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

[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.