned out to be.

THAT SAID:

This is not something a typical American of Cap's era would say.

The "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" stereotype which I remember becoming a sort of internet meme 12 years ago can be traced to a specific source. The stereotypical "Scottish" character "Groundskeeper Willie" on the American tv show The Simpsons. The joke is that he despises other European nationalities and has crazy stereotypes for lots of them. And that may be related to the Mike Myers SNL sketches where he plays a Scottish transplant with a store full of Scottish tat and insists, "If it's not Scottish, it's crap!"

It got picked up and repeated by pro-war American media in 2003, and became a new stereotype. But it comes from a wild ignorance of French history outside a few collaborators (not even the whole country!) in one particular war.

Interestingly, Millar is Scottish. So, maybe that really is a Scottish stereotype of the French. Or it's one he thought would sell in the USA.

[philippos42]

I screwed up the bolding, but it made me laugh, so I'm leaving it.

[jekylls_salvation]

Yeah, Hemingway rolled around with those French resistance groups. If Hemingway liked them, you can bet your coat on a cold day they're anti-coward.

I wonder if Cap ran into Hemingway... I know Wolverine did in the Spanish Civil War. Hm.