These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose. Maybe I can still irritate people while being funny. It works pretty well for John Scalzi! We’ll see what happens.
This essay isn’t going to be funny. Actually, it’s sort of grim…
I grew up on the short, “average end” of the DNA strand. When I tell people I grew up in a family where my father had played football and basketball as a kid growing up in a poorer neighborhood of Minneapolis. I know anyone living in New York City, Chicago, Calcutta, or Port-au-Prince had it far tougher, probably deadly. Two younger brothers were football, hockey, then baseball and track-and-field; sister was softball and volleyball, and mom had been on the Fencing team at the University of Minnesota.
To say we ate, drank, and lived SPORTS was an adequate conclusion. I was pudgy after I had my tonsils out, and it seemed that what I WAS interested in (music was OK, Dad and one brother did it, Mom sang, too). Acting, swimming, and camping were WEIRD. Being a committed follower of Christ was even weirder. I was smart enough, but never EXCELLED at anything…
Bullies – from my brothers down to Tom, a neighborhood bully who physically slugged me; added to that all the guys who intimidated me at the slightest drop of a hat. The cherry on top was my name: Guy. The decade had arrived where calling me gay-Guy carried a truckload of sexual innuendo (and not ONLY innuendo – some was outright claim-that-it-was-a-fact.) and stigma.
I survived due to a complex protective mix of…well, I’ll stop there to say that after re-watching for the dozenth time, I discovered that the AVENGER movies – specifically, the SPIDERMAN movies, the IRONMAN movies, and finally, the THANOS movies were making me seethe with anger.
I discovered that the Avengers Universe (aka the MCU or Marvel Comics Universe) overflows with BULLIES. Every single one of the movies – these UNIVERSAL GOOD women and men – not only faced unfairness and persecution by bullies over and over – they also BULLIED characters (including each other – I think specifically of Antman, who appears to be a doormat more than a LOT of times…) in the movies. Even the highest and mightiest, the ones I MOST respected: Captain America, Spiderman, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Vision…are repeatedly bullied – and they respond with bullying others weaker than them.
Of course, the biggest and most powerful bully was Ironman. And yet, the writers and watchers worked hard to make us both feel sorry for him, and endear him to us, so that, despite how much bullying Spiderman and Ironman perpetrated, not only were they OUTBULLIED by Thanos, I wept at that last scene where Spiderman (aka Peter Parker) wept over the loss of his (abusive) father-figure, Tony Stark (aka Ironman)…
By definition I will use this one from THE ANTIBULLYING ALLIANCE: “The repetitive, intentional hurting (physically, emotionally, or spiritually) of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. Bullying can be physical, verbal, or psychological. It can happen face-to-face or online (or in the Spirit realm or in another dimension, or teleportation (whether actual or spiritual).” (https://anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-information/all-about-bullying/understanding-bullying/definition)
I’m not going to go through all of the Avenger movies; I will note some obvious instances – of course is in the first scene of the first movie: Steve Rogers is getting beat up by a kid in Queens in 1942.
After that, all you need to do is think a bit and you’ll find scenes from all of them of bullying. The ones that leap out to me are Wanda bullying just about everyone she comes into contact with for her entire tenure in the Avengers. She even bullies Vision.
Steve Rogers (himself a victim of brutal bullying) resorts to bullying what’s left of the Avengers when he repeatedly says that nothing anyone else says or thinks is important – his opinion is the only valid one.
King T’Challa, like all the other bullies in the MCU vacillates wildly between a (literarily pathetic) figure and a brutal bully, forcing his will on everyone in sight – including the woman he’s trying to woo…I could see the results of THAT one coming from a million light-years away.
The god Thor acts like Steve Rogers and pushes everyone around, even resorting to bulling his “girlfriend” to get his way…(isn’t that an actionable behavior…Oh! He’s a god, he’s exempt…)
Rocket Racoon continually bullies everyone he comes into contact with (and is excused because he was treated badly as a cyborg raccoon); also, Ego bullies the entire universe; Star Lord does some bullying, then retreats a bit…
OK – I’ve got both a point and a badly missed deadline. I’ll be back to finish this next week.
Inspiration: The Marvel Cinematic Universe, https://www.space.com/marvel-movies-in-order
Image: https://rchsprowler.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/il_794xN.2741269623_o55v-636x900.jpg
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